Staying flexible in an evolving revenue leadership game with Gong’s CRO Shane Evans

Dana Feldman: What do the world’s best CROs have in their playbooks? This is the place to find out. This is Reveal the Revenue Intelligence podcast. I’m your host, Dana Feldman. Hi, I’m Dana Feldman, and this is Reveal the Revenue Intelligence podcast. Each episode we’re focused on helping you build the ultimate CRO playbook. We promise to give you access to the most influential revenue leaders at the world’s top companies so you too can achieve your revenue goals.

And in this episode, I’m delivering on that promise with my guest Shane Evans. Shane is the CRO here at Gong, and I may be a little biased, but Gong is an amazing company to be a part of with a strong track record. As a CRO, Shane is passionate about growing high-performing teams within new markets. His passion coupled with his knowledge and expertise in the AI space makes him a great addition to our playbook.

Shane, welcome to the show, I’m thrilled to have you on. Before we get into the details, I thought it’d be smart maybe to back up and do more of a State of the Union for our listeners as we start this new chapter of Reveal. So Shane, I’m curious as we kick off, how would you describe the state of the market right now?

Shane Evans: First of all, Dana, super excited to be here with you, thank you for having me. I’m thrilled that you’re going to have an opportunity to help leaders like myself understand what we need to be doing to get the most value and have the biggest impact across the different teams and companies that we’re leading.

So looking forward to the future of how this is going to unfold. As far as your question on the current state of the market, it’s a super interesting time right now. We look at the economic situation, markets are super uncertain. The rules of the game have totally changed, what used to be growth at all costs has really shifted to much more efficiency. Companies are looking for organizations that are using their resources in the most efficient way possible, which leads to all sorts of different behavior around buying, around hiring. On top of that isn’t as much opportunity out there, you see a lot of situations where competitive markets have shifted and it seems like every company is claiming or suggesting that they do what other companies do. And it’s created a lot of confusion and a lot of shifting around. And so not only are the rules of the game change, but there’s a lot of shifts in how teams are operating. And so I would describe it as a lot of uncertainty, a lot of ambiguity, that’s one way to look at it.

Our founder and CEO, Amit Gong gave some great advice to us recently where he said, “Regardless of the uncertainty, it’s an amazing time to go and create your own destiny.” And I thought that was just such great leadership and a great comment from him for our team that despite all the ambiguity, some of the best companies are forged when it is uncertain. And so I think it really depends on your outlook of what you can do regardless of market, it’s what’s your team doing and how are you operating? And so I think that’s the current state that a lot of us find ourselves in, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of ambiguity, but a lot of opportunity at the same time.

Dana Feldman: I think what you’re saying is really resonating, especially as you’ve come into Gong and brought a lot of those themes to us. I’m curious when you think through just all the shift that has happened in the market, the investors really switching from where we had all the resources we could ever want to really an efficiency mindset. Where do you, as the CRO, where have you focused first and foremost as you’ve come into Gong around those themes?

Shane Evans: I’ll put this into three categories. My first focus is around customers, and it sounds a little bit cliche even as I say that, but spending a lot of time talking to and getting to know our customers, what are they seeing and experiencing firsthand? What are the concerns that they have? The next I go to our people. Dana, you and I talk about this a lot, people are our most valuable asset as an organization, and we’re very proud of the team that has been constructed here. I’ve been grafted in and been adopted by the company, which has been an incredible experience, but the culture here that was created by our people is incredible.

And so the second area that I focus on is making sure that we have a very strong culture, a very healthy environment where people can do their best work. And that really is every single hire that we make is either contributing or taking away from that culture. And so the second big area is really around people and around talent.

And then the third area is around execution. I like to call it operating rhythm, but it’s how we’re working with one another, how we’re interacting and engaging across different teams and making sure that we are being thoughtful about not over-complexifying or over-engineering any of our processes, but we’re really trying to make it as easy as possible for our teams and for our customers together to do great work. Those are the three areas that I’ve been focused in.

Dana Feldman: There was something that you didn’t say but that I hear from you a lot is this concept of a builder mentality, and you didn’t just touch on that now, but I think it’d be really interesting for the listeners to learn a little bit more about that mindset that you really preach quite a bit and live as well.

Shane Evans: Yeah, it’s funny you pick up on that, so I’ll put that into that second category around people. And by the way, don’t get too comfortable because I could easily flip this back on you, you know every bit of this stuff as much as I do. So I might throw the baton back your way if we’re not careful. They did give you a fancy microphone for this-

Dana Feldman: They did.

Shane Evans: …so we might need to make sure that-

Dana Feldman: It is fancy.

Shane Evans: When we talk about talent, one of the things I found, so my passion has been in category creation companies where you come into a company and the category really isn’t defined or created yet and you have an opportunity to go shape and mold and create what that’s going to look like. And you have an opportunity to teach businesses and to teach people a whole new way of doing business. And so one of the challenges in those environments is when you show up to work in one of these companies, a lot of the systems, the processes, all of the infrastructure that you’re going to need, it doesn’t exist. And so when you hire talent, there’s a lot of people that are so experienced and yet they’ve worked in environments where it’s very mature and so they have a lot of the process figured out, they have a lot of the supporting teams that help them be successful. And when you’re working in an early-stage company and you’re creating a new category, a lot of that doesn’t exist. And so when you think about talent, you and

I have talked about this a lot, there’s really three areas that I like to focus in on. And the first one is that builder mentality, are you an entrepreneur? Do you have the ability to think creatively about complex problems you’re trying to solve? And then have the mindset that I own this, I’m the builder, I’m the creator, I’m the one that has to go and figure out how it’s going to happen.

The second thing that we talk about a lot around talent is curiosity. Do you ask lots of questions? Do you have a growth mindset? Are you constantly pushing on that why, why, why? Or what could we be doing differently?

And then the last one is really the competitive mindset, the motor. Are you consistently driven to be at the top of the leaderboard? Are you someone who wants to be a winner? Are you a champion? And you get that chemistry, that DNA from an individual, it doesn’t matter where you put them in the organization, it could be customer success, it could be sales, it could be partnerships, heck, you could put them in product and engineering, they’re going to figure out a way to make it happen. And so not every candidate’s going to spike in all those areas, but those are the three big building blocks that I’ve seen in really top-performing folks. And so you’re trying to build a high-performing team.

You got to make sure that the talent that you’re bringing in exudes some of those characteristics in order for them to be successful when you’re in those early phases, the early innings when you’re trying to figure stuff out, that type of DNA can really carry the day.

Dana Feldman: I love that. You have taught me a lot around that and I think we are living it here at Gong too as we think about that talent bucket. So shifting us a little bit back to State of the Union, I’d love to get more of your viewpoint, you mentioned around the market dynamics and increasing competition. What initiatives are you implementing to maintain and grow our market share here at Gong?

Shane Evans: From a growth perspective, the exciting part about being in a category-creating company is that there’s always a variety of areas where you can expand. We think about new geographic markets to explore, so international expansion is something we continually monitor. Additionally, there are numerous vertical use cases. Many people think of Gong in the traditional sense of being for sellers, yet we’re seeing new use cases emerge across various industries.

When you consider competition and how organizations use conversational intelligence, it becomes clear that capturing interactions and extracting key themes or topics is invaluable. For instance, you can analyze top performers and understand what makes the top 10% excel compared to others. By identifying specific motions and attributes, you can help move people up the performance continuum. On the topic of competition, one of Gong’s capabilities I hadn’t used before joining is the feature of a smart tracker.

For those unfamiliar with this feature, you can configure a smart tracker to detect specific themes, words, categories, or concepts being discussed. Whether it’s monitoring a particular competitor or understanding how a solution is positioned, the tracker allows you to see real-time reactions from customers. With these smart trackers, I receive real-time notifications when relevant conversations occur. This enables me to quickly debrief and understand what’s happening across the team, whether it’s an individual contributor or leadership.

What’s particularly beneficial is the ability to aggregate all of this information to discern the main themes people are discussing. This provides us with the agility to pivot quickly. In my earlier career, pivoting once a year was typically enough. We’d assess the year-end results and make necessary adjustments. However, this timeline has compressed significantly. Now, we are making adjustments on a monthly or even biweekly basis, responding to dynamic shifts in the competitive landscape.

It’s akin to watching game tape from your favorite sport, analyzing it, and making tactical changes before the next game. Competition presents an opportunity if you can obtain real-time insights and swiftly pivot as needed. Using tools designed for people like us allows us to do our jobs much more effectively. The real-time data we gather isn’t diluted or biased, unlike feedback that may only highlight the positives while ignoring the challenges or threats we face.

This transparency and immediacy offer an unprecedented ability to act on information. For those who enjoy competition and playing the game, there’s never been a better time to be involved in growth and category creation. Regardless of the market you’re in, these principles are highly applicable.

Dana Feldman: I think too, and I don’t know if you’ve realized this either, but it’s been really fascinating to watch by using the tool and the technologies you’re talking about how our forecasting calls have shifted from what we’ve all known to generally being pretty intense inspection calls in past lives and in your weekly forecast call with your senior leadership team, we are able to use that time to pick up the trends, to pick up gaps and then solution together or ideate together or move the ball forward for the entire company.

So what you said really does resonate with me ’cause I see how we’re evolving what typically has been a very different use of that time in past lives probably for you and I. I just mentioned our forecast call, but I would love to know how are you thinking about optimizing revenue forecasting and even resource allocation just to make sure that we have that consistent revenue growth?

Shane Evans: That’s a really good question, and I want to emphasize the importance of staying open to asking ourselves, “What are we missing?” and avoiding rigidity. I’ve worked with a lot of sales leaders, both great and not so great, and one common issue is that some people become stuck in their ways, relying on what they’ve always known or done. That mindset won’t be effective in the future, especially in markets that are evolving rapidly.

I want to share two key thoughts around revenue forecasting. First, this is a constantly changing and iterative process. It’s crucial that we remain curious and flexible, ensuring we’re not missing out on opportunities to improve. When we talk about cadences and forecasting—or any reoccurring meeting—it connects back to both the hierarchical structure and people understanding their roles and responsibilities within that structure.

In my experience working with different companies and talking to current customers and prospects, I’ve found that every organization is set up differently, and many are siloed. For example, some companies have operations teams for marketing, sales, success, and FP&A. What often happens is that each team brings its own data to meetings, leading to a “data war” where everyone believes their data is correct, and this stifles healthy, aligned discussions about how to go to market.

As we consider any business process—whether it’s forecasting or something else—we need to actively break down these silos. A solution could be having a single operations team that spans the entire company, providing one source of truth. This team should work across all functions, from FP&A to marketing, ensuring everyone is pulling from the same data set and looking at consistent charts and metrics across the organization.

The second key point is about roles and responsibilities. As companies scale, they often start adding roles and titles without clearly defining what those positions entail in terms of responsibilities or tasks. This leads to overlap and confusion. If you peel back the layers of any organization, you’ll likely find redundancy, where people are unsure of their responsibilities and how their work fits into the larger structure.

The result is that many teams are busy, but not necessarily connected or in sync with one another. You end up with different parts of the organization functioning like separate cogs that don’t engage with each other. To address this, we need to ensure we have the right organizational structure that spans the entire company and that each individual understands their specific role within it.

If you’re in a fast-growing company, you’ll likely need to reassess and redefine this structure every 12 to 18 months. It’s important to be intentional about this process, especially when optimizing for efficiency. Business isn’t inherently complex, but it does take time to break down into simpler pieces and provide people with perspective on how they should be doing their jobs.

Once people understand their roles and responsibilities, something remarkable happens: teams begin to move in harmony. It’s like getting people in a boat to row in sync. When teams hit that rhythm and synergy, it’s incredible to see what they can achieve together.

Dana Feldman: Yeah, I agree. I mean we just went through that here at Gong, and I think what was interesting to observe from my viewpoint was maybe what stops a lot of organizations from taking that step or defining clearly those roles is it’s like a certain load of work you’ve got to do to get there. And maybe some are thinking, gosh, this is going to create a lot of chaos or questions or things amongst the team, but we had the exact opposite, which was almost like a sigh of relief that everyone then knew their exact role and responsibility.

And so to your point, that synergy is going so much faster than probably I would’ve even guessed, and everyone is really appreciative of the clarity, so I love that. I’d love for our listeners to get maybe some more tactical insights from you specifically as it relates to AI, it’s everyone’s favorite topic, and so it’s top of mind for everyone and certainly for our listeners. So how are CROs viewing the role of AI for their organizations?

Shane Evans: That’s a great question, and it’s one that many CEOs are trying to figure out. When they’re in front of their board or, for public companies, providing updates to the market, one of the most common questions they face is: “How are you using AI in your business to become more efficient and effective?” Many of us are starting to feel the exhaustion from this question, especially when we don’t have something tangible and simple to point to.

I want to take a quick tangent here to explain why I’m so excited about Gong. The key lies in the contextual data we help companies capture, which is essential in the context of AI. There’s no shortage of data in today’s systems—plenty of structured and unstructured data to pull from. The challenge, though, is that much of the unstructured data we have access to is biased. For example, data like sellers updating notes or putting in next steps for an account record, or information from hiring systems, is often shaped by the perceptions and experiences of the person inputting it. It reflects what they want others to see or how they interpret the situation.

When it comes to AI, the models we create and rely on are only as good as the accuracy and completeness of the data they draw from. This is why, when I first met the founders of Gong, I got excited about the potential. I saw where AI was heading and recognized that most of the valuable information we capture today comes from direct interactions—whether it’s through emails, phone calls, or meetings like this one. Some people even use their phones to record in-person interactions, capturing all the contextual details.

As we think about AI, we need to be mindful of two things. First, we need to focus on the richness of the data we are pulling from. Second, we need the ability to interpret that data. Many organizations claim they’re capturing information, but do they have the language models necessary to interpret it? Can they understand not just the words being spoken, but the sentiment behind them? Is the conversation moving towards collaboration, or is it drifting away? Sometimes, the words alone don’t capture the full picture, and this is where AI plays a critical role, allowing us to extract meaningful insights.

Now, when it comes to those insights, the richness of the data significantly impacts the reliability of the insights we receive. For instance, as a CRO, my ability to predict whether a deal will close depends on how rich and complete the data is. AI can help me identify where I’m exposed, where I need to coach my team, and where potential gaps might exist. This makes us more targeted and surgical in our approach, automatically identifying deficiencies.

In the future, AI should become so advanced that I won’t need to log into systems to figure out what I should be working on. Instead, AI will prompt me—”Hey Shane, here are the areas where you can have the most impact.” That’s the power of a self-learning, self-prescribing system. And we’re already there, as long as we have the right data to feed these models, making our lives easier.

This can start with something as simple as a follow-up email after an interaction and extend to no longer needing to manually update account records on things like the stage of an opportunity or the likelihood of closing. AI can also help pinpoint where we are most exposed in a deal. This is where the real excitement begins for me, because it means we can be much more guided and intuitive in our interactions, allowing us to focus on what truly matters instead of spending time piecing together enough context to be helpful.

AI has already made significant strides, though many organizations have yet to realize its full potential. But we’re getting to a point where AI won’t just be about productivity and predictability—it will drive highly targeted, focused growth based on the insights we’re getting from these systems.

Dana Feldman: I always think about it that it’s interesting as a CRO and those of us that are in revenue roles, we’ve been carrying a tremendous amount of responsibility on our shoulders to be bringing revenue into the company, but we’ve been pretty blind up until AI came about to really understand what is going on from these interactions in our business. And then we’ve been spending or asking our teams to spend a lot of time, which to your point earlier in this discussion around driving efficiencies and productivity, we’ve been asking them to spend time on trying to give us those answers. And so as a CRO, I think many haven’t yet understood where AI plays in their world, but I think a lot of what you’ve touched on is around how do or how do you as a CRO finally get that insight visibility and the non-opinionated pieces about your business ’cause it’s there to capture it all, so I love what you were talking about there with some of those examples.

I’m curious as a CRO as well, do you have a favorite example? I know of one that you did with my team and I, but do you have a favorite example of where you used AI or AI surfaced something to you in a deal with a team, helped you ideate something, anything just pop out to you that’s your favorite?

Shane Evans: Well, here’s what I’ll tell you, what’s been fun for me, and I want you to talk about the experience that we had together ’cause that was really cool. I was not prepped for that meeting, we were going to spend a lot of time just getting me up to speed, and we had a really cool interaction with you and your team, and it was my first exposure to this feature that we have in Gong now. Before we get to that, what I will say that has made my job really fun the last six to nine months is that it’s almost daily that I’m having the opportunity to have a new insight pop up, and it’s about me being proactive and understanding how to use tools to actually go and extract insights out of the data. And so this is going to go back to this mentality of being a builder, being curious, being very driven. It’s up to us as revenue stakeholders to continue to press the envelope on what we could or should be doing, how we can use tooling to make our lives easier and to make it more predictable. And so there’s things that are happening every day that are starting to give me more confidence in where we’re going.

I’m talking about just our business in general, and that’s what gets me excited and making it fun right now. But why don’t you tell the team here what happened, ’cause I think you had a different experience based on that call, I don’t think you knew what I was doing behind the scenes as we were going through a deal review. And I think this is a good example of where AI really unexpectedly helped both of us get where we needed to go in a much shorter period of time.

Dana Feldman: We were in a deal review meeting for a customer that had been with us for a couple of years. You and I, timeline-wise, we’re both pretty new to the role and the account. And so as we were talking through it with the rep, you had asked, “What are the goals of this company and what are their greatest challenges?” And I didn’t know at the time, I was pretty new to it. And so you went into the Ask Me Anything in Gong and asked the question, what are the top goals? What are their greatest challenges?

And Gong spit back to us… And this is from years of them being a client with us, so it analyzed all the interactions and it spit back to us what their challenges and what their goals were. And that deal review really changed because typically the time would have been spent eking out those answers from the rep and instead the AI had them right there. And then you and I were able to immediately go into strategizing, coaching, ideating, all of that with the rep. And what is really near and dear to my heart out of all of that is yes, you and I could probably look at it as how cool is it as leaders, we got that insight, but what I often think about as a leader is how much better was that experience for the rep in the meeting? Did we use a better use of their time? And most importantly, did we add value to the rep? And we did because we got to the actual data we needed to be able to actually strategize. That was my experience with it.

Shane Evans: I’ll add to what I experienced on my end, and I want to clarify—this isn’t meant to be a sales pitch for Gong. Both you and I work at the company, so naturally, we talk about it a lot, and sometimes we may go a bit too far. But regardless of the platform or tool you’re using, there’s always an opportunity to figure out how to leverage it more fully.

On that day, I was heading into a deal review, and the team had spent about four to six hours preparing documentation. With my busy schedule, I hadn’t been able to review everything, which made me feel terrible. The team took the time to put everything together, and I hadn’t given it the respect it deserved by going through it all—that’s on me. However, we had this new feature, “Ask Me Anything” (AMA), where you can type in any question about a deal and it provides an answer in seconds.

I remember typing, “What are the goals and objectives of this company?” and within moments, it gave me the answer. When I asked the rep, he had about 60% of the answer right. Then I followed up with, “What about this?” and he responded, “Oh, that’s a good point, that’s actually the higher priority.” I wouldn’t have known to ask that if the tool hadn’t guided me, but suddenly, the rep’s ears perked up, and I think even yours did too. It was like, “Wait, how is he knowing where to dig in?”

The next question I asked was, “Where are we at risk on this deal? What’s going to get in the way?” It immediately gave me two or three areas of concern. What I remember is that these weren’t areas the rep wanted to focus on, likely because he felt exposed about not being in a better position on those points. But we ended up having this amazing call. I remember you called me afterward and asked, “What just happened? How did you know to go there?” And I told you, “Hey, I used the AMA feature, and it guided me to the right focus areas and questions.”

What’s fascinating is that this happened through unprompted use of the technology. We’re not far from a point where I could join a call, and the system would say, “Manager is joining the call. Manager, here’s where you should focus, and these are the questions you should be asking.” Teams would no longer have to spend hours preparing information. What’s been really fun for me is that I can simply ask questions like, “Who’s the champion on this account?” or “Who’s the economic buyer?” and it will sift through all the contextual interactions and give me the insights I need—where to focus, where to help, and where to lean in.

I think this is a great example of how AI, in real time, is enhancing the richness and strategic value of discussions. It moves conversations away from feeling like an inspection, where people are just showing up to do the work, and toward something more engaging. It’s become more fun for me in these interactions because it feels like we’re genuinely helping each other, rather than checking up on one another.

Dana Feldman: Agreed. No, it was a really fun moment for us in that deal review. Okay, so Shane, before we wrap our conversation, I’d love for you to answer one last question as succinctly as possible. As a CRO, what is your unfiltered hot take on something you’re seeing in revenue teams right now?

Shane Evans: Here’s the hot take, and I think it’s a theme that we’ve been talking through throughout this discussion, in the next 18 to 24 months, I believe that we are no longer going to have to, as revenue professionals… And hopefully everyone puts themselves in that category, you could be the CEO of a company, you could be the chief product officer, everyone’s responsible for growth and everyone should be having conversations and interactions with customers. But I think that we are going to see an environment where we no longer have to capture any notes, any follow-up activities, we don’t have to go spend time updating records on new stages, next steps that are going to occur. All the interactions will be captured and it will all flow directly into whatever system you want to use. And then we’ll get guidance on here’s what we need to do next, or here’s the next step that we should take. And I think it’s going to allow us to then focus truly on having meaningful interactions with one another, helping one another make good decisions, pushing and challenging each other, as opposed to feeling like we have to be stuck in this process of, as a seller, trying to rip a prospect through a funnel or through stages, and we can actually much more intuitively help each other get to outcomes and have much greater business impact. And I really believe it’s going to totally change the way that selling is done. The other hot take I’ll have, ’cause you asked for one, the second one I would give you-

Dana Feldman: Go.

Shane Evans: Is there’s all this talk about, well, AI is going to replace people and we’ll no longer need sellers, we’ll no longer need support staff. And you’re hearing about this already where companies are using AI to handle support questions as they come up. The reality of it is if our success teams are orchestrated the right interactions, it’s not about answering tickets, it’s about helping to educate folks on what they could be doing differently, what other companies are doing differently. It’s about creating those links and those relationships so we can really have more quality interactions to drive to those outcomes that we’re after. And so it has me incredibly optimistic and excited about the future. We get to redefine how growth is going to happen in the future. Selfishly, I think we’re right at the heart of it, we’re right in the middle of everything, which is incredibly exciting.

Dana Feldman: I love that. I mean, I don’t know if there is a sales professional out there that would not give a two hands up, hallelujah for taking away all the manual process and things that we’ve been asked to do forever and a day, so I love this. Thank you Shane, for allowing us to take the time and have this conversation.

Shane Evans: Thank you for having me, really appreciate the discussion. You already know that I think you’re incredible, an absolute rockstar. I love working with you. I’m so excited for you to be able to do this podcast with all sorts of revenue professionals to help bring the most modern learning and ideas back, and I’m excited I will not miss an episode going forward. So thanks for having me and super excited to watch this unfold as you take the baton and run with it, so best of luck.

Dana Feldman: Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. Follow Gong on LinkedIn for our tactical takeaways from this conversation, including the best plays to add to your playbook. For more revenue leadership insights, check out Gong.io/theedge. And be sure to follow the show to never miss an episode.