Annalise Hussman, Enterprise AE lead at Gong, explains how the pandemic broke old sales data and forced teams to shift from activity metrics to efficiency and deal commits. Call analytics became crucial for coaching and pipeline visibility, but she warns against ditching human judgment for pure data.
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When we move into 2021, if we see things are changing again, let's not be wedded to what was working in Q3 and Q4 of this year. How can we make sure that our sales process is agile and we're responding to the market and we're responding to our economic conditions? Howdy. I'm Annalise Hussman and I head up the Enterprise Account Executive at Gong. Prior to joining Gong, I've spent the better part of 15 years working in B2B SaaS companies. I started off as a rep at a company called Opower and then Yammer and then spent the last eight years building out sales teams at companies like Adroll and Moat analytics before joining Gong. This year has been a very interesting year to sell through. I think that throughout the year we've seen a couple of different changes in our sales process and that naturally affects the different KPIs and data that we're tracking. All of our historical data was really no longer relevant because everything had changed. What we are focused on in Q2 is pretty different from what we're focused on in Q4. So for example, in Q2 we were really focused on taking a step back, building relationships because things have slowed down in our sales process and our top of funnel the whole nine yards over the last six months. However, that is completely different. I think what the markets realize is that the platform we sell Gong isn't a nice to have, but it's a need to have. So the metrics and data I'm now managing my teams toward isn't around. Are you being productive, but rather are you managing your time the most efficiently as possible because they are that busy and so instead of monitoring like activity metrics around how many emails do you send, how many net new appointments are you booked? We're more focused on are the commits real and if not, let's get them in or out of pipeline as quickly as possible. Are we driving to close as fast as possible? Are we focused on making sure that we have the largest land as possible so we can get in and get out of deals? Because that's the nature of our business today. I think when you're doing planning for 2021 and beyond, I think it's really important to have an honest conversation around what has our new data set given us. I also would just really encourage sales leaders to be responsive and be agile. When we move into 2021, if we see things are changing again, let's not be wedded to what was working in Q3 and Q4 of this year. And so that's something I've really been thinking about a lot lately is how can we make sure that our sales process is agile and we're responding to the market and we're responding to our economic conditions. And that's been part of the inputs that we have been incorporating into our 2021 planning. One of the first things we realized is that deals that used to be signed by a VP of sales now had to go to the CFO or the CRO. So immediately that buyer was elevated a couple of levels. Folks were also a little bit tighter with their wallets, which makes sense. We're in a pandemic. So making sure that we had a clear, definitive ROI and clearly tied to a value prop that really affected the entire business was now complete table stakes. Those are about two different ways that we saw our process changed. We also saw our sales processes really speed up in some cycles where people realized that they needed complete visibility into the voice of their customer and they needed complete visibility into what are all of these now remote teams doing when speaking to their customers. So what could have been a nine month sales cycle, sometimes we saw shortened to three. I think that reps and frontline managers can use this type of analytics and insights in a very productive way and not being disruptive in a daily process because it affords them deep insights and complete visibility into what's truly going on in pipeline. So for example, if I'm coming into a one on one with one of my team members, I no longer have to spend the first 20 minutes of a 30 minute one on one asking them what's going on, who is involved, what is our next step? Because I can already answer that question and I definitively know. So Instead of spending 20 minutes catching up, I'm spending 30 minutes strategizing with my team saying, how are you moving the ball forward? How is our value prop resonating with their executive staff? And most importantly, how are we going to close more business together? Because that's what sales leaders are really good at, right? We're really good at strategizing how and moving deals forward for our team. And I think having this full picture of insights into what's going on into your pipeline frees you up to do more of that and that's why we'll close more business. So I joined GONG in April of this year, right in the heart of a pandemic. Additionally, over 50% of my team was on ramp. So it's a very experienced team, but we're still really building out our segment and building the plane as it flies. And so we didn't have a lot of historical data to definitively lean back on. And again, could we even trust the historical data that we had? And so what we really focused on was coming together as a team over communicating on what's working and making sure that whenever we had something that was working in the market, we all rallied around it and pushed forward. So again, this idea of the market is shifting and we need to shift with it and be responsive to it to make sure that we can still close a bunch of business and be successful. One of the things we actually started doing was when we were reviewing customer videos or customer interactions as part of our game tape, if we saw something that someone else did that we really liked, we would just hashtag enterprise process on it. And that was our rally cry of saying this is what we're doing now moving forward, this worked. On the flip side, sometimes we would swing and miss and we would hashtag hindsight2020, meaning hindsight probably shouldn't have done that, but we learned from it. I think everything should be based in science, it should be based in data. However, I do think that the human aspect should not ever be taken out of the equation because at the end of the day, relationships are important, the art of the sales is important. And I think that the instinct will eventually need to be listened to. One of the things I always tell my team is that, you know, when we're coaching people who are using data, when we're using the status quo to work our way through a deal, they are allowed to always go and make their own decisions. I think using your instinct and listening to your instinct is part of that ownership, of owning your sales cycle. But of course with the ownership piece you also have accountability. So if it does go sideways, you also have to be accountable to that as well. The ultimate goal for any, I think really strategic sales operations or revenue operations team is to provide real fantastic sales analytics from our salesforce other systems of record. I think that being said, there is some responsibility on everyone from the rep to the frontline manager, all the way to the revenue operations teams to make sure that we believe in the power of data and that we're all doing our part to make sure that data set as clean as possible. And thanks again for listening. My name is Anneliese Hussman. I'm the enterprise sales leader at Gong. I wish you the best of luck closing out the year and moving into 2021. And if you want to have more visibility into the health of your pipeline or learn how GONG is helping other revenue leaders supercharge their sales teams. Check out the description below. And don't forget HubSpot recently released the 2021 Sales Enablement Report. Please check that out in the description below as well.
