How Highspot Adopted a New Sales Methodology Using Gong

Putting new methods into practice to push you further

When sales enablement software company Highspot decided to implement a new sales methodology, they knew it would require managers, sales reps, and marketing to be on the same page about goals and outcomes. They also knew they’d want to be able to see what was (and wasn’t) working all along the way. 

Kelly Lewis, Highspot’s VP of Revenue Enablement, knew with the right platform the process could be smooth and effective. “We know our sellers are under a lot of pressure right now,” she says. “The macro-economic environment is shifting, so we need to make learning light, and we need to be thinking about how we create a way for our sellers to quickly take change to the field.”

By integrating Gong with their own platform, Lewis and her team were able to not only put a new methodology in place, but test it, and track its success to ensure it was doing everything they wanted. 

Highspot and Gong’s integration provides sales teams with a comprehensive view into buyer engagement and gives revenue teams a scalable way to share best practices.

Testing the waters to build confidence

Lewis started by testing the training and coaching with a small group to get an overview of what parts were effective and which were not. “We always do beta testing first,” says Lewis. “You learn so much from managers and from the beta group as they’re testing in the field that we end on making some pretty big changes from these sessions before we roll it out to all of the reps.”

The goal of beta testing is to offer to sales reps everything they need to know, say, do, and show through action-based sales and coaching plays. One way Lewis and her team facilitated that was by using Gong snippets.

“We use Gong snippets because that way, as reps are learning, they’re able to really understand what good looks like,” says Lewis. Being able to provide real world examples of new talk tracks in action gave the beta test reps the ability to see if it fit the new methodology criteria. It also provided a chance to build confidence.

“I think it’s scary to be the first to try something,” says Lewis. “When you’ve got someone on the phone you want to make sure it’s effective. Hearing your peers use new messaging in the field and understanding that the customers and prospects like the messaging helps them feel really comfortable taking it on.”

With that level of comfort established and the details of the program smoothed out, moving into full-on training for the entire staff was a snap.

Training for clarity and consistency

Once the training was locked down, it was rolled out to the entire team with assurance that it would be constructive and successful. Most importantly, Lewis and her team created a bridge between the lower-stakes arena of training with actual high-stakes sales calls by including one important element: Gong Academy’s rubrics.

Gong Academy is a trove of training resources to help Gong customers uplevel their skills and get the most out of the product. “As managers were coaching, they were using the same rubric we’re going to use live once they’re using the messaging in the field,” says Lewis. By integrating the exact scoring method in the training phase, sales reps were able to get a taste of how they might actually do on an actual call using their new material, making the training even more effective.

Being able to build a course involving the day-to-day elements sales reps face also means this training was easily pushed to Highspot’s onboarding program. Lewis says, “But by doing it in this way, the program just shifted into onboarding literally the next month, which was really helpful.”

Being able to offer new hires the latest information and expectations means getting employees up to speed and performing faster than ever. This productivity increase works across the board, quickly getting all teams on the same page and using everyone’s time to the fullest.

Tracking progress and measuring success

What’s the use in implementing a new methodology if you can’t track its progress? Luckily, by integrating Gong’s trackers it was clear from the start what was running smoothly and what needed more attention. “We got trackers from Gong, and were able to take all of it out of the box and set it up,” says Lewis. “We didn’t spend hours thinking about it, we just put it into the system.”

Not having to worry about how to collect data meant that Lewis could spend more time analyzing the numbers. Through Gong’s trackers, they could see adoption and consistency in the field—which reps were using the talk track correctly, which were following up? This was due, in part, to the fact that they were able to pull both activity and pitching numbers. 

“What’s really cool with pulling in activity and pitching is we were able to see not just whether they’re having the conversation, but if they’re sending the follow up information and the content we’ve created around this new messaging,” says Lewis. Being able to correlate achievement with adoption can be a key factor when presenting stats to stakeholders. “Sometimes you get half of that equation,” says Lewis, “but pulling the two together to show success is really important.” 

Furthermore, with access to Gong’s tracking information Lewis and her team were easily able to evolve and pivot sections of the training or bits of follow up content to ensure everything was working at the highest level. “We were able to see that certain segments weren’t adopting as quickly, which led us to do some more enablement there,” says Lewis. “We’d see that a piece of content wasn’t being used as much for follow-up and be able to ask ourselves: ‘is there something missing?’” 

Gong helped Highspot get granular with materials to ensure every single piece of the puzzle was working towards the same outcome.

Highspot knows that change can be hard, especially in a time already rife with changes for sales teams around the world. Being able to make learning light and accessible, using the actual tools that will be used in the field, can make all the difference. Being able to show what a good example looks like in real time not only builds confidence in reps but guides coaching to make it even more targeted. And the ability to monitor that success means there are no surprises and zero wasted moments—just all teams united with one goal in mind. 

“Gong and Highspot together puts everyone on the same page,” says Lewis. “It makes sure we’re all singing from the same songbook.”