How Atlassian’s build vs buy decision drove an 820% boost in MEDDPICC use

Atlassian is a global enterprise software company whose sales organization spans SDR, AE, and revenue operations teams supporting customers worldwide. Its sales leaders know that winning starts with outstanding phone execution, and they train their teams accordingly.

Following a training session on objection handling, managers were asked to reinforce with one-on-one coaching. While their coaching was effective, they didn’t have the time available to scale it across the entire team.

That tension is at the center of Atlassian's story: Effectiveness without efficiency doesn't scale, while efficiency without effectiveness only produces more of the wrong thing, faster. Real productivity gains show up only when both move together.

As Kat Hackett, the Sales Development Manager at Atlassian, put it, “Our managers needed more than just more hours in the day. They needed better signals for identifying which conversations and coaching moments would move the needle.”

That’s how the question of whether to build an internal tool or buy the Gong Revenue AI Operating System (OS) took center stage.

This is the part of Atlassian's story that matters most to anyone evaluating whether to buy or build AI coaching in-house. To break through the capacity ceiling, SDR leadership partnered with NJ Goodwin, the Principal Product Manager for AI & Automation, to find a way to automate and scale the feedback loop. They didn’t want to lose the personalized coaching reps got from managers, whichever choice they made.

NJ’s team had access to Atlassian's own internal AI, plus an engineering organization that could build a custom scoring tool. But building from scratch came with a hidden tax: weeks of piping in call data, standing up new infrastructure, and the work of training generic LLMs to understand the nuanced world of B2B sales and Atlassian's sales motion. And all that before it could produce anything useful.

“Our buy vs. build decision came down to the fact that Gong is pre-trained on sales concepts,” says NJ. Gong already sat on top of Atlassian's own conversation data, with sales concepts built in. Using it for coaching gave them the effectiveness of a purpose-built AI sales coach, without the build time.

It made sense to use Gong AI for coaching. It has the full history of our accounts, and it’s designed specifically for revenue teams.

NJ Goodwin, Principal Product Manager, AI & Automation for Sales at Atlassian

Together, Atlassian's SDR leadership and NJ Goodwin's team used the Gong Revenue AI OS to create an AI Scorecard that mapped directly to the objection-handling techniques covered in the company’s training, not a generic template. Two design principles carried the most weight:

• Effectiveness: The team defined what great looked like for each technique before building the AI Scorecard, so Gong AI scored the right thing.
• Efficiency: AI Scorecard started every rep at a baseline rather than zero, so reps were recognized for showing up and taking the call, then coached upward, with no manual setup.

The AI Scorecard evaluated every call automatically so reps got feedback the moment they got off the phone, without waiting for a meeting with a manager. That means there’s now more coaching available to reps, of equal or better quality, in less time. Plus, it’s freed up hours each week for the team’s managers.

I put in a description of what I was looking for, and I could evaluate calls immediately, taking just a couple of minutes to do each question.

NJ Goodwin, Principal Product Manager, AI & Automation for Sales at Atlassian

Kat had her team layer in AI Builder to go a level deeper than scorecards for individual reps. In one example, a rep with high call volume and low meeting conversions received an AI-generated analysis of her cold-calling patterns, plus specific scripting for how to handle the objections she kept running into.

AI Builder ran a deep analysis, gave examples, and told her what to do differently. It even gave her the messaging script for certain objections. She could basically coach herself with the support of AI Builder.

Kat Hackett, Sales Development Manager at Atlassian

The operational shift was immediate. Atlassian’s sales team saw exceptional results across efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity once they started using the Gong Revenue AI OS for coaching:

As Kat sees it, “The value of AI identifying the coaching gaps is that it’s objective. Our reps can see the evidence and understand why the AI is coming up with a given suggestion.” The benefit to Kat and other managers is that they get to spend their time on reinforcing the behavioral changes they know work. They also trust that every rep is getting the guidance they need every day.

The Gong Revenue AI OS has given Atlassian’s sales leadership more time to invest in skills that move the needle for their team. And with Gong’s AI coaching, every rep has personalized, real-time guidance that’s going to move deals forward.

Atlassian has since expanded from AI Scorecards into the broader Gong Assistant experience, to extend their competitive advantage. They’re now using it to ask questions across the entire team, surface deal risks, and move from insights to actions inside their everyday workflows. They’re achieving greater efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity across more of their revenue motion.