Drift uses Gong’s goldmine of data to increase sales productivity

Drift is the first conversational marketing platform and is the new way businesses buy from businesses. While building an enduring company and a platform that emphasizes the value of human interactions and connection, Drift puts the customer at the center of everything it does.

Inefficient. Redundant. Hit or miss.

Drift is in hypergrowth mode.

Its team is expanding. Its product is evolving. Its customer base is exploding.But with growth comes the potential for redundancies and inefficiencies.

Before Gong, the leadership team was spending countless hours on phone calls with sales reps and prospects “shooting in the dark”, trying to understand what was and was not working.

“Pipeline reviews were a mess,” said Drift VP of Sales, Armen Zildjian. The team would cross its fingers hoping the sales rep remembered something about the call. “There was no real way to get in the middle of the conversation,” said Armen. And for an organization that puts the customer at the center of everything it does, this was a big issue.

Additionally, there was little to no sales rep consistency: no consistency around pitches, no consistency around coaching new reps.

The lack of clarity was not limited to the Sales Team. Drift’s Product Marketing Manager, Daphne Funston, “would hear from a CSM that there was a customer problem or a customer opportunity. Someone from our product team would hop on the phone with that customer… and hear the story again.” Even more challenging, sometimes the issues the customer shared with their CSM were different than the ones they raised with the product team.

The Drift team needed a solution — quickly.

“Really, everyone is using it.”

When Drift originally purchased Gong, it was to help make the Sales team more efficient.

But Dan Holley, Senior Lead Product Manager, quickly found other teams at Drift who could benefit from Gong. “We’re not just using it for our sales team; we’re using it in marketing, we’re using it in product; we’re using it in customer success. And I’m sure we’re gonna find more ways to use it, really everybody using it. Having those customer insights is absolutely massive for us.”

And teams are not just using Gong in isolation. The cross-department collaboration — sharing calls and prospect/customer insights across teams is what has made Gong part of every Drift team member’s daily routine.

The answer is always in the calls

“With Gong, we don’t need to speculate. The answer is always in the calls,” says Kyle Bastien, Director of Sales Enablement at Drift.

The Product team agrees. Drift has launched better, more targeted messaging — messaging that has been more well-received than in the pre-Gong days. In Dan’s words, Gong is “the best secret weapon for product marketing” thanks to the “pre-go-to-market” insights gathered from Gong.

“We have a much faster feedback loop with our market and with our customers.” After Drift launches a new product or feature, it knows immediately how it’s resonating — no need to wait to have a meeting with the Sales team or hear directly from a sales rep or jump on a call with a customer. Drift can pull customer call snippets of every single conversation mentioning that new feature … immediately. This instantaneous feedback is powerful.

No more “Fingers crossed.”

Drift has also leveraged the power of Gong’s Deal Intelligence capabilities to get a holistic, accurate view of what’s going on in their deals. Gong has nearly eliminated long, unproductive, how-accurately-a-rep-can-recall-the-conversation pipeline reviews.

With Gong, I know what’s happening it’s public information.

Kyle Bastien | Head of Sales Enablement, Drift

Gong allows sales managers to quickly and accurately assess the difference between what a rep has said they’ve done versus what’s actually happened, enabling them to quickly identify deal risks and strategize with their reps to keep deals moving forward.

“We no longer have to read a bunch of CRM fields and cross our fingers that the data are accurate,” says Armen.

Drift’s feelings on Deal Intelligence can best be summarized in this quote: “If I want to understand what’s happening in a deal cycle, I’ll go to Gong first … not our CRM.

Up next: World domination.

Part of the Drift mission is to “put the customer at the center of everything it does.”

Gong has empowered the entire Drift team to practice what it preaches. Even better, Drift now has a sales process it can have faith in. No more long, boring, inefficient sales rep “pipeline inspection” meetings. In the Gong era of sales pipeline management, meetings are all about “pipeline coaching.”

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of how Drift plans on leveraging the power of Gong.

“Gong is a goldmine of data,” said Dan Holley. “I can’t write better messaging than what our customers are telling us.” Gong allows Dan and the team to “search for a keyword, get a result, and copy and paste that into new messaging.”

When asked what’s next for Gong, Dan didn’t hesitate, “Well, world domination.”

“So yeah, we love Gong,” says Dan.

We love you — and Team Drift — too, Dan.