Author: Michael R. Levy

Michael R. Levy is the Principal of GZ Consulting, a market research and competitive intelligence consultancy which focuses on the information services industry. Services include market sizing, market research, competitive profiling, product strategy, licensing advice, competitor benchmarking, and sales enablement. Michael has twenty years of experience in the sales intelligence industry, having worked for OneSource (Product Marketing Manager) and InfoGroup (Manager of Strategy and Competition) before launching GZ Consulting in 2011. Michael is also the author of the "Field Guide to Sales Intelligence Vendors." He also publishes a pair of weekly Market Insights Subscription newsletter covering B2B RevTech subjects such as Sales Intelligence, Data as a Service, Sales Engagement, Sales Enablement, ABX Platforms, and Conversational Sales & Marketing.

Outreach Closes $200M Round

Sales Engagement Platform vendor Outreach closed on a $200 million financing round that values the firm at $4.4 billion and brings total funding to $489 million.  The round trebled its market cap over the past year.

Premji Invest and STEADFAST Capital Ventures led the round.  Other new investors include Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Vista Public Strategies, and one of the largest U.S. asset managers based on the West Coast.  Existing Outreach investors, including Salesforce Ventures, Lone Pine Capital, Sands Capital, Mayfield Fund, DFJ Growth, and Trinity Ventures, also participated in the round.

Outreach continued its rapid growth during the pandemic, with B2B firms looking to operationalize their sales outreach, improve remote coaching, refine forecasts, and monitor sales activities and engagement. 

The firm more than doubled Q1 ARR year-over-year and has signed 18 of the top 24 fastest-growing public software companies.  ARR is around $125 million, according to Nathan Latka.  LinkedIn shows them adding sixty employees a month over the past three months.

Outreach has grown to more than 871 global employees, with recently opened offices in Prague and London.  The firm is based in Seattle and has a San Francisco office.

Data Collected by Nathan Latka based on a June 1, 2021, interview of Manny Medina.

At their Unleash user conference last month, they released their real-time conversational intelligence platform Outreach Kaia along with Outreach Insights, their buyer emotive signals and sentiment service.

Outreach Success Plans, which is currently in beta, was also unveiled at Unleash.  Success Plans align buyers and sellers to improve action and predictability.  They act as a buying hub that allows buyers and sellers to agree on shared success criteria, objectives, and timelines.  Success Plans also support shared access to project resources, allowing new demand unit members to quickly access project documents.

“This past year represents a true moment of maturity for Outreach – we are now a mission-critical part of the revenue tech stack for customers. The bets we made years ago, including significant investments in artificial intelligence combined with prospecting, closing, and customer success capabilities integrated into one holistic platform, are what revenue organizations need most right now to be successful. We continue to lead and expand the vision for sales engagement. Now, we are poised to deliver more meaningful business outcomes for our customers than ever before – from the rep to the CRO and from small businesses to the enterprise.”

Outreach CEO Manny Medina

Outreach will deploy the additional funds to expand its sales and marketing functions to meet “the growing demand” for its Sales Engagement Platform.  Funds will also be used to build, acquire, and deliver “new revolutionary technologies.”  Finally, the funds will support expansion plans and new market investments.

“Over the past five years as I’ve served on the board, Outreach emerged as a definitive standard for sales and customer engagement – proven by thousands of companies that use Outreach every day as a critical component of their workflow and their tech stack,” said Karan Mehandru, Managing Director of STEADFAST and Outreach board member. “Companies across every industry are reaccelerating growth and hiring post-pandemic and embracing intelligent automation to power their revenue teams.”

Mehandru told Bloomberg that he expects to see multiple sales software startups succeed with “multiple winners in the category.”  Mehandru likened Outreach to a modern-day Salesforce.

“If (Salesforce CEO) Benioff were to start a sales company today, it would look a lot more like Outreach,” stated Mehandru. Mehandru did not forecast when an IPO would take place but said, “We do think going public is an important event in the company’s cycle.”

Manny Medina LinkedIn Post (June 2, 2021)

LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2021 (Part II)

Continuing from yesterday’s discussion of LinkedIn’s State of Sales Report 2021…

LinkedIn State of Sales 2021 Trends

Sales managers are looking to diversify their hiring across two dimensions: geographic and cultural.  With work from home proving itself over the past year, managers are now confident that they can hire the best talent, regardless of location.

Likewise, sales professionals believe that their firms have succeeded in their efforts in opening up sales teams by gender, race, etc.  35% of sales professionals believe their sales organizations have “exceeded goals around diversity hiring initiatives,” while another 45% say their sales organization has “met” their diversity hiring goal.

On the buying side, 83% of purchasers said that all things being equal, they would give a preference to more diverse teams.

LinkedIn argues that Sales Intelligence is a crucial tool for building trust in the absence of face-to-face meetings.  LinkedIn broadly uses the term to include Conversational Intelligence tools such as Gong and Chorus, which help understand the prospect’s state of mind, and sales intelligence solutions such as Sales Navigator.

“With in-person meetings limited, sales technology provides a key pathway to gaining insight and understanding into potential customers. It’s no surprise, then, that our survey indicates that both usage of and investment in sales technology are increasing,” stated LinkedIn.

73% of respondents employ a sales intelligence solution weekly, and 23% use one daily.  54% said SalesTech helps reps build stronger relationships, and an equal percent said it helps them close more deals.  The top three categories for closing deals were CRM (70%), sales intelligence (69%), and sales enablement (69%).

Both usage and investment in SalesTech will increase in 2021, with CRM (49%), Sales Intelligence (43%), and Sales Planning (42%) seeing increased usage.  On the investment side, the top categories are CRM (41%), sales intelligence (40%), and sales engagement (40%).  Nearly seven in ten sales professionals anticipate greater SalesTech investment this year.

Data continues to be seen as critical, with 47% of sales organizations using it for account targeting, 44% for industry targeting, 43% for performance assessment, 41% for geographic targeting, and 39% for defining the buying committee.

While LinkedIn did not delve further into buying committee discovery, this is a nascent development area with multiple approaches, including conversational intelligence (meetings, emails) and machine learning.

Understanding the demand unit is critical for sales teams.  85% of reps reported that at least one opportunity was lost or delayed due to the departure of a client stakeholder.

Sales Navigator usage continues to be robust, with a 400% increase in self-bought Sales Navigator licenses over the past two years, “a surge that indicates sales professionals are investing in their own growth and have a willingness to use sales tech even if not prescribed by their company.”

59% of the Forbes Global 500 companies and 64% of the Forbes fastest-growing companies have Sales Navigator users.

Finally, message quality trumps quantity.  Simply sending high volumes of email or sharing many content pieces does not move the revenue needle.  The key is quality outreach that generates engagement and message acceptance.  “This is a strong indication that salespersons ought to be mindful of the value to the customer before sharing content or sending an InMail.”

InMails should be “short, personalized, and conversational.”  Messages with fewer than 400 characters are the most effective, with a sharp drop-off in response rates for long-in-the-tooth messages.

LinkedIn surveyed 400 sales and 400 US and Canadian purchasing professionals in January 2021.  Separate surveys were conducted for other geographies but have yet to be published. [Original Report]

LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2021

In its recently published State of Sales 2021 survey,  LinkedIn stated that “Virtual selling is good for sellers and even better for buyers.”  50% of buyers say that “working remotely has made the purchasing process easier.”  Buyers have benefited from the greater acceptance of sales intelligence and sales enablement services.

Furthermore, 70% of buyers want to retain remote work at least half of the time.  48% of buyers do not expect to be meeting face-to-face until H2 201, and 17% anticipate waiting until 2022.

“The bottom line is this situation requiring virtual selling skills won’t be changing anytime soon,” commented LinkedIn.

59% of buyers do not anticipate attending live events until H2 2021.  While 90% of the surveyed buyers have previously attended events, 48% of sales reps have now closed deals above a half-million dollars without meeting the buyer in person.

“Sellers will go back to face-to-face meetings but not remotely close to pre-pandemic levels. Digital transformation was coming no matter what.  COVID-19 just accelerated everything. In other words, digital transformation is here to stay.”

Gartner VP-Analyst Craig Rosenberg

Sales Managers recognize the acceleration of change and digitization, with 86% agreeing that “the ability to cope with change is more important than it was five years ago,” up 16% over the past year.

“Generally speaking, sales is slow to adapt,” opined Gartner VP-Analyst Craig Rosenberg.  “If the way sellers are doing things works, then they will keep doing it.  This drastic event is driving change.  Also, when the buyer changes, sales is forced to change. We often think of ‘sales’ as having to move virtual as the driver, but actually our buyers moved virtual.  Ultimately, sales is going to gravitate to the buyer’s preference.  In other words, it is much easier to adapt to change when you have to.”

The top three sources of change cited by sales managers are measuring sales processes and outcomes in different ways (51%), adding new technologies (50%), and instituting new hiring policies (50%).

LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2021

Remote sales job postings increased five-fold in Q3 2020 year-over-year, with remote positions growing 8.8X in Canada and 4.5X in the United States.  The transition hasn’t been easy.  67% of sales managers said that managing remote teams is more challenging than expected, and 65% of sales reps found it more difficult than anticipated.

Sales Operations and Customer Success roles proliferated between 2018 and 2020.  LinkedIn captured a 38% increase in Sales Operations roles over this period, 4.8X the growth of sales titles.

Customer Success positions trebled between 2018 and 2020.

Continue to Part II, which discusses diversity effort in sales, SalesTech, and Sales Navigator.

D&B Rev.Up ABX Integrated with Folloze

Continuing my discussion of the launch of D&B Rev.Up ABX.

Dun & Bradstreet also announced that the Folloze B2B personalized marketing platform is fully integrated into D&B Rev.Up ABX.  Folloze is available in both standard and advanced editions.

The D&B Data Cloud personalizes Folloze for landing pages from both inbound and outbound prospects. D&B customer profile data supports campaigns executed on display, email, or via sales outreach.

With Folloze, Rev.Up ABX customers can create and launch “data-powered, personalized omnichannel experiences across the entire buyer journey.”  Folloze captures first and third-party account and individual behavior analytics which are fed back to the CDP.  Folloze can also orchestrate targeted campaign activities across sales, account development, and channels.

The Folloze Buyer Experience Platform

“B2B buying and selling has changed forever,” said Eric Bauer, Chief Growth Officer at Folloze.  “Today’s digital-first buyers want to be treated as partners – not campaign targets.  As such, creating the engaging account-based experiences across the entire buyer journey represents the new table stakes for every marketing team.  Our alliance with Dun & Bradstreet makes it easy for marketing and revenue teams to retool and quickly deliver dynamic contextual experiences across a wide range of digital touchpoints.”

Companies that deployed Rev.Up ABX include Thomson-Reuters, Schneider, Citrix, Rackspace Technology, and Sierra Wireless.

D&B Rev.Up ABX is GA across all five modules (the four channels plus the Advanced edition that combines the four).  The Folloze integration will GA in June.

D&B Rev.Up ABX pricing starts at $30,000. This fee includes the ability to acquire data from the Data Cloud and the embedded CDP (D&B Lattice) along with a single channel to activate a campaign such as email, sales, or web. Other Standard features include visitor intelligence, lead form enrichment, a seat of D&B Hoover’s, Salesforce and MAP import connectors, Salesforce Buyer Insights (10 seats), the Outreach connector (10 seats), analytics, and programmatic audience building.

The Advanced edition applies to clients looking to license at least three modules.  It supports broad data ingestion, social activation, paid search, and real-time visitor intelligence feeds to content management systems, along with all four channels.

D&B Rev.Up ABX 90 Second Demo (YouTube)

D&B Rev.Up ABX Launched (Part II)

D&B Rev.Up ABX supports four channels supported by Dun & Bradstreet’s Lattice CDP and Data Cloud.  Users may license one or multiple packages or an advanced package that supports all of the channels.

Continuation from yesterday’s blog.

With D&B Lattice at its core, Rev.Up ABX supports AI-driven models for defining ideal buyers and their individual and account-level buying journeys.  Marketers define the goals, segmentation, criteria, and historical period for the model (e.g., four quarters of historical records), and Lattice builds and scores across the segment.  These models assist with building targeted audiences of buyers ready to engage across various stages of their journey.

Once a model is built, marketers can create and activate campaigns across channels.  For example, an awareness campaign can be activated across paid social, Google ads, and Google search for either accounts or contacts.  Lattice manages scheduled audience updates so that marketers do not need to manually update the activated segment.

Likewise, lower scoring leads triggered by website visits can be nurtured in Marketo, while higher scoring visitors are routed to Outreach as sequences or tasks.

Company-level analytics show the engagement journey across stages, contacts engaged, engagement activity, pages visited, firmographics, intent signals, and SDR alerts.

The D&B Lattice Model Builder score and rates contacts by estimated lift

The suite is GDPR and CCPA compliant with opt-in/opt-out flags shared across activation channels.

D&B Rev.Up is supported by the D&B Data Cloud, which includes

  • 420 million global companies and 37 million corporate linkages
  • 220 million global contacts, of which 54 million are C-level.
  • Digital identities spanning over 4 billion IP addresses, 22 million URLs, and over 500M devices ids.
  • 17 million technology products used by 13 million companies.
  • 3,500 intent topics spanning 14 billion digital signals.
  • Third-party alternative data sets with pre-assigned D-U-N-S numbers to ensure proper matching.

Firmographics and Technographics are available for all offerings, with intent data available for all but the Web edition in the default package (it is available in the advanced).

Rev.Up ABX is data agnostic, allowing revenue operations teams to deploy third-party licensed data sets such as G2.

Rev.Up ABX supports lookalike modeling, while the other products support three lead scoring and three account scoring models.  Lookalike contacts may be sent to D&B Lattice, D&B Hoovers, or MAPs.

The D&B Rev.Up ABX Dashboard

Continue to Part III for a discussion of the Folloze partnership and product pricing.

D&B Rev.Up ABX Launched

Dun & Bradstreet launched D&B Rev.Up, a new RevTech product line that brings together first and third-party data in “an open and agnostic platform that aligns teams, data, and technology to deliver relevant and engaging buyer experiences for target accounts.”  The datasets are unified via D&B Lattice, the CDP Dun & Bradstreet acquired in 2019.

The first offering is D&B Rev.Up ABX, which supports “first- and third-party data, activation capabilities and measurement, on top of its industry-leading customer data platform (CDP), giving sales and marketing teams a singular view of an account from targeting to revenue.”

“As sales and marketing leaders move to shared revenue responsibility, it becomes important to gain a common view of the customer throughout the buying lifecycle,” said Dun & Bradstreet CMO Stacy Greiner.  “We designed D&B Rev.Up ABX to simplify marketing and sales workflows by providing data, targeting, activation, and measurement in one platform, using an open architecture that allows teams to complement and capitalize on existing investments.”

D&B Rev.Up ABX aligns teams, data, and technology.

The new ABM service supports a channel-agnostic, “360-degree view” of accounts, contacts, campaigns, and sales plays.  Four ABX channels are supported:

  1. D&B Rev.Up ABX for Ads deploys paid media campaigns across demand-side platforms (DSPs) and social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Ads, theTradeDesk, Google Video & Display360, Verizon Media, Xandr, and MediaMath.  ABX for ads is available as either a managed service or a self-serve option.  The managed services option supports media, data, execution, and analytics.

    Revenue teams can target by role, firmographics, technographics, and intent data.  They can then engage audiences via programmatic advertising, paid search, and social media.
  2. D&B Rev.Up ABX for Web supports visitor intelligence, tying visitor activity to accounts across both offices and homes.  The service also pre-populates shortened forms, personalize websites, and deploys a tracking pixel to tie engagement back to D-U-N-S Numbers. 

    Because users select the company name from a type-ahead, drop-down list of names and addresses, the user only needs to enter a partial company name.  Dun & Bradstreet then enriches the record with firmographics, linkage, and D-U-N-S numbers.  According to Andrew Berg in Dun & Bradstreet Analyst Relations, the “waterfall matching technology” combines IP, cookie, and API matching logic.  The API type-ahead drop-down matching is completed in under 200 milliseconds after the first two characters are entered into the company name field on a form.
  3. D&B Rev.Up ABX for Sales builds lists for sales teams, rates opportunities, and activates sales plays with connectors to SalesTech solutions.  ABX for Sales supports predictive analytics, propensity modeling, sales plays, sales recommendations, and buyer propensity tracking.  SDRs may engage customers and prospects via Outreach sequences.  SalesLoft support is planned for later this year.

    Sales Engagement sequences can be driven by first and third-party intent, marketing engagement data from MAPs, and Folloze engagement.
  4. D&B Rev.Up for Email builds targets audiences and activates email campaigns via Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot (June GA), and Pardot (June GA).  Functionality includes campaign building, opt-in/opt-out support, and engagement analytics.

Analytics partners include Google Analytics, Optimizely, Adobe Target, and Adobe Analytics.  Other partners include Outreach and Salesforce.

“Teams aren’t trapped in a single, enclosed platform like other tech on the market.  D&B Rev.Up ABX integrates and works with their existing Martech and SalesTech so that they can activate in one channel, many, or all of them in a consistent and orchestrated way. They gain the power of the Data Cloud and our CDP, while also being able to use tools they already have,” blogged Greiner.  “This openness and flexibility helps teams to work efficiently and means they can maximize previous investments and use dollars wisely.  You can choose the full power of D&B Rev.Up ABX, or use it just in one channel – ads, email, web, sales plays – and then scale up to achieve a coordinated conversation with buyers everywhere they’re likely to engage.”

Part II discusses Rev.Up ABX modeling.

Artesian Solutions Engagement Signals

Artesian Solutions released Engagement Signals, a set of bespoke rules for its Connect platform.  Engagement Signals deliver “a constant supply of highly relevant intelligence and insight on their clients to facilitate advanced prospecting, customer monitoring, efficient onboarding, ongoing assessment of portfolio risks, and automated underwriting.”

Artesian Connect applies customer “Know-How” to structured and unstructured data, identifying “highly targeted calls to action.”  Engagement Signals combine triggers with Next-Best-Actions related to accounts.

We make it a priority to listen to our users and evolve our platform to solve their highest value challenges and ability to deliver transformational results. Financial Service organisations are now in a position where they must urgently transform their digital business strategies. With Artesian Connect, modern frontline banking and insurance teams can rapidly merge disparate data sources, create bespoke rules for risk selection utilising rich firmographic data and, most importantly, deliver insight from unstructured data that paints a much deeper picture for next-generation client experiences. Engagement Signals represent a simple way for our users to leverage the power of the Connect Platform through a pre-built set of features and rules.

Rich Clark, Artesian VP of Product Development

Artesian also launched a new Briefing Page that provides a snapshot of a company’s health,  financials, and signals.  At the top of the Briefing Page are financials and ownership flags, followed by Engagement Signals.  A set of tabs below Engagement Signals lets finance and sales professionals review the latest news, data, blogs, tweets, and pinned stories.

The Company Briefing provides current financials and Engagement Signals.

RollWorks Journey Stages

ABM Platform RollWorks announced Journey Stages.  The new feature “gives B2B marketing and sales teams deeper insight into the impact of go-to-market activities on account progression.”

Journey Stages determines the stage of the buying journey and activates stage-specific, multi-channel campaigns based upon this intelligence.  Journey Stages helps revenue teams “uncover insights about account journeys, measure account progression and regression, and understand key drivers and trends for any velocity changes between stages.”

Journey Stages lets sales and marketing professionals target and orchestrate multi-channel account-based campaigns based upon the journey phase.  Journey Stages tracks account progression based upon custom definitions across the full customer lifecycle.

RollWorks Journey Stages Account Progression.

“For example, if a bulk of your accounts are ‘unaware,’ you may prioritize brand programs over lower funnel plays,” blogged RollWorks Lead Product Manager Mark Miller.  ”If you see that a bulk of your accounts are ‘aware,’ you’ll likely focus on pulling them down the funnel with different offers. Essentially, you’ll have the information you need to toggle certain programs and budgets on and off at the ready.”

“We’re eager to bring this robust set of identification and measurement features to market,” said Justin Cooperman, VP of Product at RollWorks. “With Journey Stages and additional journey functionality shortly to come, RollWorks gives marketers a new layer of end-to-end insights to help them better understand the impact of their Account-Based campaigns, enabling finer tuning of their ABM programs for pipeline progression and revenue growth.”

Journey Stages is currently in beta, with GA scheduled for Summer 2021.

Seismic Aura AI Enhancements and SmartPlays

Seismic announced enhancements to its recently launched Aura AI platform.  Aura provides sales reps with “intelligent recommendations on how to effectively engage with buyers, advance deals, and uncover new opportunities.”

Aura AI is a personal assistant for sales reps delivered via a Chrome extension.  It suggests “personalized, relevant content recommendations” using data from similar customers and prospects.  This content can then be forwarded to customers and prospects or posted on social sites as a LiveSend Link that supports full tracking and analytics.

Seismic LiveSend Links support tracking and analytics

Aura also displays customer engagement history and engagement between the customer and colleagues.

“Artificial intelligence isn’t just about making sellers more productive, which is important.  It’s also about helping buyers solve their problems by connecting them with the right content,” blogged Seismic Senior Content Strategist Tony Smith.

Seismic also released CRM SmartPlays within Salesforce.  The new feature “removes the burden of identifying the best sales plays” and suggests higher-performing content and context. “The modern salesperson is constantly pulled in multiple directions, leading to information overload and decision fatigue on what to do next. Aura’s content recommendations act as the seller’s sidekick, helping them eliminate the noise and avoid missing the next important engagement moment,” said Seismic CEO Doug Winter.  “Our approach to AI combines the best of human and artificial intelligence to give sellers a competitive edge and more time back in their day to engage with buyers. I can’t wait for more Seismic customers to see what Aura will do for them.”

Vainu Industry Taxonomy

European Sales Intelligence vendor Vainu implemented a proprietary AI-based industry taxonomy.  The 700+ segments are derived from company website content and “extensive training data sets to determine unique industries for each company.”  Custom industry labels may be combined when list building.  Thus, sales and marketing can target companies, such as “Nordic SaaS providers building marketing automation platforms” or “Medical device manufactures developing machine learning applications.”

The industry codes are clustered into 46 custom industry groups.  For example, there are over 80 software codes and 19 sustainability codes (e.g., Biofuel, Biomass Energy, Clean Energy).  Vainu has focused the initial set of codes around emerging technologies and fast-changing markets.  Traditional industries such as agriculture, food and beverage, and manufacturing are supported by broad codes as these industries are well defined by traditional industry taxonomies.

Custom Industry codes may be combined to build lists such as Medical Devices that employ Machine Learning.

“Traditional industry classifications for B2B segmentation don’t do the trick anymore—they are too generic, broad, or even incorrect,” blogged Vainu Customer Marketer Ella Tyrväinen.

Custom Industries are available on the Vainu platform and via its API.  Industry-based target lists may be exported as a CSV file or JSON.

Vainu also recently added three fields to its list exports: Countries of Operation, Website Languages, and Technographics.  In February, Vainu released a webCRM integration.