The Shift from Analyzing the Past to Steering the Present
I used to think post-mortems were the holy grail of sales. Record the calls, dissect the language, run the numbers. Like an autopsy, they promised to reveal the hidden cause of death. Gong built an empire on that premise, convincing managers that if they could just analyze enough conversations after the fact, they could engineer success before the next quarter closed.
But here’s the thing about autopsies. They’re always too late.
Gong, the Historian of Sales Conversations
I respect what Gong has done. Its reports from Gong Labs are gospel in sales circles. Want to know whether mentioning price early kills a deal, or how many questions a top closer asks? Gong has the data, millions of calls deep. Managers swear by it because it offers something scarce in sales, statistical certainty.
Gong positioned itself as the microscope. It zoomed in, highlighted patterns, and told managers how to coach. In a world obsessed with dashboards and KPIs, that was irresistible. The problem is that microscopes don’t help when you’re flying the plane.
Sales isn’t a controlled lab environment. It’s turbulence, half-truths, and improvisation. By the time the microscope delivers its insights, the plane has already landed or crashed.
Enter the Co-Pilots
Clari Copilot, formerly Wingman, flipped the script. Instead of waiting until the call was over, it started whispering in reps’ ears mid-flight. Live cues, contextual battlecards, prompts when objections land like punches. It doesn’t just analyze the past, it nudges the present. That shift sounds cosmetic, but in sales, where deals hinge on seconds, it’s existential.
Avoma goes further, weaving real-time assistance into a bigger tapestry of meeting automation. It doesn’t just help you on the call. It captures the notes, updates the CRM, generates summaries. It’s less microscope, less co-pilot, and more executive assistant with a memory that never sleeps.
What we’re watching is a reframing of conversation intelligence. Gong tells managers what happened. Copilot and Avoma help reps shape what’s happening.
Why Copilot Pressures Gong
Let’s be blunt. Copilot has spotted Gong’s blind spot.
- In-the-moment guidance: Gong can tell you after the fact that you fumbled a pricing objection. Copilot interrupts in real time and hands you the playbook.
- Platform integration: Because Copilot sits inside Clari’s revenue forecasting stack, it isn’t just a coaching tool. It becomes part of the revenue operations machine.
- Perception of agility: Gong is the heavyweight champion. But in the mid-market, buyers often want scrappy and simple. Copilot’s lighter UI makes it feel easier to adopt.
This isn’t just feature war. It’s a story war. Gong is telling managers they can control outcomes through analysis. Copilot is telling reps they can control outcomes through action.
Where Gong Still Reigns
Yet let’s not bury Gong too early.
Its data credibility is unmatched. Gong Labs has the kind of sample sizes academics drool over. That authority is sticky. It turns Gong’s research into a brand asset no competitor can fake.
Gong also has platform breadth. With Engage and Forecast, it’s not just a conversation tool. It’s tying conversations to pipeline and revenue. And while Copilot is loud about being real-time, Gong isn’t asleep. Its Zoom apps and live insights show it knows the future is in-call. The question is whether it can make that pivot without losing its crown as the historian.
What Gong Needs to Learn
Here’s my unsolicited advice, written less as a critic and more as a reluctant admirer.
- Go all-in on real time. Not just alerts, but ultra-fast, context-aware nudges that feel inevitable.
- Close the loop. Make sure in-call cues trigger downstream tasks like CRM updates, follow-ups, hygiene.
- Turn research into weapons. Gong Labs should become adaptive battlecards, not just static reports.
- Name the future. Package its real-time features under a bold capability, not a quiet add-on.
- Serve the mid-market with defaults. Ship coaching packs out of the box so teams don’t drown in customization.
The danger for Gong isn’t being irrelevant. It’s being mispositioned as the manager’s microscope while others become the rep’s co-pilot.
The Bigger Tension
What fascinates me is how this battle mirrors a broader shift. The old economy gave power to managers, the ones reviewing and measuring. The new economy tilts power toward operators, the ones acting in real time.
Data is still currency, but immediacy is oxygen. Gong is rich in the former. Copilot and Avoma are trying to corner the latter.
This isn’t unique to sales. It’s the same tension we see in finance (algorithms vs advisors), in sports (analytics vs instincts), even in politics (polls vs live reactions). The institutions that thrive are those that close the gap between knowing and doing.
The Question That Lingers
So here’s the paradox. Gong’s authority is its moat, but it could also be its weight. Being the historian of sales conversations gave it dominance. But history is, by definition, the past.
If the future of sales is decided in real time, will Gong reinvent itself fast enough to matter in the moment?
Or will it become the Bloomberg Terminal of sales? A powerful archive that executives love, but reps quietly ignore while flying blind in the trenches.
Where GTM Engine Enters the Fight
Real-time guidance is only one slice of the puzzle. Sales doesn’t happen in isolated calls. It unfolds across a messy sprawl of interactions, half of which never make it into CRM. Calls, emails, nudges, notes. Those are the breadcrumbs of a buyer journey that revenue teams pretend to track but rarely do.
That’s where GTM Engine rewires the circuit. It doesn’t just listen in real time. It remembers. Every call. Every email. Every meeting. Captured, processed, and converted into structured signal without an intern hunched over Salesforce at midnight.
Gong tells you what happened. Copilot whispers what to do while it’s happening. GTM Engine builds something bigger. It's a living, learning nervous system for go-to-market teams.
No more retroactive guesswork. No more CRM hygiene theater. Just clarity. For the rep in the trenches, for the manager running pipeline reviews, for the CRO making bets on next quarter’s number.
The Future of Sales Intelligence
Because the future of sales isn’t real-time. It’s real intelligence. Embedded in every loop. Compounding with every interaction.
The winners won’t be the tools that merely capture conversations or nudge reps in the moment. They’ll be the systems that make the entire revenue engine smarter with each interaction. The system that makes the next call sharper, the next forecast cleaner, the next customer experience smoother.
That’s the real leap. Not history. Not just presence. But foresight.
Closing Thought
Sales has always been about timing. Gong taught us to measure the past. Copilot taught us to steer the present. GTM Engine points to something larger, a compounding nervous system that never forgets.
The irony is that the companies fighting hardest for our attention are the ones that disappear best into the workflow. The microscope, the co-pilot, the engine. The real prize is not being seen, but being indispensable.
About the Author
Robert Moseley IV is the Founder and CEO of GTM Engine, a pipeline execution platform that’s changing the way modern revenue teams work. With a background in sales leadership, product strategy, and data architecture, he’s spent more than 10 years helping fast-growing companies move away from manual processes and adopt smarter, scalable systems. At GTM Engine, Robert is building what he calls the go-to-market nervous system. It tracks every interaction, uses AI to enrich CRM data, and gives teams the real-time visibility they need to stay on track. His true north is simple. To take the guesswork out of sales and help revenue teams make decisions based on facts, not gut feel.
