The AI OS for Revenue Teams — Fireside Chat with Amit Bendov & Seth Marrs

Julia Nimchinski:
Awesome. Thank you to all our esteemed panelists, and we are for a tear. Seth Mars, Amit Bendoff. You don’t need no introductions, but I’ll be brief. Seth Mars, Chief Strategy Officer at Sendler, Leading Analyst from Forrester. When he talks, I listen, like thousands of others, and and yeah, Amit Bendoff, CEO and co-founder of Gong. Super excited for this panel. One question, and Seth, the stage is yours. one top GTM AI prediction for 2026. Both of you.
SethMarrs:
Amit, I’ll let you go first. Where do you want me to go?
Amit Bendov:
You go first, Seth.
SethMarrs:
Okay. I’m gonna stick with the one I had. I think this is the year of, of effectiveness over efficiency. Like, efficiency settles, and then effectiveness comes to the forefront.
Amit Bendov:
Yeah, I think this is, the year we’re starting to… I agree with Seth, by the way, it’s, like, a big focus for us, but also, I would add, like, we start to see, like, more something that looks like an autonomous system. That, that runs operations.
Julia Nimchinski:
Love it. Seth, take it away.
SethMarrs:
All right. Okay, I’ve been… I’ve been waiting on this ever since I heard about it. This is… I mean, you and I have known each other for, I think it’s 5 years now. I’ve been kind of along… in a different type of way, like, along this journey, because… conversation intelligence that started with, now revenue orchestration, all this stuff, so this is… this has been good. So I’m gonna jump in. First question for you, so… You started your career as a trainer at Kittum. So, where you were an exam… you did exam… I’m trying to imagine a world with me training me on exam prep… preparation, so… How did that… tell us a little bit about that, and kind of, did it have any impact on… because there’s a lot to do with, like, the training side, and how you’d use conversations, like… Did it have any impact on that?
Amit Bendov:
kind of. Well, I mean, that, that, you reminded me of that. I almost forgot. So, I was, like, a poor, penniless computer science student, like, back in the days, and I had a job as a cashier at a parking garage. In a basement. And then, like, a friend told me, oh, I’m doing this, like, training jobs, preparing people for, like, SATs, right, kind of things, and which I liked, you know, and so this is kind of cool. So I was, you know. as a cashier, I was working minimum wage, right? And this was, like, paying, like, higher, and I was working, like. 3 hours a week, so it’s pretty cool, and they work with very smart people, and doing puzzles all day. That… I don’t think that had, like, a lot of impact, but in the summer, when people were not studying, I was doing cold calling. Like, I was doing, like, the same company I was calling, education program. And if you want a hard sell, call on Schoolmaster, try to sell them something and improve, like, people’s brain, penniless people that, vague ideas. That was, that was a pretty good experience. So I did, like, I was an SDR, like, back in the days.
SethMarrs:
Oh, awesome. It’s the origin story. The origin story.
Amit Bendov:
Yeah.
SethMarrs:
So let’s… I’m gonna fast-forward a little bit. So I think it was 2021. You guys did an event at the Chase Arena, where the… where the Golden State Warriors won. It was really cool the way you had it set up. You had, like, half the arena, then afterwards everyone could go and play basketball on the… on the court. And I remember sitting in the stands, like, watching it, and you had someone on stage, and they were talking. They’re like, hey, you know, I use Gong, I love Gong, and I listen to calls on the way to work, and my heart just sunk. Because as an analyst, I was covering conversation intelligence. fledgling category, and I saw all the features you had, and me, I’m trying… I want more vendors to level it up, to make the category really special, so I was waiting for… like, something special to come out of it, where you can talk about all the other cool features you had nobody else had to try to spur the market forward. And, like, no one else probably noticed it, but for me, it was like, oh, I wish we could see more. But you’ve kind of, like, since then, like, you go through that, and you seem to have really embraced what you’re different at. Like, the you being… Gong being different has become that advantage, and you’ve… I’ve watched it over the years just become more and more pronounced. Even in your product releases, when you release a product. either enablement, forecasting, or cadences, you don’t release it as a Me Too, you release it, and your focus isn’t even really on the base, it’s on, like, here’s these cool things that we can do nobody else can. Can you talk us through that journey around, like, and how you think about those things when you’re releasing these and trying to bring these products to market? Because I’ve seen the evolution over time.
Amit Bendov:
Very interesting. You know, Gong was never about, like, the calls, or listening to calls, or recording calls. It was about the data. It was about the data. So I actually, like, personally, and I’m an undi… I suspect I’m an undiagnosed ADD, so I hate listening, right? Like, everything needs to be, like, in 30 seconds, right?
SethMarrs:
At my previous company, before Gong, we were recording all calls, but I just didn’t want to listen. It was just, tell me the data, like, what’s going on, what’s trending, why are we losing deals, why are some people winning?
Amit Bendov:
And the recording we kind of had to do, because there’s no other way to, or no better way to capture the information, but we didn’t even, like, plan a feature to let people listen to calls. We just wanted to show the executives some dashboards with insights. But we saw, yeah, people really love it, so we started, like, developing as… you know, we capture the data, that is the foundation, and people enjoy, and they use it and prepare for meetings, and now they do a lot of other things. But that was all the… the vision for Gong was an autonomous system. That runs the revenue, operations. We realized that CRM does not have enough data. It tracks customers, but not the revenue, not what’s happening with the interaction, and there’s, like, a way better, data source in conversations, in emails, in calls, in videos, and if we could use AI to… and that was, like, in 2015.
SethMarrs:
Oh, not today’s AI.
Amit Bendov:
machine learning, predictive models, if we could capture all this data and turn it into both insights and actions, we’re onto something good. So that was the idea. That’s why we… we did not move on. This is, like, so fundamental, and Gong’s, strengths is in the data that we get. We get whatever data we can get from CRM, you know, who the customers, their accounts, then a lot of other things, right? And then now we, add, like, third-party data and data from the internet. And the data today, people understand this is the context for AI. Without data, there is no AI, right? You can have the best models. So… and that gives us the advantage. If you do forecasting, it’s not based on just what people’s sentiment is, it’s what customers actually say or don’t say, right? If you do engagement, it’s how customers respond. If you do enablement, it’s based on real customer conversation, not hypothetical product marketing, scenarios, so… That’s the real strength, and that’s why we’re, you know, we… We’re double… doubling down on everything.
SethMarrs:
Yeah, and it’s interesting to see, because it is strange, like, you constantly find these things, and it kind of… it leads me to another topic around this. Why can’t anybody else figure that out? So, I’ll give you an example. When you talk to different vendors, when I was… when I would talk around… when conversation intelligence, and it was conversation intelligence forecasting and, like, sales cadences were around, they were kind of in those buckets. And I’d talk to vendors around conversation intelligence, like, oh, that’s commodit… call recording is commoditized, and it’s not really important. And then you go into, like, ChatGPT comes out, and everyone’s like, oh, that’s the end of Gong, because, you know, AI’s just gonna do all that stuff for them. So, meanwhile, you guys are plugging along, saying, yeah, please think that, and here’s feature X, here’s feature Y, here’s… why can’t anyone else… why do companies Instead of trying to create something valuable through this. just trying to downplay it as being something valuable. I think we’re at the point now where we all know this is some… like, being able to derive insights from unstructured conversations is where it’s at. How… you’ve had that clear path through, why can nobody else figure that part out? Or why do they fight it? Is it because it’s too hard? Or is it… and they want to downplay it? Or is it just because they truly don’t think it’s important? Like…
Amit Bendov:
It’s, well, I don’t know, it’s psychology, it’s sometimes called, like, denial, right? That, you know, you downplay something because you don’t think. It’s like, oh, yeah, sure. It’s so, it’s very deceptive, right? Because it seems easy, right? Okay, hey, I could, probably, like, you know, crank up, like, a call recorder, you know, two people in a garage for those two days. Okay, that’s, like, one thing. Yeah, you can record calls, but… If you think about the complexity of building something like that, the system is really, like, 3 layers. There is the data, which is the revenue graph. the inside and AI layer, and then there’s the application layer and orchestration layer. These are the three layers. So anyone who would need… who would want to build something like a gong. They would need first to create the revenue graph, which means, like, first, like, mashing all the data together, matching the right activities, to the right accounts and contacts, which in and of itself is already, like, a problem.
SethMarrs:
Really hard. Really hard.
Amit Bendov:
B2B, like, you know, there are many opportunities, many accounts, it’s a complex relationship, just match that together at scale for large organizations hard. Now, kick in, legal compliance. Right? Hey, did you get a permission to capture this, right? And prove it to me. And with access control, you don’t want people… you know, you need access to, like, the emails of the company, right? People could be searching for a job, there could be lots of other things. It could be, like, you know, messaging my wife. So, who has access to what? So you need, like, legal compliance, security, access control, international legal compliance. You know, we could deploy, like, 120 countries. So first. you have to get that right and accurate. Like, if you don’t get that right, there’s no AI, right? Just like, now, if you, if you’ve built that, you need to build the insight layer, right? And even now, it’s like, people say, oh, like, ChatGPT, could do anything. No, it can’t, right? At first, like, since 2023, Gong is accelerating, like, every quarter, so if I have a penny by every time, you know, I want to keep dying like this, like, every quarter, because, like, it’s the fastest growing company right now. So, since the introduction of, of, generative AI. So, the inside layer has, like, yeah, sure, we use, like, LLMs for some of the tasks, but there’s a lot of, like, predictive models, which LLMs don’t do. There’s a lot of, like, small language models that are faster and more accurate for a lot of the things that you have to get absolutely right. You can’t have hallucinations. So, that’s a pretty, substantial layer. And then you have the… need to have the applications. If you build like the first two, you need to build the application tailored like a glove. Gone. Sellers love Gone. The user interface is easy, it’s tailored like a glove, right? And… and… So, there’s a lot of work. It’s not, like, it’s not something you do, like, in, overnight. It’s a lot of work, and, We’ve been building it for 10 years, and continue to grow.

SethMarrs:
Yeah, so that little bot agent I built to compete against you isn’t really gonna pan out, I don’t think, after that conversation.
Amit Bendov:
Sorry, Seth. I still like you, though, yeah.
SethMarrs:
Alright, so let’s… one thing that I’ve noticed, and I mean, you guys are big on the Moneyball piece, right? Like, you’ve had Billy Bean at your events, you’ve had Michael Lewis at your events, and it all kind of matches up, because to me, your superpower, and you’ve been talking about this, is you are able to generate insights nobody else can, and provide them to customers. So when I would talk to them, and when I talk to them today, the thing they always go to is the insights you can get. Like, if I want to… you literally have created this own world of insights. But you… you haven’t necessarily… they don’t necessarily… they talk to you alongside orchestration or CRMs, they don’t talk to you as a… as the tool. Well, you’re… you’re now… you’ve now released, or you released an ecosystem around workflow. So, is this the time where you’re going to take your place as the central place of work for a seller, where they don’t have to leave Gong, they work completely there. Is that… like, where do you guys see… Absolutely. I think that’s a fundamental step, but, like, is this now the time to move into that, where you’re capable of moving into that, or can?
Amit Bendov:
That is absolutely the time, and again, it’s not a new idea. I have, like, sketches from, like, 2017. This is the… we… even, like, the thought was earlier, but the earliest I could find, like, early 2017, we showed, kind of, the… the dashboard of a cellar, the cockpit, where they have, like. here’s my goal, here’s what I need to do today, here’s, like, advice. Even before co-pilot was a thing, right? We had, like, a co-pilot idea. The technology didn’t exist. And… but we’re focusing on building from the ground up. Remember the three layers, the revenue graph, the insights, and the applications. And this year, we’re building the cockpit for the sellers, also for their managers, also for enablement, also for revenue operations, and for CROs. Everybody, the primary interface. We always had the vision that revenue AI becomes the centerpiece of the revenue operations. Collecting the data and provide… I mean, you know that, yeah.
SethMarrs:
But it’s a counterintuitive path, because you took the insights path, and now, almost last, you’re doing the, this is the place of work. Most took the path to, I want to consume the place of work, and then, like, insights are commoditized, like, I don’t need to worry about them, but it’s… you’re going the other way around.
Amit Bendov:
Well, remember, there’s a big difference. The others are workflow applications. Gong was born as an AI company. It’s probably… I don’t know if we’re the first, but definitely one of the first. Like, 2015, Gong was born as an AI, so… Our vision is not, like, people necessarily doing a lot of these tasks, like, it’s AI doing that. And if you don’t have the insights, like, you can’t have the actions. Right? If you’re counting on human labor, like a workflow, then you can start with a workflow. That’s why we’re, like, a little behind on the workflow, but we built the foundation. Data, insight, action. That’s the loop, right?
SethMarrs:
Huh.
Amit Bendov:
And we built it, like, in this direction, and now we have, like, the most powerful insight, the most powerful data, and we feel that it’s, like, ready to rock.
SethMarrs:
Awesome. So, let me go a little bit further with that, because you also re-released another feature, or on the verge of releasing another feature called Data Extractor, which is, I mean, one that’s probably the most exciting feature that I know about, because the thing everybody wants is, how do I stop entering stuff in CRM, and I remove the seller from that process. Actually get… you end up with, as you know, you end up with better data when a seller doesn’t touch it, or when they append it, rather than they’re the source of it. So you’ve built that out, and over the years in SaaS companies. there’s always been a focus of, I just want you in my tool, and it’s been weird when you… if you look at seller surveys around where they spend their time, there’s been no change in actual productivity of a seller, but the one stat that has gone up is they spend a lot more time in tools. What you’re doing here is… you could argue eliminating them from having to be in a tool, because now they just work, they use Gong for what they need, so, like. Can you talk about… you talk through the vision of how you’ve got to workflow, but with these things you’re implementing, you’re also turning on its head how you’d measure the success of the tool, and it feels like it’s more about what you can deliver from it, rather than spending time in it.
Amit Bendov:
Yeah, so our goal isn’t that, listen, if you have… our goal is to help, companies sell more, right? Our goal isn’t to have, like, people, like, spend more time, and there are a lot of, sometimes a lot of tools that I use that I see that they… I can see how the product manager is being measured, because they said, the email, like, there’s something waiting for you, but to know it, you have to click. And I know that they want to get that page view, right? So… It’s not… our mission is really to help sellers and to help companies sell more, be more successful. That’s the… the mission of the company, it’s not to get, like, page views. Now. Realistically, pragmatically today, Gong is most of the information for them right now, and they do use it, like, our DAO to Mao ratio is one of the best. out there, it’s increasing. Like, the more AI that we add, actually, the better it is. But, like, listen, if it’s, like, in 10 years, like, people don’t log in at all, like, I don’t see it as a sad thing, right? I mean, if the work gets done… so I envision a system that is, like, omnipresent, that kind of oversees what is going on, it listens, it reads. it looks behind the shoulders and does its things without me having to go. So, I think that portals are kind of like, you know, like… belong to the 90s, right? So, in the first 3 years, like, the next few years, for sure, like, this is the, you know, we see… we built what we think is, like, a better home for people to spend their time than rather than running through a bunch of other tools. But again, it’s not the mission of the company to count logins.

SethMarrs:
Yeah, it’s a value base, which is coming along, which is relatively value-based, versus I don’t need you to be in the tool, not in the tool, I just want you to… I’m gonna give you something useful, and you’ll be where you need to be to get the value from it, and you’re gonna keep us because you’re winning more, not necessarily because you’re spending more time in the tool.
Amit Bendov:
Exactly. If my work gets done automatically when I’m having coffee with a customer, like, what’s wrong with that?
SethMarrs:
Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. So, one thing I want to pick on a little bit is just, like, you guys tend to zig where other people zag in a certain extent, to a certain extent, yeah, I know you do, and… Also, like… if you think about forecasting, like, forecasting in particular is very interesting. It had its moment in 2022 where people were very interested in it. You… you had your perspective on it, you put a tool out. And it wasn’t… you actually weren’t even… I remember having conversations with you, you weren’t even focused on the forecasting pieces that the other forecasting vendors were… focused on. Like, the structured data, how do I run my cadences? What you seemed to do was, hey, I’m gonna put out a base piece, and I’m gonna build on it, but I’m gonna also, kind of going back to some of the things we talked about before, here are 3 or 4 things that we’re doing nobody else is doing. So, we aren’t gonna be perfect with, like, the standard stuff that everybody else has, but we think we’re gonna get there, and oh, by the way, when we get there, we’re gonna have this base that we’re doing… that nobody else is doing. That’s kind of risky, because at the time those things come out, everyone’s like, yeah, it’s not as good. But you’ve had a ton of success with that, and you would argue forecasting in particular seems to be like the structured data haven, right? I need structured data, I need my cadences, I need the accuracy. how did you think through that and get to a forecasting product and build it to what it is today? Because today, I think it’s having a moment, like, where people are looking at it going, oh, really? I’ve kind of… Gong’s kind of figured out that it’s an analytics game, plus some really cool insights in the flow of, like, what’s happening in conversations. Can you provide just some context on how that’s gone? Because that’s another example of… I don’t care if you don’t perceive me as being the best when I release, because I have a long game that I’m trying to reach, and I think if I play the long game the way that I think we’re gonna play it, we’re gonna win, and this is an example where it feels like you’re winning.
Amit Bendov:
Right, so to us, the, it all goes back to the vision of the company, right? That an autonomous revenue management system. An autonomous system has, like, several components, right? It needs to be situationally aware, what’s going on. It needs to have, like, AI capabilities to be able to make decisions, or at least get some insights, and in its interface. Prediction is a key thing, right? If you think of a self-driving car. it needs to know, okay, that… if I go that way, my ETA is 1135, right? But I need to be at, like, 1120, right? So, prediction is key to an autonomous system. That was the interesting part for us. So, traditional system were workflow system. Hey, everybody, on Friday, you’re gonna call in your numbers and roll it up, and by Monday morning, we have to call That’s still there. Gong has that, because programmatically, like, you know.
SethMarrs:
Yep.
Amit Bendov:
Still need that. But the more valuable piece to us was take the data from the conversation, create, like, AI prediction. And it will tell you, okay, your goal is, like, $180 million, but right now your trajectory suggests, like, 166. Based on the data that we’re seeing from customers, not what the sentiment from the reps is.
SethMarrs:
And…
Amit Bendov:
And here are 5 things that I would do right now. to get you, to your goal, or crush your goal. So, you know, what’s, you know, what’s better, like, knowing the future, predicting the future, or changing your future? So, we’re more interested in changing the future and creating the future, but prediction is key, right? To know early on if you’re on track or not on track is super helpful, and that helps guide AI. That was the interesting piece to us. So, we did the workflow just to accommodate, you know, the traditional way of working, but the AI prediction was the key.
SethMarrs:
Is it fair to say that you… you saw the workflow problem as an easy problem, a hard problem that’ll take time to fix. But you saw the hard problem as the predictions piece, so you said, I’m gonna release a product that gets a head start on that, that I could evolve with my workflow engine, and the concept is, pick the hard problem first and build to it. and then let the pieces that everybody knows how, or that you know how to build, those can evolve and go, but I need to start working on the hard problem first.
Amit Bendov:
Yes, yes, more or less. I mean, we… we… we did both, like, parallel tracks.
SethMarrs:
Yeah.
Amit Bendov:
Which means that we didn’t go, like, all in on the traditional workflow, because we’re not, like… This is like, you know, like 20 years old technology. The way of the future is autonomous systems, and prediction is key, is a key capability to Gong.
SethMarrs:
Got it. Here’s another, like, enablement. this is another one of those areas where you appear to be zigging when others are zagging. To me, it’s always seemed like a foundational piece that you’d want in your technology for an orchestration tool. I was waiting for acquisitions to happen, like some of these enablement companies to combine with orchestration tools, and it becomes this. You guys have quietly beavered away at this, and you’ve always kind of had a tinge of coaching, and I think, to a certain extent, conversation intelligence, like, facilitates that, but I… you just quietly keep releasing an enablement product. Like, why… Is that because it’s at the core of what you’re doing? And… how come nobody else seems to be following? Because that one, to me, is a foundational piece when you talk about effectiveness.
Amit Bendov:
I don’t know, I guess we need to get our bodies on a panel and ask them why they’re not following, but remember that the mission of enablement is to make sellers more effective, to help them win more deals, right? By saying the right things, by running the deals properly, by calling the right customers, so… There is not a goal, like, to have, like, content or training, or anything. This is just a mean to an end, right? And you could help sellers, like, in a number of ways. That’s what Gong does. So you can help them with, actually, real deals, and not practice, right? Now we’re also adding AI practice. We’re doing content generation, so rather than content management, Gong will generate the content from AI based on the data, so you could, okay, show me, Create a battle card. For, like, Evil Corp, right? And it’ll go, like, all the deals that we want, what happened over there, based on reality, not based on someone in competitive intelligence department that created. So it creates better content and equips the, the sellers. We don’t need necessarily to acquire or to copy stuff that exists. and people have to, enablement leaders say, where do I invest? You know, what makes the most impact? It’s not, like, who has the better CMS, or the better trainer, or the better this. Like, what makes the most impact? on the effectiveness of my people. How can I onboard people faster, right? That’s, that has always been a value proposition of Gone, to help the seller succeed, just in different ways.
SethMarrs:
I mean, I can’t help but think that we’ve talked through 3 or 4 different scenarios around this, and it really is… just say… it really feels to me like it’s… Just stay laser-focused on adding value to the seller, and find unique ways to do it that make a difference.
Amit Bendov:
Right, we have a strong bias, like, almost everything that we do is where AI can make a big impact, right? Yeah. So… Content management, I don’t know, it definitely can be enriched by AI, but it’s not, necessarily revolutionary. So there… we look at… there are plenty of areas. There’s, you know, commission, there’s, like, CPQ, right? we look at everything that can help, and we see work and AI, which are our core competency, can make a big difference. This is where we tend to focus. We sometimes do other things just for pragmatic reasons, but mostly, if you look at both forecasting, engagement, enablement, orchestration. That’s the theme.
SethMarrs:
Got it. Okay, so… we’re running up on time. A few years, I think it was 2 or 3 years ago, you set a date in my calendar and said, hey, by this date. A gong is gonna be more important than CRMs. So, is that date still valid?
Amit Bendov:
Yeah, when was that? Like, yeah, it’s still valid, and again, CRM is important and will be important, right? I know, but CRM was designed for, tracking and managing your customers, 360 degrees views. Revenue AI is about managing revenue operations with AI, right? This is, like, the key processes of, like, reaching out to customers. forecasting, enabling the team, leadership, insights, strategic product insights, this is it, and customers are already seeing, like, this is the main value, and we’re definitely on track. Now, Nobody think that, CRM alone can manage the revenue team.
SethMarrs:
Yeah, it seems to be common knowledge now.
Amit Bendov:
Yeah.
SethMarrs:
Which is, yeah, on the path. So great to be able to have this conversation with you. I really appreciate being able to do it. So…
Amit Bendov:
It’s a real pleasure, Seth. It was a fun conversation.
Julia Nimchinski:
Love being a fly on the wall here. Thank you so much, Seth. Thank you so much, Amit. What’s the best way for us to support you? What’s next for Gong? I mean…
Amit Bendov:
Greatness. Like, yeah, that’s like… but, if you could, reach out, connect on LinkedIn, happy if you have any questions, happy to help. And, so does, I’m sure, Seth does, too.
SethMarrs:
Yep, same, same here. Always, always happy to talk this stuff. This is the exciting things that are happening in our world. It’s always fun to talk about.
Julia Nimchinski:
Amazing, thank you so much again, and we are transitioning to our next panel.