How Paycor uses Gong for improved onboarding, coaching, deal strategy, and pipeline forecasting

Reduce ramp-up time for new hires with less burden on veteran sellers.

Shorten the sales cycle and increase the win rate.

Enable leaders to be more effective coaches.

Those were the three goals identified by Jeff Weaver, Vice President of Client Sales at Paycor, a SaaS Human Capital Management (HCM) organization whose HR software modernizes every aspect of people management – empowering frontline leaders to build winning teams that deliver enhanced business results.

As a 7-year veteran at Paycor, Jeff leads a team of more than 50 sellers and six frontline leaders focused on cross-selling and upselling to existing customers.

“We are continuously looking for ways to help our existing clients through our additional products and services,” shared Jeff.

He spends a significant amount of his day thinking about how to best develop and retain his sellers. “We are fortunate to have an extremely strong sales team – low turnover/high retention – which I attribute to our investment in enabling our sellers and first-line leaders to be as successful as possible.”

Before implementing Gong, Jeff’s team used ExecVision and had “no complaints.” It worked. It recorded calls. They knew how to use it. Their “call recording muscle” was strong. But something was still missing. It turns out, Jeff and his team did not know what they did not know.

Gong helped Jeff realize there was a next level of revenue intelligence.

With Gong, Paycor gained the following: 

A more objective (less subjective) view of the sales pipeline and forecasting model
A clear, data-driven understanding of what actions and behaviors distinguish top sellers from the rest 
Powerful insights unlikely to be uncovered otherwise

It didn’t take long for Paycor to get totally hooked on Gong.

Gong solves Paycor’s top 3 problems

When rolling out Gong to Jeff’s team of more than 50 sellers and six frontline leaders, he was hoping to solve the following three issues:

1. Training new sellers more efficiently and effectively: Before Gong, new hires had to set up a time to sit next to a veteran seller … who had to block out time on their calendar. An hour later and you’d be lucky to hear a good call – voicemails, gatekeepers, and so on.

Gong “takes the burden off our more senior sellers,” Jeff shared. New hires now listen to all these (good) veteran calls rather than having to sit and “wait for the call to happen.”

Jeff boasts, “With Gong, you can knock out five or six excellent calls in an hour.”

2. Empowering leaders to be better coaches: Whether it’s a new hire or a veteran seller, Jeff wants to ensure leaders are focused on the “right” coaching topics. With Gong, managers can coach their team on objection handling, talk-to-listen ratio, and how to best represent/message a solution.

“Ultimately, Gong helps our leaders identify small tweaks that can help our team course correct,” says Jeff. “And here’s the reality: Sellers want to be coached. They want to be even better. They want to make a lot of money. They want to get promoted. They want to be at the top of the stack rank. They just want to be coached on the right stuff to help level up their sales game.”

“Gong puts the onus on the seller to own their development, to ensure they’re getting the kind of coaching that works best for them.”

3. Ensuring deals progress seamlessly through the sales process: For Paycor, Gong’s Deal Boards have “completely eliminated” CRM pipeline reviews.

“Most CRMs,” per Jeff, “provide a one-dimensional view of your pipeline. Sure, you see opportunities, but these are all dictated by the seller: The seller inputs the projected close date. The seller adds the sales stage. The seller tags the forecast category. The seller keys in the next steps.”

Every aspect is the seller’s opinion.

Gong’s Deal Boards provide Paycor a multi-dimensional view of the pipeline: what the sellers add to the CRM + the “lens of the customer” – their voice and written word. “We can visually see that exchange — the dialogue (or lack thereof).”

This translates to more efficient pipeline reviews, better coaching, and more accurate forecasting.

Life without Gong

“I can’t even imagine what (life without Gong) would be like. It would probably be time to start looking for another job,” joked Jeff. “Working with Gong allows us to win more deals, forecast more accurately, and coach more effectively.”

Win. Win. Win. Literally.

“Gong is a game-changer.”