All about scorecards

Scorecards enable you to give and receive structured feedback about calls, making it easier to learn, improve and uplevel. Gong AI dramatically reduces the time it takes to score calls, enabling easier and more efficient coaching.

How are scorecards structured?

Scorecards consist of a number of criteria, each component tailored to your specific use case. The score helps distinguish between successful calls and calls needing improvement. Questions focusing on different aspects of the call provide clear, detailed feedback. Save time by using Gong AI to identify relevant parts of a call, so reviewers spend less time looking for it.

Why are scorecards valuable?

Structured feedback is an important way to deliver coaching to team members. Scorecards allow managers and enablement to hone in on coaching opportunities and ensure that others on the team can learn from the best examples.

Sales leaders, managers, and enablement pros have limited visibility into:

Whether or not coaching is taking place
Whether or not the reps are putting that coaching into practice
Whether or not the coaching is having an impact on rep performance

Gong helps identify areas where reps need coaching and offers several ways to provide feedback (unstructured feedback and structured) through scorecards and stats for scorecards.

Note

For a workflow recipe on improving message delivery using scorecards, see: Tracking the performance and adoption of strategic initiatives

Translating unstructured coaching efforts into scorecards

Scorecards can kickstart team growth from as early as new hire onboarding and can then be used strategically throughout the rep’s lifetime to help build a coaching culture within your organization.

First identify specific areas in your rep’s lifecycle where there are likely coaching opportunities.

Scorecard examples

Some examples might be:

Onboarding (product pitch, competitor differentiation, demo certification)
Cold calls (SDRs)
Product demos
Kickoff calls (CSM)
Discovery calls
QBRs
Key company initiatives (product rollouts, new talk tracks, sales methodology rollout)

Looking for some inspiration? Here are a few examples of potential scorecards:

Coaching opportunities	Suggested scorecard questions
SDR: Outbound	Did the SDR let the prospect know that they were calling on a recorded line? How well does the rep set up the reason for the call? Did they get the customer’s buy-in on establishing an agenda? Did they ask how familiar they are with our product? How natural did discovery feel? How well did they handle objections? Did they gain all the information you need? How well did they “sell” the next step and close? Curious to know what goes into mastering a cold call? Gong Labs data helps inform effective cold call tips & techniques.
CSM: Kickoff Call	Did the CSM come into the conversation prepared (sales handoff)? Did they have a strong “up-front” contract and set a clear agenda? Did they set proper on-boarding, timeline and partnership expectations? Did they dive deeper to learn more about the top priorities, goals and initiatives? Did they stay strategic and high level? Did the CSM ask engaging, open ended questions throughout? Did they leave with next steps in place (firm future commit)?
AE: Discovery Call	Did the speaker ask open-ended, in-depth questions? How well do we understand the role of the person we are talking to? Were the customer's key pain points clearly identified? How well do we understand the business impact of solving these problems? Did the AE clearly communicate our benefits and capabilities? Did the AE validate our ability to solve the customer's pains? Was the customer buying process clearly outlined/explained? How well did the AE handle the customer's concerns? Did the AE set clear next steps? To what extent were the goals of the call achieved?
AE: Product demo	How well did the rep prepare? Did they set a clear agenda? Did the rep summarize past conversations? Did they lead with value when explaining functionality? Did they ask impactful discovery questions along the way? How well did the rep tailor the demo to the customer’s needs? Did they set a firm future commit?
Initiative: Cross-sell/Upsell conversation	Do they know their audience and their challenges? Did they ask impactful discovery questions? Did they practice active listening? Did the rep identify how they will use your product and how it will help them scale (or meet their goals)? Did they objection handle effectively (if applicable)? Did they set a firm future commit?

Search for calls according to scores and scorecards

Looking for calls in which a specific score was given or a specific scorecard was used? You can do this from Conversations > Search. You have two filters that enable you to search according to scorecards: Overall call score and Scorecard name. If you don't see these filters on the left side of your search screen, click + Add filters and search for them in the filter selection screen.

Rolling out a scorecard: what to consider

Scorecard rollout is important for adoption. Here are some tips for making it seamless:

Phase 1: Building your scorecards

While you can create and use multiple scorecards for various teams, we recommend that you start with just one or two, roll it out, and see if that process works.

Identify what you’re hoping to improve
- For example, is discovery the biggest challenge in your sales cycle or is it objection handling?
Think through what an ideal call sounds like and break it down into questions. This will help the scorers understand what they need to listen for.
- For example, “Did the rep get buy-in on the agenda?”, “Did the discovery feel natural?”, “Did the rep go through levels 1-3 of the pain funnel?”

Phase 2: Enabling your team

Once you’ve created and published the scorecard, review expectations with those responsible for scoring. Think about what works best for your team.

If managers are overwhelmed, perhaps a peer-to-peer coaching plan will be best.
Alternatively if you have an enablement team, they may be the best scorers for “certifications” and onboarding tasks.
Put KPIs in place to set short-term goals. For example, start with having managers score 1 call per rep per month.
Click the Scored User column to specify whether to score the host of the call or another attendee, for example an SE or an AE if the SDR is the host). This will be a different individual if the person filling out the scorecard scored another attendee outside the host, but it will be the same individual if they scored the host.
Teach them how to score a call

Make sure your scorers understand what the score means.

Scoring is only effective if your team is aligned on what each of your answer values mean.

Example:

Let's say you choose a range of 1-5. The numbers indicate what “needs improvement” to what “great” looks like on a 1-5 scale. Perfect calls are rare but strive for 5 in each key area.

Did the rep set a clear agenda up front/ state why they were calling?

1. No reason for why they are calling

3. Mention of call intention (But didn't provide full context or expectations of where it’s going)

5. Purpose, duration and potential outcomes mentioned. Rep took control of the conversation.

Scoring flow walkthrough:

What does scoring a call actually look like?

Phase 3: Learning from the data

The last phase of the scorecard workflow involves leveraging scored calls and monitoring progress.

Go to Conversations > Search and find out what “good” sounds like by filtering for high-scoring calls.

Go to Insights > Team to gather high-level insights around scorecard performance.

From here, you can answer questions like:

Which reps are struggling?
Which teams are performing at a higher level when it comes to certifications?
Which teams/reps are adopting our new sales methodology?

Tip

If certain reps are struggling and do not get a “passing” score, encourage them to look at Insights, or use the Search page, to find peer calls they can listen to in order to understand what a great call sounds like.

Use scorecards to measure success

For a winning recipe that includes using scorecards to improve how your team delivers messaging, see: Tracking the adoption and performance of strategic initiatives

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