What we do at Harness

Harness is a Nonprofit Fundraising Technology company that was started in 2016. We strive to make fundraising simpler, more pleasant, and more human.

The question that started it all: if subscription businesses models were excelling in the For-Profit space, why were their Non-Profit counterparts not adopting a similar approach? Eureka! Subscription Philanthropy was born.

The main problem we solve with Wingman

We're in the process of scaling and adding more account executives. And as you scale, it becomes really difficult to be able to sit in on every single demo and help identify exactly what challenges reps are going through. 

So I think Wingman has really helped expedite that process. It allows us to look through recordings, through specific areas based on different topics or phrases people are saying.

We weren’t using anything before Wingman to address these challenges but now that we do use it, it's been really awesome and we really love it. 

I found out about CI tools from one of my friends who mentioned they were using Gong. That's really what piqued my interest and I started looking into such tools. 

We did a demo with Gong but it was ridiculously overpriced and that made me do more research. At the time, Wingman integrated with Pipedrive, which was one of the main reasons we chose it. We have since switched to Salesforce and the integration has been much better. 

How Harness benefited from Wingman

Our sales process starts with a demo of the product. After that the clients typically need an additional call to go over questions or concerns. And then there’s an onboarding call where they buy the product and then we help set them up. 

At every step of the sales cycle, there are different things that need to be accomplished. Based on the different meeting types we can go in and make sure everybody's following the correct processes. 

Battle cards are really beneficial for demo calls. In case the prospect mentions a competitor or something, reps get very easy access to cue cards and know how to combat those objections. 

Topics and competitor insights also give me the ability to really see what prospects are saying about competitors – allows me to know exactly why they use a certain product, what they like about it, what they don't like about it etc. And then from a manager’s perspective, I am able to create different assets or collaterals to send the client afterwards. It’s easy to create a doc to help with the comparison based on the challenges that the client deals with the specific competitor.

When you see the same competitor and the same things being said over maybe multiple calls, then you get to know that one of their weaknesses is actually one of our strengths. And then it helps create better assets after. 

I also think the call scorecards feature is a really cool, unique way to grade different demos. Reps can easily analyze what areas they need to improve on the most, which is great. 

One of the most beneficial things is just looking at the talk to listen ratio. Obviously the lower that is, the call is more of a conversation instead of a presentation, which is always good. The more interaction you have from a potential customer, the more likely they are to close.

It also helps us dig deeper into some of the problems. For example if somebody's talk to listen ratio is higher, normally that correlates to feature dumping or not taking the time to do enough discovery. We didn't have these insights before and such instances could lead to revenue leak and lost opportunities. 

I would have to sit in all the demos to identify if somebody was going through the same exact demo flow every single time or actually doing discovery – listening to what the prospect is saying and showing the solutions that would actually solve their problems. 

So, Wingman really helped us identify these issues and work on them. 

Wingman for call reviewing

I think the biggest thing is having the ability to review the calls. Obviously I go through a lot of recordings, but also I encourage my team to go through their own call recordings. Game tapes especially are really beneficial when it comes to call reviewing. We haven't used them to their fullest abilities yet, but we’re getting there. I'm doing little games with my team every week where they tag me on certain parts of calls that will eventually become game tapes.

Sales and sports are very similar. There's a reason that in sports a lot of time in practice is spent reviewing film, whether that's your film or your colleagues' or your competitors’ film. 

So recordings play a big part in helping people develop. Because sometimes when you're going through the sales process you have your goggles on, right? You want to believe everything that the prospect is telling you and you kind of set your mind up that – “oh, they're going to buy, they're the nicest person”. Especially when they're a yes person. Those are the hardest ones. 

But then when you review the call recording you can see that there were a bunch of things the prospect said that you weren't grasping during the call. And while watching the recording, you realize those things really led to blocking the deal. The next time you run into such a situation you will remember this because you’ve watched the recording for that closed lost deal.

I think it's just as important to view the closed lost deals as it is to see the close wons. You can always learn through those as well.

Wingman for sales training 

We use game tapes as part of the training process. It makes it easy to go over stuff. We can just tell the reps that here’s the script, the deck, or types of deals that they need to refer to. 

We still have to build more game tapes to be able to fully implement it within our training process. However, we do see that it’ll be really valuable once we get there.

We also use Wingman for training new reps, specifically BDRs, who do all the calling and set the meetings for account executives. We used to have the BDRs go in and sit on a demo. But the problem was that sometimes the prospect might not show up. But with Wingman, we can just show the call recordings to BDRs, we don’t have to rely on the prospect showing up. 

How other teams at Harness use Wingman

Wingman is really valuable for our customer success team. If, for instance, the client says the sales team said this or that or over promised on something, the customer success team is easily able to go back to the recording and confirm what was actually said about what we can or cannot do.

From the marketing standpoint, Wingman basically helps the team to help build assets. I mostly make it a point to share clips that might be useful for them, so they don’t have to go through the entire recording.

So, Wingman really helps us collaborate better internally and helps us ensure that the messaging is clear throughout the entire sales process and the customer success process. 

So, would I recommend Wingman?

Yeah, I’d definitely recommend it to others! Wingman is basically your sales manager assistant at the end of the day. It's something that can help automate your work not only when it comes to reviewing calls but also zooming in on the specific areas of the demo so you don’t have to watch all the fluff.

If you don't have a tool like this, the demo is gone once you’re done with the call and you can't really learn from it. But with Wingman you can create a repository. So, it’s really there to help improve everybody's craft.

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