*Reposted from the Pickle blog I wrote for our sales collateral when comparing Gong vs. Pickle*

Comparing Gong vs Pickle

Looking to learn about a Gong alternative? You’ve landed on the right page.

Currently, Gong is the conversation intelligence software market leader.

However, similar to how no company is the same. No conversation intelligence platform is exactly the same.

TL;DR Overview

Sales teams, particularly mid-market/SMBs with fast sales cycles, choose Pickle over Gong for a few reasons:

• It can be tough to find Gong revenue intelligence useful or even accurate. Sometimes your top-performing rep speaks +70% of the time in meetings, yet Gong data will suggest they’re a bad performer.

• Gong’s enterprise sales forecasts are really only relevant to longer sales cycles. Teams that run high-velocity sales processes (1-2 meeting closes) have to forecast outside of Gong’s templatized ‘likelihood to close’ reports.

• With evolving sales processes, pricing structures, competitor landscape, etc., it’s unrealistic to ‘clone your top performers.’

• Successfully implementing Gong can take weeks to onboard your sales team and start getting value from it.

• Gong is expensive. Teams with inexperienced reps or a few full-cycle sellers can't justify paying thousands per month ($30k annually avg.) to use 50% of the platform.

This is where Pickle excels:

• Helping high-velocity sales leaders ‘clone’ sales processes & training.

• Enabling reps to crush quota with their unique selling style.

• All at 50% of the cost to use 100% of Pickle & the ability to get started in an hour.

  
  

Want to see exactly how Pickle compares to Gong? Let's dive in.

How to Choose Between Gong vs Pickle

To help you evaluate & choose, here’s how we break each platform down:

• Ideal Use Case: The primary users of the platform. Who is it actually built for?

• App Experience: How easy is it to navigate the app? Can your grandma log in and quickly feel comfortable with the basics? Or are multiple onboarding courses required? If users get frustrated immediately, adoption will be low, leading to a wasted budget.

• Features: What can I do with the software? How is it solving my problem? If not, why do I need all the bells & whistles?

• Getting Started/Pricing: What does it take to get signed up? How much budget will it eat up? Will my team get its money's worth?

• Growth: What happens after my sales hire moves past onboarding? Will they use this app like seasoned pros? Do they collaborate with other teams?

Gong

Ideal Use Case

You don't need to look further than Gong's Super Bowl commercials to know who they target: Sales leaders at large enterprise companies.

They provide business executives with a clear picture across all revenue activities (except for marketing).

App Experience

The product is relatively easy to navigate after a few training sessions.

You're able to filter through a call database, account history (calls & emails), & training libraries.

It may not be 100% obvious how to utilize high-level features during the initial login, but you will pick it up after a while.

Some drawbacks (according to G2 reviews):

• The recording bot tends to join scheduled meetings late (if at all) & totally misses recording demos not scheduled on the calendar (on-the-spot demos).

• The transcript is not always accurate.

• Sales rep adoption can be low for an expensive tool.

• Search functionality can struggle to find exact results.

Features

Gong's feature set is broken into three areas:

• Deals & forecasting

• Team coaching

• Strategic initiatives

Deals & Forecasting:

See what deals are in play & at risk according to your CRM data & their machine-learning models.

Team Coaching:

Spot topic trends, review team member patterns, & provide insights & feedback.

Strategic Initiatives:

Similar to team coaching, understand what topics & trends lead to higher win rates.

Some drawbacks (according to G2 reviews):

• Revenue forecasting can be inaccurate at times.

• Smaller companies with faster sales cycles don't utilize all the bells & whistles to justify the cost.

• Ends up becoming an expensive Zoom transcription.

Getting started/pricing

Price

• Being enterprise-focused, you will have to dedicate a significant amount of budget & agree to rigid terms.

• Their rate ranges around $1,500 per seat/per year. Add the $5,000 annual platform subscription to get started. Not ideal for mid-market, SMBs, or startups.

Getting Started

• The platform is not a simple plug & play.

• You will need a few onboarding sessions to connect integrations & configure your account. Not to mention getting sales pros to actually use it.

‍Some drawbacks (according to G2 reviews):

• Customer success & support can be underwhelming if you're not a big client.

Growth

Gong is great for enterprise sales managers who rely on long sales cycle forecasting data.

However, most customers with seasoned sales pros tend to under-utilize the software because "they know how to sell."

This is a positioning reality considering Gong pushes their product as a high-level insight & coaching solution for massive sales organizations.

Pickle

Ideal Use Case

Pickle is built for Mid-Market, SMB, & startup sales leaders with high-velocity sales cycles & the Account Executives who run the Zoom meetings daily.

App Experience

Pickle is designed with simplicity in mind.

Too often, the software takes months to implement & adapt within any organization, let alone across every team.

Connect to Zoom & your CRM to Pickle in seconds. Pull in meetings & get value the same day you sign up.

Meetings are transcribed & analyzed in Pickle minutes after you end the Zoom. Re-live any 30-minute meeting in 2 minutes with ease.

Some drawbacks:

• Being a startup ourselves, some integrations & analytics are still on the roadmap.

Features

Pickle's features -- before, during, & after your meetings:

Before:

Prep for every conversation & never forget key talking points with Smart Templates.

During:

‍Focus on the meeting, not scribbling notes. Mark every key moment with a simple click with Smart Notes.

After:

‍Re-live from any Zoom instantly or days, weeks, months later. Push meeting notes to Salesforce & Hubspot. Clip & share key moments anywhere your team lives for coaching & training.

Spot topics & trends across every meeting, so you can keep a pulse on what is working & what isn't.

Some drawbacks:

• You won't have certain custom reporting functions

• Or the ability to forecast longer sales cycles in the pipeline.

Getting started/pricing

Some drawbacks:

• You won't have certain custom reporting functions

• Or the ability to forecast longer sales cycles in the pipeline.

Getting started/pricing

Price

• Software costs should be open & transparent. Check out our Pricing page for a clear cost breakdown of Pickle.

• High-level: teams have full access for $68/per user/per month. Or $816 per user annually

• There are no onboarding or platform costs like Gong.

• We also include Engagement licenses (people who just require recorded meeting access) free of charge.

• Software costs should be open & transparent. Check out our Pricing page for a clear cost breakdown of Pickle.

• High-level: teams have full access for $68/per user/per month. Or $816 per user annually

• There are no onboarding or platform costs like Gong.

• We also include Engagement licenses (people who just require recorded meeting access) free of charge.

Getting Started

• Pickle is designed to be simple, connect & go. With single licenses, connect to Zoom in a few clicks & pull in meetings in seconds.

• Teams will join a quick onboarding call with us to begin & they're off to the races after that.

Drawbacks:

• We lack a massive customer success team like our alternatives.

• But we average a 1-minute response time on our in-app chat with any questions you have. From there we can share the right help articles to solve any issue.

Growth

Pickle is built for Mid-Market, SMB, & startup sales leaders with high velocity sales cycles & the Account Executives who run the Zoom meetings daily.

Our mission is to be a resource small but mighty companies utilize every day & grow alongside your team.

Enabling your team to prepare better, meet better, & collaborate better.

Final Verdict

Gong is a powerful platform. There's a reason they've been market leaders in this fast-moving sector for years now. But companies have chosen Pickle over Gong recently. So how do you choose?

• If you're a large enterprise with a sizable sales tech budget looking to gain visibility into your pipeline: go with Gong.

• If you're a Mid-Market, SMB, or startup looking to maximize team productivity & every aspect of your sales cycle. While making it easy to re-live any meeting instantly without spending your entire budget...go with Pickle. See for yourself!