This company is worse than the extended car warranty people. They are turning away so much business due to their inability to listen to their prospects and steam roll/pepper them with emails and phone calls. Even when you say take me off your list. Im just, honestly disgusted with their tactics. It is really disturbing that this is the culture they have permeated across their sales force. They have completely become spammers and not sales tools consultants. Gong isn’t much better.
Edit: I am not calling it a bad tool at all. I’m calling their go-to market and sales tactics slimmy and spammy, and I have personally gone with a competitor even though they had a weaker product. I know others who have done the same. I did, however, go with gong because chorus would mean I have to work with the zoominfo spamming debt collectors. They literally rotate account and will follow up from different numbers multiple times a day. I’ve said take me off your list and a new person calls me the next week.
A few years ago one of these zoominfo guys called my office line and gave some excuse for talking with me. It sounded like a lead so I called him back. He was trying to pitch me on his product, and it actually sounded somewhat helpful but I had just started in a new role and had no buying power. Told him to call me in 3mo+ and I’d see if I could make a case. He tried to push for a meeting, so I took it and listened to the demo. Told them again that I needed some time but it sounded interesting.
These idiots and their team called/emailed me 2x/week for the next 14 months. Super confusing too because they would call from different numbers, pretend to be a lead for me, and in the confusion try to set up another meeting. I went from being genuinely intrigued by the tech to absolutely, soulfully, hating this company. I kept a tally on my whiteboard for a while and something like 24 different people called or emailed me.
It got so bad that they kept sending me Starbucks gift cards, which I kept cashing, for meetings. Thanks for the $30 guys. I will now completely go out of my way to turn anyone and everyone against you.
I work in a sales automation platform company and every time a prospect says “Not interested, I’m using Zoominfo” I’m like… bro, that’s exactly why we should talk
They sell contact info to support spamming for profit. Are you surprised they’re tactics are slimy? Their competitors also suck. Listening to our seamless ai rep is like nails on a chalkboard.
My COO says zoominfo is the best thing out there and everything is up to date. I showed him personally someone i know who has not been at the company in 3 years and he tried to argue i was wrong.
Really pisses me off when I talk to Shawn at ZoomInfo and tell him to call me back in three months; and then a week later Carol is calling me “to follow up on our call last week.” A month later Dale is calling me, because it’s EOQ and manager approved some discount, and he, “thought it might be a good time” based on the last couple conversations he and I had.
Do they think people don’t remember names? Voices? Or are they some kind of hive mind over there, and I’ve actually spoken with all of them?
When sales people / orgs don’t listen, it’s exhausting.
When they show contempt for the prospect, it’s worse.
The ease of use and saturation of that industry means companies just move away from the expensive option like ZoomInfo.
I’m one of the folks who works close with our sales ops guys and evaluates our tech stack. (Thank God my title conveys nothing about my actual influence in purchasing)
In the past 5 years we’ve moved from ZoomInfo to Seamless and now we’re with Apollo. Other than the UI, nothing has changed, our SDR connect rate is higher than ever, and we’ve saved money.
I respect any honest sales person because it’s a grind but that industry is so commoditized, i could never sell in that industry.
Have nothing but bad things to say about that company. They tricked us into an upsell call and hung up on us after we (gently) pointed out that we would not be purchasing the next tier. My jaw dropped.
Unfortunately, they and companies like them are the gold standard for tech. Every company wants to be exactly like them and eventually change things to go on that path.
My new company has ZoomInfo and I’ve already started pushing for using Apollo instead, simply because it’ll save the company a shit ton of money and that makes me look good. Easiest recommendation ever.
I used to sell a predictive dialer to extended car warranty people so first and foremost, my apologies.
Second, ZI has fallen from grace and there is quite a few new players on the field, that are eating up their market share.
Apollo is great, since it has a lot of features built-in and with so many credits for data enrichment included in your monthly fee (additional credits available for more $$). Only thing it doesn’t do well is LinkedIn.
Same with Salesloft, Outreach and Outplay, as they’re focused on email and calling (with Outplay giving you SMS).
Personally I love prospecting on LinkedIn and so I use a platform that is central around that, plus provides all the other features (data enrichment, AI-copywriting, document hosting & tracking etc.) as my daily. I even use the Kanban-style pipeline to keep track of my prospecting opportunities to make it easy before I pop them into HubSpot as actual opportunities.
I really wish ZI and Gong keep followinig this “I will sell you anyhow” strategy. Helps startups like us build our pipeline without spending too much on marketing
We at MeetRecord compete head on with Gong and Chorus and have a steady flow of leads and eventual customers who are frustrated with this aggressive strategy.
Yepppp. Worked at a start up. Spent hours going back and forth with CEO about getting tools for my outbound for just $100 each (yeah I left and doing MUCH better) but I set up a few calls with lead gen tools. Average cost was $100-$200
Guess what the AE quoted me AFTER I told him everything about limited budget, just me on outbound etc etc
$20,000 for a license
Fasted hang up I’ve had on a call.
This was back in May. I still was getting emails from the guy when I left in Sept.
