You don’t want to leave revenue on the table. But that’s exactly what happens with poor sales territory planning.

Imagine your sales team’s completely out of whack” Some are drowning in work, while others twiddle their thumbs. Your best reps are bogged down with trivial deals. Everyone’s stepping on everybody else’s toes. 

You’ll be much more profitable if your systems are dialed in and well-planned.

This article explores how to get the most out of sales territory planning. We’ll explain why it matters, how to overcome challenges, the steps you should take, and the best practices to bring in more revenue.

Sales territory planning is the strategic process of dividing your market into smaller segments that can be managed more effectively and efficiently than one sprawling territory.

Some factors to consider in your sales territory design include:

The goal is to align sales reps with the most suitable territories. By balancing their workloads, and matching the right reps to the right types of buyers, you can boost performance and drive more revenue.

Of course, the most straightforward way businesses divide territories is by location. They often have one rep on the West Coast, one in the Midwest, etc. 

But you need more than lines on a map to engage effectively in enterprise sales. Today, businesses can tap into extensive data stores that allow for more strategic thinking. For example, you can harvest insights from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, customer interaction analytics, and predictive sales models. 

Leverage that data and you’ll better understand past performance as well as what buyers prefer and how they make purchasing decisions. 

You can then separate territories by deal sizes or buying cycles. Advanced sales territory plans let you prioritize high-value buyers and assign reps based on where they’ll likely succeed.

Think about a SaaS company that serves both enterprise and small business clients. Rather than geographic territories, enterprise-level clients are given to reps who have experience closing high-value deals. Those who don’t focus on closing deals with smaller businesses.

Sales territory planning is all about strategy. It’s not a haphazard system with unpredictable results. It’s about making decisions that drive team performance and benefit the bottom line. Here’s how:

A solid territory plan keeps deals moving through the sales pipeline. When reps know their accounts and know them well, they focus on high-value opportunities. They don’t waste time or get bogged down in unnecessary delays. 

That reduces downtime between interactions with buyers. It helps your team’s sales velocity by enabling reps to close deals faster. It eliminates confusion over who’s responsible for what and ensures that sales efforts aren’t redundant. 

Balanced territories are essential for better individual and team performance. With uneven workloads, some reps struggle to keep up, and others fall short of their potential. 

Careful territory planning lets you segment business opportunities to match each rep's strengths.

When you do, reps stay motivated and win more often. Their sales territory is balanced and personalized to them, and their results improve. 

When your sales team is on the ball, they can meet — and even exceed — quota. That boosts retention, performance, and morale. 

If territories aren’t clearly defined, forecasting sales will be complex. Clear and sensible sales zones allow for more predictability and visibility into each pipeline stage. 

When reps can focus on their assigned territories, sales leaders can track what’s happening and identify bottlenecks. It’s easier to predict outcomes and adjust strategies in real time.

No more end-of-quarter surprises and scrambles!

For example, a sales manager might notice several enterprise deals stuck in negotiation. Thanks to the clarity of their territories, they know whether to intervene early and offer additional resources that push the deals forward. As a result, the sales team avoids a last-minute rush to hit their target. The forecast remains accurate throughout the quarter.

To plan your sales territories, you need to craft a strategy. These five steps can propel you to a powerful start that fosters focus, efficiency, and success: 

Start by identifying where your best opportunities are. Assess each region, potential customer base, or industry segment.

There are many ways to discover the best opportunities, including:

Analyze buyer demand, competition, and which places have the highest revenue potential. Focus on zones with the biggest payoff to maximize your team’s impact.

When looking at your competition, try to find underperforming areas and missed opportunities. 

You can also look at your churn rates as you move forward to see where your shortcomings are. 

Let’s dive deeper into how to move beyond simple geography. Think about how your buyers behave, how often they purchase, and in what amount.

For example, a software company might divide its sales operations into subscriptions and enterprise clients. Monthly subscribers are smaller but more frequent buyers, requiring more engagement and lead-generation activities. (It’s a numbers game.)

But, larger enterprise clients need more personal attention and nurturing. (It’s a relationship game.) These transactions are less frequent but have a more significant impact. 

Splitting your team into different markets allows each group to do what they do best.

Now you’ve seen where the opportunities are and created appropriate territories. It’s time to match sellers to their zones. 

Here are a few questions to ask before you make any decisions:

Think of the ‘hunter vs. farmer’ salesperson dynamic. Hunters are great at getting out there and closing deals. Farmers build relationships and can play the long game. 

Consider sales styles and how they line up with buyers’ expectations. Use performance data to crack the code on where individuals thrive. 

You can also rotate reps through different territories to keep things fresh over time. 

Next, establish clear and realistic goals for each territory. Look at your market and any historical data to set initial quotas. These should be challenging but achievable.

Consider a mix of sales goals based on both outcomes and sales activity. For example, you could set standards for closed deals and the number of demos delivered. 

Set smaller weekly or monthly targets to engage reps and bring in small wins. Make sure enablement deploys training to help your staff reach their targets.

None of your performance goals should be fixed. You should always create feedback loops to see how sales roll out, and adjust as needed. 

Lastly, reward your team on an ongoing basis. Don’t just wait until the end of the quarter or year.

Move the Middle: Turn your B-players into A-players - Gong

Like anything else in business, sales territory planning is never a one-and-done task. Once things are up and running, you need to monitor them closely. 

Luckily, you can mine a slew of performance data if you have the right platform — one that’s backed by AI. Identify what’s working and where you’re off-course. Feedback is crucial, so create a culture of constant reviews from buyers and sales reps. 

Create sessions where reps can share challenges and ideas within their territories. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

When you’re ready to improve your sales territory management, incorporate these best practices, as together, they form a proactive approach to driving growth: 

Effective communication is at the heart of sales territory planning. Changes to territories can easily cause confusion and frustration if you don’t handle them properly. 

Don’t simply communicate the changes; also clarify why they’re being made. If there’s a broader company objective at play, inform your reps. 

Frame these discussions around how the new structure affects the company and the reps. That builds buy-in. Make sure your reps know whether the changes affect commission structures, streamline workloads, or create long-term stability. 

Also, don’t spring changes on your reps. Give them ample time to make transitions and adjustments. Ensure smooth handoffs and maintain client relationships through any changes. 

Today's markets are dynamic, and territories should reflect those shifts. 

If competitors pull back in a region, it may open up new opportunities. If they’re gaining traction, you might need a new sales strategy.

Economic trends like inflation, market downturns, and new regulations can affect customer spending. 

Lastly, a critical external factor is your buyer. Understand where they are in their buying journey. Notice trends in buyer preference and pay attention to broader shifts as well, such as pushes for sustainability or supporting local business. 

Sales automation platforms offer real-time insights. They’ll help you track territory performance and monitor reps’ activities. They can identify issues before they become bottlenecks, and ensure that you can spot struggling regions early and intervene. 

They also monitor lead generation and deal velocity in real time. If you see that a high-potential region isn’t delivering results, you can place an experienced rep there or boost coverage. 

There are applications for AI in sales and territory planning as well. 

It can enhance territory management by predicting trends, identifying hidden opportunities, and recommending adjustments.

If you want to learn more about how AI in sales can improve forecast accuracy, speak with an expert at Gong today.

Finally, let’s cover obstacles that get in your way. Accounting for these challenges at the start of your sales territory planning can give you a leg up on the competition.

One of the most common problems is a lack of balance. Performance suffers if some reps are overwhelmed with too many high-potential accounts while others have too few. 

Also, different reps excel in different markets and misalignment hurts success.

Give each rep a mix of high- and low-potential accounts. When you notice an imbalance, don’t be afraid to make changes.

Sales reps may resist realignments, especially if they hurt client relationships or commissions. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 State of Sales Report, top sellers are more effective because they understand their buyers. It’s natural for reps to want to maintain existing relationships.

Be prepared to demonstrate how the realignment benefits your reps and offer support such as introductions to new accounts. 

When boundaries are undefined or overlap, it can lead to unnecessary conflicts. Create buffer zones between boundaries where reps collaborate instead of competing. 

Establish clear rules when accounts transition to prevent disputes. Monitor any boundary overlaps as you go.

Having poorly planned territories leaves revenue on the table. Opportunities are overlooked, and deals are missed. 

Assign reps to re-engage accounts with stalled or expired deals, and prioritize territories that have long-term value, not just immediate revenue. 

Run blitzes to have reps find opportunities in overlooked territories. 

Better forecasts give reps the best on-the-ground understanding of what’s happening in your pipeline and they can even alert you to deals that are about to go off track. Make sure you’re not just looking at data but checking in with your sales team about how sales are progressing.

With data-backed pipeline reporting and more accurate forecasts, sales leaders can close the gap between targets and results. 

Realigning territories at the wrong time can disrupt momentum and result in lost deals. Changing in the middle of the sales cycle is a common problem. 

Instead, plan realignments at the start of a new quarter or during downtimes. You can also roll out changes gradually to reduce disruption.

Now that you know the steps, best practices, and common challenges in sales territory planning, you can tackle its management more smoothly. 

Remember, sales territory planning requires thoughtful strategy. As you encounter new phases, come back to this article and continue putting its advice in place. It takes time to dial in your processes. 

Book a demo today to see how you can improve forecast accuracy, grow your pipeline, improve business efficiency, and close more deals with Gong’s Revenue AI Platform.

Check out The State of Sales Productivity 2024 for more insights.

Is your sales team overworked? Struggling to hit their goals? It might not be their fault, especially if their capacity and their targets are poorly aligned. 

When you know what your team is actually capable of, you can set ambitious quotas that drive your team forward instead of leaving them defeated before they even begin. 

In this article, you’ll learn what sales capacity planning is, why it’s important, and how to set appropriate targets. 

Sales capacity planning is the process of estimating your team’s performance potential and aligning it with your revenue goals. Your team’s sales capacity is the volume of activities each rep can carry out as part of their usual duties. 

Rather than guessing, take a data-driven approach to predict your revenue potential and identify the number of reps you need to hit your sales goal. 

Sales capacity planning that’s backed by data helps you make better decisions, allocate reps and resources more effectively, and improve sales performance. Use it to find a balance between hiring new sales representatives and maximizing your current reps’ productivity.

Even with the highest-performing sales reps in your industry, you’ll struggle to reach your revenue targets if your sales team is understaffed. 

Solve this by using sales capacity planning to determine how many sales representatives your team needs. 

It’s not just a case of hiring the minimum number of reps necessary, though. 

Sales capacity planning can also help you take advantage of new opportunities: 

Effective sales capacity planning can optimize your team’s performance and highlight opportunities for improvement through new sales software or training. 

You’ll need to track several metrics to calculate your sales capacity. They include the following:

The best sales software will automatically calculate these above metrics so you don’t have to do that manually.

You can calculate sales capacity in several ways. Some sales capacity models are simple, while others are more complex. In either case, you’ll first need to define your planning period: monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

If it’s your first time calculating sales capacity, start with a basic formula like the following:

For example, assume you have 10 reps who each have a quarterly quota of 100,000 and average quota attainment across your team of 80 percent:

Sales capacity = 10 x (100,000 x 0.8) = $800,000

Your team can generate a maximum revenue of $800,000 each quarter. 

That formula is a great starting place, but it doesn’t take into account ramp times or churn. You can’t hire 10 new reps and expect to automatically increase your sales capacity to $1.6 million overnight. 

To create a clearer picture of your true sales capacity, you have to factor in the number of new hires you plan to recruit over a given period, their average ramp time, and average turnover. 

If you lose two reps on average each quarter and expect to hire two new reps who will operate at 25 percent capacity for the next quarter, then your sales capacity calculation will look like this:

Sales capacity = (10-2) x (100,000 x 0.8) + 2 (100,000 x 0.25) = $710,000

Because you’re likely to lose two reps in the next quarter, you only have eight reps working at full capacity. You also have two reps working at a quarter capacity because of their ramp time.

Once you’ve calculated your sales capacity, you may need to improve it. 

Hiring additional sales reps is certainly one strategy, but it’s not the only option — or even the best option — according to Dorean Kass, Chief Sales Officer at Neustar:

"The other mistake I see is assuming that growth is driven by capacity — that more reps equals more sales. It's not that simple. Many factors come into play, including market approach, messaging, and addressing the total addressable market profitably."

Here are five strategies to improve your capacity without increasing your salary budget: 

Reevaluating how sales territories are structured can have a major impact on sales capacity.

By creating better-defined, more targeted territories, reps can focus on high-potential opportunities, leading to higher quota attainment and increased efficiency. On the flip side, over-hiring can shrink territories, spreading opportunities too thin and diluting individual rep performance.

Instead of simply adding headcount, refining territory distribution ensures that each rep has the right mix of accounts to maximize their selling potential.

You’ll never be able to fulfill your revenue potential if you are constantly losing your top sellers. 

Make retaining them a priority by implementing one or more of the following tactics:

Holding onto more sales representatives not only reduces hiring costs, it also means you lose less time to onboarding. 

Next, turn your attention to your hiring process.

The better you get at identifying and onboarding high-quality candidates the higher your sales capacity ceiling will be. 

You don’t need to hire more staff if you can increase your sales team’s performance. Combine sales activity tracking with pipeline management to spot individual and team weaknesses. Then, implement a coaching program to fix them. 

You don’t have to hire a dedicated sales trainer to implement this practice. 

With Gong’s Ask Anything feature, for example, SDRs and sales leaders can identify coaching opportunities and replay crucial touchpoints instantly rather than replay hours of calls or reread transcripts and call summaries.

With Ask Anything, reps can quickly get relevant information — including the full context of a deal — across their entire pipeline, and get real-time recommendations for the next best steps in a deal. 

Improving rep performance addresses one piece of the sales capacity equation. Increasing quotas addresses the other. 

You already know that sales reps are competitive by nature. Many will raise their game to meet more ambitious sales quotas. So, why not try increasing your sales targets?

Use pipeline data and revenue forecasts to make quotas as challenging (but attainable) as possible, and see if your reps rise to the challenge. 

If they don’t, consider optimizing your sales strategy to give them a break. That’s the approach Paul Butterfield, former VP of Global Sales Enablement at Instructure, takes:

A final way to increase sales capacity is to give reps more time to sell. A lot of administrative work like updating CRM files and sending follow-up emails can now be automated thanks to AI-powered sales tools.

Generative AI can even complete large chunks of the sales process, including email personalization.

This has an incredible impact on sellers’ productivity. In Gong’s State of Sales Engagement study, reps said they spend an average of 12.1 hours each week writing emails. This time is split between customizing pre-written templates and writing emails from scratch. There’s no need to waste those hours, when Gong’s generative AI is at their fingertips.

Hiring new reps isn’t the only way to improve your capacity. Integrating an AI-backed sales solution that supports data-driven decisions can also boost your team’s productivity and quota attainment. 

With Gong, sales leaders get the data and coaching insights they need to optimize sales capacity and increase rep performance. With real-time revenue AI and better resource allocation, sales reps can spend more time selling.

Ready to learn how to increase your sales capacity? Book a demo with Gong today. 

It’s hard to overstate the power of accurately forecasting how likely deals are to close or the revenue you’ll generate in a given timeframe. 

Predictive sales analytics aren’t just numbers. They’re the foundation on which you and your company make great decisions about hiring, budgeting, marketing, sales strategies, and production schedules.

This guide explores the types of predictive sales analytics and how they can benefit your revenue teams.

Predictive sales analytics use data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to forecast future outcomes. These outcomes might include how much you’ll sell over a given period, what percentage of deals are likely to close, or which reps will hit their targets. 

Until recently, most traditional sales analytics tools could only tell you what’s happening now (e.g., how much revenue your reps have committed). Today’s intelligent analytics solutions analyze real-time trends and apply predictive models to determine what’s most likely to occur in the future.

AI-powered sales solutions employ machine learning and predictive models to scan and sift through a wider range of data inputs. For example, Gong Forecast automatically captures and analyzes over 300 buying signals, including customer interactions, historical sales data, and information from integrated apps like Salesforce, Google Calendar, and Zoom. 

(Image Source)

In the image above, Gong Forecast automatically calculated and assigned each rep a “most likely” revenue figure and a “best-case” scenario.

Everyone in a sales organization can use predictive analytics to guide how they streamline workflows and improve performance:

In short, predictive sales analytics are the new cornerstone of a top-performing revenue organization.

There are four main types of analytics. Each provides targeted insights into the four stages of decision-making: what happened, why it happened, what could happen, and what to do next. 

Traditional sales analytics tools can only execute the first two types of predictive analytics. But intelligent sales solutions like Gong can handle all four. 

Specifically, Gong Forecast looks at your past customer interaction data to identify themes and trends. Then, it identifies similar deals in your current pipeline to see how they’ve turned out in the past. With those insights, sales leaders can spot the deals most likely to close and the ones most likely to go sideways.

If you use Gong in your sales organization, it will analyze historical data alongside insights from current deals’ sales calls to assign a predictive score for each deal in your pipeline. The higher the score, the more likely a deal is to close. 

AI-driven sales solutions can provide unbiased, accurate customer insights, so you don’t have to rely on individuals’ recollections and assumptions. Gong automatically captures and analyzes every customer interaction so you can spot at-risk deals, enhance pipeline visibility, and improve forecast accuracy. 

Have a look, for example, at this example from Wooloo, in which a prospect said the deal might close in the new year instead of the current quarter:

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Knowing this improves forecast accuracy and allows you to coach and allocate resources more effectively.

Predictive sales analytics eliminate the guesswork. With data-driven quotas, more accurate targets, and more informed decision-making, sales teams are more confident and effective — whether they’re closing a deal or setting next quarter’s sales goals. 

Here are three specific ways you can use predictive analytics to drive revenue in your organization: 

When you can accurately predict buyer intent, you can prioritize and grow your pipeline effectively. You can divert effort and resources away from low-intent prospects and focus your reps’ energy on the prospects most likely to convert. 

A predictive analytics tool enables this approach by leveraging conversation intelligence data. An AI model like Gong’s can pull from every single customer conversation to pinpoint what matters to prospects and surface objections like competitor pricing. 

With these actionable insights, sales reps can adapt their strategies based on customer behaviors by highlighting relevant product features or addressing objections early in the process. According to data from Gong Labs, this can increase win rates by 35 percent. 

Forecasts underpin many parts of the sales process, from setting targets to allocating budgets and making hiring decisions. Accurate predictions are essential, but many sales teams need help creating them.

According to a global Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey, less than one-quarter of executives think their forecasting methods accurately predict sales, accelerate successful initiatives effectively, or identify top performers. 

Underforecasting and overforecasting are both dangerous.

When you overforecast, you may eventually need to cut costs and reduce your workforce. When you underforecast, you miss opportunities to accelerate a successful initiative and create onboarding problems for new customers.

The good news is inaccurate forecasts are a data problem that predictive sales analytics can address. 

An AI-powered solution like Gong collects and analyzes data from hundreds of sources to find patterns and trends that traditional sales forecasting solutions would miss. That allows you to predict pipeline outcomes with up to 90 percent accuracy. 

With more accurate sales forecasts, revenue leaders can:

Most importantly, predictive analytics provides more accurate forecasts that you can confidently present to stakeholders and executives. 

Opinion-based forecasts are time-consuming to create and analyze. First, you have to corral data from your CRM and other platforms, often into static spreadsheets. Then you have to chase reps for their opinions. Finally, you must review each deal individually to predict whether it’s likely to close. 

The right predictive sales analytics platform can automate all of this. There’s no need to chase sales reps when predictive models automatically run forecasts based on the data they collect from your CRM and other integrated sales tools. 

Data-driven decisions happen faster as a result. A predictive forecasting model allows sales managers to invest more heavily in a profitable new market now rather than waiting to make decisions at the end of the quarter, leaving revenue on the table.

Most marketing teams use CRM information or sales reps' feedback to create buyer personas. CRMs are great for storing contact information and important persona details like pain points, motivations, and buying patterns, but they can quickly become outdated.

Sales reps need up-to-date, detailed, customer profile information to personalize the buying experience. 

Solve this using a predictive sales analytics platform that has conversational intelligence to add genuine color to your personas. Rather than basing personas on feedback from your sales reps, you can fine-tune them using real customer insights and interaction data. 

Even the most battle-worn veteran can’t spot everything in their sales pipeline — or the market. That can mean an untapped market goes unnoticed, or a potential upsell is overlooked. 

Predictive sales analytics helps leaders stay ahead of their pipeline, flagging trends and insights they can act on immediately.

For example, given historical trends and real-time conversion intelligence, predictive sales analytics can identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities by predicting which products or services a customer will need in the future. 

Reps can take the initiative and sell these features up front, increasing customer value and boosting deal size. 

We know that forecasting is as challenging as it is essential. Our research shows that while 63 percent of leaders believe forecasting is critical to success, only 27 percent think their forecast methods are accurate. 

You spend hours collecting data, chasing individual reps to submit their numbers, and prepping for meetings. You spend those meetings painstakingly combing through those deals one by one. Even then, you still can’t be sure your forecast is more than 50 percent accurate. 

Rather than relying on second-hand data and assumptions, Gong Forecast fuels predictive models with real-time customer interaction data to deliver accurate, actionable results. 

Here are two companies already succeeding with Gong:

Piano is a leading data analytics and customer engagement platform that helps major brands like Air France and LinkedIn understand and influence customer behavior. 

The company needed help with its revenue forecasts. Before Gong, pipeline data was spread across multiple systems, such as Salesforce, Google Drive, and Slack. 

Locking in predictable revenue: Gong takes Piano’s forecast accuracy to 90%

Gong Forecast solved this by centralizing all their data in one platform. Now, everyone operates from a single screen, allowing weekly forecast calls to happen with zero prep. 

AI-driven insights like Deal Likelihood Scores and Deal Warnings help the teams prioritize their sales efforts to close as many deals as possible.

Quarterly revenue projections are much more accurate too. Where their numbers could vary by millions in the past, Piano can now forecast with 90 percent accuracy thanks to Gong’s predictive analytics.

“The progress we’ve seen from what the CRM, sales managers, and even the CRO used to tell us was going to land is astronomical,” says Peter Lastowski, VP of Revenue Operations at Piano. “We’ve closed the gap by millions. With Gong, our end-of-quarter forecasts are solid.” 

It isn’t just revenue teams that benefit from using Gong. Piano’s marketing department uses it to generate insights and identify pipeline gaps for specific segments. 

Crayon is a leader in competitive intelligence software. Brands like ZoomInfo and Dropbox rely on Crayon to track competitive intel and analyze information across their entire organization.

Previously, Crayon used several platforms to track deal information and collate everything in a Google Sheet. Now that they don’t have to spend hours chasing down individual reps for sales numbers, their forecasting process is more efficient and effective. 

How Gong Forecast helps Crayon create accurate and reliable forecasting 

Gong’s forecasting capabilities cut Crayon's forecasting time by two-thirds. Where calls used to take an hour, the sales team can now complete them in 20 minutes — and they’re more accurate. 

Calls are also more transparent because everyone works from the same data and can see the full historical forecasting record.

"I have throughout my career said that there are two really dangerous things that I hear from salespeople or sales managers, and that is I think or I feel. Gong gives us the ability to move out of that very dangerous realm of emotion and into the realm of knowledge."

Gong’s sales insights also power other departments, particularly product design and development. Gong brings customer feedback into the Product Board, which is pushed into Salesforce and feeds directly into Crayon’s product roadmap. 

A predictive sales analytics solution brings speed, precision, and automation to your sales cycle. That means better forecasting, stronger sales performance, more closed-won deals, and sharper buyer personas. 

Centralizing your data in Gong's Revenue AI Platform delivers even better results. While CRMs track basic deal stages and low-level customer interactions (and rely on reps for manual data entry), Gong automatically captures every customer interaction. The platform’s predictive models draw on more than 300 data points, so you can predict revenue more accurately than ever. 

Book a demo to find out more.

For more forecasting insights check out these resources:
Guide: Successful sales forecasting in five steps

Improve sales forecast accuracy with 4 key red flags

The Gong Collective is more than a partnership program; it’s an extension of the revenue AI movement. 

Revenue AI has transformed the way businesses optimize sales performance, analyze customer interactions, and drive predictable growth. But no company — no matter how advanced its AI or how robust its data — can evolve in a vacuum. Doing so leads to insularity and stagnation, which is bad news for any company and its customers.

That’s why we keep partnerships at the core of Gong’s go-to-market strategy. The Gong Collective is a thriving ecosystem of technologies, services, and consulting partners that help businesses get even more value from their revenue AI investments. The input of this deeply collaborative network means our customers succeed more often by uncovering insights, closing deals, and maximizing revenue outcomes at an accelerated pace.

Three avenues of Gong Collective partnerships will serve our customers well in the coming years:

The sales and revenue tech landscape is complex: Organizations rely on a mix of CRMs, engagement tools, forecasting platforms, enablement solutions, and professional services. In the continual pursuit of consolidation, the key isn’t minimizing vendors but rather picking a combination that unlocks success. Winning tech stacks include robust integrations that effectively connect your systems and supercharge your team’s productivity. 

Case in point? Gong is powerful on its own, but when you pair it with best-in-class tech partners, it becomes a revenue AI powerhouse. By integrating with platforms like Linkedin, Salesforce, Snowflake, 6sense, Chili Piper, and more, Gong not only enhances visibility across the entire customer journey but also helps streamline seller workflows. That means you and your team derive all the benefits of Gong, with greater intensity:

Technology alone doesn’t drive change. Lasting shifts in revenue happen when it’s combined with successful implementation, enablement, and business strategies. That’s where Gong’s service partners – agencies, consultants, and global systems integrators – come in. Here’s how they work alongside Gong to enable change inside your organization:

Today, AWS Marketplace and private equity (PE) partnerships are creating more ways for our partners to build their businesses using Gong.

As AI continues to transform revenue teams, partnerships will be the force that ensures companies get the most out of their data, insights, and sales strategies. 

Revenue AI thrives when the right technologies, services, and strategies come together to help GTM teams operate with complete clarity. That’s why the Gong Collective isn’t just a program — it’s the future of how businesses like yours will win.

Ready to fuel your growth with the Gong Collective? Click here to learn about our incredible network.

Most sales reps treat lost deals like a breakup — painful, awkward, and something they never want to revisit. But that’s a huge mistake. 

Every company wants to understand why a deal went south. The best ones don’t just analyze the loss, they mine insights to re-engage and turn “no” into “not yet,” and “not yet” into yes. Gong included. Over $1.1M of my 2023 closed-won revenue came from deals that already existed. Not new inbound, not cold outbound — just opportunities left for dead. 

Reviving closed-lost deals is one of the easiest ways to build your pipeline but almost everyone messes it up by:

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Reps just need to get their hands on the right tools to support their success. 

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you already know I’m such a Gong power-user, that I wouldn't work in sales for any company that doesn’t use our platform. So, let me show you how I bring dead deals back to life fast and turn them into closed-won using Gong.

Most sales reps and AEs want to follow up on lost deals but the process is slow, manual, and frustrating. You know you should personalize your outreach, but the time it takes to gather relevant insights makes it feel impossible to do at scale. 

Here’s what that looked like for me before I used Gong: 

All this took way too many clicks and wasted way too much time. It made no sense to drop a prospect into a brand new sequence and pretend we’d never spoken. I knew past conversations held critical information that could help me land a new opportunity. 

But those insights? Gone. Flushed down the drain. 

Thankfully, reconnecting with past prospects is no longer a time-sucking, multi-tab nightmare. What used to take several hours, now takes me less than three minutes — all inside one platform. 

Here’s my step-by-step process using Gong: 

🚀Why it’s a game-changer

No more hunting for details across sources, no missing pieces, no noise. I get the most relevant data on the people who matter.

🚀Why it’s a game-changer

🚀Why it’s a game-changer

The highest performing reps don’t just chase new leads — they maximize the pipeline they already have. Our data shows a direct correlation between time spent with buyers and quota attainment. Reps who exceed 130% of quota spend 60% of their time on customer-facing activities. 

That’s why reviving lost deals is a necessity. But only if it’s efficient and gets you back in front of your buyer with the right message.

That’s exactly what Ask Anything helps you do. Instantly understand customer challenges, so you can craft compelling outreach — without getting stuck in research mode. It’s how elite sellers work smarter, not harder. Quarter after quarter. Year after year. 

Your success – and your company’s long-term business growth – depends on leaving no stone unturned and knowing exactly which ones to flip. Lost deals don’t have to stay lost forever. 

Take Ask Anything for a test drive and bring them back to life today. 

As a CRO, I’m directly accountable for Gong’s revenue performance, and so it helps me to have a 360° view into the inner workings of our entire revenue organization.

In the past, the challenge was that there was more to consume than hours in the day to consume it. Hours of calls, pages of reports, dozens of ad-hoc questions and requests—it was as challenging to allocate my time intelligently as it was to respond to urgent trends.

Gong makes this infinitely simpler. From the highest-level views of my whole revenue organization to the most granular views of individual deal progress and rep performance, the insights I need are never more than a few clicks away.

I rely on Gong to make my life as a CRO simpler and more effective. I believe every CRO would experience the same performance boost with the insights Gong has to offer. In this article, I cover my daily workflow with Gong, so that revenue leaders everywhere can get as much value from the platform as I do.

The first thing I do every day is log into the platform and review the info on my Homepage. I can see interactions where I’ve been tagged—team members calling out good and bad examples of sales skills, like handling objections, building rapport, and identifying key metrics. I can easily pick the interactions that feel most urgent and respond to them to engage with my team.

Then, in the Ask Anything section, I can type in any question I have related to an account, and opportunity, or an individual sales meeting, and Gong will analyze all my data to generate an answer. Maybe I’m worried about a strategic deal closing this quarter; I can ask, “What is the likelihood this deal will close in Q1?” And then perhaps follow up with, “What can the rep do to ensure it closeds?”

The Homepage is a high-level view of the entire revenue organization, my primary way of keeping a finger on its pulse, celebrating wins, and addressing weaknesses.

Gong’s Deal Board is where I can organize and zero in on all our active deals. I can organize our deals by whatever sales methodology I want—Gong happens to use MEDDICC—and in doing so, get a clear idea of deal progress and the likelihood of it closing. Once I’ve chosen a sales methodology, Gong automatically assesses each deal according to it and assigns scores to deals based on how thoroughly they’ve completed each facet of MEDDICC.

I’ve also created a tab for “Must Win” deals, the anchor deals for our quarter. All of this helps me forecast more accurately, spend my scarce time more intelligently, and have as positive an impact as possible on my revenue organization.

In the Forecasting tab, I can see how the organization is trending for the quarter. Gong automatically provides assessments of:

Here, I can also see forecasts by team, and I can dive into each team to see forecasts by rep—how they’re performing so far, their likelihood of hitting their target (based on deal likelihood scores from the Deal Board), and what they’re doing each day to advance their deals.

In the Insights tab, Gong automatically brings up topics that need my attention. This includes insights on particular deals (e.g., important deals where there’s been little recent activity) and on particular reps (e.g., sections of MEDDICC where particular reps tend to struggle). Gong’s Insights give me granular, targeted data I can use to coach my team more effectively, intervene in deals where necessary, and improve revenue outcomes.

Gong’s Trackers feature tracks certain terms that are important to us—names of competitors, specific business goals, internal messaging—and correlates mention of those terms with win/loss trends. So, if I want to get a sense of how often we win when prospects mention certain competitors, I can dive into that Tracker and get a quick view. This makes it easy for me to understand win/loss trends through the most relevant lenses.

In short: Gong makes it easier for me to see exactly what I need to see, when I need to see it. It surfaces insights that only an AI-powered platform equipped with my sales methodology, team composition, and business goals can find. It’s an invaluable competitive edge, and any CRO trying to analyze their revenue organization without it faces a steep uphill battle.
Ready to learn more? Check out an instant Gong demo here.

If you’re driving revenue for a high-growth B2B company targeting enterprise customers, you know how complex it is to secure high-quality leads through paid search. You can’t cast a wide net; every marketing dollar must target the right opportunities. 

As the name goes, search engine marketing (SEM) relies on who’s searching for keywords (not personas or segments), we have to be strategic to target the conversions that matter most. This is especially difficult with upmarket buyers whose decision-making processes can be long and complex. To engage them at various stages, we rely on multi-touch, integrated campaigns — with paid search being a strategic channel. 

This is a challenge many of us face — and exactly why Gong and Google Ads team came together. 

Google Ads ranks among our top three sources for driving pipeline revenue. We have a full-funnel campaign strategy for our Google Ads campaigns to meet prospects where they are in their buying journey, including:  

In 2022, we took the first step towards implementing value based bidding (VBB). We used a static model that assigned value to leads based on criteria such as a demo request vs content download. While this strategy helped us generate more pipeline with the same budget in 2023, we knew there was the potential to do even more.

Sourcing more high-value customers — the brands that make the biggest impact to our bottom line — drives sustainable, long-term growth. So, in 2024, we decided to push the envelope with VBB and implemented a dynamic model that assigned values to leads based on their segment (SMB, mid-market, enterprise) and ideal customer profile (ICP). We focused on driving upmarket (enterprise-level) demos — those most likely to drive more revenue for Gong and with a higher potential to scale. 

Given our investment in Google Ads, always-on experimentation is another strategy we use to drive business impact. To drive more leads and improve campaign and landing page conversion rates, we run: 

We also collaborate with Gong’s SDR team to improve opportunity conversion rates. SDRs follow up with the leads, talk to the prospect to understand their challenges and convert them into opportunities. 

To help the team personalize their lead follow-up strategy, we added the search query — the exact words the prospect searched for — to lead alerts. This provides them with context they can use to personalize the follow up email and address the specific pain point the prospect was looking to solve. For example, the follow-up email sent to a buyer searching for sales prospecting software would be different from that sent to someone searching for a sales AI platform.

And the results speak for themselves: 

All without increasing our Google Ads spend.

For the Google Ads team, efficiency and scale are paramount. But with thousands of sellers worldwide, it's a massive challenge to capture and effectively use individual, team, and regional data. That’s where Gong steps in. Google uses Gong’s Revenue AI Platform to drive alignment, speed up decision-making, and boost productivity.

Our partnership with Google Ads is ambitious, successful, and just getting started. We’re excited about the new innovations that will shape the next outcomes of our work together. We’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in sales and marketing — refining strategies, optimizing campaigns, and supporting our respective businesses to expand our pipelines. 

As we evolve together, we’re not just setting new standards — we’re crafting the future of B2B revenue generation. 

We are happy to share that Gong has been recognized as a winner in this year’s BIG Innovation Awards under the Product — Business Services category. The 2025 BIG Innovation Awards, from Business Intelligence Group, celebrate organizations and individuals — from state-of-the-art SaaS solutions to products that solve everyday problems — that push boundaries and advance their industries. Honorees are the companies and innovations that most successfully drive forward innovation in their respective fields.

With 2025 planning in full effect, leaders are working to prioritize AI investments that stand out against competitors. Doing so successfully requires an approach that not only differs from competitors but also drives undeniable business results. Gong’s Revenue AI platform achieves both — delivering insights and helping drive actions that enable organizations to achieve greater revenue success. 

Gong’s inclusion as a winner showcases the revenue AI platform’s strength in delivering meaningful results that go beyond saving GTM teams time, but also helps them uncover the precision, accuracy, and nuance to drive success.

The BIG Innovation Award is judged by business executives with experience and knowledge of the nominated products and industries. Winners are evaluated based on the product or platform’s creativity, measurable results, and overall impact on their selections, and are awarded based on how these achievements measure above those of their peers.

“Humanity relies on innovation to improve our lives and the planet,” said Russ Fordyce, CEO of the Business Intelligence Group. “We’re thrilled to spotlight Gong as a shining example of innovation making a profound impact globally.”

This award win acts as a commencement to Gong’s 2025 list of accolades and follows a year of various industry-leading wins, including: 

The Stevie Awards, Best Use of Technology in Sales

Inc. Best in Business

InfoWorld Technology of the Year, AI and machine learning: Applications

Forbes Cloud 100

Forbes America’s Best Startup Employers 

AI Breakthrough Awards, Best AI-Based Solution for Sales

The Cloud Awards, Most Advanced AI Environment

Many enablement leaders lack visibility into the performance of new programs. It’s not unusual to launch a strategic initiative and then…crickets, leaving you with more questions than answers, such as: 

But without access to in-depth insights, it’s impossible to know exactly if an initiative is working or not. And that can stop progress in its tracks – according to McKinsey, 70% of strategic initiatives fail due to lack of monitoring. 

Implementing robust initiative tracking is a must if you want to level up your field team and drive more revenue. But doing so is easier said than done. 

That’s why I’m excited to share how my team and I use Gong to access strategic initiative insights, uncover sales methodology adoption, and move the business forward.

Sales methodologies drive consistency. These frameworks guide reps through the sales process and help them win more deals.

At Gong, we use MEDDICC as a sales framework; it helps sellers qualify customers by understanding the decision-making process within a buyer’s organization.

After implementing this framework, I needed to know if my team was adopting the process, so I turned to Gong’s initiative boards.

To better understand whether our field team is adopting MEDDICC, I rely on the initiative board in Gong. This board provides me with a high-level overview of program adoption over time. You can also use initiative boards to track sales messaging adherence, new pricing structures, product and service launches, and much more.

Looking at the graph, I can quickly see how different components of MEDDICC (metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, implicate pain, champion, and competition) are being adopted across the entire field team. The trend lines show me what’s working well, what isn’t, and where there are opportunities for improvement. 

I also use the timeline to see how launch dates, enablement sessions, and seasonality have contributed to overall adoption. You can customize the displayed timeframe to fit your needs, but I typically look at the past 90 days. 

To drill down into each element of the sales methodology, I hover over the individual lines on the graph. In this case, I can see the team is almost always nailing discovery questions, but there’s a lack of adoption and, potentially, understanding of the paper process. With this knowledge, I can connect with my team and quickly spin up new enablement or training resources to help the field with the deal execution stage.

After viewing adoption across the field, it's time to analyze the sales methodology adherence by team.

Identifying broad trends over time is a great starting point, but I want to learn how each team has adopted our sales methodology. Scrolling further down on the initiative board, I can see adoption by team and MEDDICC category. You can also customize your initiative board by individual, as opposed to team.

To quickly understand the information in front of me, elements with high adoption (greater than 70%) are highlighted in green, and elements with low adoption (less than 40%) are highlighted in red. You can choose the thresholds that work best for your business.

With access to more granular metrics, I can quickly pinpoint insights and develop more targeted enablement materials. From this view, I can see that most teams have no problem identifying a champion and key metrics. However, most teams – especially Kate’s –  are struggling with the paper process. Now, we can use that intel to build focused training and enablement programs that make sense on a process-level to our sellers, and help them level up. 

To build and scale successful enablement programs, you need visibility. 

Thankfully, Gong’s Revenue AI Platform helps enablement leaders track and measure the impact of new initiatives, like implementing a sales methodology, so they can equip sellers to win more often. And we’re constantly releasing new AI-driven capabilities to help your GTM organization succeed. 

Personally, I’ve found Initiative Boards to be a game-changer – I use them to access insights and make changes on the fly to ensure we’re moving the business forward. I can’t wait to see how other enablement leaders use these boards to transform their workflows.

Get a demo to learn how to unlock new levels of visibility.

We are honored to announce that Gong has been recognized as the winner in the AI and Machine Learning: Applications category in InfoWorld's annual Technology of the Year awards. The InfoWorld Technology of the Year awards highlight the leading products and solutions that positively change how companies operate, and how their employees work. 

IT leaders and CIOs are currently struggling to effectively measure  AI's value — with most leaders conflicted between choosing productivity gains, revenue growth, or worker satisfaction as the key value driver. That’s a huge part of the reason why we're honored that InfoWorld has decided to recognize The Gong Revenue AI platform as a leading solution that addresses all three areas. 

In their assessment, the InfoWorld Technology of the Year judges acknowledged how Gong’s platform helps revenue organizations automate the "tedious but essential task” of capturing a complete, high-quality, and contextualized view of their data. Valuable information often goes undetected by traditional CRM alone.

The Gong Revenue AI Platform empowers everyone in revenue teams to improve productivity, increase predictability, and drive revenue growth by deeply understanding customers and business trends, and driving impactful decisions and actions. By capturing every customer interaction, Gong equips GTM organizations with the right quantity, quality, and contextual information – accelerating insight to action as a result. 

This achievement joins a growing list of recent recognitions that validate our efforts to create leading revenue AI technology. This includes Inc.’s 2024 Best in Business list in the AI & Data category and The Cloud Awards, Most Advanced AI Environment. 

The complete list of winners for this year's Technology of the Year awards can be found here.