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What else can I be doing to drive revenue? How do I optimize our go-to-market strategies to ensure effectiveness and ROI? If questions like these keep you up at night and occupy your thoughts by day, have we got a podcast for you.
Welcome to Market Mastery presented by The Bridge Group, the podcast where sales professionals learn to advance their careers. Join host and revenue expert Kyle Smith as he talks to elite B2B sales and revenue experts about the strategies they're using to win in the market.
From cultivating a killer company culture to navigating compensation questions, we'll provide you with the insights, education, and strategies you need to thrive.
For more from The Bridge Group, visit www.bridgegroupinc.com.
Julian Alvarez [00:00:00]:
Now that I'm selling a product for sales professionals, the network that I've built over the last 15 plus years, being in sales, former directors, sales leaders, AE's that I used to work with, I really am just excited about what they're currently doing because of course Gong can help them, but also just like, hey, what are you doing within the market? And what technologies are you looking at? Or what's the playbooks that you're running at the moment?
Kyle Smith [00:00:27]:
Welcome to Market Mastery, the podcast dedicated to uncovering revenue driving strategies for sales leaders in B2B tech. On today's episode, I have the privilege to be joined by the VP of sales development for Gong, Julian Alvarez. Julian, thanks for coming on.
Julian Alvarez [00:00:43]:
It's my pleasure, Kyle. Excited to be here.
Kyle Smith [00:00:45]:
Yeah. And for those who potentially aren't familiar, even though Gong has such a massive brand, could you give us like a quick overview of what is Gong and then dive into a little bit of what your role is within the organization?
Julian Alvarez [00:00:57]:
Yeah. So Gong is conversational, intelligent platform by trait. We've developed an AI recording tool that allows you to create transcripts as well as give follow up emails to sales conversations. And so that's really the bulk of what the platform does. It's been great. We started to develop an engage platform which allows sales professionals to email and do calls through Gong, as well as a forecasting feature that allows you to forecast opportunities from pipeline opportunity creation to close one ARR and close loss ARR. So really created a strong revenue intelligence platform that allows you to prospect into accounts as well as track those all the way to close one.
Kyle Smith [00:01:41]:
Great. And then what is your role specifically? Vp of sales development. It's fairly self explanatory, but what do you do?
Julian Alvarez [00:01:48]:
Our team is chartered to create quality pipeline and what we do is we take inbound signals and we do our best to convert those over to quality pipeline for our account executives as well as we go outbound into accounts that we can try to create interest in. So it's all about building quality pipeline for our account executive team across Gong.
Kyle Smith [00:02:10]:
I want to focus on the conversation intelligence aspect of the offering for a second. Do you think, especially when I'm thinking about outbound, that conversation intelligence has been commoditized? Like, where are we in the technology evolution lifecycle? Are most people that you're calling into already using something? So it's a competitive displacement or is there still a lot of Greenfield out there where there's nothing being utilized and you could sell it?
Julian Alvarez [00:02:33]:
Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. I think it depends on the industry. So technology base companies, SaaS companies, I feel like they are aware or they have a solution in place. There's still obviously a ton of greenfield with businesses that might just be starting out or things of that nature. But I would say there is a lot of greenfield outside of technology. But I feel like the space is, there's still a ton of opportunity to grow in.
Kyle Smith [00:02:56]:
Okay, great. So outside of b, two b tech SaaS, like the only world that I live in, and obviously you've spent the majority of your career in, do you notice any industries in particular who are starting to take like the role of professionals selling more seriously? I know that you just have like a sliver of a window into that, but investing in serious technology is an indication that they're taking it more seriously.
Julian Alvarez [00:03:20]:
Morgan Stanley just came out with an article about how they're to be using AI within their selling motion to help their professionals, like within banking and finance, be more effective there. So I would say investing, banking, finance, all of that, you'll start to see, in my opinion, them start taking on newer technologies that will help their professionals be more efficient at what they do. I would even say real estate. I would say those are probably the key ones. Healthcare is massive. Those types of companies and industries would be something that you could use conversational intelligence. And also, even if you think about it, the ability to converse and talk about like booking plumbers, booking roofers, anything of that nature. You have a selling motion within that going off track a little bit here.
Julian Alvarez [00:04:06]:
I was letting out some solar panels and the whole conversation in sales motion was online and through technologies, and they had technologies where you could see your whole roof and where exactly you put the panels. And all of that would be recorded and creating transcripts and you'd have to follow up. So I think the world of selling will continue to evolve and use technologies to help individuals be more effective.
Kyle Smith [00:04:27]:
The thing that I personally love, because I get to do it every day, and that your whole team gets to do, is selling to salespeople. And so while that hasn't always been true at a lot of stops in your career, it is now. And so what are some of the things that you find to be extra beneficial when you are salespeople trying to generate opportunities within an organization and you're targeting salespeople?
Julian Alvarez [00:04:51]:
I think until you're actually selling to salespeople, you don't realize how fun and exciting it is. As a professional that's been doing this for a really long time, jumping back onto prospecting calls and talking about my day to day and how I use the platform and how my team engages with the platform is so fun and exciting. You're getting to practice what you preach. You get to use the platform day in and day out. You can be one of the power users of the Gong platform, which I am, and get to do daily. And then I get to tell my story. And I get to tell my story in a way that is I'm really passionate about because I get to see and live and breathe in it all the time. Telling the sales professionals, I didn't realize until I started to do it how fun and exciting it is.
Kyle Smith [00:05:33]:
I think what you said, you get to tell your story, it's completely different. Like voice of the customer is something that I talk about in trainings all the time and it's extremely powerful and taking just initial awareness to actual interest. But instead of me telling a consolidated version of a case study that I read off of the website or that marketing gave to me, I get to tell genuinely my story. This is how I, a sales professional, leverage this technology to be better at my job. And so I think that makes it so much more engaging and impactful and really interesting.
Julian Alvarez [00:06:09]:
Yeah, like, I mean, you're going to still have your champion clients and your key accounts that you have that you can leverage for referrals and having those customer to customer conversations that talk about a platform, I'll tell you what, like being able to give that story from what you're using and what, how you're using it is, it's really powerful.
Kyle Smith [00:06:27]:
Definitely. And one of the things that we talk about sometimes is, and you've been in these rooms, I guarantee it, where you're talking about messaging and as you're evaluating messaging, the room is filled with sales development, leadership, operations leadership, product marketing, like all revenue focused minds. And if you're targeting somebody who is, let's say, a security title or somebody in manufacturing or operations, not revops, and you're like, I don't really like that message. There's just a general like gut or emotional reaction to the messaging that you're laying out for a cadence. And one of the things we talk about is that that is irrelevant because you're not the Persona, but in this instance you are, which is awesome because you get to say, literally, you're prospecting other versions of me. So if you're working with your team on messaging, your personal opinion about the messaging is actually interesting and matters.
Julian Alvarez [00:07:20]:
And the thing about it is we really try to leverage that within Gong and our leadership team, Carly in particular, she runs our mid market and an inbound team within our sales development here at Gong. And she did an amazing job along with a couple other frontline leaders to create these Persona trainings from individuals inside Gong that we continuously do to educate our sales development individuals on how to have more impactful messaging as well as conversations with these icps. Because it is our CRO, it is our revenue office person, it is our sales enablement, and it is me who leads sales development who's going to be a key Persona in the buying process. And so it's so fun to continue to leverage ourselves so that we can put out material and messages that are going to resonate with the industry. And talking just about flows and cadences and sequences within an outreach of sales loft or even a Gong engage. How we can trade things and put new video prospecting in and think about like, hey, I can actually look at my LinkedIn or my inbox and say, how many messages did I receive from sdrs? Which type of messages actually resonated with me? How am I going to think about in terms of when I will respond to an SDR? And it just creates this narrative within our organization that gives us confidence of like, hey, we know what we're doing, we practice what we preach, and we're really going to do whatever we can to leverage best practices within the industry to actually get the messaging right.
Kyle Smith [00:08:44]:
And I think the other benefit is when you're running those experiments and doing some of the things that you just outlined, the benefit you have not just targeting salespeople, sales and marketing primarily, is that the thing that catches their eye or increases your engagement rates. Really, it can just be cool and interesting because we're consumers of like, what else are other people doing? Like, it is a little bit copycat, like looking around to understand not only what's working well for our organization, but what are other sales and marketing professionals doing that's working well for them. And so if you do something cool or interesting, like leverage video in a unique way in your prospecting process, you might see a massive spike in engagement rates. Not only because, sure, they're interested in the Gong story and thinking about how they might use it on their team, but also they're just like, this is an interesting way to go about prospecting. I wanna see like how they're doing this because I might go and copy and replicate that for my team.
Julian Alvarez [00:09:40]:
I didn't even think about this prior to joining Gong. And I joined Gong about seven months ago. Was the importance of how I could leverage my network now that I'm selling a product for sales professionals. The network that I've built over the last 15 plus years being in sales has been so much more powerful than if I was a company not selling to sales professionals, because I am now on my phone, texting, calling, LinkedIn, messaging, former directors, sales leaders, AE's that I used to work with all across the industry in multiple different industries and just getting their take on. Like, how are you currently managing your pipeline? How are you currently engaging prospects right now? How are you coaching sales professionals? And like, this is ranging from CROs to director of sales to frontline managers to ics. And like, these are individuals that I used to cold call with as an SDR or was my previous manager seven years ago. And so, like, that network of social selling and getting feedback and not just using my experience, but like, using my network's experience to actually penetrate sales teams was something that I actually didn't even think about before I joined Gong, which has been really fun to reconnect with former leaders that I haven't talked to in a long time because now I really am just excited about what they're currently doing because of course, Gong can help them, but also just like, hey, what are you doing within the market? And what technologies are you looking at? Or what's the playbooks that you're running at the moment?
Kyle Smith [00:11:13]:
I mean, that's great. And being able to aggregate that feedback makes you better, your team better. And also is soft touch point for potential customers. If they're not customers today, that is a way to have a soft touch point with a prospect.
Julian Alvarez [00:11:28]:
You know, it's funny, is, like, not changed topics here, but, like, I did find that once we came back into the office after Covid, like, I found my satisfaction within my role and my happiness actually increased because I started to see people face to face and I was connecting with them a lot more. And, like, what this leveraging my network is actually doing is continuing to build that connection with other people, which in sales, where it's a people business, it's who you can connect with. And the, those soft touches are very important. But also, selfishly, it just makes me happy to, like, see how my former colleagues and friends and acquaintances are doing and, you know, what's going on in their life. So it really has added a lot of value, not just within my network, but also just overall within happiness of life. Really?
Kyle Smith [00:12:10]:
Definitely. And so is your whole team back in office, or do you have some hybrid, like, what is that setup?
Julian Alvarez [00:12:17]:
Yeah. So we are hybrid. All of our team is connected to a hub. Our hubs across the United States are San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Atlanta. And so my team sits within a hub. We do have some legacy individuals who've been here for a really long time who are remote, but our hiring strategy is to our hubs, and we're really leveraging that hybrid approach where we do three days in office and two days work from anywhere.
Kyle Smith [00:12:43]:
Okay, great. I was just thinking about it as you were talking about the need to feel connected. I think everybody does, just like at a human level. But I think back to, I don't know, whatever, 1415 years ago, sitting in the cubes and doing the SDR job is difficult. The only thing that made it bearable is that you were surrounded by a bunch of people who had a similar experience, like they were all doing the same job as you. You got to share ideas with each other. When somebody yelled at you and hung up on you, you got to, like, stand up and have, like, a laugh about it to add some levity to the situation that otherwise could, if you were isolated, make you feel really not happy or satisfied with what you're doing professionally. So it's great to hear that you have people back in office, because I think those benefits specifically for the SDR function, like, you can't really do without them.
Julian Alvarez [00:13:29]:
It's a high five for hang ups, right? It's that, hey, I just got crushed on the phone. This individual was like, rude, didn't want to talk to me, hung up on me. Quick. High five someone else. You get moving. You're not alone when you're dealing with rejection. And I think the human nature, especially the SDR, where you are more junior in your sales career most of the time, where you could really leverage that positivity from your other teammates. And if you get the group of really like minded sdrs in a company, magic happens.
Julian Alvarez [00:14:01]:
You'll see those individuals get promoted into becoming superstar AE's within your organization. They'll become managers, and they will really help elevate not just your qualified pipeline and opportunities created, but your whole organization. And when you get that right, it is something special. And what I love, it's not just within your, but you'll start to see them spread their wings and go to different organizations and to relate it back to sports. It's like that coaching tree that you build. You bring in a lot of fcrs, and they do well. They move up within your company, and then they go and go elsewhere and become director of sales and managers and lead the way at other companies. And that really is what makes sales development special, in my opinion.
Kyle Smith [00:14:41]:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And to be like, even a little bit selfish, I think about the monetary implications of that is if you're doing a great job of developing this talent into future sales leaders, and they have nothing but positive things to say about not only Gong as an organization, but also as a technology. You're just building out a giant network of locked in, loyal customers. You gave me the opportunity to go be an SDR manager and eventually an SDR director or something. I am going to guarantee that I have what I built my career foundation on as a technology at my new company.
Julian Alvarez [00:15:14]:
And again, it's like relating back to your original questions three or four times ago. It's like selling to sales professionals and using your platform as the key platform for you to do your job. The ripple effect of those individuals being absolutely plugged into your platform and then spreading that across is something that, yeah, it really is more impactful, I think then we even track or think about.
Kyle Smith [00:15:38]:
Definitely one of the things I think sometimes gets a little overstated is brand. And so we work with clients big and small, and some that are like household names, Fortune 500 companies, some who are a startup that nobody's ever heard of. And so I was curious your perspective. To me, Gong is like a brand, especially if you're talking about sales technology. So when you call and you say, hey, this is Kyle calling with Gong, there's no, what is that? What do you do? There's at least some familiarity and awareness versus if you were calling with, I don't know, one of your previous companies or something somebody's never heard of. How much do you think that matters in your ability to source opportunities?
Julian Alvarez [00:16:15]:
It makes it easier. There's no doubt in that for Gong. So I'm speaking about the Gong brand and what Gong built to be the leader within conversational intelligence. There are a lot of other good competitors. There's a lot of conversational intelligence companies popping up. Safe to say, as you alluded to, Gong is a premier brand in that conversational intelligence space. And now Gong is starting to tap into a couple other features and opportunities to build pipeline with the engage platform and forecasting, which allows us to not only go with the Gong brand name and then have those conversations to go into the consolidation play of app consolidation within the tech industry, which I think is a really popular term at this moment. The brand that Gong has built over the last six to eight years has been very beneficial for our sales team, is it required to find success? No, but it definitely helps.
Julian Alvarez [00:17:12]:
And so, like, I would say being a part of a brand like Gong helps us create more energy and synergy around our marketing material, our events, in terms of when we go to Gartner, having a booth there, the engagement around what we're doing, and just outreach in particular. Like, it does create the ability for us to penetrate accounts just based on brand. However, I would also say though, Gong has a brand of like, hey, it is the premier product, it is expensive, it is this that or the other, or, we vetted this technology six months ago, why would we want to vet it again? So, like, there is the give and take of like an established plan, like Salesforce, HubSpot, when you think about these types of companies, where you are selling a great product, but if someone vetted you out earlier, like, you just could have to navigate the conversation a little.
Kyle Smith [00:17:58]:
Bit differently, which is where the ancillary products come in, so that your team still has an opportunity to go source an op. Even if maybe it was a no for conversation intelligence, that doesn't mean it's a no for everything, which is the beauty of adding these other products.
Julian Alvarez [00:18:11]:
With the growth of Gong and where we're doing with our product, it does give you the ability to tell a new story, a new narrative that could create a little bit more energy around a deal or opportunity that is coming through. Let's say a sales development or an Ops or strategy person instead of the core VPS sales, where they're just focused on conversational intelligence, which definitely is nice, for sure.
Kyle Smith [00:18:32]:
Definitely. So you have five offices.
Julian Alvarez [00:18:35]:
San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Atlanta in the United States.
Kyle Smith [00:18:39]:
Okay, so you have four us offices. And then how many reps total on your team?
Julian Alvarez [00:18:43]:
My team, 42. So I have 42 ics, seven leaders.
Kyle Smith [00:18:47]:
And so with 42 ics, seven leaders, when I've worked with other vp level leaders, with an organization of that size, sometimes it can be difficult to stay really connected to the individual contributors and what's actually happening. So how frequently, if at all, are you engaging with the individual contributors? Or are your managers mostly your conduit to understand what's happening on the floor? On a day in, day out basis.
Julian Alvarez [00:19:09]:
My managers are going to be the conduit to the ICS. However, I'm in sales dev because I want to see these individuals grow. My why and who I am as a person. And what brings me fulfillment is seeing these SCR's go from a junior individual who was scared to cold call to an account executive that's leading the leaderboard in three years, because that's my why I am really focused on making connections with these individuals. And so every time I travel to a different office, I try to get at least 15 minutes with every IC in office to connect with them and talk with them. I am Ama, so ask me anything on the floor of the different offices that I go to. I do a stand up each week. I talk about performance.
Julian Alvarez [00:19:51]:
I talk about updates in terms of what we're doing. And I try to connect with our team every week during that conversation. And then we also have different committees. So we have a culture committee and a content committee that I try to pop into and stay engaged with to allow me to understand what they're working on and how they're staying connected with an organ, how they're thinking about content and what's resonating with the industry. And then last but not least, we do a book club that I actually run. So this is our third book club of the year. We do one every two months or so. We did one on atomic habits, and then the second one was set for life, which actually, the team chose to be more financially literate, which I thought was really cool.
Julian Alvarez [00:20:27]:
Like, the team to educate themselves on, like, how to think about their career and setting themselves up for financial freedom. And then the one we're reading right now is probably my favorite, is fanatical prospecting by Jeb Blunt. And so, like, that is another way for me to stay connected with the ICs because I'm not talking about my experience. I'm not talking about knowledge that I'm going to give to them. I'm actually just absorbing knowledge with reading the books with them and talking about it. And so, like, I think those different techniques and ways in which I try to stay connected is, honestly, it just really, for me, makes me fulfilled. And so, like, I am very connected with the ICs that we have here.
Kyle Smith [00:21:06]:
I love the book club, and you have, like, varying ones. Anything that Jeb's written is, like, right in line, like, perfect professional applications. So it's. It helps your team and performance, but something like the financial literacy book just shows that you as a leader are willing to invest in them, and you've brought all these resources together, like, smart people who just want to improve professionally and personally. It's like you're dedicating these time and these resources and developing them even outside of what they do for you at Gong, which is awesome.
Julian Alvarez [00:21:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. And the financial, like, that was like a whole series where we did the financial literacy book. I did an ama about like, hey, what I think about. And then we also had, one of my good friends growing up is a financial advisor at Edward Jones and he actually came and did a Q and a with the team so that they can have a completely different perspective of like, ask him anything that you want. He's been working in this industry for 15 years. And so like, that's where in my opinion, like, the whole person comes into play of if you can tap into these individuals and think outside the box of like, not just cold calling, not just opportunity generated, but have them really think about the importance of what this career is going to do for them and have them start to understand like the financial literacy stuff. Because I remember back when I was in SDR, like, gosh, if I would have been able to tap into some of the knowledge that I have now, of course, now I forget the, like, if I could tell myself back then to read these types of books, I think I would have been able to propel my career even more.
Kyle Smith [00:22:29]:
I've not professionally, like through consulting engagements because there's certain lines, like when we're the third party consultant, but for sure within my personal network, you know, know a lot of sales professionals, one of the things we talk about a lot that directly leads into job satisfaction in how stressed you feel is avoiding lifestyle creep, which everyone deals with in every profession. But for sales, I think it has a unique impact because let's just say 50%, you know, maybe it's a little bit less. 50% of your total comp plan is incentive based compensation. And so you have to be extra careful of that lifestyle creep. And because it's really easy, next year is not always going to be your best year ever, which is easy to think in the early stages because when you're 22 through 25 and almost guaranteed is like, there's a steep. But then what? Like when you hit four years of experience, five, six, if you keep going there, like, not next year is not always going to be your next year. And if you let lifestyle creeps start to eat into all of your disposable income, all of a sudden you're having still a decent year. Maybe you're trending at 80% attainment, maybe you're not going to go on a pip, but, like, you're having a decent year.
Kyle Smith [00:23:32]:
It's not your best one ever. And now all of a sudden you're like miserable because you're just scraping by. Because lifestyle creep made your actual personal life pretty stressful.
Julian Alvarez [00:23:42]:
It's tough going to the like, lifestyle creep and compensation, all that. It's the whole person. It's like individuals who you'll find top performers will start to educate themselves on that type of stuff. But if you can create the development within your organization and the eagerness to learn, you'll start to see the whole, like all boats rising in the tides, which is great. And I also think when you're tapping into individuals in the sense that we're talking about like the lifestyle creep and you being able to have those financial conversations and have those individuals think about financial literacy upfront in their career, the development that you have and the decisions that they're going to make and they're going to think about like, oh, wow. I learned not just how to cold call, not just how to create opportunities, but I learned more about life and decisions that I need to make and that impacted me. And ultimately, the development of the individual will create a individual that wants to stay and work with the management team and work with the leadership because you're going to continue to develop them. And as we know, like manager is one of the biggest reasons for attrition.
Julian Alvarez [00:24:41]:
And so I think the market and the individuals that we have now that we're coaching and training, there's so much knowledge out there. And if you can hone in the curiosity that they have and really help them continue to grow as people, you're going to have happy and engaged in place.
Kyle Smith [00:24:56]:
Yeah. That's how you truly develop the will follow you anywhere mentality, which is like, you see that happen with few leaders, but the ones who are the best, you could tell that their team, regardless, like whether you're working for the best leader brand or whatever, or you're making a jump to something else, if you've developed a team who trusts, respects you and knows that you have their best interest in mind, not just professionally, but just them as a whole person, you have people who will follow you wherever you go, which is pretty awesome.
Julian Alvarez [00:25:25]:
And the one thing, Kyle, it's not just saying, it's, yeah, you really got to put them into practice. And it can't be just one book club. It can't be just one conversation. It can't be one ama. It's just like the culture that you build in terms of your operating rhythm as a leader just continues to build. If you can create the. And I'll refer back to the atomic habits. If you can create the consistency within your systems and your coaching leadership style and what you're bringing to the table, like naturally you'll just continue to build on that and create leaders on top of you.
Julian Alvarez [00:25:53]:
And there's one, it's called the five levels of leadership by John C. Maxwell, where he has the different types of leaders, and the pinnacle leader is the leader that can actually coach and train the future leaders that are going to be just as good as that one. And so, like, that's what I always think about when you're coaching, you're spending time with individuals is like, how can they be better than me in the future? Future, what can I train them and coach them on so that they can take my job?
Kyle Smith [00:26:16]:
Definitely. If you can do that successfully, then you've won.
Julian Alvarez [00:26:19]:
Yeah.
Kyle Smith [00:26:19]:
One other question for you. How do you use Gong so your VP level?
Julian Alvarez [00:26:23]:
Oh, yeah, how do you use Gong? The best way I can describe it is for me, I was just in a conversation with our two frontline managers for our enterprise business unit. And so, like, what I peel out the layers from Gong is the first and foremost, like, how are we going to forecast in terms of our opportunities that we're going to create next this month? So what I'm looking at is all of our stage zero and stage one created opportunities. What you can see within Gong is when were those opportunities created? How many contacts do you have in those opportunities and actually look and listen to the inquiry call that your SDR have? I'm listening to some of those calls, but my managers are on every single one of our inquiry calls that our team has, and then they can forecast from there. How many are going to convert to stage one and stage two? So first and foremost is like, hey, July 1, we got 21 working days. Here's our goal per team. What? How many inquiry calls do we have on the calendar? How many of you listen to? What are you going to forecast for discovery and for solution presentation? How many discovery calls ran? Did you listen to them? How does AE feel are their next steps there? What are your thoughts? So, like, that's all within Gong, just like up from. We also looked at our previous month's performance of like, okay, how many opportunities stage two did we create? How many moved and progressed down funnel, and how much pipeline did we generate from that? So we can see that within the Gong pipeline dashboard. And we see when the last activity was, who created that opportunity forecasting category, total pipeline that we generated in next steps.
Julian Alvarez [00:27:52]:
So then we take a snapshot of like, hey, last month, how did we perform? Then we dig into KPI's, just as we would in any other engagement platform. We look at what was our last week's KPI's did everyone on our team hit the baseline KPI's that we needed emails, people, activated calls, talk time. But those key metrics that we're looking at for SDR works. So we look at forecasting for opportunities, opportunity, production, KPI's, and that's all within Gong. And then what I do for my team is I forecast our stage two plus deals in what's going to win with our vps of each segment. So I'll take that and I'll show my team like, hey, enterprise leaders, we have x amount of millions in pipeline in stage two with a closed date this quarter. We have x amount in stage three plus with a closed date this quarter. Here's the AE forecasting category.
Julian Alvarez [00:28:41]:
Our goal this quarter is, let's say, 3 million in close one ARR. Currently we're at, let's say half 1.5. So we're at 1.5 at a $3 million goal. We need 1.5 million in close one ARR to hit that 3 million goal. Where is it? So then I'm able to look at these deals and say, okay, in Gong, here are all of them. Here's the 5 million in pipeline coverage that we have in 33 plus. With the closing in the next 30 days, we have a really strong line of sight to our close one error. Our target for our outbound SDR source.
Kyle Smith [00:29:14]:
With a ton of validation. The attachment of the transcription and the recording is where you don't have to have this hope that the AE or whoever updated the opportunity appropriately. There's checks and balances built in.
Julian Alvarez [00:29:27]:
And then I go and I take those 5 million, pipe coverage against our goal and I talk to that VP later in that call, and I'm like, hey, here's my line of sight. Here's my forecast. Here's what I think we could do. What are your thoughts? Pressure test deals that we have here. And then she's able to back, yep, deal. Real deal. Good. And then I joined the forecasting calls with our CRO and our head of Ops with the vps in the each segment, and I get to sit there and understand how they're speaking to these deals and I give my check off, like confident, confident, confident so that we have from an SDR KPI perspective to an SDR opportunity generated to forecasting to close one.
Julian Alvarez [00:30:04]:
The story is all there within Gong.
Kyle Smith [00:30:06]:
Yeah. And if you have that dialed in it, also if you have all of those metrics dialed in with a high degree of confidence and that level of visibility, you want to talk about future planning, you're saying, okay, we're starting to look at 2025. I, with a high degree of confidence, can say, if you give me three more headcount, ten more headcount, 50 more headcount. Here's what I think that we can deliver. That's where the planning benefits starts to impact future planning, which is pretty awesome.
Julian Alvarez [00:30:32]:
Future planning. And then also, like, it gives us the lever. Because what I say is like, okay, team sales dev, gotta hit your quota, gotta build pipe. Once we do that, then we can start thinking about quality of pipeline, stage conversion and all that. And now we can go to the table and speak to the ad leaders and have that clarity in the conversation. There's no, like, battling of, like, quality, quantity. This is going to win this. We all speak in the same language and actually can collaborate.
Julian Alvarez [00:30:57]:
And what we found is multithreading is massive. To win deals, you got to have multiple things there. And what we found is our AE source deals had a little bit more contacts associated with the opportunities. So our goal is now our sales dev. Like, let's see if we can multi thread more effectively upfront and, like, burst into an account so that we can actually create more energy around the deal to progress it through to get them actually closed.
Kyle Smith [00:31:22]:
Well, have you ever tried change of voice for multithreading? Meaning, like, let's say you and I are both sdRs. We both call into the account. So it's not, it doesn't seem like Kyle is circumventing or going around, like, a prospect I already talked to. No, Julian's just calling over there. Or maybe it's an oopsies. Or maybe we're intentional about it. Whatever.
Julian Alvarez [00:31:41]:
Love that we're having this conversation. I never tried to do multiple voice in two sdrs calling into one account. We do ae SDR vps.
Kyle Smith [00:31:50]:
You have to. It's not something that works, like, tremendously well at scale, but on certain one off instances, and, like, we think about the idea of reciprocity. Like, you call mine, I'll call yours, like, whatever. And at some level, it equalizes out. I don't get credit for every single thing I've ever done, but neither do you. But as a team, everybody works out.
Julian Alvarez [00:32:09]:
Totally, totally. That's a great idea. I might have to implement that. Kyle.
Kyle Smith [00:32:12]:
Yeah. Try it out.
Julian Alvarez [00:32:13]:
Yeah, definitely.
Kyle Smith [00:32:14]:
All right. But thank you very much. I really appreciate the time. If anybody wants to get in contact with you, brainstorm with you, or just learn more about Gong, how can they reach out to you?
Julian Alvarez [00:32:22]:
Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best, easiest place. Julian Alvarez, LinkedIn. Gong. Find me there. You can also email me.
Kyle Smith [00:32:34]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Market Mastery brought to you by The Bridge Group. If you're a revenue leader in the B2B sales space or know someone who is, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.