Gong started life as conversation intelligence and found that senior revenue leaders heard that phrase and mentally filed it under sales enablement, which meant no meeting. The product could already do deal management, forecasting and prospecting, so the category name was undersized rather than wrong, and in 2019 they renamed the space revenue intelligence to match the buyer they wanted. Then they spent years making the term unavoidable: original data research, an evangelist role, a consistent point of view about opinion based decision making, and a website that taught the category before it sold the product. The sequence is the lesson, product capability first, then a name sized to the buyer, then relentless repetition.
3 hand-picked resources, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it Two marketers who actually built categories (revenue intelligence and customer success) compare notes on the iterations that came before the name that stuck. Full transcript on the page if you would rather skim.
On [Un]Churned, Gainsight by Josh Schachter with Udi Ledergor and Lauren Olerich 49 min
Open gainsight.com →Why we picked it Lochhead walks through frame it, name it, claim it, and is unusually direct about the better trap of competing on incremental product improvement. Good for hearing category design argued by the person who named it.
On Lenny's Podcast by Lenny Rachitsky 1 hr 20 min
Why we picked it The company's own account of why it moved from conversation intelligence to revenue intelligence, including the buyer problem that forced the rename. This is the primary source on the most copied category play of the last decade.
From Gong by Jonathan Costet 10 min read
Open gong.io →How category design reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Brand, web & content, our Starting Up track.
The same ground, over in Find your idea & build the brand, our D2C track.
