Author: Kevin Heraly

The company that holds every customer conversation: Gong.io has transformed from a simple sales tool into a powerhouse of revenue intelligence. Today, it stands as a leader in empowering sales teams with AI-driven insights, offering a comprehensive suite for conversational intelligence, deal tracking, and strategic decision-making. 

Core Strengths: Leading the Charge in Conversational Intelligence

At the heart of Gong is its industry-leading conversational intelligence. Here's what sets it apart:

• Comprehensive capture: Gong records and transcribes every customer interaction, providing a goldmine of actionable insights.
• Deep analysis: Sales teams can drill down into conversations, uncovering key signals and success drivers.
• Seamless collaboration: Teams can easily share recordings, annotate transcripts, and tag colleagues for follow-ups—all within their workflow.
• Robust integration marketplace: With connections to over 50 apps, Gong ensures smooth data flow across your entire tech stack.
• An “icing on the cake” feature is their contact capture. Anyone you’re emailing with at the prospect domain will be created as a contact in the CRM if you choose. 

Users rave about Gong's Warnings and Win/Loss analytics, which make real-time risk identification a breeze. The Deal Drivers insights and Initiative Tracking are equally impactful, helping teams refine go-to-market strategies and gauge the reception of key initiatives.

Core Strengths: One of the Best UI’s Out There

Gong has one of the best user interfaces in sales software. Many credit their rapid early adoption with the look of the interface. They have always presented calls and emails, and all account activity, in a streamlined account journey with a timeline feel. Their deal boards were another big hit early on because they were so much nicer to look at than tools like Salesforce. Bottom line, people want to keep using a tool that makes them feel knowledgeable AND elegant at the same time.  

My Experience with Gong.io

As a Gong Admin and Program Manager since 2021, I've witnessed firsthand how it's revolutionized our sales approach. The Initiative Tracker, for instance, has been invaluable in helping us adjust messaging and spot adoption trends we might have otherwise missed. While I have made great use of these features, reviewers often note that they haven’t captured the full value of the Initiative Tracker.

What truly sets Gong apart are its AI-driven tools like "Ask Anything" and AI-Driven Playbooks. These features take proactive insights to new heights. Our team has found them invaluable, especially for gathering real-time product feedback. Since adopting these features, we've been able to funnel critical customer insights directly to our product and engineering leadership, significantly accelerating our platform iteration speed.

A note about my Gong experience: it is specifically related to the combination of using Gong and Salesforce.com together, but have heard similar praise for their Hubspot integration. 

Evolution and Innovation: Gong's Journey Since 2021

Since 2021, Gong has consistently rolled out impressive updates:

• Deal Intelligence: Sharpened our ability to assess pipeline risks and opportunities.
• Enhanced Salesforce integration: Introduced seamless data flow and automation.
• AI Smart Trackers: Added deeper context to conversations, notably boosting win rates.
• "Ask Anything" and AI-Driven Playbooks: Streamlined manual tasks, enabling our team to focus on high-impact activities with greater precision.

Gong's ambitions now extend beyond conversational intelligence. They're building a full revenue engine platform. New products like Engage (for sales email engagement) and Forecast demonstrate Gong's commitment to becoming an all-in-one solution. This expansion aligns perfectly with the consolidation trend many customers, including ourselves, are prioritizing.

The ‘sales platform race’ has been heating up in Revenue Intelligence since about 2020. The reason Gong is positioned well as an incumbent tool is that they have so many early adopter conversation intelligence customers. I spoke with a user who expanded into Gong Forecast simply because she knew that Gong already “had every conversation” and it created the sense that they understood her business better than others. 

Room for Improvement 

While Gong is undoubtedly powerful, there's room for growth. Many pain points appear to stem from an iterative feature rollout process. Here are the pain points we have identified:

1. The reporting interface, while robust, can sometimes be limiting for users seeking highly customized or granular insights. 
2. Some of Gong’s features will only shine after a period of time that’s needed to gather all of the conversations that relate to the key initiative. For a while, reporting on the success of a key initiative won’t be possible because there haven’t been enough conversations. This makes a lot of sense, but still catches users off guard at first. 
3. New users often face a learning curve with advanced features. A more intuitive setup process or enhanced onboarding resources could make a significant difference here.

Looking Forward

Gong's focus on AI-driven insights are bound to expand further. The buzz among peers is all about how Gong will incorporate more automation and predictive features. Tools like Deal Spotlight, which provides AI-powered summaries, have only scratched the surface of what's possible.

I believe that customer teams aren’t taking full advantage of Gong and their features, and this would be a prime consolidation opportunity for teams that have a separate CS tool which may not be providing the same intelligence level that Gong offers.

In all, I anticipate Gong will continue refining their ability to deliver actionable, real-time insights that not only save time but directly impact revenue outcomes. For teams deeply invested in revenue operations, Gong's trajectory is definitely something to watch closely.

The RevTech Review will feature a separate review for Gong Forecast – so stay tuned! 

Disclosures: 

• Kevin has been a Gong customer since 2021
• Kevin has participated in Gong's customer advisory board