How can SDR/AE use Gong to improve qualification skill?

I have interacted with quite a number of SDRs/AEs whose companies actually use Gong. However, not many of them rave about how Gong has helped their sales life. All they know is that they have a recording of a call or meeting, but no one is actually using that recording to help them get better at selling.

(It doesn't surprise me because on Gong's homepage, their pitch was targeted at the decision maker such as CRO or VP of sales.)

That was not the case for Nick Blackbeard .

Nick raved about 3 specific things that Gong helped him with:

1) The standard tracker helped him identify how good he is at asking qualification questions around MEDDIC.

For example, if he wants to know how well he asked the “economic buyer” question, the standard tracker can show him his statistics.

If he notices another salesperson ranked very high on “economic buyer,” he can review that person’s calls to see how they asked the “economic buyer” question and the circumstances in the call under which they asked it. That is a great way to learn with context.

Here is an example to show you what Nick meant. A group of BDRs is being trained to qualify using the MEDDIC framework.

You can see under the column for Economic Buyer that all of them could use some help improving their ability to qualify this information.

However, when it comes to qualifying for PAIN or Champion, the Senior BDR is performing quite well. Just as Nick mentioned, other BDRs can review this Senior BDR’s specific calls to understand how she approached it in context.

Here is how trackers look under a single call's recording. In this example, the trackers are set up to show the salesperson which discovery questions she asked and how much Budget & Timing information she obtained.

2） Gong can show “how long you have paused” between the salesperson’s question and the prospect’s reply.

Many salespeople tend to fill silence with their own talking, which can cause them to miss important information the prospect might have volunteered.

One time, after discussing Problem 1, Nick didn’t immediately jump in to ask another question. After a short silence, the prospect volunteered, “Actually, this problem X is only a small problem. It is part of the bigger problem Y.” This was such an important piece of information, and Nick only got it because he allowed the silence and gave the prospect a chance to finish what was on their mind.

After that happened, Nick used Gong’s feature to help him become aware of whether he had a tendency to speak too quickly after a prospect.

3) Using Gong recording for onboarding training

During Nick’s onboarding period, he listened to actual call recordings between prospects and salespeople. It allowed him to see real prospects' reactions. He could also see the kinds of questions these prospects would ask. He felt these were incredibly useful—better than role-playing.

I completely agree with Nick on this. Some of my clients may not have Gong, but they have meeting recordings from zoom or meeting recording software such as Fireflies. These companies would select recordings of typical situations that a salesperson might encounter in the sales cycle and ensure the salesperson in the recording is doing everything correctly so that the newly hired person learns from the right examples.

I do have to add a disclaimer here: Nick could use Gong this way because of how his company set it up. As Robert Read said, “If the company didn’t set up the trackers well in the first place, it would be very hard for individual salespeople to use the data for self-diagnosis.”

Related articles on Qualification

Want to read more articles like this? Subscribe to my newsletter here. See you every Thursday!