Recommended contacts in Deals FAQs

You can find recommended contacts in the Contacts tab of the deal panel. Everyone can see contact recommendations, but it requires a paid active license with a provider to reveal a contact’s phone number and email.

Gong recommends contacts for any open deal in your pipeline, based on your past deals. We analyze your past deals to determine which titles had the biggest impact during each deal stage. For example:

• A head of finance is needed to qualify a deal during negotiation

• A VP of manufacturing is needed at the discovery stage

• A security lead is needed while assessing the deal for a widely distributed software product

If we notice you're not actively engaged with that title, we check if the prospect company has someone in that role. If they do, Gong recommends reaching out to that person.

Yes. We only show recommended contacts when you have 100 closed-won deals. This enables us to determine the roles typically involved in your successful deals, and recommend them to you.

If you’re new at your organization and haven't yet reached this number, we check to see whether there are at least 100 deals closed-won by anyone who rolls up to your direct manager or manager's manager. If so, we make recommendations based on who we see on those deals.

If the first-level manager’s team has fewer than 100 deals, we check the second-level manager's deals, and if necessary, the third level. Recommendations are not made if there are fewer than 100 closed-won deals at the third level.

Once you already have 100 deals, you’ll be able to view recommended contacts, however Gong only looks at up to one year of past deals, depending on whether that data is available. This data includes CRM data and deal activity (calls, emails, etc).

When you reach out to a recommended contact and they begin engaging with the deal, they are removed from the recommended contacts list. They remain on the list as long as they haven't actively participated in the deal.

Contacts who are no longer active in the deal may still appear on the recommended contacts list. An active contact is defined as someone who has engaged in the deal—such as by sending an email, joining a call, or initiating communication—within the last 21 days. As a result, a contact who hasn't participated in the deal for over 21 days may reappear on the recommended contacts list.

In certain cases, Gong may not recommend any contacts for a deal due to the filters we apply to ensure high-quality suggestions. Examples include:

• All relevant contacts are already involved in the deal

• There are too many potential contacts with the same title, making it difficult to narrow down

• The recommended contact shares the same name as existing partner contact information

• Gong is unable to identify relevant contacts within the company

• The contact is a former employee and no longer holds the role

• The contact's email address couldn’t be verified

The logic used to recommend contacts is independent of the logic used for these warnings. However, it’s possible, for example, that Gong will recommend contacts on a deal with too few contacts.

Gong partners with contact data providers such as Cognism, Apollo.io, and LeadIQ. If you choose to see the details of the recommended contact by clicking View, Gong displays the contact’s details as they are received from the provider, and doesn’t modify them in any way. Admins can add integrations with contact providers from the Gong Collective.

No. All Gong customers have the option to view contact recommendations, without phone numbers or emails, regardless of whether they have a paid license with any of the supported providers. However, you may need a paid active license with a provider to further reveal a contact’s phone number and email.

You can view names, titles, phone numbers and email details when available from the contact data providers.

Currently, there is no way to configure which titles are recommended.

You can request to integrate with another data provider in the Gong Collective.