“Adapt or die.” In the 2011 movie Moneyball, Oakland A’s manager, Billy Bean, tells his lead baseball scout (a 29-year veteran in the industry) to “adapt or die.” The scout complained that Bean was “discounting what scouts had done for 150 years” in favor of a “kid who has an economics degree from Yale.” Bean, […]
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All businesspeople get them. They are usually bad to very bad (to awful). Often they are automated. They rarely include any customization or personalization. Cold emails. If I had a dollar for every terrible cold email I’ve received in my business career, well, let’s just say I would not be writing this article now. […]
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Sometimes a flashy sales presentation will not get the job done. Depending on your product/service or who you are speaking with, you may need to get more technical in your sales approach. This is where a sales engineer becomes a huge asset to your team. A sales engineer is like a player-coach — one part […]
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The SPIN Selling Methodology is similar to Solution Selling. It relies on great sales discovery and question-asking to help customers understand their problems, how impactful they are, and what the best solution might look like. The sales world is not short on sales methodologies. We blogged about what we believe are the top 12. Clearly, […]
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Imagine a world where you had a single, full, real-time, unfiltered, unopinionated source of truth. Let’s break down those “sources of truth”: Single: No silos. No need to pull go to sales and marketing and customer success to retrieve relevant data. Full: No “partial truths.” Not a slice of reality. Not a few recorded calls […]
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Sales forecasting isn’t revolutionary — it’s been around since the dawn of time. But the issue: It’s not always real. Forecasting relies on opinions … subjective percentages tied to “what we think” will happen. Take a single deal: A sales rep who is overly aggressive may have a different looking forecast compared to a rep […]
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The world has changed dramatically. As Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight said, “even though our jobs might have felt hard before going remote, they definitely seem like smooth sailing in hindsight.” And the key to thriving in today’s economy, according to Nick? Driving more sales from customers. (Some things in sales never change!) Nick joined […]
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The best salespeople do everything in their power to create an unfair advantage. Chris Orlob, John Barrows, and Mark Roberge know a thing or two about how to create this unfair advantage and dominate sales. Chris was an early Gong guy (Nov ‘16 start date) where he’s served as the Senior Director of Product Marketing […]
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While the exact list depends on who you ask, the following (alphabetized) traits are all critical for a sales manager: Able to coach, analytical, available, confident, empathetic, good listener, innovative, leads by example, loyal, motivating, passionate, positive attitude, serves vs. dictates, strategic vision, strong communicator, and thoughtful. However, checking off most (or all!) of the […]
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Dinosaurs: Dead. Pagers: Dead. Charlie from Lost: Dead But you know what is NOT dead? COLD CALLING. I know. I know. I know. I know what you are thinking. Cold calling never works. That’s a true statement IF you don’t listen to what the data tells you about cold calling. Speaking of data, Gong is […]
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Most sales methodologies focus on uncovering and satisfying buyers’ needs. As such, a majority of sales leaders train their reps to ‘go along to get along,’ right from the word go. The Challenger Sales model folks say that’s a problem. A major one. It ignores what they see as the most important element in successful […]
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Ah. Sales scripts — the elusive and oft-discussed topic on every sales team’s agenda (or should be). Sure, some Sales teams seem to be more script-driven than others, but have you ever considered exactly what makes up a sales script? Or how you could use a sales script to boost your conversion rates? As always […]
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So you want to write better sales emails? Close more deals? Grow your career in sales (and top the leaderboard)? If that doesn’t describe you, maybe you should not be in sales? But if it sounds aligned with your goals, keep reading. The most successful salespeople send the best emails. They know that email is […]
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Sales templates help guide new and seasoned salespeople If done well, they serve as a starting point for various steps along the sales process — incorporating best practices and often company and product-specific messaging. However, most sales templates are not backed by data and science. Good news: These are 100% backed by Gong sales stats. […]
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