Addepar leaders increase sales efficiency with Gong

Use your time wisely

For Jamin Fochtman, Head of Sales Enablement at the wealth management platform, Addepar,  there is a delicate balance between leading onboarding and ongoing education for five teams and nearly 100 people as well as being present for his two young children. He wants to be with them as much as possible during the early years, so every moment he spends at work needs to count; the more productive and efficient, the better. Eliminating mundane tasks increases his productivity and allows him to  spend more time helping his teams get better.

“My time is really valuable and I have to be able to allocate it where it matters most,” says Jamin. “Turning a 30-minute meeting into a five-minute meeting doesn’t just save time, it makes those five minutes more strategic and effective, and propels my business forward faster.” 

Listen to the data

The more you know about what goes on during your team’s sales calls, the more quickly and easily you can reduce risks inside deals. Gong data provides visibility into sales calls and makes it clear where your time is best spent.

“So many of us think that if you make more phone calls and send more emails, that will lead to more closed deals,” says Jamin. “The fact of the matter is that more labor-intensive work isn’t necessarily better work. Thankfully, Gong shows me data about what’s really going on in sales calls so I can be more effective in my job, in turn preparing me to deliver actionable feedback.

My teams don’t have to just pick up and dial more when they have the right data.” 

Jamin and the Addepar team use Gong’s Trackers to piece together what happens in successful calls and replicate those best practices across teams. He gets alerts when reps use the terms associated with successful calls, so he can reinforce those behaviors, as well as alerts for calls that are missing the markers of success. That makes it easier to coach so everyone’s on the same page in their messaging, and it provides visibility into where improvements can be made (for individual reps and across the whole team). 

Jamin remembers: “Before Gong, there was so much more that we just weren’t paying attention to, down to the granularity of what happens in each stage and each conversation.”

Let the insights guide you

Part of saving time is letting the insights do some heavy lifting for you. “On Monday you don’t have to comb through your reports and forecasts and think, what do I need to do on this one? What have I not done here? Gong just puts it all in front of you,” says Jamin. “Gong tells our sales leaders every Monday exactly where to focus their time.” 

That advantage helps you work more productively and changes the whole way you strategize. You’re no longer relying on second-hand information and guesswork, you’re influencing each deal’s outcome using a strategy that’s based in fact and validated with data.

Using Gong’s Deal Insights, Addepar learned there was room for improvement with  single-threaded opportunities which led to a complete process change for the entire team. Now in every call, reps encourage the prospect to invite another employee from their company to join the next call. 

“We set up a Tracker and challenged reps: In every single conversation, you have to get a check mark that says you asked ‘Is there anyone else?’ Without that checkbox, you can’t go to the contract stage.” Setting up that automated structure ensured that Addepar truly changed how its deals are done.

Stay one step ahead

With the extra time Jamin and his team saved by using Gong, they were able to commit to more strategic initiatives. They were able to think about getting ahead of the competition. 

Using Slack channel integrations, for example, they assigned small groups of people to watch different topics. One group of three, for instance, might be in charge of building a Call Library for interactions that mention a specific competitor. Each group eventually presents its findings to the full team, and recommends the best way to respond as a sales organization.

“You’ve now unified that go-to market message and set up a Tracker for it, so you’re being alerted every time people mention the key message a group presented on,” says Jamin. Not only does this create positive feedback for the group that initiated that change, it also garners buy-in from the entire team when they see that the new approach is being used and working. Overall, it ensures that everyone delivers more effective messaging that’s backed by data. 

“It unifies our message so we’re all saying the same things the same way and winning the deal every time.”

Onboard faster, coach smarter

Get everyone on the same page starting on day one of your onboarding, and maintain that learning environment with coaching throughout your employees’ time on your team. 

If you use it to its full capacity, you’ll find that Gong helps tremendously with onboarding — it did at Addepar. Since implementing Gong, Addepar is able to onboard new hires and facilitate internal transitions 60% faster than before. 

As reps progress in their roles, Addepar uses the Deal Drivers page to gamify the Gong learning experience and encourage progress in difficult areas. 

With faster, more effective onboarding, the right tools at their fingertips, and data to support their learning, team members also engage in self- and peer-to-peer coaching. This saves time for Addepar’s exec team, and it’s also raised adoption rates and built champions. 

“Don’t be a hero. You don’t have to build every single Call Library yourself, you don’t have to present every single finding, and you don’t have to teach everyone everything,” says Jamin. “Enable those around you and leverage Gong to do that work for you.” 

Time-saving insights allows Addepar’s sales leaders’ workloads  to be autonomous, productive, and based in reality. 

“It’s totally changed how we communicate and land deals, for the better.”