TIBCO has Mastered the Art of Closing Huge Deals Faster, Thanks to Gong

When you’re a sales leader at a company that helps other companies take advantage of the power of real-time data to make faster, smarter decisions, being on top of your game isn’t an option; it’s a requirement. TIBCO Software’s Group Vice President of Sales, Pedro Diaz found himself with this requirement. In Gong, Pedro recognized a synergy of purpose.

“We give our customers freedom. We don’t care if your data is in the Cloud, in a SaaS platform, or on-premise. We only care about getting the power of that data to make faster, smarter decisions.”

A key leader on Pedro’s team is Aline Brasil, TIBCO’s VP of Enterprise Sales, US West & Canada. Aline came to TIBCO with a Masters in Social Psychology. Suffice it to say, Aline knows a thing or two about human behavior, which gives her a distinct advantage.

“Sales,” according to Aline, “is often focused on feelings/gut feelings, but you really need to understand the data (and the social science) to be most effective.”

TIBCO’s Revenue Leadership needed more transparency in their selling process, pipeline, and forecasting but had already over-invested in technology and were not keen on evaluating yet another tool.

Gong. Gong. Gong.

TIBCO purchased Gong to solve several critical growth issues

TIBCO was (and still is) on a tremendous growth trajectory.

100% year-over-year growth with an aggressive hiring plan. As a private-equity-owned business, they needed to ensure forecast accuracy, quickly scale winning behaviors among their experienced sellers, all while ensuring rapid adoption of the MEDDIC sales process.

TIBCO was looking to create an efficient, coachable sales team —by leveraging a senior-level, enterprise-driven team who had been doing this for years. They were also aiming to build a predictable pipeline, based on data-driven insights. Finally, the team wanted to shift the revenue closer to the front of the quarter; historically, 90% of in-quarter revenue was closed in the third month.

But — like many enterprise organizations — they were suffering from “tech fatigue” because of an overflowing tech stack with any sales tool at their disposal. The thought of adding one more? Quite improbable.

After a thorough evaluation, they saw the value the Gong platform could provide, supporting both their AEs needs as well as the needs of their leadership team. Gong quickly gave TIBCO the visibility needed to solve the really big challenges.

Gong proved its value (and then some) early on

The TIBCO team saw value almost immediately. Within the first few months of using Gong, the sales managers identified a deal where they could provide immediate, valuable feedback. 

Even the most tenured, “A-Player” reps became raving fans of the call insights, tagging, and note-taking. They leveraged the MEDDIC qualification process in pre-call planning and then observed the execution (“reviewed the tapes”) using Gong. Managers were able to quickly assess new reps coachability — a key metric used to determine if a rep would be successful at TIBCO.

Within the first 3 months of using Gong, TIBCO added another logo to its trophy case: An 8-figure, 6-year deal that closed in 90 days instead of the usual 9 months.

The team attributes this deal size and speed acceleration directly to Gong — string of calls, coaching the rep, and spotting critical insights on the Deal Board. Specifically, the team was well aligned on the reality of deals, coaching and executing around MEDDIC, and collaborating internally on the voice of the customer.

Over the next several months, Aline and Pedro learned through usage that Gong was much more than “just a call recorder” and the team easily saw that Gong is a platform that can surface critical, relevant insights in seconds — insights that are coupled with actionable next steps.

As Pedro shared, “When I needed to come up to speed on a deal, it would often take 10-15 mins to look through other revenue tools. Often, this process was frustrating and time-consuming enough that I would jump ship before uncovering all the essential details.” With Gong, a GVP (or a sales manager or AE or BDR or CSM or … ) can uncover all relevant data about a deal in 10 seconds. 

“One click and a few seconds later,” shared Pedro, “ I know everything I need to know about a deal. The speed of insights is astounding.”

Deal Boards also helped tremendously with deal collaboration between a rep and manager, and by collaborating around the voice of the customer and strategizing over the reality of what is happening.

This has resulted in TIBCO closing more logos faster and with better forecast accuracy.

How else does TIBCO extract value from Gong?

While speed is an attribute both Aline and Pedro called out as incredible, they also shared the following as to how Gong is impacting their business:

Shifted when revenue closed

TIBCO used to close 90% of its quarterly revenue in the 3rd month. Stressful!

With Gong, 60% of revenue was closed in the first month of the quarter. 

Some huge benefits of this dramatic revenue shift include: 

An ecstatic CFO. Never a bad thing.
Higher price integrity to close all deals as the end of quarter approaches results in higher price integrity.
A huge improvement in mental health (Aline shared how Gong has allowed her to truly unplug on vacation knowing that she will quickly get back up to speed upon her return.)
Happy customers Gong helped TIBCO create happier customers by staying coordinated as a team to deliver on the actual voice of their customers.

Coaching

Pedro says coachability is the #1 trait he looks for in a new hire. Gong allows the team to quickly assess rep skills and coach “like they never could before”. 

“I am my account executive’s personal assistant. I am not here to ask for things. Instead, I am here to help close deals. Gong makes my job easier.”

Even more, scale was uncovered when the team began using Gong to “Coach the Coach.”

Thanks to Gong, the team discovered newer managers were riding along and joining more of their reps calls than they should have. This resulted in less time to coach … to teach … to leverage MEDDIC … to be personal assistants, selling for their team. Having this Gong insight so quickly meant they could course correct immediately.

TIBCO also uses Gong to help upskill their BDRs and AEs who are early on in their careers by sharing calls to showcase great examples of successful teammates in action. This helped to transfer knowledge and coach new teammates, which led to a few accelerated promotions.

Reps adoption of Gong

While the “A players” on the Enterprise team were initially very resistant during the first 30 days, they quickly leaned into using Gong to help get to the next level and collaborate internally on complex deal cycles. As a result, new reps ramp quicker and close large deals in record time.

And it wasn’t just the top reps who were skeptical. Everyone at the TIBCO thought the “big brother” feel of Gong would be controversial and hard to combat. However, in reality AEs were more than willing to share their calls for the needs of the business (i.e., learning from the best).

An Enterprise company supporting an Enterprise sales team

TIBCO has been around for 25 years. They are a true Enterprise company with a large team of experienced sellers closing large deals.

TIBCO has all the tools and technology at its disposal as an enterprise company, yet it still invested in Gong

Why? With Gong, TIBCO doesn’t have to dig through multiple tools to find what they are looking for. Reality lives in Gong.

And for enterprise sellers — longer deal cycles, more decision makers, lots of threaded conversations — time and efficiency are everything. 

“As a former seller and now sales operations leader, it became clear very quickly how valuable this would be to each level in the organization. It’s also truly autonomous, meaning much less work is needed to drive adoption and no work is needed to drive data collection. Gong has so many use cases that impact sales productivity but for us, it all began with getting a clear view of our pipeline. From there we could coach, onboard, and identify macro-level trends across customers and related to competitors.” Kyle Scott – Manager, Global Sales Strategy & Solutions

The A players see the value of the insights Gong provides. The results: Deals close faster and reps are better positioned to self-coach. Oh, and moving 90% of revenue closing from the last month of the quarter to 60% of revenue being closed in month 1.