Gong Gives Genesys Sales Managers The Ability to “Ride Shotgun” With Any Deal

If customer referrals are gold, unsolicited customer referrals are platinum.

When Chief Revenue Officer at Inflow Communications, a Gong customer and Genesys partner, said, “Because of Gong, we are moving significantly more business,” that’s all Alex Ball, VP of Mid-Market & Velocity Sales at Genesys needed to hear. He was “all in,” ready to learn more.

Alex immediately started internal discussions at Genesys about Gong.

“When a partner goes out of its way to share how much they love a product in its tech stack,” said Alex, “that speaks volumes.”

Once Genesys purchased Gong, they began understanding what Inflow meant about “moving significantly more business.” 

In the first year of implementing Gong, Genesys achieved the following:

A 50% increase in win rate for Gong-influenced calls
A 38% reduction in opportunity time to close

Here’s the playbook Genesys used to dial up its growth.

GENESYS SALES STRIVES FOR EFFICIENCY

Genesys is a company that sells customer experience and contact center technology — both cloud-based and on-premises — to businesses of any size. Headquartered in Daly City, California, Genesys also has an international presence with nearly 60 offices all over North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Genesys works with thousands of organizations  in more than 100 countries and has built a team of nearly 6,000 people. 

Genesys reps are often selling into high-level decision-makers, so it’s important that all are at the top of their games. They have to find a balance between time spent researching and truly understanding a deal and efficiency.

Prior to Gong, Alex (VP of Mid-Market & Velocity Sales) would spend upwards of 10-20 hours (HOURS!) per week reading through rep/prospect emails, reviewing slide presentations, and doing everything he could to be as prepared as possible to jump into that next call when needed.

For Alex and his team, the process was not efficient and certainly did not scale.

FROM 10-12 HOURS TO “JUST A FEW”

An elite sales manager does not need to be a part of every deal. Instead, she should be focusing on the engagements where their expertise is necessary for coaching purposes and/or to “seal the deal.”

However, in a “Gong-less World,” it can be challenging to know how and where and when to spend time.

“Prior to implementing Gong, I didn’t have data to inform where my time and effort spent would be the most effective,” said Alex. So he ended up being heavily involved in every deal. 

Spread thin, Alex wasn’t always able to deep dive and truly inspect what was happening on every deal. Instead, the process was more “following fields in the company’s CRM” and then using one-on-one meetings to “add color” to better understand each deal. 

But that was time spent catching up, not strategizing with his reps. 

Since implementing Gong, double-digit hours prepping for a call have shrunk to “an hour or two” getting ready for an important prospect meeting.

Over the past year, Alex’s team has grown nearly 45%. During this growth, Alex has been able to maximize his time in deals to be more strategic and more efficient. He’s engaging in the more cross-functional, bigger picture, strategic work — all while not losing touch with the front line of the deal. 

Alex is now having more valuable conversations. He’s able to jump into deals and make an impact without needing to be on every email thread and read each email as it comes through.

GONG HELPS SALES REPS CRUSH THEIR GOALS

Sales reps at Genesys all have the same goals: They want to crush their number. They want to be successful. They want to keep growing their career.

This mindset is what led every salesperson on Alex’s team to adopt Gong — immediately.

“Nobody on our team felt as if Gong was like ‘Big Brother,’” said Amy Jeschke, Senior Manager, Velocity Sales. “Not one single rep felt like we were ‘looking over their shoulder’ and keeping tabs on them. They understood that Gong was going to help them become better salespeople.”

Prior to installing Gong, Amy struggled to “be in 12 meetings and demos on any given day.” “Struggled” really meant it was impossible. There just are not enough hours in the day (something most sales managers can relate to).

Gong provides Amy a realistic view of where her team is in each and every deal cycle and the likelihood of close/won vs. close/lost. From a coaching perspective, Amy now knows what feedback she can – and should – give to the AE on her next one-on-one.

Alex says that Gong enables him to actually hear both sides of the conversation. This, in turn, means the rep and he can listen to snippets from the call together. This full visibility and transparency allow sales managers to step in and coach in the most efficient way. Managers don’t have to guess or speculate — all of the data is right at their fingertips. They can help guide reps — again leading them to the ultimate goal of helping their team crush their goals.

GONG FOR DEAL EXECUTION IS THE REAL DEAL (AND DATA SUPPORTS THAT CLAIM)

“Deal Execution is amazing. It’s one of my favorite tools that I have as a sales manager.”

For Amy, Gong allows her to quickly and more completely understand what Genesys prospects are saying. It lets her see which deals have the best chance of closing while ensuring they are putting their best foot forward in front of these customers. It also allows her to efficiently find coaching opportunities that would be nearly impossible by just “viewing dashboards and reports.”

In fact, instead of doing her pipeline report out of the CRM during Amy’s one-on-one meetings, she just pulls the data from Gong. 

Gong provides “immediate access including the heat map showing me the most active deals.”

Bonus: Clicking on any deal uncovers rich data from all sides of the conversation — calls, emails, etc. 

Double bonus: Communication velocity gives Amy and her team quick access to the number of emails and calls over time. Is the prospect reaching out to Genesys more frequently than they are to the prospect? Is the exchange one-sided or are both parties communicating — and with what frequency? From a one-on-one coaching perspective, these data points provide powerful insight to more accurate, more complete deal predictability.

Gong provides so much more context and color compared to just looking at fields and charts in the CRM.

Executing on deals is even easier with Gong’s Deal Board.

Brittany Nicholas, Manager, Velocity Sales at Genesys says the Deal Board empowers her to address risks early on instead of waiting for surprises.

“Warnings about deals without multi-threading has been a life (and time, headache and pipeline) saver!

“As a sales manager, you hate it when you hear from your rep that things are ‘really good’ and that they are ‘set up for a successful close’ and then — for whatever reason — the deal falls flat. UGH. It turns out the rep may have been overplaying their card a bit. The prospect had ghosted them! Without these Deal Warnings, we’d be less likely to catch these ‘early warning’ signs.”

Amy also leverages Deal Warnings to quickly and visually be alerted about certain hotspots — deals missing a scheduled next step or deals that have been dormant for more than 14 days. “Warnings allow me to instantly see what needs my attention right away,” she says.

“I love being able to filter the Deals Board, from the whole team down to the individual rep. The heat map is a super-helpful, quick visual to see what’s going on.”

But that’s not all.

Amy also appreciates being able to see “next call scheduled”, competitors, ACV, close date and stages. “All of it is gold,” says Amy.

One more thing that Amy loves: the weekly emails. Amy finds the weekly emails a huge time-saver. “Very actionable” in her words. 

“Not only do I get a snapshot of the ‘coaching week in review,’ but I also get actionable suggestions such as coaching feedback, calls from my teams biggest deals, and so on.”

Finally, what Amy raves about the most is Gong’s ability to be proactive. “Gong does the work. Gong knows what I don’t know (but want to — even SHOULD) know.”

All of this proactive Gong work helps Amy do her job better.

However, at the end of the day, data and metrics speak louder than words. Here is a stat that impressed even our team here at Gong: 

Teams within Genesys who leveraged the Deal Board sold 54% more in 2020-Q4 compared to their peers who didn’t. Either engaging with the Deal Board helped reps sell more or top performers chose to use the Deal Board. Either way, the value of the Deal Board is directly (and demonstrably) evident.

#DATA

ONBOARDING WITH EASE

Alex’s role as the VP of Mid-Market & Velocity Sales at Genesys can be tricky. He is in what seems like a constant search for top talent. And as soon as he brings in the “best of the best,” onboards them to speak and sell Genesys, they are gone. 

And to be clear, they are not leaving Genesys; they are simply “moving up” to the next team.  

“It’s incredibly challenging to run a segment where every year you’re gonna lose your best people.”

And yet that’s exactly the scenario for Amy, whose team serves as the training ground for the mid-market team. Every year, Amy brings in top talent and has to onboard them very quickly so they can be successful — hitting their numbers and growth rates … and then move on to the next level/team.

This means she often has an open headcount for backfill — lots of (natural) “good” attrition.

In fact, last year alone Amy lost her 4 top reps to other teams in sales and 2 other reps to cross-functional jobs within Genesys. This 50% attrition meant Amy had to onboard 6-7 new reps last year. 

And still, thanks in part to the efficiencies from Gong, Amy’s team realized a 37% year-over-year growth rate all while reducing its new reps “time to self-sufficiency” from 6-9 months down to under 60 days. 

Here’s how they did it. 

Before Gong, seasoned reps were asked to invite rookie reps to upcoming calls. Scheduling inevitably became the biggest challenge and roadblock. Since the calls happen in real-time, it was tricky aligning calendars. Even though Genesys recorded some sales demos and calls, there was no consistency, no organization, and no process whatsoever.

Gong changed all of that. 

Amy created a new Gong-influenced onboarding process: a 5-week training guide with self-guided modules and mock-activities. Thanks to this new process, Amy ramped up 4 new employees in less than a month.

This would not have been possible without Gong.

Thanks to Gong, new reps now listen to calls that are the most relevant for the sales cycle stage they are currently in. If the next call is focused on pricing, the rep jumps into Gong, looks for the “Pricing Calls” folder, and reviews as many of the top rep calls as they feel necessary to make them more comfortable.

Per Alex, “Gong gives us the ability to ‘ride shotgun’ with any deal — even if we are not able to join every meeting live.”

Amy and her team exceeded its 2019 goal at 112% of her number, with Q4 being their largest quarter.

#GongEffect

GONG REMOTE

Gong is also well-positioned to thrive among remote teams. (Remote work was especially important during the COVID-19, shelter-in-place, work-from-home environment.)

It’s a perfect tool for somebody who’s remote.

Amy Jeschke | Senior Manager, Velocity Sales

Amy says that Gong Alerts are really helpful for remote teams due to the shelter-in-place mandates that emerged due to COVID-19. “These emails notify me of the calls I missed the previous day. If there are high-level prospects we are really watching closely, I don’t have to go into Gong. Alerts bring Gong to me.”

Another feature that is well-suited for remote work is the ability to listen to calls “on air.”

Sometimes a sales manager wants to hear a prospect/sales rep call as it’s happening but doesn’t want the prospect to know they are listening. After all, the dynamic very well can change when a rep’s boss is listening in. Sometimes this is a good thing; other times, not so much. 

The ability to listen to calls “on-air” allows Genesys sales managers to listen in on a rep call in (near) real-time. Amy uses this feature when there is a deal she wants to be heavily involved in, but doesn’t necessarily want to be interacting on the call with her sales rep and the prospect. The feature allows her to add value for the AE, but not “really” be on the call. 

This is the best of both worlds.

FAR FROM DONE

Genesys is not done with Gong — not even close.

“We’ve made tremendous strides with how we’ve used Gong, but we have really just scratched the surface,” says Alex.

“The career growth and career trajectory of reps on my team are really critical to me. I’m proud to say we’ve had 4-5 individuals on the mid-market team move to the enterprise team. And that’s in large part because of the insight Gong has provided Genesys.

Genesys has been focused on the Sales side of the company, but there is a ton of potential to leverage Gong in Customer Success, Customer Care, Product, and more. 

“We can really help retain and grow revenue with our current customer base — with GONG!”