The Fascinating Narrative War Between 2 Hot Startups

The weapons are words.

The stakes? Billions of dollars in valuation.

The combatants? Chorus.ai and Gong.io, two companies that have raised over $50M to build and dominate a category known as — well, that depends on how this plays out.

Both companies were founded in 2015. Both promise to make your sales team more successful through AI. Both do that by analyzing recordings of your sales calls to answer big questions: How can my worst reps be more like my best ones? Which of our messages are resonating? Why are we winning or losing deals?

Until recently, both companies described their offerings as part of a category called "conversation intelligence." Here's Gong's website a couple of months ago:

And here's a recent content piece by Chorus, aimed at thought leadership in the "conversation intelligence" category:

But a few weeks ago, just when it seemed everyone was on board with what this stuff was called, Gong CEO Amit Bendov announced that, from here on out, Gong's solution was part of a new category that he dubbed "revenue intelligence":

As I wrote in longer post about category narratives, Gong's move is about more than just a new word. Like all category namers, Bendov is hoping the new name becomes shorthand for a new story in buyers' minds about how the game has changed.

It's a story Bendov told at a recent Gong event about the end of sales teams operating on hunches, and the emergence of a new era (already underway) in which they're run based on a view of what's really happening:

Meanwhile, Chorus appears to be sticking to its "conversation intelligence" guns. In fact, I like the top message on its website (what I often call the "Promised Land articulation") because it clearly articulates a desirable "goal state" for buyers. It's not as broad as what Gong is talking about ("visibility into customer interactions") but it's clearer and more concrete:

(For more on the trade-off between concrete and aspirational Promised Land messages, check out Founders: Pitch the Promised Land.) Apparently Gong likes that message too, as the same phrase appears in its home page chatbot:

It's going to be super-interesting to watch this play out. Will Chorus start talking about revenue intelligence, or will it hold the line at "conversation intelligence"? Will Gartner or Forester go with one or the other, or call a truce by creating their own moniker for a new Quadrant or Wave? Will buyers even notice?

My take is that category names matter less than the narratives behind them.

In particular, successful category creators seem to act as if it's the category narrative they're selling, not their own company or products.

In this sense, I see Gong taking the lead. (Full disclosure: I trained Bendov and his team at Gong on my strategic narrative framework, though I did not work directly on his category narrative presentation.) When I look at Chorus's messaging, they seem to treat the category name mainly as a label for making claims about product:

But Gong is starting to do that thing I was talking about, where it's acting as if the category narrative is the thing it's pitching (in service of selling product, of course). Instead of making claims, the category name is a shorthand for a story about a new game for winning — a new religion, really. Check out Gong senior director of marketing Sheena Badani's Linkedin profile:

Like I said, this is less about whose category name is better, and more about how teams leverage them. Are you treating it merely a taxonomic label for classifying product? Or are you using it to evangelize a new narrative?

Like I also said, this is going to be fascinating to watch.

About Andy Raskin: I help CEOs align their teams around a strategic narrative — to power success in sales, marketing, fundraising, product, and recruiting. Clients include CEOs of publicly traded companies, as well as those at startups backed by top venture firms including Andreessen Horowitz, KPCB, GV. I’ve also led strategic narrative training for teams at Salesforce, Square, IBM, Uber, Dropbox, VMware and General Assembly. 

To learn more or get in touch, visit https://andyraskin.com.