Gong's Udi Ledergor on crafting magical marketing moments

00:00:01:11 - 00:00:27:02

Ben Hillman

Picture a grand theater with the red curtain just about to rise. In the background, an orchestra warms up and the stagehands make a last minute adjustments. A musical is an intricate balance of many elements. The actors, the orchestra, the sets, the lighting. Each person, whether in the spotlight or behind the scenes, plays a crucial role in creating a seamless and magical experience for the audience.

00:00:27:08 - 00:00:52:08

Ben Hillman

The synchronization among the actors, the harmonious blend of the orchestra and the precise timing of set changes are crucial when they work in tandem. The audience is left spellbound, fully immersed, and the wonder unfolding before them. Just like a stage musical, a successful business is an ensemble performance involving different departments. Marketing, sales, product development, customer success, you name it.

00:00:52:12 - 00:01:17:16

Ben Hillman

The stage is the market and the audience is the clientele. A harmonious integration between marketing and sales teams is akin to the seamless ballet of actors and orchestra. When marketing campaigns are well aligned with sales strategies, it creates a symphony that captivates the audience. In this case, the clients. This unified approach helps in creating better products, resonating messages, and ultimately satisfying the customer's needs.

00:01:18:19 - 00:01:47:20

Ben Hillman

So where do you scout for your marketing ballet? What goes into the lineup of a sales orchestra? Look no further than Udi letter Corps as the chief evangelistic gong. His vast experience in driving marketing initiatives that are closely aligned with sales objectives makes him a valuable advisor. Just like a director, ensuring every piece is coordinated on stage. Moody's insights on nurturing cross-functional collaboration have been instrumental in scaling businesses.

00:01:49:22 - 00:02:14:01

Ben Hillman

In today's episode, we'll dive into the nuances of aligning marketing and sales teams for the crescendo of business success. Udi Letter Guide will share his experiences in building a cohesive company narrative, scaling product offerings and creating magical marketing that engages and delights customers. From Paddle, it's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth.

00:02:14:01 - 00:02:36:22

Ben Hillman

To make you an outstanding operator on today's episode. Udi Ledergor. I spoke to Andrew DAVIES at the end of 2022 about aligning sales and marketing teams. They talk about the evolution of the marketing team at Garmin, designing sales and marketing alignment, how to know if growth problems are internal or external challenging best practices, and how good marketing creates magic.

00:02:37:10 - 00:02:58:14

Ben Hillman

After you finish the episode, check out the show notes from today's episode. Then, while you're leaving your five star review at the podcast, tell us what resonated most about Rudy's advice for First Stop. Rudy talks about the evolution of the marketing team at Google.

00:03:02:03 - 00:03:10:14

Andrew Davies

Rudy Let me just hear a little bit of the story of the last few years as we start off this this interview you're doing, going as the first marketer. Is that.

00:03:10:14 - 00:03:18:08

Udi Ledergor

Correct? That is correct. First marketer and employee number 13 way back in mid 2016. Seems like a lifetime ago. Now, four.

00:03:18:08 - 00:03:26:06

Andrew Davies

Of those people don't know and most people will give us the quick one line proposition on what going is and then talk to me about what that team looks like today.

00:03:26:15 - 00:03:51:03

Udi Ledergor

Create the reality platform, which is that the leading revenue intelligence platform, what it does, it captures all customer conversations, uses AI to pull out insights and then serves those to sales professionals and leaders to help them get better at their craft, provide a better buying experience, do better pipeline management, better forecasting, and coming up soon, better pipeline creation and prospecting as well.

00:03:51:06 - 00:03:55:11

Andrew Davies

What's the team look like now? If you joined as the first marketer, I'm sure you're not the only one right now.

00:03:55:12 - 00:04:11:10

Udi Ledergor

We have a little bit over 50 marketers on the team now, so it's bigger than the entire company. When I joined, I joined, as I said, as the number 13 were at about 1300 employees in the company. So 100 X growth right there, which makes it a very different company. But the thrills and excitement are different every day.

00:04:11:16 - 00:04:19:10

Udi Ledergor

It's been quite the journey. I mean, this is kind of the dream that everyone has. When you join a startup, you want to grow it to a large, successful company and we're well on our way right now.

00:04:19:10 - 00:04:25:01

Andrew Davies

Team down for me is that including Bergdahl's release sitting in sales and product marketing, is that with you or is that with product?

00:04:25:02 - 00:04:51:21

Udi Ledergor

That's an interesting topic. I built the first SDR teams in Israel and then in the U.S. and California, but all of those have been consolidated under sales a few years ago. So today the 50 plus marketers do not include any borders. The two largest teams within marketing are revenue marketing, otherwise known as the manager and product marketing. Those are the two largest teams and the two smaller ones are corporate communications and content in one and creative and brand in other.

00:04:51:21 - 00:04:53:10

Udi Ledergor

I think, you know, a few people from that team.

00:04:53:14 - 00:05:11:12

Andrew Davies

Talk to me about promoting a bit more before we go on, because I've been in a few different businesses. The C product marketing very differently. And honestly, in many European businesses, product marketing is often that solo PM who's trying to save the world in between every other function. Whereas you know, I love being in businesses often San Francisco based businesses are really well staffed.

00:05:11:12 - 00:05:12:10

Andrew Davies

PMT teams.

00:05:12:10 - 00:05:33:09

Udi Ledergor

The teams will probably argue that they're never fully staffed, but that's part of their job, and they'd be telling the truth, which is which is true. They have a lot of work because they have a lot of responsibility. So the pilot teams are responsible for telling the story as it relates to our platform and our product and what value we provide to different customers across different segments and geographies and industries and company sizes.

00:05:33:18 - 00:06:00:04

Udi Ledergor

And there's lots of nuance to that work. Once they they pull together the messaging, which is a really difficult feat in and of itself, then they have to create all the derivatives, which are everything from the sales decks to the website copy to helping other marketing teams like digital and organic and content, create the right content pieces to put out there to promote whatever product piece we're promoting around a product launch or other promotions, whether it's speaking opportunities for four events around a product.

00:06:00:04 - 00:06:14:11

Udi Ledergor

They take a big part in creating the keynotes for our CEO and other executives at our events. So really owning messaging and all the derivatives that come out of that, as well as pricing and packaging, which is something we're talking a lot about, especially in this economy for.

00:06:17:07 - 00:06:20:06

Ben Hillman

Next, Rudy talks about designing sales and marketing align.

00:06:23:03 - 00:06:54:23

Andrew Davies

So I've always known going is selling to the Chief revenue officer persona or the head of sales persona and came into of you know I mentioned before this call we're a happy going customer came into Pablo and suddenly had access to all of this different messaging insight, conversational insight from our revenue teams. Talk to me a bit about, you know, this topic that we dance around in many startups in our commercial functions, sales and marketing alignment, how you design that, how are you working with your sales orgs and the other functions in your business to make sure that alignment is design, not just default?

00:06:54:23 - 00:07:18:17

Udi Ledergor

I think it starts with the fundamental understanding that a marketing team cannot succeed without the sales team succeeding. I think I speak on behalf of my friends in sales to say that it would be very difficult for sales to succeed, especially in the long term, without their friends and marketing succeed with them as well. It starts with the relationship of trust and communications between the heads of those departments, and this has been super important to me and to our sales leaders since day one.

00:07:18:18 - 00:07:36:14

Udi Ledergor

I have a really strong, close relationship with our Chief revenue Officer, Roy Markfield. I, I gave a talk and wrote a short article a while ago about, you know, how your chief revenue officer takes their coffee. If you don't if you have to think about it, you're probably not close enough to them. In case you're all in suspense, our chief revenue officer actually doesn't drink coffee.

00:07:36:14 - 00:07:50:19

Udi Ledergor

He drinks tea, although he's been known to take a decaf every now and then. So if you don't know how your chief revenue officer takes your coffee to that resolution, probably not close enough. Back when we were at the office before COVID, we used to take our weekly coffee walks and get to know our drinking habits quite intimately.

00:07:50:19 - 00:08:09:02

Udi Ledergor

It moved out to virtual meetings mostly since then. But but we get together as often as we can, so it starts there. It's not just getting together. It's having that level of trust where you assume everyone is doing their absolute best and everyone is well intentioned. No one is slacking off when sales are not selling as much as marketing expected.

00:08:09:02 - 00:08:24:08

Udi Ledergor

To the least, it's not because they're lazy. It's not because they're ignoring the leads that there might be something wrong with the leads the market wants to look at. When marketing is not bringing in the quality or the quantity of the leads that sales were expecting. Again, it's usually not because marketing is slacking off. There might be a problem.

00:08:24:08 - 00:08:40:23

Udi Ledergor

The macro environment, our target addressable market might be too small, there might be budget issues. We need to assume less contention. No one's coming. It just a warm up a seat. Being able to discuss these challenges openly with good faith that everyone is doing their best. But how can we solve this together? That's kind of the key to the relationship.

00:08:40:23 - 00:09:06:12

Udi Ledergor

As the teams grow, we have to empower our bench and then their direct reports on continuing that relationship of trust. And it's the tiny little microaggressions that can set that off track. If the VP's or the directors on the team sees that the C-level executives are making nasty comments or jokes about, oh, marketing just throws their fishbowl of leads from the event over the wall and expect us to sell to them.

00:09:06:13 - 00:09:23:12

Udi Ledergor

That's going to permeate down the command and control chain and everyone's going to get the idea that there's a lack of trust between the teams. But if everything is done in a respectful way, that assumes best intentions, that respects the efforts of the other teams that we work together to solve this, then we create the kind of relationship that we have here at Gong.

00:09:23:12 - 00:09:43:10

Udi Ledergor

And I think every company should should strive for work at all levels of sales and marketing leadership. People are connected. I don't think there's any format of sales, weekly meetings, whether it's the segment meetings or the leadership meetings where there is not a marketer sitting in there on a regular basis, listening to what they are being challenged with right now and proactively thinking how can marketing help them?

00:09:43:18 - 00:09:48:14

Udi Ledergor

Because we cannot succeed if our friends in sales don't succeed. That's kind of the framework and how we think about it.

00:09:48:14 - 00:10:05:16

Andrew Davies

It's really interesting. You point out the microaggressions, all those small complaints, they amplify down the organization. Let's just dig into that a little bit because we're in a situation right now where many people are describing the market shift as us walking from peacetime into war time. How do you defend that sales of marketing alignment in wartime?

00:10:05:17 - 00:10:28:01

Udi Ledergor

First of all, it's hard out there right now for everyone. Let's acknowledge that nobody's on an island right now. If you're feeling the difficult times right now, saw your customers or your vendors or other companies in your space. And it's important to to be transparent about that. It is objectively hard right now with companies tightening up budgets and consolidating their i.t tech stack, looking for cost savings.

00:10:28:01 - 00:10:43:13

Udi Ledergor

That is all happening. So if people are not clicking as much on your ads, it's not necessarily because the ads are bad, it's because they're not in the market for buying as much as they used to be six months ago. I think it's important to communicate that to sales. You know, there might be fewer leads because people are not in the market as much right now.

00:10:43:13 - 00:10:57:01

Udi Ledergor

And when marketing sees that sales are getting some leads, but they're not converting them as well as they used to, that also needs to come with a healthy dose of compassion. The same lead that six months ago would have bought and within three weeks they might take three months or nine months or not buy at all right now.

00:10:57:01 - 00:11:14:17

Udi Ledergor

So the conversion rates are also down. Having that common understanding of how the macro is affecting both sales and marketing and customer success. We're fighting for every customer retention and try to mitigate churn and downgrade that's happening everywhere right now. Being mindful that it's hard for everyone. Our problems always seem bigger and more important just because they're ours.

00:11:14:17 - 00:11:32:21

Udi Ledergor

But but everyone is suffering right now and just being mindful of that is is helpful and realizing that we're all in this together. You know, as cliché as it sounds, we will get out of this together again. It's probably even more important in wartime than it was in marketing. Can't go on a victory march claiming, Oh, we just got all these leads and all this stuff.

00:11:32:21 - 00:11:50:17

Udi Ledergor

If sales are bleeding in, customer success are bleeding because they're not bringing enough business or there's too much churn, marketing has nothing to celebrate about. We have to win this together. And at the end of the day, we define what we do in marketing as make sales easier. So simple as that. And the sales are not succeeding that that really nobody has anything to be victorious about.

00:11:54:05 - 00:11:58:07

Ben Hillman

And now how to know if growth problems are internal or external.

00:12:01:20 - 00:12:22:17

Andrew Davies

It's super interesting that you point out the need for that common context across sales and marketing and product and customer success. And one of the things we've been looking at, we for our metrics product, we see about 28 billion of our off through all of our software users and customers. So we had a bit of an advance warning on that churn problem that people were facing and the lack of expansion as well as new acquisition.

00:12:22:17 - 00:12:34:16

Andrew Davies

But outside of seeing that data, you know, how do you find a way of benchmarking correctly when things are taking a ding? How do you know if it's the market environment or if it's actually things that are going wrong within the function within the team?

00:12:34:16 - 00:12:47:15

Udi Ledergor

That's a terrific topic that I'm sure many teams are busy with right now. So I can share some of the things that we're doing here in golf to look at what's happening. Obviously, we saw some correction in the market that things are getting harder and here are some of the things that we looked at. We start at the top of the funnel.

00:12:47:15 - 00:13:18:21

Udi Ledergor

Could it be lead quality as the lead quality changed over time that might be leading to to lower sales? We looked at things like their job title, their industry and their company sizes because we have historical conversion rates. We were lucky to have data from the last six years of sales with over 3500 customers. We know quite a lot about the markets that we operate in and we know that a VP of sales at a mid-market company in North America, in the tech industry should convert at such and such a rate to every stage and opportunity all the way to business.

00:13:18:21 - 00:13:41:05

Udi Ledergor

One, looking against those benchmarks that we have from from historical sales, we're now looking at the new cohorts of leads. Are we still getting the same amount of VP's? Great. If maybe we're now getting a lot more managers and fewer VP's, so that could be a cause for for lower conversion because we know that in the case of Pong, we have a much better chance of closing a deal with a VP that we do with the manager next after the title.

00:13:41:10 - 00:14:02:18

Udi Ledergor

Do we? What is the mix of industries? Because we know that certain industries buy from us in a more easier fashion and we're more accustomed to selling to certain industries than others. Has the industry mix change? We look at geographies, we look at company sizes, etc. So that's that's a good way. Just looking at the the firm graphics and demographics of the leads coming in to make sure that there's no dramatic shift in quality.

00:14:02:18 - 00:14:17:06

Udi Ledergor

So so that would be the first place we look at. The next place we look is the sales process itself. So, okay, we've got the leads. They made it all the way, the salesperson, what are they doing with it? We're lucky enough to have gone just like you to look at to that and to see which sales teams and which sales individuals are using.

00:14:17:06 - 00:14:33:02

Udi Ledergor

Which version of the sales message Are they using the latest deck? Because I don't know if any everyone knows this gong actually reads the slides that they're presenting. So I know who's using an old deck. I know who's using the new. What if someone is using the old deck that that we retired three months ago? That might be a problem.

00:14:33:02 - 00:14:56:21

Udi Ledergor

So we can pick up on that very, very quickly with God. And that helps our enablement efforts reinforce the leader's messaging. So that's another thing that that we look at. The next thing we look at when we have business lost, we quickly categorize them and we use gong to help with this because we know if the customer talked about pricing or discount or competitive, it can give us a good reality check that sometimes is not identical to the gut feeling of the rep who lost the deal.

00:14:56:21 - 00:15:18:08

Udi Ledergor

A rep will never admit, Oh, I was not in the zone or I completely failed to show value here. Usually place it on some externality like oh, they do have budget. They didn't see the need. Okay. What do you mean they can see that either. If it's the right ICP and we have the right product and we fail to show the B right, we put together this information and then we look and see, okay, what do we need to tackle here and in a market like this, no big surprise.

00:15:18:08 - 00:15:44:21

Udi Ledergor

We found that there's a lot of concerns around budget and consolidation. So that pushes us to quickly find solutions. Everything from more flexible payment terms to giving more licenses to consolidating and maybe giving free pilots of new products for existing customers to buying out other tools that they're using that are competing with us against budget by understanding why you're losing deals, not just how many deals you're losing, we can find the solutions to the top causes of that.

00:15:44:21 - 00:15:51:03

Udi Ledergor

That's kind of how we go down the chain from leaf quality to sales process to win loss analysis and reasoning.

00:15:51:03 - 00:16:07:04

Andrew Davies

And I love how you know, that obviously is multi department. And I'm sure you know you're not just talking with sales and but as you said, with customer success and then also with product I mean gone in my head as a as a customer is a revenue intelligence tool serving cruise to health of accelerate revenue, you will get better revenue.

00:16:07:04 - 00:16:17:02

Andrew Davies

So are you now pivoting the entire message towards that kind of CFO persona that everyone's saying is now paramount and around cost savings or how you thinking about your message and your value prop in this time?

00:16:17:02 - 00:16:33:22

Udi Ledergor

Yeah, I would say we're pivoting the entire messaging because gong in its core still does the same good old thing that it did six months ago. The people love it for it, use it for and find business value. I think the messaging changes now are more of an overlay with some nuanced changes to cater for what people care about most right now.

00:16:33:22 - 00:16:56:02

Udi Ledergor

So I'll give a couple examples. A year ago, one of the big benefits that we talked about with selling GO was it helps you onboard new reps faster because it really slashes onboarding time by half. The new reps can listen to libraries of the best and worst plays. How this company talks about competition and pricing and discounting. That was a big benefit when most of the market was in hypergrowth.

00:16:56:02 - 00:17:16:18

Udi Ledergor

Now the situation is very, very different and very few companies are in hypergrowth, or I almost say nobody is in hypergrowth right now. I don't think anyone is complaining about the problem of having to onboard 1000 new reps this year. And so if that's the case, we need to drop that part of the pitch and focus on something that is top of mind for people, which might be how do I get the most out of my existing resources?

00:17:16:18 - 00:17:36:14

Udi Ledergor

Because I'm going to have to keep my headcount flat or even deal with fewer people on board since we have to go to layoffs, how do we get more out of less? That should be part of the core messaging now. Yes, the CFO is it is involved now more than ever, and they care about how are you helping me, not just with why we bought the software, which is to make our sales reps better and sell more deals.

00:17:36:14 - 00:17:57:19

Udi Ledergor

But how are you helping me consolidate my tech stack? Harry Helping with me with cost savings, with productivity gains. And so we had to incorporate that into the pitch. I could share that we did some testing in the last few months and we found that with the right mix of that overlay of productivity gains and efficiency and budget savings, we saw a conversion lift of 43% on the home page.

00:17:57:19 - 00:18:17:20

Udi Ledergor

So 43% more leads were converting with that messaging without changing the core of what the reality platform does, but adding that overlay of productivity and efficiency. And if you go to our website now, I think last week we launched the new page and that's our new control. Now it looks a bit different from what we had just two weeks ago because this is a constant learning process.

00:18:17:20 - 00:18:27:02

Andrew Davies

I'm glad you not pivoting to far that it seems like there's a few Asus businesses that are scraping the barrel to make sure they've got a sudden CFO cost saving of, you know, value proposition.

00:18:27:02 - 00:18:43:16

Udi Ledergor

But it has to do with right customers have a bullshit meter from a mile away if you're I don't know, you're selling socks and you're talking about how this is the most cost saving tool in the world. It's probably not going to stick. So sometimes sometimes you actually have to do a product pivot in order to to beat curve demand, right?

00:18:43:16 - 00:19:06:17

Udi Ledergor

We saw that during COVID when travel stopped. So companies like Airbnb made a brilliant move and switched to virtual experiences. And that's how they were weathering the storm. Other companies, like if you're running an airline and nobody's flying, then you're kind of screwed. Those are really extreme cases. I think most companies, if there wasn't really for their product in peacetime, there's probably still a need for their product in wartime.

00:19:06:17 - 00:19:26:07

Udi Ledergor

They just have to get tighter about the messaging and maybe push forward some of their product innovations that customers are looking for most right now. So if we know that customers are looking to defend our ROI to their CFO, to their CEO, to their board, we also had our product team push forward some of the features within Gong that actually show the value that the customer is getting.

00:19:26:07 - 00:19:42:13

Udi Ledergor

So it's easier for our teams to show the student Uber's take off the table. The questions about the value that you're seeing from Gong. While some of this we could afford to do with hand-waving a few months ago, now we have to show more concrete numbers because they're asking for them. So that's what I suspect most successful companies are doing right now.

00:19:46:05 - 00:19:49:05

Ben Hillman

Next, Woody talks about challenging best practices.

00:19:52:17 - 00:20:15:20

Andrew Davies

I've definitely been seeing ads for cost saving socks, so there's some companies that are perhaps being slightly inauthentic about that. But you're famous for your going is famous for a couple of years now of Super Bowl ads. How are you thinking about your brand versus demand mix? Now you're from a couple of Windows. Firstly, and how you negotiate that with your sales team are often those slightly more top of funnel endeavors are not maybe driving direct leads, although I know there are some numbers from yours that say they were.

00:20:15:20 - 00:20:21:01

Andrew Davies

But then secondly, again, in that shift from peace time to war time, how are you reevaluating that marketing mix?

00:20:21:01 - 00:20:41:20

Udi Ledergor

We had the great fortune of of being in hypergrowth all this time, and we're still very much in growth. But but obviously things are more challenging right now. And in the last few years we could afford to do that really cool overlay on top of our demand gen programs and do Super Bowl ads, as you remembered correctly, at least on one of those we saw very clear short term impact on demand.

00:20:41:20 - 00:21:02:22

Udi Ledergor

We had our record week of pipeline in our 2020 Super Bowl or our 2021 Super Bowl at and then this year we saw a nice lift in awareness. We did some before and after awareness surveys in the markets where we aired the ad and we saw a clear lift in awareness to the brand. But it's one of those things that are still considered a long term brand play.

00:21:02:23 - 00:21:17:10

Udi Ledergor

Given where the market is right now, the very deliberate decisions we need to make about every dollar in our account. It was my decision not to move forward with a Super Bowl ad in the next Super Bowl. That's coming up in a couple of months. And I it's not that I brought up a proposal and got reject it.

00:21:17:13 - 00:21:32:01

Udi Ledergor

I don't want to bring up a proposal if I don't believe I can defend it, if it's not the right thing to do. And so I did not. And we're now spending all of our dollars, including what might have been reserved for Super Bowl on more measurable campaigns to make sure that we see the short term impact, because that's our focus area right now.

00:21:32:01 - 00:21:49:08

Udi Ledergor

I would say broadly, the money that we would have used for some big brand campaign that's hard to measure in the short term is being divided between our digital spend, where we do see short term optimizations and continued flow of leads and our events program, which is now back in full throttle in person as well as hybrid events.

00:21:49:08 - 00:22:11:12

Udi Ledergor

And we're seeing amazing influence and sourcing of pipeline from our events program as well. Just a few weeks ago, we did our big annual celebrated event. It was a first attempt to do a large scale hybrid event, which is kind of the call of the times. And we have thousands of people tune in to the virtual event from around the world, which is something a couple of years ago we never thought of doing before.

00:22:11:18 - 00:22:43:07

Udi Ledergor

COVID forced us all to rethink how our that's programing experience looks like. And we had a really high caliber audience in person, giving them a VIP experience with a meet and greet with some of the speakers and our executives. So there were literally tens of millions of dollars of pipeline in the room during that event. And we're continuously working on crafting the best, most interesting hybrid experiences to account for both the quality of people that we bring in and the experience that we provide them, and the quantity of accounts and opportunities represented in the room, both in-person and virtually.

00:22:43:07 - 00:22:45:21

Udi Ledergor

So those are the kinds of things that we're focused on right now.

00:22:46:00 - 00:23:01:20

Andrew Davies

You're what do invested in those perhaps slightly crazy ideas like the Super Bowl ads for it for a B2B SaaS business coming back to the sales and marketing alignment point, have you felt like you're skating a bit on your off the rink? Are you skiing off piste when it comes to what your sales team want, or are they fully supportive of those endeavors?

00:23:01:20 - 00:23:21:05

Udi Ledergor

I think they were fully supportive. If they're not, I didn't hear about it. I definitely set up a tracker in Gone During and after the Super Bowl season last years to hear conversations where it's brought up and luckily or not, luckily, but happily, a lot of customers, hundreds of customers brought up our Super Bowl ads by saying, you know, to their CRM, Oh, I just saw our Super Bowl ad last week.

00:23:21:05 - 00:23:43:21

Udi Ledergor

It was fantastic. Or the Reps being very proud that their company is sponsoring the Super Bowl would say something like, Oh, did you get a chance to catch the game last week? We had a commercial there. Not sure if you saw it. So they're they're obviously very, very proud. And what I heard consistently from the sales team as that being on the Super Bowl, especially as private startup, just elevates the brand to the level of, oh, wow, we're playing with the big kids right now because we're on the Super Bowl.

00:23:43:21 - 00:24:03:03

Udi Ledergor

I don't think anyone thought that was a waste of resources or something that impacted us negatively in any way. Even my CFO was was happy for the most part with with those investments because we found a clever way of buying the ads in certain markets where we have customer prospect hubs and not just going crazy with the national lab, that would have been hard to justify for a business like ours.

00:24:03:07 - 00:24:13:10

Andrew Davies

I've heard you say that by the time something's best practice, it's ordinary practice. So what are some other things you're doing that are unique, perhaps engaged with now or planning to do over the next year?

00:24:13:15 - 00:24:42:01

Udi Ledergor

We have an operating principle at Gong that we call challenged conventional wisdom. And what we mean by that is that things that are conventional wisdom should not be dismissed just because of conventional wisdom. Some of them are pretty smart, right? We all have to eat, drink and breathe. That's conventional wisdom, and I still follow it. It's a bad reasoning to say why we're doing something is because it's conventional wisdom, because if you look how other companies, you know, do their website, you conclude that having a neutral blue and green light is conventional wisdom.

00:24:42:01 - 00:24:57:09

Udi Ledergor

So everyone should be doing that. But we don't. We wanted to stand out. We thought that if we do what everyone's doing, we're just going to blend in. And that's the worst thing that could happen to start when we put out our content, we're not afraid of putting out something controversial or polarizing because conventional wisdom would tell you, Oh, you don't want to upset anyone, right?

00:24:57:09 - 00:25:13:09

Udi Ledergor

You want to make sure everyone likes you. What the thing is, if everyone likes you, no obscenity. What? You're probably not exciting anyone either. So that's how we end up putting out on the website. We have purple and bright pink colors, and we've got a crazy bulldog that's screaming at you from the chat window, and he's actually setting hundreds of meetings every quarter.

00:25:13:10 - 00:25:40:17

Udi Ledergor

So. So that works. And it's conventional wisdom in our content marketing, you won't usually find agreeable obvious content. You'll find things like the piece we did on salespeople who swear during their sales calls win deals at 8% more than their colleagues who don't swear on sales calls. Now, that created a whole shit storm on LinkedIn. When we released that part of my French because people had an opinion whether the like, Yeah, that's the bomb.

00:25:40:17 - 00:26:04:05

Udi Ledergor

That's what I'm saying to this is appalling. I can't believe you would suggest that salespeople should be swaying on sales call. And we pulled out the popcorn because that's exactly what we were hoping for, creating conversation. And and it's hard to do if if you're not eliciting any strong feelings or views on that on the topic. So if you're going to be the, you know, goody two shoes, here's my holiday season post on five things you should check off your list before the holiday period.

00:26:04:06 - 00:26:24:00

Udi Ledergor

Okay. We've all read that in 100 versions. That's not an unexcited anyone. But if you put up something controversial like that, then you might actually get some conversation going. And that's how we think about our marketing and programs and events. We want to bring something that people maybe haven't seen before or have a strong opinion about, or that would just make them pause and question like, Oh, I never thought about it that way.

00:26:24:00 - 00:26:26:09

Udi Ledergor

That's kind of the lens that we take to a lot of our marketing.

00:26:30:01 - 00:26:33:12

Ben Hillman

And now Rudy talks about how good marketing creates magic.

00:26:35:04 - 00:26:57:07

Andrew Davies

Just coming back to this theme of cross-functional alignment, you mentioned in one of your first answers about one of the limitations on on the metrics you're seeing might be the size of the market. And I think as a company goes from zero to IPO, that's often one of the most difficult conversations to host between sales and marketing and product of how do you expand that serviceable market by all of you working together?

00:26:57:07 - 00:27:02:18

Andrew Davies

Is that something you've faced with Google, or have you got any frameworks for how you think about market size as you go through your growth journey?

00:27:02:18 - 00:27:21:20

Udi Ledergor

When the company is founded? You know, it's not love to have a cool idea. The very basics require that you're solving a difficult, painful problem, that there's many, many people who have a budget to pay. You solve that problem. It's not something that sales and marketing can solve it. If you have to think about what are the addressable markets, what products are we bringing, what value are we creating with God?

00:27:21:20 - 00:27:45:10

Udi Ledergor

We started with conversation intelligence that then expanded to revenue, intelligence, and within that market we've expanded to additional products like forecasting and pipeline management and others. We very, I guess, modestly or conservatively estimate that almost everyone who has a CRM seat around the world could use gong, and that's not the end of the market because we have other products coming up that even non CRM users are able to get value from.

00:27:45:11 - 00:28:10:12

Udi Ledergor

That's the way that you always want to be thinking. And as you start getting some traction, looking a couple of years ahead because when you have hundreds of salespeople and they all want to Kels, you're going to run out of the pretty quickly unless you have a really large TAM or thinking about expanding into a digital to answer that that is a regular conversation here at Gong that's how we make our decisions as to which geographies to expand into, which industries, to expand into, what companies, sizes and types were selling, to what departments within the company we're selling it to.

00:28:10:13 - 00:28:27:00

Udi Ledergor

It has to be an ongoing conversation. You don't want to be surprise. One morning waking up and you're out of town. You know, that's one of the first questions that investors ask you around Doral So how big can you go? Show us the tab. Who's the bigger player who's already done what you're claiming to do or something similar that would make your story credible?

00:28:27:01 - 00:28:33:03

Udi Ledergor

Then, of course, as you head for the public markets, they're going to ask all those scrutinizing questions as well. So you better be prepared with answers.

00:28:33:03 - 00:28:44:04

Andrew Davies

Come in to land here. I was looking at your your LinkedIn profile. It says you're a lover of theater, performing arts and magic. So how does magic play a part in your marketing function? How do you it incorporates influence into your day job?

00:28:44:04 - 00:29:04:19

Udi Ledergor

I was an amateur magician. As a young boy. I am a big, big lover of all performing arts, where my husband and I are subscribers with opera. The symphony orchestra, the ballet. We go to musicals, we go to theater, we're going to jazz concerts. I love that experience of the Curtain Rises. You just forget about the whole world outside for a couple of hours and you get this magical experience.

00:29:04:19 - 00:29:21:13

Udi Ledergor

I've taken that with me into marketing because I believe that good marketing creates magic. I think of the Disney brand. Many people will describe it as magic, right? Storytelling, the characters that was possible there is not possible anywhere else. They create magic. And I'd like to think that a gong were able to create a tiny speck of that.

00:29:21:13 - 00:29:37:03

Udi Ledergor

When you go to our website, we're like, Wow, this is really different. This is about what I was expecting. When you come to one of our events, I hope we provide you with a magical experience. We we brought a world renowned drummer who's played with some of the biggest bands in the world to our last event that the audience was completely amazed with the experience that we provided there.

00:29:37:03 - 00:29:53:16

Udi Ledergor

I think you can do that with great content, with great social campaigns. Just provide a moment of magic as we're all mindlessly scrolling through our LinkedIn. We're in desperate need of some entertainment, the comic relief, and we try to provide that even if it's a small moment of magic. That's what I love about my job, that we can do that for people.

00:29:53:20 - 00:30:11:07

Andrew Davies

Influence Maybe some time. When you were in London, I can host you a the West End some time to see a magical performance there. So I really appreciate that. I really thank you so, so much. I love the clarity of answers. I love the curve you've launched your company on and seeing what's coming around the corner. So really appreciate the time and have a fantastic have a fantastic weekend.

00:30:11:07 - 00:30:13:02

Udi Ledergor

Thank you for having me. Andrew. Glad to be here.

00:30:15:14 - 00:30:38:06

Ben Hillman

Shout out for being on the show. Now you have a better understanding of sales and marketing alignment. Today we talked about the evolution of the marketing team at Gong designing sales and marketing alignment, how to know if growth problems are internal or external challenging best practices and how good marketing creates magic. Make sure to give protect outlook five Star review and tell us what lesson from today's episode was your favorite.

00:30:38:10 - 00:30:46:10

Ben Hillman

Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Battle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SaaS.