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Gong Labs

This Is the Secret to Rising Through the Sales Leaderboard

By Chris Orlob, December 19, 2017

Sales reps at the top of the leaderboard talk about the business value of their offerings far more than product features or technical details. That’s no secret. What’s less known is that coaching a struggling rep to go from one to the other is the most decisive factor in helping them rise through the ranks. It’s the most […]

Product News

Introducing the Gong.io Mobile App

By Chris Orlob, December 18, 2017

Get your ears on every call, from wherever you are, with the Gong.io Mobile App It’s Saturday night as I write this and my wife is not impressed. I’ve been listening to call recordings on Gong’s brand new Mobile App for two hours straight! Yep… it’s here. Say goodbye to listening to podcasts and audiobooks […]

Gong Labs

If You’re Selling Alone, You’re Doing It Wrong (These Stats Explain Why)

By Chris Orlob, November 30, 2017

The next time your sales manager joins one of your sales calls or demos for the sake of “team selling,” be sure to thank him or her. You may be 258% more likely to close that deal than if you flew solo. The Gong.io data science team is at it again. We analyzed 21,392 B2B sales […]

Sales Enablement, Sales Management

These Are the Top Three Ways to Get Visibility Into Sales Conversations

By Chris Orlob, November 21, 2017

Getting visibility into your team’s sales conversations is the single best way to eliminate the “performance gap” between your few star salespeople and the rest of your team. But there are a few ways to go about doing that. The best way for you is going to depend on a few variables, such as the […]

Sales Management

Your Sales Effectiveness Programs Will Fail Without This Key Ingredient

By Chris Orlob, November 7, 2017

The key ingredient that makes all of your sales effectiveness programs generate strong returns comes down to this: Visibility into your team’s sales conversations. Understanding this concept is critical to avoiding wasted time, effort, and money with your company’s sales effectiveness programs. If you’ve been following this series, then you’ve learned two things: The #1 […]

Sales Management

This Is What Separates Your Star Reps from the Rest of the Team

By Chris Orlob, November 4, 2017

The difference between your star salespeople and your “middle-of-the-pack” reps comes down to ONE thing: Their sales conversations. Being “sold” on this fact is the first step to closing the sales performance gap between your best reps and the rest of your team. As of this writing, our data science team at Gong.io has analyzed over […]

Sales Management

This Is the Single Reason Sales Leaders Miss Their Number Today

By Chris Orlob, October 30, 2017

It’s not a lack of leads. It’s not inefficiency. It’s not even sales effectiveness (at least, as it’s generically defined). It’s more specific than that. It’s the “Sales Performance Gap.” This is the (vastly misunderstood) delta that separates the top 20% of your sales force from everyone else, creating a performance bell curve that looks like […]

Gong Labs

These 7 Words SELL (and We Have the Data to Prove It)

By Chris Orlob, October 16, 2017

A few weeks ago we published an article called These Are the Worst 13 Words to Use During Sales Calls, According to New Data. There are hundreds of articles that recommend the vocabulary to avoid in sales, but this was the first one to have hard data behind it. I sense that’s what made the […]

Gong Labs

This Is the Worst Way to Build Rapport, According to New Data

By Chris Orlob, September 26, 2017

“Part of what it means to have a powerful personality is that you can draw others into your own rhythms and dictate the terms of the interaction.” -Malcom Gladwell A new study on the science of sales conversations shows that “average” salespeople actively seek rapport with their buyers, while top salespeople pull buyers to seek […]

Gong Labs

Sales Demos That SELL: 9 Winning Demo Techniques, According to Data

By Chris Orlob, September 14, 2017

Sales demos are often the most pivotal moments in the sales process. Hopefully, before your sales demo, you’ve done a solid discovery call with your customer. What you talked about during discovery will dictate your sales demo flow (more on that later). The data science team and I at Gong.io analyzed 67,149 sales demos to understand the […]

Gong Labs

These Are the Worst 13 Words to Use During Sales Calls, According to New Data

By Chris Orlob, August 29, 2017

Really, Chris? Do we really need yet another article about “X words to stop using in sales?” Yes – here’s why. This is the first of those articles to have data behind it (that I know of). Not that there’s anything wrong with similar articles that lack data. There’s something to be said about intuition. But it turns out […]

Gong Labs

This Is How a Bad Quarter Starts In Sales (As Illustrated by Data)

By Chris Orlob, August 15, 2017

Having a bad quarter in sales almost always follow this pattern: Two “lazy” months followed by a frantic third month (characterized by a desperate scramble to get something (anything!) across the finish line). At the beginning of a new quarter, you feel “fresh.” You’re glad the chaos of finishing the last quarter is over, and […]

Selling Skills

How to Predict If Your B2B Sales Job Will Survive AI

By Chris Orlob, August 9, 2017

I recently got sucked into a heated LinkedIn debate about whether artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually displace the B2B sales profession. These discussions seem to be cropping up a lot lately. Many sales professionals and leaders believe it won’t happen; they predict that people will always want to buy from people and that relationships will […]

Gong Labs

Here’s Why Your “Sure Thing” Deal Didn’t Close (And What to Do Next Time)

By Chris Orlob, August 1, 2017

New research confirms that “happy ears” in sales isn’t just some cynical phrase that grizzled sales veterans toss around to poke fun at rookies–it’s actually a real phenomenon, now validated by data (see below). The data illustrates that when buyers respond to your sales presentation a little too enthusiastically (with few objections raised), they are […]