AE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 5x President's Club

Creating raving fans @ Gong. Founder of Closed Won. Dad to Monty 🐾 

Brian LaManna

Software stocks just got crushed. $400B wiped out in a week.

ServiceNow down 50% from peaks. Salesforce off 40%. Even Palantir down 30%+ despite crushing numbers.

What happened? New AI models released from Anthropic changed the narrative overnight.

For the first time, investors are asking: "What if AI replaces software altogether?"

Here's the fear: Companies now have three options instead of two:

1. Buy your SaaS software
2. Evaluate 2-3 competitive options
3. Build their own / use AI agents

But here's what most miss:

As a fast growing company, would you rather pay $100K annually for best-in-class software… or divert your finite engineering resources to build, maintain, train on, and secure your own tool. 

Instead of using those engineering resources to focus on your own product/offering.

Similar to COVID, this is a moment where the strongest SaaS companies get stronger, and weaker ones fall off. 

The companies at risk? Simple point solutions with seat-based pricing that's easy to replicate.

It'll be easy to identify the "winners" a few quarters from now. 

Companies that show YoY revenue is accelerating. They are AI beneficiaries . 

Those slowing down? Their stocks will get decimated. And their down fall will become sell fulfilling. 

Exposing which companies actually have a moat, and which were just renting one all along. 


P.S. Think we see this trickle through to the private markets next... funding will dramatically slow for Software companies and "ChatGPT wrappers."

AE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 7x President’s Club

Most painful (lost) deals I remember.

-One that had a DocuSign out for signature around March 15th, 2020. The team took a few extra days to look it over... COVID hit... and they never ended up signing.

-6 month evaluation, decided they were going to move to us from a larger competitor, and then not realizing they had an auto-renewal. I take fault for not pressing harder on this.

-21 month deal cycle that continued to push quarter after quarter for a variety of excuses, despite promising interest. Nothing as painful as a super long deal cycle with twists and turns. Eventually turned it Closed Lost.

-Running a successful evaluation with someone who told me "I am the decision maker and signer on this" ... when it came to sign, someone else blocked it from happening. Lesson learned... if someone blurts out "I am the decision maker" .... they are most definitely not the decision maker 🤣


Quickly learned to never celebrate a deal until it's signed.

Time really does kill deals sometimes.


P.S. Redesigned the website around Closed Won Club at https://closedwon.xyz/ ... how do we like it?

Kyle Asay

VP at MongoDB | SalesIntroverts.com | Sellers promote faster with my frameworks

I begrudgingly started my career in sales as an SDR at Qualtrics. After realizing there was no way out, I decided I might as well get good at it and qualified for five consecutive President’s Clubs as an AE, front-line leader, and second-line leader. 

After an incredible 8.5 years at Qualtrics, I was recruited to MongoDB, where I ended my tenure leading their North America acquisition sales organization for commercial, midmarket, and lower enterprise segments. 

After nearly two years of rebuilding and scaling that organization I was offered a role I couldn't pass up to run global midmarket sales for LaunchDarkly. 

When I'm not refreshing my forecast and asking for deal updates from my teams at LaunchDarkly, I'm building frameworks to help other sellers replicate (and exceed) my success. 

You can join well over 10,000 sellers learning from those frameworks at SalesIntroverts.com.

VP, Global Growth Sales

Responsible for global midmarket sales and BDR functions for net new acquisition and customer growth.

Jen Allen-Knuth messaged me, desperate for help:

“Kyle -  I’m trying to get an incredible dog adopted but with how mean I am on the internet it’s hard to get nice people to listen to me. Can you help?” 

I know most people would think, “Wow, with how much Jen has bullied Kyle there’s no way he’d offer to help.”

But I’m not most people. I’ve got a heart of gold. 

And this puppy needs a home. 

Meet Minnie: an 8-month-old Siberian Husky. 

She had a rough start to life being abused by another dog, but ended up in a foster home where she’s flourishing in a safe environment.

She plays nicely, shares her toys, and is a joy to be around. A real “anti-Jen,” if you will. 

She’s available to adopt at the Many Paws Global Rescue in Palatine, IL. 

A like/comment/repost helps more people meet Minnie, and makes it more likely she finds a permanent home!

VP Global Growth Sales at LaunchDarkly | Founder of salesintroverts.com

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The Battle

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