Musings from Gong Celebrate'24
Gong held its Celebrate'24 event late last month, which I attended virtually. Here are my key takeaways.
Gong continues to demonstrate strong execution of its multi-product strategy. Gong Engage has surpassed 700 customers—a significant milestone, considering it launched 16 months ago. It represents a notable portion of Gong’s 4,000 customers and follows the success of Gong Forecast.
Bradford Jordan, Head of Global Sales and Partner Performance at Reddit, shared an engaging account of Gong's impact on its company sales transformation. Reddit, now the 6th most Googled term globally, has been experiencing remarkable growth, culminating in one of the rare IPOs this year. This growth entailed significant changes in sales culture and processes. Gong played a critical role in enabling this transformation by aligning revenue functions with a unified source of truth delivering guidance, insights, and answers to all stakeholders.
Gong unveiled several new features, with two standing out. The first is real-time guidance, a long-awaited addition. The second is Gong Enable, an AI-powered role-play solution, and Gong's 4th product. Gong Enable allows sellers to engage in hyper-targeted rehearsal sessions with a Coaching Agent.
Gong’s vision of becoming a complete revenue orchestration platform is built on its robust data infrastructure. The Gong Data Engine now integrates with over 250 ecosystem partners, highlighting its strong commitment to developing a data platform that supports all revenue functions.
Aligned with its vision of AI empowering humans, Gong has embedded AI capabilities throughout its platform to assist sellers at every stage of their workflows. For instance, AI Brief, a summarization tool, streamlines handoffs, meeting prep, and more. Additional features like AI Tracker and AI Trigger further enhance the platform’s ability to drive seller productivity and precision.
Among the capabilities discussed, Flows stood out as particularly promising. Introduced with Engage, Flows now extends beyond prospecting sequences to encompass workflows like account handoff and cross-selling. By leveraging its comprehensive data set and AI, Gong aims to support all revenue motions, transforming their execution through intelligent triggers, insights, and automation. This vision is encapsulated in the company mantra: a better way to revenue.
Since the 1990s, CRM for Sales has ironically been labeled "Sales Force Automation," despite widespread seller frustration over its time-consuming nature. Gong and a few other providers racing to build revenue orchestration platforms are reshaping this narrative. These next-generation platforms promise not only to automate the myriad tedious tasks required for flawless sales execution but also to infuse these workflows with AI intelligence, transforming the concept of sales force automation from a misnomer to a reality.