Helana Zhang

Big News 🎉 @Gong just dropped some MAJOR AI capabilities that deliver new levels of automation, deep customer insights, and standardized knowledge sharing across the entire revenue org. With Gong’s new capabilities, you can: ✨Create smoother collaboration workflows across teams ✨Make coaching more efficient and consistent  ✨Deploy ready-to-use Smart Trackers ✨Centralize process, systems, and data ✨Bring AI-powered context to your sellers   Game. Changer. Learn more about these exciting new capabilities here: https://lnkd.in/gE9Hu8N3

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I’ll keep this short and sweet. After 7.5 years, I say goodbye to Okta. 7 different roles spanning everything from Product Marketing to Demand Marketing and everything in between. $100M~ in ARR to $2B+. The creation and re-invention of multiple market categories. From just a few thousand customers to north of 20,000. Truly iconic, and I consider myself lucky to have been a part of it. Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest, it was a heck of a ride. As for what’s next, I’m excited to share that I’m starting my adventure as Chief Marketing Officer for Axonius. A few important considerations in choosing my next gig: (1) the opportunity to partner with fantastic founders in Dean Sysman Ofri Shur and Avidor Bartov who bring unparalleled expertise, integrity and intellectual curiosity. (2) a market opportunity that is massive, pervasive and untapped (CAASM) … and it’s just the beginning. (3) technology that customers love. Axonius delivers on all of this and more. The future is bright and I’m really excited to get started.

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Marketers: we should categorize self-reported attribution as "first recall." The human brain is fallible and memory is malleable. Prospects saw you dozens - hundreds of times and the first time a trusted colleague mentioned your name, it stuck. Or when your rep sent that cold email, your prospect [subconsciously] said "oh yeah I think I know them..." Emir Atli wrote about this today. SRA is another touchpoint to look at but is one of thousands along the journey. How much credence do you give to self-reported attribution?

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The Forrester Wave: Revenue Orchestration Platforms was published today and...drum roll 🥁...Gong was named a leader and received the highest score in the Current Offering category of any vendor assessed. My fav quote: 🔥 “Gong’s AI reveals unique buyer and seller insights to improve deal outcomes. One of the few companies founded with AI at its core, Gong has used its nine-year AI résumé to create transformative insights for revenue organizations.” 🔥 Congrats, Gongsters!

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Sharing RevOps co-op community best practices on something we all know is critical - designing territories to ensure the success of your sales force and, by extension, your company. The number of different strategies available make selecting the right one both challenging and critical. The team at RevOps Co-op delve deep into this topic 👇 https://gag.gl/Nm2xoO #RevOps #Data #DataQuality

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Value selling has been a hot topic at Accord lately. …so much so that I spoke about it at our company offsite in San Francisco a few weeks ago. 👀 Now, I am no expert here, but the overall goal for our offsite was to ensure that we had consistent knowledge and understanding of the topic company-wide. Why the shared knowledge on value selling? Most revenue leaders we talk to are looking for a way to operationalize their value selling motion to ensure consistency across revenue teams.... so everyone at Accord from sales, to marketing, and engineering, better be on the same page. While the internal dialogue was strong, we know that everyone always gets great value from learning from the experts (and our customers were asking for more sessions too). So we decided to bring back our Value Selling masterclass! Top leaders from RedHat, OneTrust, and Freshworks will join us on Sept 25th at 1pm ET to share their insights on how they’ve translated their value selling frameworks to the field. 💡 Whether you are a sales leader, rep, or even a marketer who wants to learn more about the topic, this session is sure to be 10/10. Sign up below, and if you can’t make it live, we’ll share the recording. https://hubs.la/Q02N57gL0

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I’m proud to share that ZoomInfo has been recognized as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for ABM Platforms. 🚀 Since launching ZoomInfo Marketing in 2022, we’ve come a long way. Momentum favors the bold and innovative, and here at ZoomInfo being innovative is a core value we don't take lightly. How did we go from a Niche Player in 2022 to a Leader in 2024? We listened to our customers. They wanted fast onboarding, comprehensive integrations, and a unified platform with the best B2B data. ZoomInfo Marketing delivers all that and then some. Our vision for ABM goes beyond accounts—it’s about knowing your buyers and delivering real-time, actionable signals to both marketing and sales teams. While historically ABM has focused on intent data, at ZI we knew that there were so many more valuable buying signals that marketers could harness. With so many more relevant signals and context, you’re now creating demand instead of just capturing demand. This is just the beginning. I’m excited for what’s next as we continue to advance in the ABM space and bring actual sales and marketing alignment a reality. This is what ZoomInfo customers experience when they use our ZoomInfo Marketing and Copilot solutions! A new era of AI for GTM teams is being ushered in, and it's awesome leading that charge. 💪 I have a LOT of thoughts on this topic, so I wrote a blog post. Check it out here: bit.ly/4hO56vd 

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Tired of losing hard-earned deals? Solve for Revenue Leak. In Clari's 2024 Revenue Leak Report, RevOps leaders said leak happens at every stage of the funnel. - Creating: Poor and slow upsell pipeline tracking - Converting: Unsure where pipeline is dropping off - Closing: Slipped deals Don’t let Revenue Leak drag down another quarter – or another year. Download the Revenue Leak Report for more: https://lnkd.in/eW-pEqVZ

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Is your annual planning aligned with your GTM strategy? This week in Customer Focus, we're diving into how companies can better align their annual planning process with GTM execution for 2025 success. 🌟 This week's newsletter focuses on what to consider when: ✅ Building a more cohesive plan that keeps your customer at the center ✅ Identifying opportunities to enhance cross-functional collaboration ✅ Turning high-level "GTM motions" into actionable GTM tactics Let’s make 2025 the year you feel most confident in growth plans truly resonating with your customers. Check it out and subscribe! 👇 #gtmstrategy #productmarketing #growth #startups

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Feeling inspired and recommitted after last week's GTM Partners Seattle roadshow. Much like reading your favorite book or watching your favorite movie, every time you play it back, you catch something new in the content. Some of my favorites nuggets I'll take with me into this week: "When you are unfocused, you pay an optionality tax" - Bryan Brown when discussing how focus will set you free in your GTM strategy. Whether it's your external offer to the market or your internal priorities, determine where your business can grow the most and skate there with speed and clarity. "Train AI to speak like your superhuman seasoned sellers" - Angela Frackowiak dropping unreal levels of knowledge and insight into how she, Branislava Jelicic and their team at Armis are using Regie.ai to scale the operational complexity of their inbound and outbound motions. "If you ask department questions, you get department answers" - the silo'd problem-solving across the GTM teams has to stop. Elevate your cruising altitude by using frameworks that don't pit functions against each other, but rather seek to draw out cross-functional solutions (I took a great framework pic at the event for anyone who wants it). H/T Outreach for letting us drink in your beautiful office view all morning

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When I first joined Frontify and the partnership team, I quickly got used to using Gong for all my external calls. The funny thing is, more often than not, the people I'd speak to would also get very excited about it and ask if they could get it too (mind you, this was BEFORE the big AI hype). So naturally, when Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈 invited marketers to talk to him and learn more about how to leverage Gong for marketing, I was excited to hear more. While talking to Udi, I was reminded again about what a great tool Gong is (yes, I work for a SaaS company, and I love software, so what) and how easy it is to leverage for direct feedback at scale from your customers and prospects. Thanks so much for the insightful session, Udi!

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This was quoted to be Google's response to people who believe that the quality of Google results has trended downhill. Does this does come across Google's attempt to bring "information seeking" back to itself over Perplexity or OpenAI or even #Claude? Look at Barry Schwartz's poll asking "Do you think the new Google March core and spam updates will reduce unhelpful content from showing up in the search results by 40%?" - 77% said "NO." Just like we saw through #ElonMusk's call to pause AI efforts, do you see through this "core, complex and contradictory" update by #Google #SEO #GoogleCoreUpdate #helpfulcontentupdate #SEOUpdates https://lnkd.in/eQXkf7sk

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Today ZoomInfo introduced our new GTM signal to help take the guesswork out of prospecting: WebSight Buyer ID Every day, high-value decision-makers visit your website — but who are they? That's where WebSight Buyer ID comes in. This new signal identifies decision-makers or previously engaged leads visiting high-intent web pages, delivering real-time alerts so you can act fast. Gone are the days of generic outreach. Now, you can focus on the right people at the right time, with tailored messaging that drives engagement and builds trust. Ready to learn more? Check out this blog post Jonathan Hinz, our VP of Product Marketing: bit.ly/3Bia4Ab

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For any PMM having a hard time nailing messaging… Facts - There’s no ‘Don Draper’ moment where inspiration will strike in the middle of a meeting. The good news is you have everything you need. 1. Look at your wins. Find the last 6 months of closed/won deals in your CRM. Find the patterns, and talk to the AEs if you need to. Better yet go talk to the customers themselves. Why did they buy? What made them pick you? 2. Once you have a good sample, use your judgement and distill out 3-5 ‘winning use cases’. These are the foundational proof points of why you’re differentiated. And they’re real 3. Then build the top and bottom. Top = what’s the one unifying value prop across the winning use cases. Bottom = what’s the product capabilities that support those use cases 4. Document this, turn it into your first call deck, and your website nav + core pages Refine this every 6 months. Sales will love it, and customers will actually believe you #productmarketing #messaging

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A lot of people have heard of "Wei Ji" Wei means crisis while Ji means opportunity. In the ancient Chinese philosophy, opportunities often arise from crisis. As I look across the GTM landscape, this is exactly what I think of. The "death of predictable revenue" is a great way to get eyeballs. However, most companies after they hit scale (>20mm or >50mm were doing something different, and predictable revenue was falling apart much before 2019. Does this mean I am negative or sour on GTM? Absolutely not. This environment will forge new winners, and demand operational excellence. No one playbook or blueprint can be replicated. This week: Will SDR Autonomous agents take over the SDR function? An anonymous (but highly followed Twitter account shares his observations on rolling out an genAI support agent, the upcoming bloody war in GTM. An interesting update on SFDC/Informatica and finally the Truth About Sales Training. Link in comments -

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demandDrive, the industry-leading integrated sales and marketing agency, is transforming their prospecting efforts with the help of ZoomInfo. 🤝 🏁 ☀ AJ Alonzo, Director of Marketing at demandDrive and ZoomInfo Champion, shares how ZoomInfo WebSights helps his team uncover insights about website visitors' behavior — allowing them to personalize outbound efforts and improve their prioritization processes. The result? Millions of dollars in ARR. Learn how demandDrive is turning page views into pipeline with ZoomInfo: bit.ly/4dgBN1G

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☁️ Salesforce's Shopping Index data shows that the consumer caution we saw in 2022 and 2023 will continue through 2024. #Commerce-wise, we're seeing YoY growth, it's just modest so far — 2% in Q1. That compares with 4% in Q1 2023. 📊 Here are a few #retail and #commerce trends suggested from the data: 🛒 Shoppers are saving their big spending moments until later in the year. A Salesforce sentiment survey conducted in April 2024 showed three-quarters of consumers waiting until #CyberWeek to make bigger purchases. 💰 Discounts remain important to shoppers, but they are also gravitating towards free shipping. 📈 The cost of targeting new customers is rising. 🔎 Check out more on these consumer shopping trends in MarTech: https://bit.ly/3VfDBAC

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In 2023, 61% of companies did not achieve their revenue targets. Clari surveyed 400+ revenue teams & professionals to find out why: - Hidden breakdowns in your ability to create, convert, and close new deals - Lack of visibility in forecasting capabilities - Bad, missing, and stale data AKA Revenue Leak. The good news: Revenue Leak doesn’t have to stay hidden. Now we’ve got insights, tools, and resources for you to spot and eliminate. Download the report to find out where you’re losing dollars and how to fix it: https://lnkd.in/gDWrxAKB 

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📽 Our latest show launch of The Marchitect on The Compete Network isn’t just cool (but it is that), it also connects directly to our GTM objectives at Klue, here’s how: 👇🏼 ✅ Aligns to two of our marketing objectives 👉 category leadership & increasing executive engagement. 👯 Builds an audience with a key persona 👉 executive engagement became more critical than ever last year (I’m sure you can relate). Building awareness and engagement among CMOs & VP PMMs helps to support many other programs across our mktg, sales and CS teams. 👩‍🎓 Connects to a core pillar of our marketing programs, Education 👉 Providing value through helpful education has been the most successful path to revenue for many years. Extending this to a more senior audience connects directly to a proven approach. 🧠 Big brains build brand affinity 👉 Rowan Noronha, Morgan J Ingram and the guests we’ve pulled together for this season are hands down some of the best minds in the game right now. Our strategy is to work with the best creators in the world of competing, and on that front, these two really bring the heat 🔥🔥🔥 If you want to maintain trust with your exec & board (and therefore your budget 💰 ), it’s critically important that your media development isn’t just for fun; but it connects to outcomes. When we’re looking at show investments, an idea needs to connect to one of the three purposes: a) growing our audience, b) converting that audience, c) educating that audience to develop more successful customers. Excited to get this series off the ground - tune in for our first live episode May 14! 🤩

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