Gong's Amit Bendov on Powering Your Company Brain

**Amit Bendov** (0:02)
I personally have not logged in to a CRM in years. All I need to do is like, hey, what's the status of Zapier right now? And it tells me everything.

**Wade Foster** (0:24)
My guest today is Amit Bendov. He is the co-founder and CEO of Gong. Now, when Amit started Gong, he bet on an idea that a lot of people thought was backwards. He said, the truth about your deal is not in the CRM, it's in the actual conversation. And he has built a billion dollar company proving this. Now, Gong today is one of the most AI native companies in the world, but Amit, he's caution on the hype. There's a lot of power, you should use AI a ton, but should you use it everywhere? Should you use AISDRs? Should you cut headcount? Find out on the show. His whole argument is AI is making capacity cheap, but judgment, that's where the magic is. Amit, welcome to the show.
One thing I am fascinated to start with is, you have always said that the CRM is a lie.
And I think that's, a lot of folks are starting to realize that, but you realized that in 2015

**Amit Bendov** (1:21)
Well, I didn't say it's a lie. That's a bit harsh. I said that it's not the source of truth for like what's happening with customers. That's like, so there are things that are true in CRM, like who bought from you or your customers are, what they're paying you. That is all true. So it's not a lie. But the interesting question, and I was asking like, well, why are we losing like so many deals? Like, you know, every company's conversion is like one out of five deals or one of 10, whatever it is, right? What happens with another five? And why are like usually like half the salespeople don't make their numbers? Are they like, is it like them? Is it us or training? And the answers were not the CRM. So I said, like, people are seeing it as a source of truth. So it's, I think more accurately, it's a source of a truth. But CRM depends on people telling it what happened.
And they don't do it, right? Because there's not enough time, and they don't always want to do it, and everybody hates doing it. So the idea was, can we retrieve that information from elsewhere, taking people out of the equation? That seemed crazy. Like, when we announced Gong in, like, 2016, I said, this is, like, the biggest invention since the introduction of CRM 20 years ago. And everybody said, like, oh, yeah, right, like, there's another delusional founder. But now this doesn't seem crazy, right? People see that the majority of the information does not exist in the CRM.

**Wade Foster** (2:50)
Yeah, I mean, it's been fascinating to watch my own transformation in using these tools, where, you know, I rely just as much, if not more, on the Gong transcript than I do the CRM.

**Amit Bendov** (3:06)
Yeah, I personally have not logged into a CRM, like, in years. All I need to do is, like, hey, what's the status of, like, Zapier right now? And it tells me everything.
Obviously, you talk about the transcript, but the emails, all the interaction with the account, everything that's happening, like, it's a much richer data set.

**Wade Foster** (3:30)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you say, hey, I have not logged into the CRM. Same here. I would say my usage of the CRM has gone through the roof, though, in the last, you know, 12 to 24 months. Like, I'm using it more than I ever have, even though I've not actually touched it. Right.
Is that a trend you're seeing consistently across your customer base? I would have to think so.

**Amit Bendov** (3:52)
Absolutely.
Even Salesforce, I mean, very smart. They embrace it rather than fight it. They said, okay, we're going full headless, that everybody wants to use it with other systems. Be my guest. And that's a great opportunity for the vendor. So this is still CRM is a good source of data and will be around for a while. They're not going away, but the way that people use them is completely different and much more powerful.

**Wade Foster** (4:21)
Now, what are the workflows that you're seeing from your most progressive customer base? What is the things that you want to shake the long tail of folks and be like, you got to get on this, you have to do it this way?

**Amit Bendov** (4:33)
Well, what we're seeing, and that's a good thing, it's not a bad, but people look at the personal habits right now, okay, we're going to automate meeting prep and like, here's my agenda, that's all good. But the powerful things is what, and this is what Gong has always been about, is to get the insights on a global scale, right? To understand, okay, what are we doing right? And what could we be doing better?