SaaStr CRO Confidential: Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond + Gong VPS Jameson Yung + Jason Lemkin

Hey SaaStr fans, welcome to episode 3 of the CRO Confidential series. I'm Sam Blond, your host. I'm currently the, uh, a new partner at Founders Fund investing in primarily B2B software companies. Prior to joining Founders Fund, I was CRO at Brex for almost 5 years. Today we have two incredible guests. Uh, normally we stick with one, but one very special guest here to boost the ratings. We'll start with, uh, the first guest, Jameson Young. Jameson and I have known each other for nearly 15 years now, which is crazy. Um, we started as, uh, friends in San Francisco. Uh, he joined me at EchoSign where we sort of competed as reps number 1 and 2 on the team for closing EchoSign business. I was fortunate enough to have him join me at Zenefits for a number of years. And now Jameson is the SVP of sales at Gong, a company most recently valued at something like $7.5 billion, where Jameson leads the entire customer lifecycle for the majority of Gong customers. So acquiring customers and servicing them. Really excited to have you here today, Jameson, and welcome to the podcast. Podcast series.

Glad to be here. It was very uncomfortable for me to hear you say that many nice things about me in a row, uh, but I appreciate it.

All true. And, um, you know, a tough act to follow, but if there's anybody that can do it, somebody that we have known for as long as Jameson, you and I have known each other, I've known Jason. Um, we referenced EchoSign, uh, of course, the CEO of EchoSign, the leader of Zaster. So excited that you're able to join us today, Jason. Uh, and thank you for being here.

One quick anecdote just for fun, and then I'll be more of a wallflower. But I remember after we were acquired by Adobe, Sam, I think you inherited about 20 AEs from Adobe, right? Something like that, right? And I remember pre-Gong, you made this comment to me one day, like, I can't believe what these guys say on the phone. It's so terrible. It was like an epiphany for me and Saster of like understanding what these broader teams do that like our quality had declined. Like you, I don't I think this was pre-Gong, so I don't know how you listen to their calls. I'm curious, right? But that was the moment when I realized this category, and obviously Gong has a lot more surface area today than just listening to, but that initial idea was transformational when I heard you say that. You're like, "Oh my God, they send the dumbest emails and they say the worst things on customer calls, the dumbest things." [Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Yeah.

Well, pre-Gong, all that you could really do is join calls live.

Yeah, shadowing.

And the thing that you're referencing, Jason, that was a huge takeaway for me is it makes such a huge difference which sales rep gets the lead in terms of the probability of that deal closing. Like, you would think the product is what matters, but there is so much variance across the team that the customer experience or the buyer's experience can be radically different despite the product being the exact same product. Um, and so, you know, um, and has a a huge impact on leveling the playing field a bit there.

I mean, the scary part is those were only the things that they were dumb enough to say while you were on the phone too. I'm sure it was even worse if you weren't there.

I can't imagine.

Yeah, they were, they were certainly trying their best. Um, and so, well, I think that— perfect, perfect segue. The, the thing— so back in the days of Ecosign, and even in the days of Zenefits, there was, there was this tech stack that existed for within sales and that sales leaders would implement. And it included things like, you know, CRM and tools for prospecting that had contact information and a number of these different just sort of like staples that came along with the tech stack. And when I think of Gong, the first thing that comes to mind is better than any company I've seen over the last, let's call it 8 to 10 years, Gong has really become now a staple in the sales tech stack for tech companies. And for you all, you really created a category here. You're not an alternative to a CRM. You're not one of these other types of companies. And so you really did this creating a category as well as anyone. I'd love to learn what you think you all did well at Gong to be so successful at accomplishing this.

Yeah, I mean, appreciate that. And I think you're right. I think we did create a— we had to create new spend essentially, right? It wasn't— we didn't replace something else that people were using previously. Thankfully, all the things you guys just described were problems that people needed to solve. I think we did a decent number of things well. I think one is what we talked about a minute ago, which is I do think that we had a very compelling story early on on why like the current world was broken and it was based on opinion and why it didn't make sense. I think we had a really strong content engine early on as well. With Gong Labs, which I think was helpful to kind of proliferate through LinkedIn. But honestly, if I'd say there's one thing that we— that was most important that we did best, it has to do with the product that we had. We have this product that has this very short setup time. I mean, this can be set up in— generally set up in 30 minutes, and the time to value is so fast. And so you could, you could turn this thing on, and in a week or in 2 weeks, it could tell you answers to questions that you've never been able to answer before, right? Like understanding what your real competitive set looks like, how it's affecting revenue, all that kind of stuff. And I think that was, that was key because the bar that we, the bar that our sales team was selling to wasn't like, hey, give us a bunch of money for something that you've never used or don't understand. It was more, hey, turn this on, we'll do an assessment of your business, right? And, you know, if it makes sense, then we can continue. If not, then don't. But the fact that that bar was so low, it really helped us get into organizations and prove value pretty quickly.

That's interesting. I was gonna— I was gonna ask the same. I noted the one fast— one of the many fascinating things about Gong is it's a budget expander, right? And in the old days when we were working together, I had a rule— this, this is dated— that maybe you could get 20 to 30, maybe 40% of your Salesforce ticket in additional apps, right? So back then, back then, folks were spending $150 on Salesforce, so we had like a $300 $30 to $50 a month window. That was tight. That was tight back in the days because there's only room for 2 or 3 apps. Now it's like 2x Salesforce, um, and it's an expander. But it's very interesting that maybe that one of the secret sauces is being so easy to deploy that you don't have to have all the budget expansion discussions on day one, do you, to get in there? You can, you can sneak in there by the team being champions before you even ask for the big check, at least in the earlier days.

Well, you could at least— you at least get to push that like prove value conversation to later when, when the value is more apparent. And in the case of us, we actually had enough data to prove the value at that point, whereas if we had to do that all pre-sale, you had to write a check before you turned it on, like, we just— we didn't have that kind of data set.

I did that— sorry to, to monopolize them, but it's so interesting. Did that in your time, did it flip? In other words, I went, I went the other day to buy a customer support app, and I found that all the ones that used to have free trials are now caught contact sales. And that's okay because the brands are big. Did that, did that almost PLG-ish motion, did it fade when everybody uses Gong today? Did you flip it around from a sales perspective?

So we were never like PLG as in you like click a button and then we turn on, uh, you turn on Gong. It was always to talk to the sales team first to turn it on, mainly because there's a million different things that you can answer with this. But if you're not focused in the way that you, you deploy it and the way you think about deploying it, so we had to to, to do some stuff. But I will say, we did, you know, uh, a year ago or whatever, if we were more established, we started trying to move away from that pilot motion or that business assessment motion. And honestly, it was a mistake. And we've gone back to it, uh, more heavily now, uh, especially in the current—

that's interesting. It wasn't— despite Gong's brand today, right, which is dominant, it was a mistake to move away from that ease of pilot motion.

Yeah, I think we got some, some quicker deals out of it in some cases, but I, I just— I think that us trying to solve for time to close was the wrong thing to be solving for. It's interesting.

It's interesting. I'll, I'll reinforce this concept a little bit with my experience. And Zenefits was similar in that we were sort of creating a category as well. We were displacing— and Jason knows as well as anyone— we were displacing insurance brokers. And Zenefits did not look like a typical insurance broker. We look like a tech company. Um, and so again, like reinforcing this concept of making it very easy to buy. Well, Zenefits monetized through health insurance commissions. And so first of all, we were perceived as sort of like a free product. But the second thing that made us so successful, and part of our value prop, part of our sales pitch, was just as easily as you make us your broker and you get to try this incredible software that comes along with doing so, The next day, the next month, 60 days from now, you can go back and sign back over to your prior broker, no questions asked, no cost whatsoever. And so just like removing barriers to being able to use your product when you are in this creating a new category, not a well-established space, I think is the primary takeaway from, from those two examples now, Gong and Zenefits, at least with this crew.

That's just how you de-risk it, right?

Jason, since we're so lucky to have you from the very early— I mean, running sales from so early— can I ask, can I sneak in one question, Sam? Um, because, because you're one of the few people— guys like us, some of the few that can be objective— why did you guys beat Chorus? Uh, just being objective about it. I know, I know, I'm sure they're all in there, but now you can be more objective about it, right? Because I think the core product, like the, the very nuclear product, is— was good at both. Right. I mean, both, both easily could transcribe a call, do a little bit of, a little bit of analysis, sentiment analysis, and send you an email and record your Zoom. Right. So, so maybe being objective, part of it was the differentiation maybe was modest, right, at some level. Right.

And you're right. Right. You know, at the time, I wouldn't have said that our products were similar, but at the time I joined, they were pretty similar. Now they're demonstrably different and teams are different sizes. Et cetera. But at that initial inflection point, when I joined, in fact, we didn't even really know what our differentiators were yet. It was like, you know, we tried to plug it in and we started trying to figure it out as we went. I think a few things helped us. One is, I think the sales team that I— early on, I came in and I raised quotas and raised comp and hired a sales team that was, you know, probably a level, one or two levels above what I think we originally thought we were going to, to put in place. And one of the main reasons for that is you're talking to CROs and VPs of sales. Like, you can't have a really junior sales rep on the other end of the phone. And so raised quotas, raised OTE. And so I think the sales force that we built early on and the people that, that joined early to help sell were just a— I think we were outselling them. I also think our marketing engine was different. I joined— one of the things that brought me there was, you know, this, this whole concept of there is— sales is not all art. There's a science to it. And, and we're able to start to expose the science that's behind it. And that's what a lot of the content was. And I think that content still on LinkedIn has just this massive impact. So I do think our brand, even from the beginning, carried a little more weight. Just people now got on the phone and thought that we were, you know, like a Forrester or something and doing content. They didn't realize what we were. But at least they recognized the name a little bit more.

Um, so, so that air cover— the, the first one was hire more experienced reps, right? Which is something we think about, right? Because there's pros and cons, right? But you leaned all in on folks that could confidently sell to a CRO, not, not the nervous kid, right? And that played out well for you, right?

Well, and it wasn't, it wasn't the, you know, field rep that's in a suit and has been selling for 20 years. It's not that version of— I still needed really scrappy people that wanted to come in and figure this thing out. But it also wasn't the, you know, you've been selling for a year or two rep, you know, it was in between those two things.

Yeah. And the second one's interesting, which is air cover, right? Marketing gave you guys good— you looked even bigger in sales processes than you were, which is what a great marketing and sort of effort can do, is like, whoa, you're, you're a dominant vendor when you were probably 40 people at the time or something like that.

People always thought we were bigger than we were actually back in the time. And you wouldn't correct them, you'd go, yep, just don't ask for the financials.

Other than that, yeah, we're huge.

No more questions.

My, my interpretation of what Jameson just said, and, and, you know, correct me if, if you think this is, uh, reaching or something like that, but in an environment where products are at relative parity, um, like sort of nuanced differences, go-to-market can make the difference between winning and losing.

Yeah, and I mean, I think the fact that we won go-to-market as early as we were, that allowed us to continue to invest in the product, grow the team, etc. So it kind of started feeding the differentiation of the product as well, and we figured out differentiation and what resonated because, because, you know, we were learning that on the phone. It— I, I did look crazy when I came in though and I jumped quotas up suddenly because there were a couple reps there. I think there were 3 reps. It ended up being one that, that stayed, but, uh, because I had to justify that OTE, I was like, look, I, I think we can, uh, jump quotas up in order to justify, and it worked thankfully.

But I see you increased quotas so that you could justify paying higher market salaries to the AEs, right? You had— you had— you couldn't— you couldn't wave your hands and just do it with venture capital back then, right? So that was the trade-off, right? But you had to sign up as the leader too, because that had to roll up into your commit, didn't it? There's no free lunch.

I mean, 100%, but at the same time, if it didn't work, it didn't work for me. So, you know, whether—

uh, so lots of, lots of things went well in creating this new category. One, one thing, like, uh, despite Gong being one of the most successful businesses of, of this sort of tech generation, As all of us on this call know all too well, nothing is perfect. And what are some of the sort of lessons learned throughout this process, maybe things that didn't go so well? Anybody that's listening in, in this environment where they're trying to create a new category, things that may save them some cycles?

I mean, you heard me happen to reference one earlier, which is like we tried to move away from a motion that was really comfortable to us at one point and recognize, you know, that we're probably moving away from pilots and moving back. So that's one. I actually think a bigger one, though, for us From the very beginning, when you put Gong in the hands of users, they went crazy for it. Like, we call it raising raving fans, but they, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, I don't know how I operated without this. Sales reps would feel that way, sales managers. We didn't recognize how powerful that was early, and I don't think we did a good job of— I mean, simple things, right? We would have people that were at one organization, and salespeople are transient. You know, you stick around a SaaS startup job for a couple years, that's, that's pretty long time. We did a good job of like tracking when they went somewhere else and using that to start our new sales cycle and leveraging the fact that we have these power users moving around. And I'd even say one thing that, that Chorus did, did better than us is they did a really good job of getting advisors pretty early. They, they, I think they got through giving them some equity, but they insert these like champions inside of decent-sized organizations that would block us out pretty well. And we never did that actually, but I think they did. And I honestly, looking back, I think that was something that we should have done. It would've given us more traction faster.

Well, that's interesting 'cause there's so many stories on the internet that, hey, advisors don't do any value, right? That they just look good on a slide for raising venture capital, but it worked. They literally were such strong advocates for Khorus that they were able to block you out of some key accounts.

Early on at least, right?

Early on, early on. Early on when you're both emerging vendors, right? When no one knows, no one really knows, right?

Now, I have no idea how many advisors they actually paid and how many of them helped them, but we certainly saw some that were helping.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Did you guys on a sales or marketing side, when these raving fans— and we all didn't realize, I don't think any of the three of us realized in the early days when we worked at an app with raving fans what it's like not to. That's the reason you didn't get it is because we didn't know what it was like on the other side. We thought it was table stakes that all apps Like, how could you even sell an app that people didn't love? But it turns out not to be the case. But did you track them through marketing CRM triggers? Did you, did you, did you proactively like have a team go after, uh, you know, champions that changed other orgs?

So we started to get to that point. There's a company called User Gems that, that will actually help you do this, that, that, uh, that I'm not affiliated with in any way, but we use to do, uh, some of this stuff. But before we were using them It was— I mean, we're just using really good SDRs that were hungry and were using LinkedIn to hunt in the right ways, and they'd spot it and start those conversations.

Yeah, my, my, my learning from the Zenefits experience, and again, like kind of this concept of category creation, was, was a little, was a little different, could be unique to Zenefits, but I'll roll with it anyway. So Um, we really embraced this identity of the fastest growing tech company ever, ever. And I remember I had a bunch of in-person conversations with people largely in the Bay Area. You know, I work at Zenefits, I've heard of Zenefits. Nobody knew what Zenefits did. Um, and so embracing this identity around sort of like fast growing tech company, raised a bunch of money, um, that was a, that was a mistake. Um, and I think the right thing to do, or what to try and do is associate your company with what you do. Had we been known as, you know, the best health insurance broker or the first tech-enabled health insurance broker or something like that, it would have been so much more valuable to us as a business. Because, um, while so many people had sort of heard of the brand, no one knew what we did. And we were associated with, you know, raising lots of money and fast growth, but not with a quality of our product or anything like that. And Jameson, I think that Gong has done a really good job here, uh, where, uh, like you talked about these raving fans. I, I know almost no one in the opposite camp. I've never heard anyone sort of talk negatively about their experience with Gong. And, and the first thing that comes to mind for most people is like, I couldn't live without it. Um, and so I, I think like, you know, kudos to, to y'all on something that Zenefits probably could have done a better job of just in terms of embracing a different identity.

Well, I think the other place that that showed up to that identity, I agree with you, Sam, uh, that it also showed up in like what the salespeople that we hired like cared about. Because the minute we started slowing down, you started seeing a team get pretty upset, uh, that, you know, I thought they weren't fast growing, that there weren't promotions quickly. And so I think it also showed up in, in, uh, the people we ended up attracting and in turn, you know, when they started being dissatisfied.

I think that's a good segue. So one very topical thing for us to consider, it's a tough time for tech right now. Seems like everyone is talking about the economy. Companies are doing layoffs, lots of talk about extending runway. I don't think we will spend much time there or add any color on what to expect in 2023. Tech economy. But one of the more conversations that I am having with founders and sales leaders right now is, okay, we— it's either we've done layoffs or we're in a fortunate position where we don't need to do layoffs. Um, regardless, quota attainment is dipping across the team. Uh, we're missing our company revenue targets in Q4. Morale is starting to turn negative. What should we do? Common conversation I'm hearing a lot. Would love to learn how you've approached this new environment at Gong.

Yeah, I mean, I should probably preface it with like, we're lucky enough to be in the group that has not had to do layoffs at this point. We've got 10 years of runway plus, and so we're in a good financial spot, but it— Just 10? Just 10. In the current world, at least. We'll see how the world looks in 6 months, I suppose, but— But I can certainly relate to the fact that, you know, Q4 attainment is going to be lower than it was in Q1 of this year. And participation from reps, the number of people that are going to be over target is going to be lower than it was in Q1 of this year as well. And I think, you know, obviously we were through the same thing not that long ago in COVID. We had— it was painful and we expected it to persist longer than it did. Ended up being a faster recovery. But either way, you're not sure what the future holds. And still today, we're not. And I think one of the most important things is just not to make some massive radical change. You still want to stabilize the team. But, you know, at least in our world, it's a conversation with the team to go, hey, you know, we know things are rough. We don't know how rough they're going to be and for how long. But trust us, right? And we'll, we'll, we'll make sure people are taken care of in the appropriate ways. And unfortunately, I think we've earned that trust because we did the same thing during COVID And, you know, we had to make some people whole when it made sense. But we are trying not to kind of do anything that's really hard to undo, like changing people's quotas and changing comp plans that are really drastic. The other one I'd say is getting people— that first part's important in order to do the second part, which is once people are stabilized, it's like getting people to pay attention to the things that they can actually control, right? Like you might not be able to control the fact that a CFO isn't going to sign right now because the budget's completely locked up, but the inputs that get you there, you can control. And so getting the team focused around those, in some case, maybe spiffing some of those things to put extra focus there, but just getting people to look at the things that they could still have an impact on. And then I'd say the last one is everybody wants to feel like they're winning. Your whole company wants to win. And when the wins aren't showing up on the scoreboard, you need to find ways that they are winning and push those and amplify them across the organization. And we did that a lot. A lot during COVID We're doing that a lot now too. It's, you know, people are still winning every day. It's just they might not be closing the same number of deals that they were.

Let me ask you a follow-up question. I mean, you can— it's interesting you compared Q4 of this calendar year or fiscal, whatever it was, to Q1, right?

Yeah.

But here's what I'm trying to get my arms around. Q1 was freaking insane. Like, we've never seen anything like this in our careers. And I keep saying, having done SaaS for a while, I think times are pretty darn good. It's just the comps are atrocious. If you compare yourself to Q1, this is going to look like the world, but roll back, is this a Gong? Gong has grown so incredibly. Is this really so bad compared to 2019?

Right?

Is it really so rough? I'm asking you, I don't know the answer, but I feel like people don't have, sometimes have perspective because 2021 was insane.

It was insane, right? [Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] I think that's true. And I also think that we don't know how every other company around you is doing right now, right? So like you might be doing very bad compared to yourself, 3 quarters ago, you might be doing really good compared to your peer set, but you don't find that stuff out usually until either from your board or you find it out retroactively. It's like, oh wait, it actually wasn't as bad as we thought it was. And so I think you're right, there's some perspective that's missing.

I think you gotta— I think you gotta find out how your competitive set is doing. You gotta do what— whether it's your board, whether it's, uh, whether it's a road, whether it's tracking, whatever you can, you gotta know how your peer set is doing because If you don't, you don't actually know how you're doing in these environments. If you're growing faster than your competitors and you've got 10 years of runway, everyone should get a Christmas bonus. If you have 10 years of runway, hooray, but you are growing more slowly than your competitive set, you can hide, you can say, oh, it's the economy, but actually you get an F. You get an F, right? You got to know, you got— I know it's not— we kind of forget about this area of competitive intelligence, but I think we got to get good at it in tougher times. We got to know. Otherwise, We don't actually know we're performing.

My personal experience, um, both, um, making, uh, my personal experience both thinking about me as a sales rep and then also as a leader, people on the team, uh, folks have short-term memories. And so, uh, Jason, you asked about sort of like 2019 or, or sort of like steady state or average performance, um, across long time intervals. We may be more likely there. I think it's just people got so used to the performance and the attainment and the bonuses, the commission checks from the last— what now has really been sort of like Q3 of 2020. I mean, that's when, that's when the, like, the, the crazy performance started. Um, Q2 was this, like, and then Q3. And so we're going on 2 years now of, uh, you know, the boom times, or however we want to—

well, we got soft. Let's be honest, we got, we got soft. We got soft. We got soft. And the folks that are newer have always been soft. I know they think that, I know they think that, that, whoa, but they forgot that SaaS is hard. SaaS is hard.

It is.

Even at iconic companies like Gong, it's always, is every deal's hard, isn't it? I mean, 80% of deals are hard today, right? And, um, I remember like at our competitors at DocuSign, I talked to this kid in like May of 2020 that joined, okay? And she said it was the best job ever. She closed 6 deals her first day. That was a window of time because we couldn't leave our houses, right? And so that's her first sales job. She closed 6 deals at DocuSign her first day. She'd never done sales before. I bet she closes 0 a quarter today, don't you think? Not that it's not a great company, but I bet she's 0. I bet she's 0, right?

Funny illustration. I I wonder if she's looking for a new role. She sounds great.

She might be great. I mean, I'll be honest here. This was her first job out of college. It's 2 years. She could be. But I just think she grew up in an environment where she doesn't understand the frame of reference, right? It's not her fault. But imagine, oh my God, SaaS is great. I called Dad, Mom and Dad, I closed 6 deals my first day.

I mean, I think the hard part about that is like giving someone perspective is just very, very difficult, right? You just sound like an old man. It's like, you sound like an old man. It doesn't work.

So if anybody has a good way to do that, I'm very interested in And back in 2008, EchoSign, it was, it was harder sledding than 2021, uh, anywhere. I'm sure EchoSign included.

10x. Yeah, 10x everywhere.

Um, Jameson, uh, so real, really helpful and insightful answer. Just sort of like repeating what I heard to take away, because again, this is like a daily occurrence whether I'm talking to a VP of sales, a founder, describing this environment. And it's like, what should we do here? Should we change quotas? How should we motivate the team? And my takeaways were like, cooler heads will prevail on this. Don't make a bunch of drastic changes because the change fatigue will just add to the already low morale. Find the wins that are happening and emphasize those wins. One other thing that comes to mind for me that I found really helpful, and it's absolutely true, is that like so many leaders are born out of the tough times. And you can message that to the people on your team, that there will be people that today, this quarter, next quarter, however long this lasts, they step up, they are positive, and they're a positive influence on their teammates. They perform, they hustle, they do these things. And you know, this is a very long game. Um, we, we are going to go through cycles indefinitely, um, as we have historically. And you have to perform at all times. And so those that perform when times are tough are the ones that ultimately have the best outcomes with their careers. And hopefully a message like that is motivating to the people that see themselves as future leaders.

I mean, effort and attitude are more important right now than they've ever been. You know, an attitude, a lot of that is just how it's affecting the rest of the people around you. It's, you know, I don't know.

Let me catch one follow-up before we move on, Jameson, to the next topic. Sam, just this is what I'm seeing. I just, when I have a market leader, emerging market leader, right? I mean, Gong's not that big, right? I'll give you an example, and then I'll ask you what— I've invested in two companies that are pretty— they're adjacent, okay? They're not direct competitors, but they're pretty similar. One is north of $100 million. I think it's seen its growth slow from like $70 to $50, okay? The other one's at $10 million. It's seen its growth slow to zero, okay? And I think there's a few root causes of it, but one of them I think is that today, When budgets are tightened, they're going to brands. They're going to brands because if— and you may not— you may have a myopic— and I'm curious if you see Gong as relatively stronger than upstart sales startups. I see a lot of upstart sales startups, newer ones like $10, $20 million, $5 million. I see them being slaughtered in today's environment. I don't see it with the leaders. I don't see it with the ones that have broken out. I don't see them decelerating to nothing.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it'd be hard for me to have perspective on that, you know. I mean, I think it— I think generally you're seeing people pull back on risk. So if you're being perceived as risky, then you're probably always in a more difficult spot. Whereas if it's, you know, you're a brand that several of your friends or counterparts are saying, yeah, we use them, they're great, we've been using them, they know the name, I'm sure that's helpful right now.

Yeah, Jason, we talked about this a little bit where we may be in an environment where there's cost cutting, and in that environment, you sort of got to pick and choose who is being cut. And there are a number of factors that influence that. I think to your point, hard to cut— we'll use the biggest sales tool— hard to sort of justify cutting Salesforce or something like that. That's as a brand, as—

There's no churn at Salesforce. There was no churn in 2008, 2009. There was none. But NRR shrunk. Right? But there was no churn. There was no churn in the work—

they're user-based models, so of course they're shrinking, right? When you're no longer hiring, by definition, right? Yeah, exactly.

And so it probably, you know, there's, there's sort of like levels to this or a spectrum. And Salesforce on one end, you have Gong somewhere in the middle, and then you have this new thing that a sales leader thought would be fun to try, uh, 6 months ago, and it's this new company. They're probably just, just by that nature, um, like, uh, higher on the, the chopping block than, uh, the more established brands. Exactly as, as you mentioned, that, that, that seems intuitive, right?

I think so. Jameson, has your, has your renewal playbook changed in the last 6 months? Are there some interesting learnings from like how the messaging's changed for renewals?

I mean, certainly. I mean, I think messaging's changed from, you know, we're gonna help you 3x your team and onboard faster to how we're making you more efficient. Uh, thankfully we do well both, but the message has to change. I think the other one too is, you know, to what you talked about earlier is there's just a higher bar for value right now. And so helping your customers recognize the value you're providing that they might not recognize on their own, right? The fact that people love it isn't enough to keep something right now. And so tying it to true impact is something that, you know, we're very, very focused on and able to do, thankfully, Are you doing things—

I'm just curious, like, I would imagine at Gong today— I mean, everyone's under some pressure, right? But I would imagine no CRO or VP of Sales wants to lose Gong. There's no benefit to them. The last thing I want to do is I don't want to lose one of my key arrows. Are you talking directly with CFOs or others in— and are those— because those might be radically different conversations, right, than when they're part of that process, right?

Well, and you're right, I think no one wants to lose— it's like It's like you're going through a storm right now and you're about to lose all the radars that are in front of you on the plane. My God, yeah. Right? So it's the last thing people want to get taken away. But to your point, something has to go. And we're not the cheapest thing in the tech stack either. So there's definitely a target that's associated with us. So yeah, we're involved in a lot of CFO conversations. And we're also involved in a lot of arming the— way you prove value to finance and the way you prove value to a CRO or VP of Sales are different. And so that's part of where the changes come in. I mean, like the efficiency talk track, the efficiency measurements, that, that's, that's to help the CRO move through the CFO and help the CFO understand.

And Jason, what about, like, the relationship angle here? Are you encouraging the folks on your team that are supporting your highest revenue Are you encouraging customers, are you encouraging, go visit these people in person, spend more time developing relationship? Any thoughts around that?

Yeah, 100%. You know, if you can visit them, absolutely, right? Like making sure you're doing executive business reviews where you're, you're kind of aligning on value becomes super important right now. So all of those things.

Guys, I think we are approaching time. This has been a blast. First, Jameson, thank you for gracing us with your presence. And Jason, thank you for doing the same and helping boost ratings. It's awesome to see both of you. Hello, Joe. Fun to sort of be in the same virtual room for the first time in a few years. But it's awesome that we're all back together after something like 15 years of close friendship. So great to see you guys. And thanks for—

well, Jameson, if you're, if you're in the Bay Area in September, make sure you come to Sastranio and do this again live. You can teach us all how we do it.

Sounds good, I'm in.

All right, very good.

Thanks guys, thank you all.

Thanks everybody.