We are honored to announce that Gong has been recognized as the winner in the AI and Machine Learning: Applications category in InfoWorld's annual Technology of the Year awards. The InfoWorld Technology of the Year awards highlight the leading products and solutions that positively change how companies operate, and how their employees work. 

IT leaders and CIOs are currently struggling to effectively measure  AI's value — with most leaders conflicted between choosing productivity gains, revenue growth, or worker satisfaction as the key value driver. That’s a huge part of the reason why we're honored that InfoWorld has decided to recognize The Gong Revenue AI platform as a leading solution that addresses all three areas. 

In their assessment, the InfoWorld Technology of the Year judges acknowledged how Gong’s platform helps revenue organizations automate the "tedious but essential task” of capturing a complete, high-quality, and contextualized view of their data. Valuable information often goes undetected by traditional CRM alone.

The Gong Revenue AI Platform empowers everyone in revenue teams to improve productivity, increase predictability, and drive revenue growth by deeply understanding customers and business trends, and driving impactful decisions and actions. By capturing every customer interaction, Gong equips GTM organizations with the right quantity, quality, and contextual information – accelerating insight to action as a result. 

This achievement joins a growing list of recent recognitions that validate our efforts to create leading revenue AI technology. This includes Inc.’s 2024 Best in Business list in the AI & Data category and The Cloud Awards, Most Advanced AI Environment. 

The complete list of winners for this year's Technology of the Year awards can be found here. 

There’s one concern sales leaders often raise: the productivity drain caused by siloed CRM and emails. 

If the critical context your reps need isn’t available right where they work, damage to your pipeline and your reps’ productivity is inevitable. Reps waste time toggling between tools, manually digging up the contextual information they need to personalize outreach. 

Gong Anywhere solves this data disconnection. Available now for Gong Engage, Gong Anywhere brings revenue AI directly into Gmail and Salesforce, helping reps create and convert high-quality pipeline seamlessly within existing workflows. In the coming months, Gong Anywhere will also be available in Microsoft Outlook, expanding its reach to the Office 365 ecosystem.

When your reps can’t access the context they need from the solution they're already in — whether that’s their CRM, email inboxes, calendar, etc. — fragmented workflows stifle the ability to personalize engagement. Their attention is divided across tools, making it harder to craft relevant, high-impact outreach. Pipelines quickly go sideways, primarily for two reasons:

Reps lack personalized insights

Buyers and reps identify personalization as the number one way to increase response rates (Gong State of Sales Engagement Report). That’s why reps spend up to 12 hours each week personalizing messages. It's a massive amount of time, and yet, 91% of buyers still say sales content lacks personalization. That’s a problem connected data can help solve.

Toggling between tools lowers productivity

Your reps waste time when they bounce between their CRM, email, and sales engagement solution. Context-switching all day, every day, hurts pipeline health, productivity, and sellers’ willingness to adopt standardized tools and processes — even the ones designed to boost their efficiency! 

In fact, a full 70% of reps are overwhelmed by the number of tools they are supposed to use (State of Sales Report). 

That’s where Gong Anywhere comes in, which brings the power of Gong’s Data Engine and Gong AI to your sales team’s existing workflows.

Revenue teams can now work in the solution of their choice while accessing deep contextual information and insights based on complete customer interaction data. Your team can create more engaging and personalized outreach while saving time and boosting productivity. 

Gong Engage customers can now download Gong Anywhere for Gmail and Salesforce from the Chrome Store. 

With Gong for Gmail, your reps can bring Gong’s next-level insights straight into the emails they’re composing — in the solution they’re already working in. Your team can build stronger relationships with prospects and customers while staying more productive throughout the day.

Reps can access deep contextual insights without leaving Gmail, helping them:

Prioritize email conversations: Reps can easily identify leads/contacts and prioritize conversations with those people in their inboxes. They’ll also see whether leads/contacts are not open to being contacted, so they can focus on chasing only the best deals and avoiding contacting folks who’ve unsubscribed. Devin, for example, doesn’t want to be contacted:

Identify buying signals: Reps can monitor leads’/contacts’ actions, like email opens and clicks, to assess prospects’ interest levels before reaching out. Phil has interacted with this email numerous times:

View contacts’ details: Sellers can access “contact view,” making it easy to access background information (role, company, LI profile, a history of interactions, etc.) about a prospect. With this information, reps can personalize their responses and engage prospects in high-quality conversations.

Ask Anything: Immediately gain in-depth insights into your accounts, deals, and contacts by asking open-ended questions in Ask Anything. Use its answers to get a quick and comprehensive understanding of the contacts or equip reps with personalized insights. 

Dial contacts: Reps can make dials, as well as add notes and contacts to their standardized workflows without switching tabs. They’ll save time and remain focused on the task at hand.

Apply templates and content blocks: Reps can browse, select, and apply Gong Engage templates and content blocks to their emails — all right in Gmail.

Rephrase emails: Reps can instantly rephrase their email or adjust the tone in seconds with the power of Gong AI.

Improve your contextual understanding — and your outreach — with Gong for Salesforce. Reps can get comprehensive account context with Gong's conversation data, then reach out to customers without leaving Salesforce.

With Gong for Salesforce, reps can:

View contact’s context: Gong’s contact view in Salesforce brings conversation data into CRM, allowing reps to get the full context of a contact to boost engagement quality. 

Ask Anything: Gong AI answers open-ended questions instantly, so reps go into conversations with answers to key questions, like, “What challenges is this contact facing?”

Dial from the CRM: Reps can call contacts directly from CRM without the need to switch between tools, boosting their productivity and efficiency. Email from the CRM: Reps can email contacts directly from CRM without the need to switch to their email tab, boosting their productivity and efficiency. 

Add people to flows: Gong for Salesforce makes it incredibly easy to take action on contacts faster without toggling between tabs. Reps simply add Salesforce contacts to Gong Engage flows directly from the CRM.

“Gong Anywhere helps me engage customers and prospects, and ultimately helps with speed to lead. It improves workflows for quick calls, and the ability to add contacts into flows through CRM is a HUGE time saver – maybe four hours each week. The ability to see what other reps are sending to prospects and customers is incredibly helpful. My favorite feature is 100% Ask Anything.” - Luke Mladucky, SpotOn.

Soon, teams will also see account and contact summaries in both Gong for Gmail and Gong for Salesforce. These will shorten the already brief amount of time it takes your reps to get up to speed on an account or contact.

Gong Anywhere represents a new way to productivity. This is the first of many ways you’ll be able to bring the power of Gong – with its data layer and revenue AI – to the solutions you use every day to sell, whether that’s CRM, email, LinkedIn, and more. Boost productivity and improve pipeline health, all with  AI designed to drive efficiency across workflows and elevate how you connect with customers. 

If you’re not a Gong Engage customer, get in touch to streamline and elevate your sales engagement efforts. 

Choosing and tracking key metrics that reveal, predict, and manage your pipeline health is a big responsibility. And it’s made all too complicated by the fragmented, low-quality, and outdated information that RevOps leaders have to cobble together from CRMs, business intelligence tools, and spreadsheets. 

This haphazard system requires manual effort and constant maintenance, making it nearly impossible to drill down and get deal insights — let alone action them. And some RevOps leaders aren’t even sure which metrics to focus on. (If that’s you, read our guide on the “5 metrics that matter for predictable revenue.”)

The end result is a patchwork of uncertainty that hinders your ability to make informed decisions and run a rigorous revenue process. 

You need a single point of reference – one that centralizes your data and KPI reporting right where your team works. 

That’s why we’re excited to offer Revenue Analytics to all Gong Forecast customers. With it, you can:

Here’s a closer look at what Revenue Analytics brings to the table.

Combining data from your CRM and customer interactions in your workflows unlocks three key benefits:

Centralized. Access opportunity data from your CRM, paired with hundreds of data points gathered from your customer interactions, with AI flagging any risks. This means your team finally has a single place to understand everything happening in their pipeline. No more jumping between spreadsheets, CRM, and BI to understand what’s happening. Everything is centralized in Gong, in the apps where they already work — with zero toggling.

Configurable. How many times have you had a meeting where the numbers don’t match? When everyone is working in their own spreadsheets, there are often several definitions of key KPIs, like win rate and attainment. With Gong, you can easily define consistent metrics. Build a metric library and use dashboard “recipes” to quickly build and roll out reporting – knowing that each calculation is correct, and that teams are working on a unified scoreboard. 

Actionable. There’s not a static report in sight. Unlike BI tools and CRM reports, which aren’t connected to underlying opportunity data, you can use Revenue Analytics dashboards to drill down into individual opportunities and take action, all on one screen. No other tool allows you to seamlessly go from 30,000 ft to ground level and back – with this superpower, you don’t just review the pipeline; you can start creating it in a couple of clicks from a dashboard. 

With this new capability, you can gain a deeper understanding of performance trends and forecast more accurately. Here’s how that works across certain features: 

In the future, we’ll be adding additional features and capabilities that go deeper into your forecast and analyze more of the customer lifecycle, including forecasted gap to target and attainment, prospecting activity, and customer health – insights you can only get from Gong. 

Once Revenue Analytics is configured, you can focus on improving forecast accuracy, rep productivity, and pipeline generation. Let’s take a look at actions you can take in each area, using Revenue Analytics to answer key questions you may be asking yourself:

QUESTION: Do my reps have enough coverage to meet their forecast?

ACTION: Review your forecast dashboards weekly to ensure the team is on target.

QUESTION: Is this data reliable?

ACTION: Drill down into your pipeline to see how AI assessed each deal.

QUESTION: How accurate are my leaders and reps at forecasting?

ACTION: Use the Performance Widget on the Leadership Forecast Dashboard weekly, monthly, or quarterly to see forecast accuracy by individual.

QUESTION: Which reps are hitting their productivity goals and which are being left behind?

ACTION: Look at your reps’ productivity KPIs to see who meets targets and who needs support.

QUESTIONS: 

What’s my pipeline growth rate? 

What are the trends in average deal size? 

What’s the general state of our team’s performance? 

Who’s our team’s star in lead sourcing and why?

ACTION: Review your Pipeline Generation dashboard to immediately unlock all the answers.

QUESTIONS: 

How are we doing on key performance metrics? 

Which lead generation strategies are working? 

Are there trends we should pay attention to? 

Which areas for improvement would optimize our pipeline’s effectiveness? 

ACTION: Incorporate the Pipeline Generation dashboard into your individual and team meetings to keep everyone on track with data-driven discussions.

“Gong’s Revenue Analytics is a game-changer for our sales teams. Our CRM requires significant time and resources for custom analysis. Gong provides real-time, customizable data instantly—empowering smarter decisions and driving faster growth." Sascha Meier, EQS Group

You don’t need us to remind you that setting up and maintaining revenue reporting across CRMs, BI tools, and spreadsheets is time-consuming, inefficient, and doesn’t consistently yield accurate results. 

Leave data chaos behind and get a clear, real-time view of your revenue engine. With Gong's Revenue Analytics, you no longer have to work with bad data and disconnected systems. Instead, you can:

Drive pipeline accuracy, actionability, and accountability, right where your teams already sell. 

Ready to experience the power of Revenue Analytics within Gong Forecast? Get a demo.

Revenue Analytics are now available to Gong Forecast customers.

Here at Gong, a core operating principle is to create raving fans. Whether it's through our platform or event experiences, we strive to equip our customers with the tools they need to succeed — their wins are our wins.

That’s what Celebrate ‘24 was all about. On November 21 and 22, we brought together revenue leaders from enterprises across all industries to discuss what it takes to build world-class go-to-market orgs. Attendees had the opportunity to connect with peers, engage in breakout sessions, and help us define the future of revenue.

For our attendees who want to look back as well as anyone who missed the live event, let’s revisit some of the key moments and big announcements from the event.

Watch all of Celebrate ‘24 on-demand here.

When asked about the top challenges impacting their productivity, sellers who responded to Gong’s State of Sales Productivity, 2024 study said they spend 61 percent of their time on administrative tasks. They need a better way to revenue — one that’s not constrained by siloed solutions or administrative-intensive processes.

So it was fitting that our very own CRO, Shane Evans, kicked us off by reflecting on how productivity and growth constraints are tied to the lack of consistent, contextually rich data — and the ability to turn it into insights, actions, and decisions.

Our CEO, Amit Bendov, then joined the keynote stage to delve into Gong’s past, present, and future. “Our vision is an autonomous revenue management solution,” he said. “You’ll just talk with customers and the system does the rest. It provides automation and insight — you’ll know a lot more without having to rely on drudgery.”

Amit then introduced our next steps on the road to that fully autonomous future – the next evolution of Gong’s Revenue AI Platform. He unveiled five new AI capabilities: 

AI Brief

Get anyone up to speed on the relevant account, deal, or call context. Define structured templates to standardize and streamline how knowledge is shared.

AI Scorecard Answers

Take the burden out of scoring your reps by pre-populating your coaching scorecards with AI-suggested answers.

Pre-Trained Smart Trackers

Monitor common revenue concepts, such as competition, budget, and decision-makers, across your team’s calls and emails without having to train AI yourself.

Revenue Analytics

Gong Forecast customers get access to configurable analytics, customizable dashboards, and centralized target and metric management.

Gong Anywhere

Available now for Gong Engage in the Chrome store, Gong for Gmail and Gong for Salesforce both bring Gong AI directly into your most-used tools.

Check out our full product announcement blog for the full list and more details.

Finally, Amit welcomed Bradford Jordan, Head of Sales and Partner Performance at Reddit, on stage to learn about Reddit’s business and revenue transformation — and Gong’s role in it. 

“Our first goal was to deliver value to sales without asking for anything in return,” Bradford said. To do that, it’s helpful to create champions throughout the business who “fundamentally care about giving more power to sales.”

Rather than filling reps and managers with as much information as possible, Reddit thinks of enablement as "training pilots" and "designing airports." That’s where Gong comes in.

“Gong unlocks intelligence for our cross-functional teams, ensuring we're pulling from the same source of truth and keeps us all on the same page,” he said. Alignment comes in tandem with speed, too. “Gong at Reddit is a place where you can find guidance, insight, and answers faster than was ever possible before.”

In a lively conversation moderated by Dana Feldman, revenue leaders from LinkedIn, Amazon, and Workday shared best practices for operationalizing revenue AI across GTM functions to increase productivity, drive better decision-making, and close more deals.

Highlights included:

After the morning keynote, in-person attendees were able to join breakout sessions specific to the problems they wanted to solve. Broken out by three categories — productivity, predictability, and growth — the breakouts focused on a variety of key outcomes for teams across GTM orgs, spanning enablement to post-sales and beyond.

The breakout sessions included revenue leaders from these incredible Gong customers:

We were fortunate enough to be joined by NFL Hall-of-Famer Steve Young, who closed out the event by sitting down with Shane for a great conversation about meeting adversity with great data and determination — as well as a willingness to do the unexpected.

Highlights included:

When in Orange County, you do as the Californians do — and our 200 in-person attendees did just that. They played golf at the Monarch Beach Golf Links, participated in a wine tasting and charcuterie board workshop, and ventured on the water to spot some cetaceans in Dana Point, 2021’s Whale Watching Capital of the US.

Our commitment to revenue teams around the world isn’t limited to our annual event. We continuously offer new resources aimed to equip our industry with the information that helps revenue leaders and sellers alike keep pace with change and learn best practices.

Some recent highlights:

Dan Morgese, Gong’s Director of Content and Research, presented several exclusive insights from our new State of Sales Productivity report during Celebrate. The report takes a look back at how revenue teams performed in 2024 and previews how leaders plan to grow revenue in 2025. For example, top performers were 2x more likely to use AI to automate data entry, but only 32 percent were using AI solutions that are part of their organization’s current tech stack. 

We spoke to seven Gong customers who have successfully leveraged revenue AI to improve processes across their GTM organizations, including Square, MadKudu, Intercom, and Datarails.

Find these can’t-miss resources, plus more practical advice, data-driven insights, and trending topics for revenue leaders on The Edge.

Whether you joined us online, in person, or are just catching up on the event now, we want to express a resounding thank you!

Now that Celebrate is in the books, we look forward to continuing to work with our customers and other revenue leaders to build unstoppable GTM organizations. While Celebrate is a blast every year, we don’t only strive to address your needs and pain points once a year. That’s why we keep building on the Gong Revenue AI Platform — and we’re so excited for what’s still to come.

Ready for a better way to revenue? Get started with Gong today.

As revenue AI’s impact on go-to-market teams continues to expand, companies are not only eager to embrace AI technology, but also to do so in a strategic manner that delivers deep value to their most important revenue objectives. Knowing this, we’re pleased to announce that Gong has been named to Inc.’s 2024 Best in Business list in the AI & Data category, a recognition that highlights companies making a profound impact on their industries and society at large. 

This accolade reflects Gong’s mission to empower companies to unlock their revenue potential, leveraging the power of customer-interaction data and AI to transform their revenue teams. At Gong, AI has been woven into our platform since day one to help revenue teams increase productivity and predictability, and drive growth – and we continue to deliver game-changing innovations to help our customers succeed. 

At Celebrate, our recent flagship customer event, we unveiled new revenue AI advancements such as AI Brief, AI Scorecard Answers, and Revenue Analytics, as well as the expansion of the Gong Collective partner ecosystem. All of these underscore our leadership in helping revenue teams operationalize AI to drive value. For example, our State of Revenue Growth 2025 Report, shows that win rates increased by 38% when revenue teams used Gong’s Ask Anything capability. 

Inc.’s Best in Business Awards spotlight companies that achieve significant milestones, such as customer expansion, key product launches, increased market share, and industry-defining accomplishments. For Gong, this honor highlights not just our product innovations but also the impact we’ve made on the business world at large. We’re honored to be recognized by Inc. for our achievements in the AI & Data category, and we’re excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with revenue AI.

In addition to the Inc. Best In Business Award, Gong has received several accolades this year including: 

For more information on the Inc. Best In Business Award or to see the complete list, please visit inc.com/best-in-business.

You know the art and science of closing deals — but are you closing as many of them as possible? 

Or are vital details slipping through the cracks, like they do for 86 percent of sellers who participated in LinkedIn’s State of Sales survey? This large swath of respondents experienced the same pain point: They lost deals because a critical client or stakeholder simply walked away.

Of course, no sales professional has full control over losing stakeholders. But your team should have enough visibility into their deals to predict this kind of outcome in most cases.

The good news is that your chosen deal management software can support you in key ways:

If your team lacks predictability and needs more clarity, visibility, and certainty around deal outcomes, it’s time for new deal management software. 

Below, we explore key aspects of the software selection process. 

Deal management software streamlines and automates sales processes to improve their efficiency and outcomes. It often features a centralized dashboard where sales professionals, marketing teams, and other key players involved in closing and securing deals can get at-a-glance information about a deal’s progress. With the right information, you can also analyze data about each deal, harness specific features that ensure the progress of forecasted deals, or raise flags around stalled deals to change their outcome.

Make sure your team has access to these basic features of reliable deal management software: 

Deal management software offers visualizations of your entire deal lifecycle and gives you more control over its progress. 

Time saved on one deal means more time spent closing other deals. That’s one of the main benefits of using deal management software.

But today’s sales professionals need more than efficiency alone. They need deal management software that also offers predictability, AI-powered decision-making, and accurate, unbiased data — to name a few.

Before you choose a platform for your team, make sure it provides these seven benefits:

Don’t leave your sales to chance. Doing so is the quickest way to miss opportunities and fail to meet your sales goals. 

Instead, you need an AI-powered deal management platform to accurately predict sales cycles and revenue. These platforms create forecasts using customer data, sales trends, and industry insights. 

You can use accurate forecasting to: 

A platform like Gong Forecast, for example, uses 300+ unique signals to predict deal outcomes, delivering 20 percent more precise forecasts than CRM data alone. With Gong Forecast, you can confidently predict future revenue outcomes by analyzing in-quarter sales trends, historical performance, and detailed deal insights. 

Deal management software offers complete sales funnel visualization by integrating all your sales channels — emails, social media, downloads, etc. — to capture leads automatically. Once the lead is captured, the system offers a real-time view of its progress, allowing you to quickly identify and eliminate bottlenecks. 

Plus, the platform’s detailed customer data allows you to personalize engagement at each funnel stage, so you can identify at-risk deals and measure the health of your pipeline. 

This lets you quickly address prospect concerns, keep buyers moving down the funnel, and, as a result, close more deals.

Manual pipeline management can be chaotic, often leading to crucial deals slipping through the cracks. Deal management software prevents this by prioritizing high-value deals on your dashboard. 

The platform sorts deals into categories like: 

With real-time updates on each deal’s progress, you can take action quickly to address concerns and keep deals moving through the funnel. 

These platforms also generate valuable customer insights, capturing interactions with high-value clients that help you identify gaps and remove roadblocks. This ensures a smooth sales journey — increasing your chances of closing the deal. 

For example, Gong prioritizes deals based on urgency and importance, allowing you to focus your efforts where they matter most.

As customer needs evolve, so should your sales strategies. But how do you stay on top of current customer needs? 

It’s easy — leverage deal management software. 

The right sales solution will collect leads from multiple channels and store information in a single place. With a unified platform that automatically captures previous interactions and common concerns, your teams will have a clearer picture of every potential buyer. 

In addition to organizing customer data, a platform with AI capabilities will gather actionable insights into key criteria:

This saves research time and increases productivity since your sales reps can easily find the information they need to adjust their strategies to effectively nurture leads and close deals. 

For example, Gong syncs with customer relationship management tools and stores critical data from your customer interactions. That’s how Gong Insights offer an unprecedented view into current customer needs, allowing you to easily adjust your strategies for better conversion and retention.

Relying on manual sales processes creates disconnects between marketing and sales teams — which can lead to mixed messages for customers. This misalignment damages your brand and can stifle long-term growth. 

Deal management software solves this issue by centralizing leads, client information, sales records, and interactions. Its automated updates mean your team can access the most current insights into your deal pipeline in just a few clicks. 

This seamless access ensures that all team members are on the same page, fostering collaborative and data-driven planning for campaigns and sales outreach. 

The result is a unified approach that creates a consistent brand image across all touchpoints, including marketing and sales. This consistency wins trust and strengthens bonds with buyers. When prospects see you as a reliable problem-solver, it boosts your credibility and brand value. 

Sales teams often waste time chasing unqualified leads. This distracts them from pursuing quality leads that are more likely to convert. 

To fix this, seamless sales qualification is essential — which is where deal management software comes in. 

The best platforms use predefined criteria to rank prospects and prioritize leads, shining the spotlight on those who are more likely to convert. After pinpointing qualified leads, you can double down your efforts to nurture them with personalized communication. 

Meanwhile, your marketing team can create campaigns that meet the commonly held needs and challenges of your top leads. Targeting the right people will generate more qualified leads and reduce your marketing spend.  

When employees spend most of their workday on repetitive tasks, it frustrates them and reduces their efficiency. Plus, manual processes increase the risks to your business as it grows by increasing the chance of errors and inaccurate insights. 

Deal management software solves these challenges by automating repetitive administrative tasks, such as:

This frees up your reps to focus on high-priority deals. Sales managers can also gain clarity into the entire pipeline and team progress without spending hours on manual work. 

Beyond administrative tasks, sales intelligence software anticipates trends, identifies evolving customer challenges, and improves your marketing campaigns by automating:

For example, Gong’s sales automation software automatically records client interactions, tracking key deal details like deliverables and estimates, so you can maintain strong client relationships.

Every deal follows multiple stages, from lead generation to negotiation and closing. It’s a given that your deal management software needs to provide functions that can accommodate every stage of your sales. 

You should also consider the rapid rise of AI, which is fundamentally changing how deals are initiated, developed, and closed. 

In 2023, Ansarada found that external factors such as political volatility, cybersecurity concerns, and regulatory changes significantly extended deal timelines. The median time to close a deal then was 244 days — more than eight months.

This highlights the need for quality deal management software that can track deal stages and capture crucial data so sales teams know what to do next and which deals are at risk. 

Let’s look at seven essential features of deal management software. 

One of the main reasons you invest in deal management software is to automate processes and save time. 

Look for a tool with advanced automation capabilities, including sales tracking, data entry, and AI-powered intelligence that automatically identifies gaps and provides solutions. 

An excellent way to see a solution’s automation capabilities is to sign up for free trials. When you do so, you should be able to answer these key questions:

Look for a solution with contact management and communication recording features. It should centralize and segment all your contacts, enabling your team to access and organize them easily through advanced filters. 

Also, ensure the selected management software can record and analyze client interactions that allow you to: 

Switching between multiple tools can cost you precious time. 

Finding a sales tool that syncs with your CRM and other communication and productivity platforms is key. 

Extensive integrations create an ecosystem, keeping all your valuable sales data, client interactions, and insights organized in one place. They also improve collaboration between your sales and marketing departments. 

Worried about integrations? Look no further than Gong, which integrates with platforms like these, and many more (full list here): 

Review deal management software features against their price to ensure you get the best long-term ROI.

Remember the adage that “cheap is expensive.”

If you’re solely focused on finding the cheapest tool on the market, you’ll need to compromise on valuable features and may even have to invest in additional tools in the future — which will cost you more. 

A better approach is to consider your budget and the features you need most versus those you can go without. 

List and compare the features and pricing of the tools you’re considering. You can also use a site like G2 to see features, read reviews, and more. 

From there, choose software that offers the most functionalities for your budget. 

When you compare pricing, consider potential future add-ons and their costs. It’s best if the vendor offers customizable subscriptions based on your team’s size so you can easily adjust your licensing plan as your company grows. 

For example, Gong customizes its subscription pricing. Select your team’s size and the features you need, and you’ll get a plan that’s tailored to you.  

Implementing a new solution often involves technical hiccups. To ensure that they’re resolved quickly, choose a platform that offers reliable customer support.

Your chosen vendor should offer chatbots and a 24/7 customer assistance team. 

Plus, it’s even better if the software comes with step-by-step guides and user modules to help your team learn the software quickly and reap its full benefits. 

Your chosen software solution should have task management and tracking capabilities. It should also automatically assign deals to the right sales reps, streamlining workflows and minimizing oversight. 

Features to look for include:

Since every business has unique needs, choosing software with extensive customization capabilities is vital. Look for software that allows you to: 

A flexible tool lets you stay aligned with your business objectives and adjust based on changing client demands.

We’ve discussed why you need deal management software and how to choose the right platform for your company. But what happens after that? Here are some best practices to get the most out of your selected software. 

Define your sales process step by step. To do this, you must first figure out your business goals and set realistic sales targets. 

Once you have your targets in place, you can create a strategic sales plan: 

To take it a step further, consider the most probable challenges they’ll face and create solutions so your team can quickly tackle them without disrupting the sales flow. 

With a clear sales process, your team will know precisely how to proceed with each deal, thereby minimizing confusion and ensuring a smooth client experience. 

Deal management is a team effort. 

Each team member is vital in moving the client onward through the sales journey, using effective communication and collaboration.

Luckily, it’s easy to sync Gong’s deal management software with internal communication systems so everyone is aligned and up to date. 

The platform’s real-time data and customer insights allow teams to make informed and collaborative decisions and boost conversions.

Assess performance metrics and customer interactions to identify potential areas of improvement. 

Use journey and empathy mapping to pinpoint common areas of friction or heat mapping to detect frequent drop-off points.

Once you understand why clients aren’t converting (or are taking too long to convert), develop relevant strategies to overcome this issue. 

For example, customers who drop off before signing up may be balking at extensive form fields. To solve this problem, try shortening the form or switching to one-tap sign ups.

Sales is both an art and a science. You need skilled sales reps for the art of selling and powerful deal management software for the data and insights they’ll need to succeed. 

If you’re ready for more accurate sales forecasting, streamlined sales processes, and transparency across the sales funnel, consider Gong’s Revenue AI platform. 

With robust features designed to elevate every aspect of deal management, Gong’s AI-backed insights can give your team a competitive edge and increase your bottom line. To see Gong in action, book a demo today.

Related links:

When asked about the top challenges impacting their productivity, respondents of Gong’s State of Sales Productivity, 2024 study had two top answers: administrative tasks (61%) and inefficient processes (47%).

Those are not stats you’d expect to see now that sales teams have AI at their disposal. Why aren’t more revenue teams efficient in their efforts to drive growth? 

It isn’t for lack of trying. But today’s revenue teams are limited by disjointed processes, solutions, and data; they’re struggling to unify workflows and collaborate with ease, let alone meet rapidly changing customer expectations. 

They need a better way to revenue – one that’s not constrained by siloed solutions or resource-intensive processes. 

That’s why today, at Celebrate, we announced a series of enhancements to Gong’s Revenue AI Platform that help unify your tech stack and bring together critical GTM functions. With our latest innovations, you can embrace new levels of automation, create consistency across your sales workflows, and grow your pipeline from anywhere. 

At Gong, we continue to expand our market-leading revenue AI capabilities with five new product enhancements designed to empower your entire GTM org – from sellers to the C-suite:

Disjointed processes, solutions, and data are byproducts of the modern, specialized revenue team. Just think about how many team members work with one customer — from SDRs who prospect to AEs who close the deal to CSMs who manage the post-sales experience. Executives are also peppered throughout that journey, ensuring the company addresses that customer’s needs and goals.

It takes a village to close a customer, and that doesn’t just mean handoffs – upselling and cross selling also add to the complexity. To transfer knowledge between all these stakeholders, sellers dedicate considerable time to creating account briefs, with varying results to show for it. 

Inconsistent – not to mention time-consuming – briefs damage the handoff process, leading to missed opportunities and dissatisfied customers. 

Enter the AI Brief — which gives you the ability to get anyone up to speed on the relevant account, deal, or call context for a given situation. Here’s how it works:

We expect this feature to be generally available in the coming months.

Now that your reps can spend more of their time and energy with the customer, you can focus on improving the quality of those interactions. 

In today’s competitive market, a poor interaction can send buyers running. That’s why coaching scorecards are so important, as they ensure sales teams are adhering to the best practices that drive higher win rates. 

Diligent improved win rates by 7.4% by using Scorecards to coach the team on the use of video to improve client interactions. 

Scorecards are essential for effective coaching, but up until now reviewing and scoring calls has been a manual and time-consuming task for managers. 

Gong’s new AI Scorecard Answers are a force multiplier for your sales productivity. They take the burden out of scoring your reps by pre-populating your coaching scorecards with AI suggested answers. You can generate a scorecard with simple prompts like “Did the rep confirm the next steps?”. Gong will analyze the call recording to detect what happened and then suggest answers to the scorecard, dramatically speeding up the scoring process for managers. 

AI Scorecard Answers also result in a better experience for reps, who get more timely and clear feedback that shows exactly where in the call they scored high or low. Most of all: the customer experiences more engaging and productive sales conversations. 

We expect AI Scorecard Answers to be generally available in the coming months.

Since Smart Trackers came out two years ago, thousands of teams have used them to monitor complex concepts to help improve sales execution. 

Deals where sellers use Smart Trackers have 35% higher win rates than deals without smart trackers. (ROI of AI, Gong Labs 2024 study)

For example, Kelly Services set up a Smart Tracker to see how often their reps were getting to authority.

Smart Trackers can provide powerful insight, but take time to train. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Pre-Trained Smart Trackers, so you can monitor common revenue concepts across your team’s calls and emails without having to train AI yourself.

With Pre-Trained Smart Trackers you can start tracking concepts in minutes, not hours. You can accelerate time to insight, get ahead of market trends, pinpoint coaching opportunities, and uncover sales cues that are essential to uncovering risk and growing your pipeline.

You will have access to a pre-trained library of trackers, which will only continue to grow. We will release new Pre-Trained Smart Trackers each month.

We expect this feature to be generally available early next year.

Data-driven decision-making can often be stymied by complex organizational silos that make it hard to connect and harmonize data.

Similar to how an AI Brief solves the game of telephone tag, Gong’s new Revenue Analytics addresses data and analytics challenges by centralizing target and metric management right where revenue teams live.  

With Revenue Analytics, Gong Forecast customers get access to configurable analytics, customizable dashboards, and centralized target and metric management. Create a library of metrics and targets to populate pre-configured dashboard templates, or create your own custom dashboards to measure revenue performance. It’s a single point of reference from which you and your teams can manage your pipeline, forecast accurately, and deliver reliable revenue. Plus, since these analytics are built on-top of your Gong workflows, you can drill down and take action from any dashboard.

Pipeline Analytics, the first release of Revenue Analytics, is generally available today for all Gong Forecast users. Use Pipeline Analytics to inspect pipeline, monitor pipeline health, and track pipeline-building and conversion within Gong, tasks that used to require manual effort across CRM, business intelligence (BI), and spreadsheets. 

With revenue insights gleaned from your customer interactions and surfaced directly in team workflows, reps and managers can be more proactive and strategic. And generate more revenue, with greater precision.

Today’s sellers struggle to quickly get the full context they need to efficiently personalize engagement. To equip reps with the necessary insights, in the systems they’re already working in, Gong is helping customers bring their rich conversation data and insights directly to CRM and email inboxes with Gong Anywhere. Available now for Gong Engage in the Chrome store, Gong Anywhere helps reps combat the productivity drains and knowledge gaps that arise from siloed CRM and email systems with two extensions:

Gong Anywhere for Salesforce and Gmail is currently available in the Chrome Store. Sellers will soon be able to access these capabilities within their Microsoft Outlook workflows, so they can grow pipeline from anywhere.

With nearly 80% of sales organizations failing to meet their revenue goals (Forrester), it's clear that access to AI isn't enough. GTM organizations need to move beyond disjointed tech stacks and workflows to effectively reap AI’s benefits. 

Unify your AI platform with Gong and derive better outcomes from your AI investments. With Gong’s Revenue AI Platform, you can streamline workflows, reduce pipeline risk, and create more predictable revenue across your GTM teams. 

Start now by booking a demo today. 

Every sales leader wants a more efficient and effective team.

Who among us doesn’t want to build a sales team that exceeds quotas month after month, quarter after quarter? No wonder there are hundreds of strategies and methodologies that promise to be a silver bullet. But you won’t see real, measurable results if you start implementing them at random. 

You need a framework. 

Sales performance management (SPM) uses data to systematically improve the most important parts of your sales process. From setting goals to forecasting, no stone is left unturned in your pursuit for a higher win rate and more revenue. 

In this article, we’ll cover everything a modern sales leader needs to know about SPM, why you should use it, and how to maximize your results. 

Sales performance management (SPM) is a data-backed framework leaders use to improve individual and team performance. 

It covers virtually every part of the sales process and leverages all your management skills, from setting goals and objectives to coaching reps, forecasting, and monitoring performance. The goal is to drive continuous improvement across your team as a whole and for individual reps. 

Your SPM framework should be tailored to your company’s goals and requirements.

Every SPM framework is unique, but there are several vital elements to include regardless of what you want to achieve. 

Planning lies at the heart of SPM. Start by evaluating fundamental decisions you probably made ages ago, like the best way to segment your markets, organize your accounts and allocate sales territories to each rep. Make every decision meaningful so that reps feel rewarded by their territories, not regretful. 

Money talks. Incentivize your reps to become more productive by setting tough (but realistic) quotas. Don’t forget to reward them handsomely, and don’t let motivation wane. Review goals and commission structures regularly to avoid their going stale.

You want to see improvement in your team’s performance, right? Then you need to check if reps are on course to hit their goals. 

Regular check-ins are an option, but it’s much easier to use sales performance management software that automatically captures and analyzes every customer interaction. This software also makes it easy to track deals through your pipeline and see where bottlenecks occur.

Don’t just acquire sales data; turn it into insights through detailed analysis. Like performance monitoring, this isn’t something you need to do yourself. A revenue AI solution like Gong can analyze your data to uncover deal-winning insights you might otherwise miss. 

Bonuses aren’t the only way to help reps hit and beat their quotas. Personalized sales coaching can help reps master the parts of your sales process that they struggle with and close more deals. With Gong, for example, managers can use AI to spot behavioral patterns and target the skills reps need to improve. 

Accurate forecasting helps you stay ahead of risks and make data-backed decisions — like which markets to focus on and which deals to prioritize.

As Michael Duncan, Director of Revenue Ops at Gong explains, “We constantly analyze our pipeline to be sure it aligns with our goals. We use Gong to analyze complex data and make informed decisions, relying on our own platform to solve the deal challenges we encounter.” 

Let’s look at the benefits sales performance management offers.

Chiefly, it makes you and your sales team more productive, efficient and effective — so you can smash targets and increase revenue. Here’s exactly what you can expect when implementing an SPM framework:

Making accurate predictions about future sales is tough, with 67 percent of sales operations leaders agreeing that accurate sales forecasts are harder to create today than they were three years ago.

SPM changes that with the help of sales data collection. The pipeline metrics you automatically gather during the performance monitoring part of the process make it easier to spot emerging sales trends. That’s not to mention the added reassurance that comes from using an AI-powered SPM tool that uses hundreds of data points to create more accurate forecasts.

If you want to motivate your reps, you’ll want to avoid setting unattainable targets. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done with 91 percent of organizations failing to hit sales targets in 2023. 

SPM makes things easier. The framework’s focus on data means you won't need to pull targets out of thin air. You can base quotas on existing sales data to make them as motivational and attainable as possible. 

Whether your team is full of fresh-faced SDRs or grizzled industry veterans, employing SPM can skyrocket their performance. 

For one, an SPM framework ensures that you set attainable targets that motivate reps to perform. It also promotes accountability across your organization, making reps even more likely to fill their quotas. 

Second, a renewed focus on sales training gives your reps the insights they need to perform better. Managers can use the data they collect to focus on the parts of the pipeline reps struggle with, and provide targeted advice that helps reps improve. 

How many of your sales team would be willing to leave for a better job offer? When we surveyed sales talent in 2022, almost half of them were actively looking for new opportunities. 

But a sales performance management initiative can encourage your team members to stick around for the long haul. When you improve training, goal setting, and your overall sales strategy, you make your company much more appealing to sales representatives who want to develop their skills and get paid for hitting targets.

Your finance director will love you too, given the high cost of recruiting and training new staff. 

If you’re like the majority of sales leaders we surveyed in our State of Sales Engagement report, your top priority will be creating a pipeline that quickly converts to revenue.

And, at the end of the day, that’s exactly what SPM will help you build. Implement the framework and you’ll be well on your way to building a bigger, stronger pipeline — one that’s bursting with high-value deals your reps close more often than not.

Now that you know why SPM matters, let’s look at how to run it without a hitch.

Sales performance management initiatives may be mandated by your leadership team, but it’s important to get feedback from everyone involved in the process before and after it’s implemented — especially your sales reps. 

Your reps will experience the impact of SPM first-hand, and will be able to tell you what’s working and what isn’t. They may even have SPM ideas you haven’t considered. 

Sales coaching is a major part of SPM, and feedback should flow both ways. Give your reps frequent feedback so they know what they’re doing well and where they can improve. 

If you want to improve your sales performance — and you surely do — then track relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your business goals. 

We recommend tracking both revenue- and activity-based KPIs individually and company-wide. That will provide you with a series of leading and lagging indicators you can use to identify issues and opportunities. 

Your revenue-based metrics can include:

Your activity-based metrics can include:

In either case, you can use these metrics to measure performance or create a quota that reps need to hit.

Push your sales reps to succeed by setting ambitious goals. But make sure they’re attainable and back them up with generous incentive schemes. 

Personalization is key. Blanket goals are easier to set, but they won’t consider an individual rep’s strengths and weaknesses. This can demotivate less experienced reps who fail to meet their quota, or top-performing reps who hit their monthly quota in two weeks and have no motivation to go further.

And don’t forget about yourself! The whole point of SPM is to improve your department’s performance, so set a relevant department-level goal for yourself and share it with the rest of your team. When reps understand their role in the broader team’s goals, it can make them more determined to meet their own targets.

Plenty of managers have tried to run an SPM plan manually using nothing more than a CRM and a spreadsheet. But it’s a fraught process that’s cumbersome and often inaccurate. You’re much better off leaning on SPM software.

The right sales performance management software gives you the coaching, forecasting, and reporting capabilities you need to automate and streamline the entire sales process. 

For instance, Gong’s Revenue AI Platform serves up personalized coaching insights and recommendations to help teams replicate the actions of top performers. And reps can analyze sales calls for insights, personalize sales enablement content, and get AI-backed suggestions on how to move deals forward.

Sales-based AI can improve the quality of your work too.Take sales forecasting as an example. Gong uses over 300 unique signals to predict deal outcomes with 20 percent more accuracy than an algorithm that uses CRM data alone.

Sales performance management isn’t another task to add to your already overflowing plate. It’s a different way of thinking about all the tasks you have to do anyway, and doing them in a way that delivers better results.

Don’t embark on an SPM program alone, though. Trust Gong to understand what’s really happening in your pipeline, so you can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. You’ll be able to fix underlying issues with your existing sales processes, provide better coaching to reps, and make better decisions based on highly accurate forecasts. 

Your SPM framework is all available in a single platform. Book a demo today to learn more.

If you’re spending countless hours digging through prospect calls to extract insights, you’re not alone. According to our State of Sales Productivity Report, sellers spend 56% of their time on non-customer-facing activities due to tedious administrative tasks and inefficient workflows.

But manually reviewing calls takes time away from what matters most – selling. Reps need instant access to conversation details to make informed decisions and close more deals. 

Thankfully, Gong’s Ask Anything functionality helps you quickly get answers to your revenue questions so you can improve productivity and increase visibility. As an account executive who’s experienced the pain of manual and time-consuming call review processes, I’m excited to share how I use Ask Anything to manage my deals more effectively and efficiently. 

As an account executive, I’m responsible for a large number of deals, so my schedule is usually packed with back-to-back meetings. 

I often jump from call to call, so I have a limited amount of time to prepare for the next conversation. I need to be able to access prior call insights instantly, and with Ask Anything I’m able to do just that.

In Gong, I can quickly search for a discovery call conducted by an SDR, ask specific questions, and get the information I need to conduct a relevant demo. Using Ask Anything streamlines the account handoff process, saves me time, and provides me with critical buyer intel.  

Here are some of the questions I typically ask to get up to speed on previous conversations quickly:

After the next buyer call is complete, I need to record details from the conversation. I want to capture relevant notes so I can easily personalize future follow-ups based on what was discussed.

At Gong, we follow MEDDIC as a sales methodology, so I use Ask Anything to gather details related to the following areas: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, and champion.

Here’s an example of how I’ll query Ask Anything to provide me with this information. 

“Assuming the salesperson is using MEDDIC as a framework, analyze this call in bullet format.” 

Gong’s Ask Anything functionality then provides a detailed answer (example below) that I can quickly log into the “manager notes” field on my Gong deal board. 

The fields in Gong deal boards sync bi-directionally with the CRM, so I only have to make updates in one place. This saves me time and ensures accuracy and consistency throughout the systems in our tech stack.  

Once I’ve input the relevant MEDDIC notes on the deals board, my manager and other members of sales leadership can quickly and easily view this information. That way, they can see how conversations are going, identify areas for improvement, and assess pipeline health. 

With Ask Anything, I don’t have to spend hours preparing in-depth notes. Gong does the work for me, ensuring my whole team has access to accurate and up-to-date information. 

Increased visibility keeps everyone on the same page and helps drive deals forward. 

The traditional call review process is inefficient, manual, and time-consuming, but Gong’s Ask Anything is changing the game by giving reps their time back.

Ask Anything uses generative AI and billions of customer-facing interactions (5x any vendor in the market) to provide sellers with answers to their most pressing revenue questions. With deeper insights, sales teams can increase productivity, conduct highly personalized buyer conversations, and, ultimately, grow revenue. 

Watch the recorded demo to learn how you can use Gong to work smarter, not harder.

If you’re an SDR like I was, you know the intensity that comes with juggling so many tasks along with the urgency of capturing a potential customer's attention. When the competition is fierce and there's so much noise in the market, standing out has never been so tough. 

Top that with the weight that we’re often the first point of contact that prospects have with our companies — we literally shape their first impressions. That's why we can't fall into the trap of prioritizing quantity over quality in our outreach efforts. And we can't afford to drown under the demands of our huge workloads and high quotas.

Now, imagine the power and confidence we can gain from using sales engagement software like an extra set of capable hands. Every company wants that – including Gong. It helps us stand out from the crowd, save valuable time, and build a robust pipeline quarter over quarter. 

For me, that’s Gong Engage, the sales engagement solution built right into our revenue AI platform. I wanted to share how it made me more efficient and effective at driving quality relationships and revenue when I was an SDR in this edition of our “Gong on Gong” blog series. I rely on it even more in my new role as an AE.

Our most crucial task is to instantly build trust — without a solid foundation, even the best pitches and products fall flat. Many sales engagement teams struggle to achieve high outreach volumes without compromising the quality needed to build real trust and rapport. For me Gong Engage is a superpower in this area. 

Once all my contacts are in Engage, I use the “Ask Anything” feature to surface important nuances about a contact’s or account’s history and needs. It’s powerful because it draws from every type of interaction across a customer’s entire journey with us. 

I combine these details with extra insights from company websites and LinkedIn, all housed inside Gong Engage. This allows me to always personalize my communications effectively (as you’ll see further down). Engage makes it easy to show customers that we understand their challenges and are genuinely interested and able to help them. It supports higher-quality conversations that foster engagement and fruitful, long-term relationships.

One of the biggest challenges that SDRs face is maintaining context at every stage in the sales process. Juggling so many conversations can lead to disjointed communication, which is problematic, especially if it makes prospects feel overlooked or misunderstood. 

I rely on Engage’s AI-recommended actions in the “To-dos” section to manage all tasks related to my calls, emails, LinkedIn messages, and even videos. It supports me by focusing my attention on the right activities and gives me peace of mind by keeping all relevant info organized in one place. It’s amazing that anyone on our team always has at-a-glance access to the same critical information when they need to support or take over.

Knowing that I’m always aligned with a customer’s journey is a huge advantage. Our customers have smoother experiences, increasing the likelihood of engagement and follow-ups. 

If we don't get our messaging right, we get nowhere. We know this and yet, there are a few factors that can work against us when we're trying to craft communication that converts:

Sound familiar? Crafting individualized messages takes significant effort, making it easy to slip into the habit of rushed, generic outreach.

Gong Engage simplifies this with its “Scripts” feature, letting us create persona-based scripts for our calls. We use insights from sales and marketing to address each persona’s unique challenges. It saves us loads of time because we don’t have to start from scratch each time.  When I combine these scripts with my personal notes, I’m confident I’m addressing customers’ specific needs. This approach makes my sales engagement personal and impactful so I get results.

Failing to connect with enough prospects and customers or resorting to substandard messages is unacceptable if we want to be sales professionals who win consistently. But now, we can double our productivity and personalize conversations like never before, thanks to AI-powered technology rooted in insights from our market and actual customer interactions. 

Gong Engage is that AI-powered sales engagement software, enabling you to exceed quotas faster. It’s a one-stop shop to unite SDRs and AEs, streamline workflows, and manage pipelines effortlessly. 

Ready to level up your sales engagement by fostering trust and genuine connections with customers? Here’s your instant demo.