With the acquisition of Drift, we faced the challenge of migrating approximately 125 former Drift employees, now new Lofters, from GONG to Salesloft Conversations within just 10 business days. This involved transitioning over 15,000 GONG recordings and integrating both seasoned and new users into the Salesloft environment.
The Sales cohort of about 25 users was already familiar with Salesloft, but we also introduced 100 new users to Salesloft’s Drift instance, focusing specifically on Conversations. This group included Renewals Managers, Customer Success Managers (CSMs), and Professional Services team members.
Preliminary Steps: Understanding User Needs
As a preliminary step in our field enablement, we conducted Chairside sessions with two Sales Leaders and two Account Executives (AEs) from their respective teams to understand their daily use of GONG and grasp their workflow. Additional Chairside meetings were held with leaders in the CSM, Renewal Management (RM), and Professional Services Management (PSM) sectors to tailor our training to their specific needs.
Tailored Training Sessions
Leveraging the insights from these Chairside sessions, we crafted training modules that mirrored the users' existing workflows to minimize the impact of the transition. Where necessary, we translated terminology and processes from GONG to Salesloft, ensuring a smoother changeover.
For the Sales training sessions, a Salesloft Sales Engineer led the discussions, joined by a Commercial Account Executive who shared his day-to-day experiences using Conversations at Salesloft. For the RM/CSM/PS sessions, the same Sales Engineer facilitated, this time accompanied by a Senior Customer Renewals Manager, a Senior CSM in Enterprise, and a Manager of Consulting Services, each discussing their specific use cases.
Migration Timeline and Support
Below is the timeline that was communicated to the team, supplemented with additional office hours in early April to address any remaining questions through our newly created Slack channel, part of our comprehensive training plan.
| 3/20 | Start learning about Salesloft Conversations Sales Set-Up Video: 4 minute video RM/CSM/PS Video: 5 minute video | |
| 3/21 | Live Training Session for Sales | 11:00 am-11:45 pm EST |
| 3/22 | Live Training Session for Customer Org | 11:00 am-12:00 pm EST |
| 3/22 | Gong Will No Longer Be Recording Calls | |
| 3/28 | Sales Office Hours | 11:00 am-11:30 pm EST |
| 3/28 | Customer Office Hours | 11:30 am-12:00 pm EST |
| 3/31 | Drift Gong Instance will be deprecated | |
| WK of 4/8 | Additional Office Hours - Time TBD | |
Ongoing Efforts and Achievements
The Technical Services Manager spearheaded the substantial task of transferring over 15,000 GONG recordings into Salesloft Conversations, a crucial step in the migration process. This was a significant undertaking, and their efforts were instrumental in ensuring a seamless transition.
Join this forum to share your experiences, challenges, and best practices for managing significant transitions within Salesloft. Let’s learn and grow together!