Clari vs Gong for Commercial Solar & Energy EPC

Before configuring either tool, split your pipeline stages into two categories: the ones your sales team controls through the buyer's decision process, and the ones that depend on a third party like a utility, a permitting authority, or an interconnection queue. A deal stuck on an interconnection study isn't stalled because the customer went cold, and treating it the same as a stalled sales conversation will have your team wasting follow-up effort on the wrong deals.

Write out every external gate your projects typically pass through, from initial interconnection application to final utility approval, and treat each one as its own tracked milestone rather than folding it into a generic 'in progress' stage.

A signed contract that's still waiting on interconnection is committed revenue with an uncertain timeline, not an open opportunity with a probability percentage. Define that distinction explicitly: a deal moves out of your sales pipeline and into a separate committed-but-pending-gate category once the customer has signed, even if construction can't start for months. Mixing the two categories is what makes an EPC forecast look wildly inaccurate month to month, since the actual conversion rate hasn't changed, only the visibility into external timing.

Once that split exists, your sales-stage forecast becomes far more stable, because it's no longer being dragged around by projects whose movement has nothing to do with selling. A tax credit ruling that's still pending works the same way: it changes the economics of the project for the customer, not the likelihood that a signed contract closes, so treat it as its own tracked gate rather than folding it back into sales-stage probability.

Clari's stage governance is well suited to this once you've built the external-gate category into your stage model. You can set up a stage that explicitly represents 'signed, awaiting interconnection' or 'signed, awaiting permit,' separate from your standard sales stages, and use Clari's rollup to reconcile what's actually committed against what's still being sold. That gives leadership an honest view of backlog that isn't sales pipeline still being worked, and it stops a project manager from getting the same status-update call your sales rep would get for a stalled deal.

Gong can be genuinely useful for the earlier part of the sales cycle, where developer and customer calls happen and a rep is actually influencing a decision. Where it can't help is anything after the contract is signed, since interconnection delays, permitting timelines, and utility scheduling aren't conversations your sales team is having, they're external processes with their own queues. If most of your forecast uncertainty comes from post-signature delays rather than a live sales conversation, Gong is analyzing the wrong stage of the deal.

That means the case for Gong here rests entirely on how much of your revenue variance actually comes from the sales cycle versus the permitting and interconnection process. For most EPC operators, it's the latter.

Ask what share of your pipeline volatility actually comes from external gates versus genuine sales-stage movement, since that ratio tells you whether stage governance software solves your real problem. Confirm whether your team can consistently log the difference between 'waiting on the customer' and 'waiting on the utility,' since that distinction has to be entered by a human before any tool can report on it. And check whether your existing project tracking system already captures interconnection and permitting status, since duplicating that inside a sales tool creates two sources of truth instead of one.

Confirm these points before you commit budget:

• Ask what share of pipeline volatility comes from external gates such as utilities and permitting versus genuine sales-stage movement.
• Confirm your team can consistently log the difference between waiting on the customer and waiting on the utility, since a person has to enter that distinction.
• Build a separate stage for signed projects awaiting interconnection or another gate, so they are not treated as stalled sales conversations.
• When a utility pushes a study back, reforecast the expected date rather than downgrading the deal's strength.

Say a project signs in March with construction targeted for August, contingent on an interconnection study due in June. If the utility pushes that study to September, the deal hasn't gotten weaker, the timeline has simply moved, and the right response is to update the expected gate-clearance date, not to discount the deal's probability the way you would for a stalled sales conversation. Reforecasting this way keeps your revenue-recognition timeline honest without making the underlying sale look shakier than it is, which matters when a lender or investor is reading your backlog numbers.