Gong, which closed on a $200 million Series D round earlier this month, is in one of the SalesTech segments that has benefited from remote working. Demand for conversational AI tools from vendors like Gong and Chorus that record, transcribe, and analyze meetings and calls accelerated with the pandemic.
“With global sales teams switching to remote work and field sales teams grounded for the foreseeable future, we are seeing substantial demand for Gong’s solution even in a challenging business environment,” said Gong CEO Amit Bendov.
“Gong’s Web site is like a direct view into the subconscious of those hyper-enthusiastic salespeople who make the rest of us nuts but get the job done. The actual product is AI technology that captures video, phone, email, and face-to-face interactions and extracts insights about people, deals, and market events. It must work: they just raised a $200 million Series D, bringing total funding to $334 million. Did I mention their chatbot is a bulldog?”
David Raab, CDP Institute
Carl Eschenbach, a partner at Sequoia Capital, argued that firms benefiting from COVID fall into two classes, those that are enjoying a temporary lift and those that will enjoy long-term benefits due to social and technological shifts.
“There will be less [SIC] field sales reps than ever before. Said Eschenbach. “People will be working remotely and selling over digital mechanisms like we’re using Zoom.”
While Gong did not disclose their revenue, they said it has trebled over the past year. Forbes lists their 2019 revenue at $30 million so 2020 revenue should clock in around $90 million.
Gong has over 1,300 customers, including Autodesk, HubSpot, LinkedIn, MuleSoft, Outreach, PayPal, Shopify, Slack, Twilio, Zillow, GE, and Zoominfo.
Over 64,000 sales and support professionals use the Gong platform, up from 45,000 in December.
They recently launched a Deal intelligence module which provides deal pipeline visibility and “deal at risk” alerts to sales reps (see the image at the top of this blog).
Gong Partners include
- Conference: Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, BlueJeans, WebEx, GoToMeeting, JoinMe
- Sales Engagement: Outreach, SalesLoft, Groove, Xant, FrontSpin
- CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot
- Others: Slack, ClearSlide, Clari, Google, Outlook
“We made a bold prediction in 2016 that Gong’s technology would become the most significant innovation for sales since the invention of CRM,” said Bendov. “The market has proven that prediction was correct. With global sales teams switching to remote work and field sales teams grounded for the foreseeable future, we are seeing substantial demand for Gong’s solution even in a challenging business environment. There is a new way to win in sales, and the best sales teams are turning to Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform to guide them down that path.”
Last month, Gong competitor Chorus closed on a $45 million Series C. The round was led by Georgian Partners, with participation from Emergence Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Sozo Ventures. Five-year-old Chorus has raised $85.2 million to date. Georgian also led the $33 million Series B in December 2018.
The new funds will be deployed for product innovation and expanding its go-to-market team. CEO Jim Benton said that they would continue to develop their interaction signal capture capabilities, particularly those tied to relationships and driving deals to close.
“The insights provided by conversation intelligence can be a lifeline, identifying risks as well as what is working so that they can replicate best practices across the revenue team,” said Benton. “Sales floors in the office may be empty, but through the use of conversation intelligence, managers can still walk the floor virtually and offer coaching and a helping hand when needed.”
Chorus records, transcribes, and analyzes business calls. Transcripts include time-stamped notes and a call summary with risk factors and upsell opportunities. The Chorus platform helps reps capture and analyze interactions from calls, meetings, and emails. Chorus looks for keywords and topics such as pricing, competitors, and next steps.
“We want to make sure each person says, ‘I was just watching the call, and here is where we left off,’ or ‘I noticed this theme in your conversation, so let’s get started there.’ We are putting the ‘R’ in customer relationship management. There is a lot with the ‘customer’ and ‘management’ aspects, but in terms of ‘relationship,’ that does not always make it back into the CRM, and we think it should.”
Chorus.AI CEO Jim Benton
“We are continuing to make sure we are understanding these interactions for teams and leadership to see what works, so they bring their best,” continued Benton. “You want to make sure you represent the best of your team, give feedback, coaching, have the right messaging and which interactions drive the best close rates–all the science behind what success looks like.”
The firm doubled its headcount to 100 and trebled its revenue in 2019. Chorus has over 200 customers, including GitLab, Zoom, Adobe, MongoDB, and Qualtrics. It is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Boston and Tel Aviv.
Correction: I originally transposed the digits on Chorus’ Total Funding. The correct value is $85.2 million.