Tag: Sales Engagement

Flash: Clari Acquires Groove

Revenue Platform vendor Clari announced the acquisition of Sales Engagement Platform Groove this morning.  The transaction is expected to close on August 21.  No deal details were released.

“This is the most transformative day of our history,” Clari CEO Andy Byrne told VentureBeat. “It’s a big acquisition for us.  When we started this company, our thesis was grounded in the belief that AI would revolutionize how businesses manage revenue. More specifically, our vision was to assist CEOs in answering the critical question of whether they would meet or miss revenue targets.  We aimed to offer a predictive solution to address the common issue of revenue leaks that many companies face. Our goal was to help them achieve what we call revenue precision.”

The courtship began two years ago when Clari customers began asking about Groove. Around the same time, Groove was implemented internally. The firms launched a Groove / Clari integration last year with a strong UVP.

The deal brings the firms closer to creating a full customer lifecycle platform, with Groove supporting Sales Engagement and Engagement Analytics alongside Clari’s Conversational Intelligence (Clari Copilot), Digital Sales Room, and Revenue Operations capabilities.  Clari will recommend sales actions that limit revenue leakage, which reps can execute in Groove without switching applications.  Groove engagement data will be fed back into Clari, helping identify deals at risk.

“Most CEOs have a tough time answering the most important question in business: ‘Will we meet, beat, or miss on revenue?  By bringing together Clari and Groove, revenue leaders can implement their revenue collaboration and governance strategy across all internal and external workflows, giving them full visibility and control over the company’s most important business process – Revenue.”

Clari CEO Andy Byrne

Clari’s vision is to “bring the entire revenue process into one unified platform so our clients can consolidate, simplify, [and] accelerate” their go-to-market.

According to Clari CMO Kyle Coleman, every CRO, CFO, and CEO he has spoken with over the last six months has emphasized the need to consolidate, simplify, and accelerate their revenue cycle.

“We’re really excited to be able to lean onto this macro trend of consolidation.  But it’s not just consolidating for the sake of saving money.  It’s consolidating for the sake of reducing complexity, simplifying, and improving your revenue results,” Coleman explained to GZ Consulting.  He is ”really confident” in the firm’s expanded capabilities and sees them as “exactly what revenue teams [want] right now.”

From 2013 until 2021, Clari focused on building revenue reporting and a revenue database (RevDB) with time series data.  Information is gathered from CRMs, emails, calendars, etc., with Groove soon feeding its activity data.  RevDB also ingests external data from data warehouses and Clari’s digital sales room functionality.  Data is stored and analyzed in RevDB with support for six products:

“Clari’s RevDB architecture has been a long-term investment by Clari and is the secret sauce that powers the company’s unmatched revenue AI (RevAI) capabilities,” stated Clari.  “With Groove added to the Clari portfolio, revenue teams will get real-time insights and suggested actions across every revenue workflow to create and convert more pipeline, while company leaders will be able to see every input, tie every activity to results, and precisely predict revenue outcomes.”

Clari with Groove brings together six product categories to serve the full revenue team.

“We’re augmenting the CRM with information that reps are never going to create manually.  And then we’re pulling that into our database to build our machine learning and AI models,” explained Coleman.

Last year, Clari acquired Conversational Sales Platform Wingman and added it to its deal monitoring and analytics workflows.  The integrated service was recently rebranded Clari Copilot.

“It expanded the workflows that we’re running for revenue teams, bringing call recordings into the flow of work,” remarked Coleman.  “You can actually hear and see what the customer is saying…Making CI less of a call recording solution for a call center and really more of a purpose-built solution for revenue teams.  While we’re doing that, we’re also adding this whole new dataset into the revenue database that makes us very capable for NLP and prescriptive AI…The RevAI capabilities we have made us capable of recording all these new AI use cases…We have all these different types of AI that we leverage across the platform.  We have the predictive components.  We have the generative components, and we have the natural language processing.  And we’re finding the right ways to expose that…in the flow of a rep’s work [and] in the flow of an executive’s work, so they’re actually getting the insight they need when they need it.”

Groove, already a Clari partner, allows sales reps to go from forecast and deal risk alerts to integrated actions, providing feedback loops and recommendations as a “closed loop of Insight and Action.”

When I spoke to the firms last year about their partnership, they presented an excellent joint value proposition presentation.  This messaging continued forward into their acquisition briefing.

A common issue for revenue teams is identifying revenue leaks and mitigating them.  Revenue leaks exist across the entire revenue lifecycle.  For example, deal slippage is identified in real-time by Clari, allowing reps to take action via Groove to bring the deal back on track. 

When Clari identifies a deal slipping for competitive reasons, it can suggest a play be executed in Groove.  Likewise, Clari can identify sub-par win rates, overly generous discounting, and low conversion rates for early-stage opportunities.

As Groove is native to Salesforce, it records all activities in real time, providing “full-funnel forecasting” and analytics to Salesforce and Clari.  Groove activity will also begin feeding into Clari’s RevDB time-series activities and conversations database.

“We can tie our campaigns through to revenue in Salesforce, and that is something that they (Groove’s competitors) cannot do,” argued Groove VP of Marketing Kristin Hersant.  “Then all of that rich data, tying engagement through to revenue, is pulled into Clari and used in the analysis, and that is available today.”

Coleman explained that while you can’t win a deal at any moment, you can certainly break a deal.  And once a deal is lost, “it’s very difficult to un-lose” it.  Thus, “if you don’t do the right thing at the right time – handle the right objection or pull the right person in or do the right kind of follow-up” – the deal could be jeopardized.  Therefore, “handling revenue critical moments expertly and in a prescribed way” and governed by best practices is critical in addressing revenue leaks.

“Having all of that insight into all these moments that exist and then having confidence that every one of your employees is going to be able to execute on them?  Well, this is what’s so exciting to us,” said Coleman.

Clari customers benefit from a consolidated selling platform for prospecting and engagement.  The platform will turn insight into action, allowing sales reps to kick off a Groove Flow immediately.  They will also better understand “top-of-the-funnel effectiveness and tie it to down-funnel results.”

Clari customers “can use it [Groove] both to fill the funnel and execute the funnel, turning insights into action in real-time – closing that loop and knowing what’s happening at the top of the funnel.”  Revenue teams can tie activities to revenue results and “hone and change” their revenue process.

Groove customers also benefit from platform unification as they prioritize activities, simplify forecasting, and enjoy a better understanding of deal status.  They will leverage analytics that tie activity to revenue impact, thus improving outcome predictions.

Furthermore, leaders will receive “end-to-end visibility of the revenue process by connecting sales engagement with conversion.”

“The goal is to consolidate all revenue-critical technology for all revenue-critical employees,” stated Coleman.  While the focus is on supporting the revenue team, Clari is finding that other stakeholders, such as finance and product management, also benefit from the ability to track sales activity.

For antitrust reasons, Clari has not discussed pricing with Groove for the six products but expects to have it locked down by the end of the month.  Reps will be quickly trained on the combined offering, and a unified team will be at Dreamforce.

“We’re bringing all of our quota carriers together for a two-day super deep dive – everything you need to know about the Groove product [and] everything you need to know about the combined platform.  We don’t want our sales reps to show up uninformed when they take the first meetings, and we expect there to be a healthy amount of demand coming in for this combination,” explained Coleman.  “We’re on this path to be a truly multi-product company.  And part of that journey is creating a true co-sell playbook.  When does it make sense to sell the full platform?  When should it be Groove standalone?  When should it be Groove plus Copilot?”

“The ultimate goal from a Go-to-Market standpoint is to be the single revenue platform that’s used by all revenue employees,” continued Coleman.  “We feel really good about this vision that we have to be the most used platform.”

Clari already has $1.5 trillion in revenue under management and over 1,500 customers.

Groove co-founders Chris Rothstein and Austin Wang will join Clari and oversee the Groove product line’s strategy, product direction, and customer success.

“I’m incredibly excited about the power of combining Clari’s Revenue Platform with Groove’s best-in-class pipeline creation and conversion capabilities,” said Rothstein.  “Together, we will create more pipeline and enable sellers to act on opportunities with incredible speed and effectiveness.  Revenue teams are looking to win more, faster — and Groove and Clari are bringing the rocket fuel.”

The first stage of the Groove integration is planned for October.

“This acquisition will create a sense of urgency in the market that leads all key players to step up their focus to create their own version of a revenue orchestration platform,” opined Forrester Principal Analyst Seth Marrs.  “It’s a significant win for all companies looking to improve sales performance.”

“Consolidating to create a more comprehensive platform is the best option in this environment,” continued Marrs.  “Those that don’t, face the less appealing prospect of a down round or going out of business.”

“B2B sales tech buyers want to take advantage of AI for sales and simultaneously reduce complexity in their tech stack,” said Gartner Senior Director Analyst Dan Gottlieb.  “Clari with Groove now has the pieces to deliver a complete revenue hub with interconnected workflows and deep data integrations.”

Gong Engage (Generative AI + Sales Engagement)

Engage’s generative AI models help personalize customer engagement efforts while streamlining email composition.

Revenue Intelligence vendor Gong unveiled Gong Engage, its entry into the Sales Engagement space.  SEPs have been adding Conversational Sales tools for several years, so Gong adding SEP functionality should not be surprising.  After all, Gong began as a conversational sales solution before widening its scope to Revenue Intelligence.  Also, one of Gong’s top rivals, Chorus, is owned by ZoomInfo, which has been building ZoomInfo Engage for several years.

“Gong Engage serves as a single solution to streamline sales engagement for revenue teams by delivering AI-based sales guidance from the first touchpoint with a prospect to deal close,” wrote the firm.  “Engage helps teams create and accelerate pipeline by delivering increased productivity with AI-driven automation and guidance, high-quality outreach to engage entire accounts, and a single sales engagement solution to streamline revenue workflows.  Gong’s proprietary AI delivers three times more accuracy than off-the-shelf AI models.”

Engage supports core SEP features, including a web-based dialer, workflows, and email templates.  It also sports generative AI models for deal prioritization and extracting call highlights, action items, and outcomes.  AI features include:

  • Call Spotlight, Gong’s generative AI functionality that composes call briefs, account highlights, and action items from sales conversations
  • Automated call outcomes and email response classification that automatically categorizes calls and emails and syncs these insights with the CRM
  • Assisted writing, which helps reps personalize their outreach based on persona

“Engage’s contextual, account-based approach for prospecting and selling exceeds the limitations of traditional lead-based tools that encourage mass outreach with little targeting.  Instead, it delivers a complete understanding of an account, including all touchpoints, relevant CRM information, and conversational history,” stated Gong.

Gong emphasized that it didn’t jump on the generative AI bandwagon following the breakout success of ChatGPT but has been working to integrate generative tools into its platform for over a year.  Furthermore, its focus on sales-focused NLP offers it a leg up on vendors marketing generic ChatGPT tools or lacking years of AI expertise and product development.

“Gong launched in 2016 to harness the power of AI to rid customer-facing people of their day-to-day drudgery.  We have been working with LLMs for over a year and see it as a major breakthrough.  But highly accurate, domain-specific AI that delivers a deep understanding of what’s going on within a sales organization and the next steps needed to win deals is more elusive,” said Gong CEO Amit Bendov. “AI is the core of Gong’s platform, and our new models exemplify the sales-driven advancements we’re bringing to market to help our customers transform their teams and accelerate revenue growth.”

Along with conversational sales expertise, Gong offers Smart Trackers, a set of AI-based customized signals.  Launched last year, Smart Trackers help revenue teams “identify deal risks and opportunities, understand the effectiveness of strategic initiatives, replicate best practices, and get ahead of emerging market needs.”

Gong Recommended Contacts

Engage’s Recommended Contacts feature analyzes historical deal data to recommend contacts for outreach.  It feeds contact data from LeadIQ, Cognism, and Apollo based on target personas.  Recommended contacts may be added to flows (cadences), or sales reps can reach out via email, phone, or LinkedIn.

Engage also displays buying signals from over 120 Gong Collective integrations “to help teams stay on top of their pipeline, no matter where signals are coming from.”

Along with consolidating conversational sales, sales engagement, and revenue intelligence in a common platform, Engage supports partnerships that include LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Chili Piper, and Calendly.

Engage workflow and dashboard features include Pipeline Views for viewing key tasks and insights across open opportunities, an Analytics Dashboard for sales management, and team collaboration tools for sharing and assigning tasks across teams.

“Gong changed how revenue teams build pipeline with our customer-centric AI – now we’re changing how they engage with customers at every stage,” said Bendov. “We have leveraged our market-leading AI technology as the foundation for Gong Engage, which sets the entire revenue team up for success.  Engage is the only solution that harnesses customer interactions at scale to drive high-quality engagement and ultimately, grow revenue.”

Gong Engage will GA this summer.

Demandbase / Outreach Integration

Demandbase announced a native Outreach integration with other SEPs in development.  Streamlining Sales Intelligence and Sales Engagement allows reps to “focus on engaging with prospects and closing deals, rather than wasting time on manual tasks.”  The I-frame integration supports core Demandbase Sales Intelligence functionality within Outreach workflows.  For example, sales reps can research companies and contacts, build lists, and launch Outreach sequences inside of Outreach.

The Demandbase Sales Intelligence Watchlist displayed as an I-frame tab in Outreach.

Users will see common information, tools, and workflows presented in the same format as their CRM but in Outreach’s Account, Prospect, and Opportunity records.  There is also a standalone tab in Outreach similar to the Demandbase standalone tab found in CRMs.  This Custom Tab supports company and contact searching, prospect list building, connection management for warm introductions, customer and prospect news tracking, and custom buying trigger configuration.

“We’ve noticed that the order of preference as far as where sellers spend time actually starts with their SEP – So, Outreach.  And if they have to, they’ll go to CRM,” observed Demandbase Product Marketing Manager Travis Breier.  “When you look at Outreach users who have Demandbase and Outreach, they can spend all of their time within Outreach and never have to go to the Demandbase platform.  They’re not missing out on any information… It’s just one less thing that they have to learn and one less barrier to access the Demandbase information.”

“Being a seller has never been easy, but the proliferation of data and tools has led to stressed-out sellers with lost productivity, lower quota attainment, and less revenue,” says Gabe Rogol, chief executive officer at Demandbase. “With our simplified and smarter Sales Intelligence solution, reps no longer need to waste precious time figuring out their next steps and executing them.  Instead, they can close more deals and make more money.  Think of our intelligence as a sales superpower, all within the tools sellers use every day.”

Demandbase Sales Intelligence is integrated with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Outreach, Slack, and browsers.  The Sales Engagement integration enables reps to add contacts to Outreach sequences and personalize the messaging.

“Integrating Demandbase’s Sales Intelligence directly within our platform will unlock new levels of value for sales teams looking to efficiently create and predictably close more pipeline,” said Outreach CEO Manny Medina.  “With this next-generation integration, sellers can more easily and quickly find and contact accounts, get data-focused insights, and unlock new levels of productivity — all while never leaving the Outreach Sales Execution Platform.”

Demandbase recently dropped the Cloud Designations for its products, emphasizing its unified functionality within the Demandbase One platform.

“We found that it kind of creates this illusion of complexity that we don’t feel serves it justice as far as the actual products you’re spending time in,” said Palmer.  “They’re even more interconnected.  Most of our customers are now buying three or more products.  We’ve got bundles and packages of everything, so we’ve just moved away from that whole cloud nomenclature to just Demandbase One.”

The Cloud services will now be called Demandbase ABX, Demandbase Advertising, Demandbase Sales Intelligence (FKA InsideView), and Demandbase Data.

A Hot Leads feature that provides SDRs with key engagement insights and the ability to take action on unknown leads will soon be available.  Hot Leads will be displayed in the Prescriptive dashboards and identified by engagement activity, intent, recency, news/company/job changes, technographics, etc.  Hot Leads will be GDPR and PII compliant.

In other news, Demandbase was named a Notable Provider in Forrester’s Account-Based Selling Technologies Landscape, Q2, 2023 report.  Seventeen vendors were included in the report.  Account-Based Sales vendors “improve visibility into the potential of each account; increase sales rep efficiency; and increase pipeline value (deal size), win rates, and forecast accuracy.”

“The landscape for B2B GTM teams continues to change at [a] breakneck pace.  At Demandbase, we’re committed to shaping that market evolution to empower our customers to achieve their most audacious goals,” said Demandbase CPO Brewster Stanislaw.  “This year, we’ve placed a deep focus on making sellers’ jobs easier and more effective with AI-powered insights and seamless workflows, and we believe our inclusion in this report further validates that direction.”

Continue to my coverage of Demandbase Smarter Sales Intelligence.

Outreach – Corporate Visions Partnership

Corporate Visions Sales Transformation Strategies.

Sales Execution Platform Outreach and Revenue Consultancy Corporate Visions announced a partnership to “help companies transform enterprise organizations’ sales for the modern era.”  Corporate Visions, which recently acquired win/loss analytics vendor Primary Intelligence, offers science-backed revenue growth services for sales, marketing, and customer success. 

Along with hosting conferences and training, Corporate Visions helps firms “articulate value and promote growth” in three ways:

  1. Make Value Situational by distinguishing your commercial programs between customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
  2. Make Value Specific by creating and delivering customer conversations that communicate concrete value, change behavior, and motivate buying decisions.
  3. Make Value Systematic by equipping your commercial engine to deliver consistent and persistent touches across the entire Customer Deciding Journey.

“I have been a fan of Corporate Visions and their work since the beginning of Outreach.  Their commitment to research-backed solutions for sales challenges and solid track record of implementing solutions across GTM teams that lead to results is unmatched.  Their work has resulted in increased revenue and profitability for many of the world’s biggest companies,” said Outreach CEO Manny Medina.  “That’s why Outreach is partnering with Corporate Visions to empower Chief Revenue Officers to unlock sales productivity so they can efficiently create pipeline and predictably close more deals.”

The partnership aims to increase deal velocity, improve sales quota attainment, and generate higher win rates.  Corporate Visions will offer a quartet of Outreach-based services around tech implementation strategy, sales messaging optimization, skills coaching, and sales forecast process & measurement.

“By leveraging Corporate Visions’ best practices as organizations implement Outreach’s platform, enterprise sales leaders, from the CRO down, will ensure that every action their team is taking consistently builds enough pipeline coverage for the next quarter without sacrificing today’s deal velocity or pipeline conversion rates,” wrote the firms.

Resources

Outreach

Corporate Visions

Engagement Data Is Becoming Integral to SalesTech

Chorus Momentum identifies deal risks.

One of the most important SalesTech trends, besides the emergence of ChatGPT, is the rapid incorporation of engagement datasets alongside intent datasets for prioritization and messaging.

A few years ago, we saw the emergence of intent data sets such as first-party web visitor tracking, second-party product review site research, and third-party B2B media research.  Initially, this content was integrated into MAPs, ABX platforms, and CDPs, but it was not well integrated into SalesTech.  We are now seeing intent data being integrated into SalesTech platforms in a simplified fashion (e.g., High Intent Topics in CRM profiles and Slack alerts) that is digestible for sales reps. 

However, intent data only indicates whether a company is in-market, not whether the buying committee is considering your offering or seriously engaged with your sales team.  This intelligence comes from a new category of engagement data captured from digital interactions between the revenue team (sales, marketing, and customer success) and the buying committee.  Engagement intelligence consists of both traditional digital interactions (e.g., clickthroughs, downloads) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) analytics derived from sales and buying team activities.

NLP helps RevTech platforms determine who is interacting with your firm.  It also analyzes buyer sentiment, buyer concerns, deal health, and risk flags.  The primary sources of engagement data are emails, recorded phone calls, and recorded meetings.  However, any digital interaction between buyers and sellers can be captured such as activity in digital sales rooms, webinar attendance, chat messaging, and scheduled meetings.  I anticipate that customer support platforms will also be tapped for engagement data to help gauge churn risk and friction during product trials.

Engagement data indicates whether a deal is on track and what issues could result in lost deals or pushed out pipeline.  For example, engagement data assesses whether:

  • Discussions are single or multi-threaded
  • Key decisionmakers are involved (e.g., has a security review been performed or has legal been included?)
  • Competitors have been mentioned
  • Pricing concerns were raised
  • Follow on meetings have been scheduled
  • Meetings had a positive flow or were dominated by the sales rep

In short, engagement data provides sales reps and managers deal health and risk analytics that improve forecasting and ensure that deal risks are quickly mitigated.  And as interactions are digital, managers can discuss these issues during one-on-ones or offer quick tips on next steps.  They can even review the discussion associated with the risk and identify skills and knowledge gaps for coaching.

Nektar’s Insights Hub details buyer-seller interactions, leading indicators, buying committee engagement, MEDDIC adherence, etc.

The interesting thing about intent and engagement data is they are highly complementary with each other.  Operations teams should be looking at integrating intent data alongside engagement data.  Intent data is valuable for identifying who and when to reach out to ideal customers.  However, once a relationship is established, the focus shifts to engagement data for monitoring deal health.  After a deal is signed, both engagement and intent data are in play.  Intent data identifies cross-sell opportunities and churn risk through second and third-party intent topic monitoring while Engagement and Product Usage data evaluate adoption rates and potential implementation issues.

Engagement data and deal health analytics can be found in Revenue Intelligence services (e.g., Clari, Revenue Grid), Sales Engagement (e.g., Salesloft, Outreach, Groove), Conversational Sales (e.g., Gong, Chorus), Revenue Operations (Nektar), and Sales Enablement (e.g., Seismic, Bigtincan) platforms.

Revenue Grid Deal Guidance

Groove Plays Announced

Groove Plays are triggered when one or multiple conditions are met.

Sales Engagement vendor Groove introduced its Plays service to the market this morning.  Groove observed that most sales engagement vendors tout flows (aka cadences and sequences) but that sequenced, linear processes fail to capture the increasingly complex nature of modern enterprise sales.  Furthermore, flows were initially designed for SDRs and appointment setting but are inadequate for meeting the broader needs of the revenue team.

Along with the introduction of Plays, Groove is shifting from sales engagement to a broader vision of “Connected Sales Execution” that unifies team, strategy, and technology.

“When my co-founder Austin and I founded Groove, we were sales leaders facing the exact challenge that Groove Plays solves,” said CEO Chris Rothstein.  “We knew that in order to digitally transform sales as a profession, we had to start by building a foundation in advanced data capture and linear-process automation.  With Groove Plays, we are introducing the next generation of Groove to solve the biggest untapped market in sales.”

Forrester recognized this transformation in its Q3 2022 Sales Engagement Platforms Wave report, noting that Groove’s activity capture and interaction management are “top-notch.”  Groove collects and aggregates signals from interactions and scores from Salesforce and external sources such as Clari, Seismic, 6sense, and Snowflake.  “This information is used to connect buying group members and make suggestions based on broad data sets.  Groove specializes in industry-specific and customer-specific suggestions and signals.”

“We’re launching Groove Plays as a way to take your playbook finally out of your head and put it into software so that you can assist reps at the right time, rather than after it’s too late,” explained Rothstein to GZ Consulting.  “And then the second huge benefit: if you can constantly see what’s being done, what’s not being done, and what’s correlated with winning, then you can evolve and constantly get better.

Plays are designed for complex, non-linear sales processes.  Sales Operations set up Groove Plays to monitor accounts for risks and opportunities.  Plays are triggered when specified conditions are met (e.g., stalled deals, single threading, missing participants by role).

Groove Plays also monitors rep activity to see whether plays contributed to positive outcomes.  Thus, sales managers and operations teams know whether sales reps follow company playbooks and which ones are effective.  Play analytics are broken into outcomes without intervention (the playbook was followed), with intervention (the playbook was followed but after a reminder), or ignored.

Furthermore, by monitoring activity, Plays prevent reps from failing to follow critical steps (e.g., sending a follow-up message after a call, quickly turning around meeting action items).

Groove Play Outcomes analyzes the efficacy of Plays

Alerts are fed to Groove’s Master Review List, which is displayed in its Chrome extension and visible across Salesforce, Groove, and email.  In addition, timers can be set to prevent plays from automatically firing, thus reducing the likelihood that reps are overwhelmed by automated triggers.

Plays provide proactive coaching instead of waiting until account reviews or forecasts.  Delayed recommendations are generally reactive instead of proactive.  “At that point, it’s too late.  And then you react way too late.  Our goal is for you to put the rules in the system, so it’s assisting you at the right time when there are signals…so you can be more proactive and consistent,” stated Rothstein.

Plays recommend actions when specific criteria are met.  For example, a play can be built for deals with negative sentiment concerning price and slowing engagement.  The play could then recommend an ROI calculator to a prospect, helping shift their thinking from cost to ROI.

Plays can also be built around handoffs, ensuring that crucial transition steps are not skipped.

Plays are also integrated into Groove’s conversational intelligence service and generative AI, providing meeting follow-up emails based on insights.  Reps can choose to regenerate the email or add snippets.

Groove suggests “ideal email content based on insights gathered from earlier in the deal process via Groove Conversations and advance activity capture.”

Plays can also be designed around deal risk, suggesting actions if key buying committee members are not engaged.  Likewise, plays can be setup if MEDDIC steps have not been completed, the primary contact has not responded to a renewal message, or internal approval timelines are not being met.

Groove’s RIO AI engine consists of three underlying engines:

  • NLP: Analyzes emails and generates insights for coaching.
  • Association: Ties actions to outcomes across the tech stack.
  • Guidance: Suggests actions based on sales plays and generates personalized content and best engagement times.

Groove supports “Connected Sales Execution” across sales, marketing, and customer success.   RIO ingests account and activity histories with feedback loops to refine plays and recommendations.  Thus, Connected Sales Execution spans teams, processes, and technology. 

“We’re a platform to help you execute your sales strategy,” argued Rothstein.  At its heart, Groove employs AI, processes, rules, and sensors (e.g., email capture, calendar capture, logging, phone calls) that analyze activities and generate insights.

“We’ve always been a company that connects all these things: the technology and the process, the team and the process,” stated Rothstein.  “Where we can help is getting everyone on the same page, executing the playbook in real-time, and seeing what’s working and [what’s] not.”

Groove Plays is in Alpha with a planned Q2 beta.  Groove Plays will be available to all customers at no additional cost when it GAs this summer.

Kyle Porter Steps Down as Salesloft CEO

Salesloft Chairman Kyle Porter

Kyle Porter, who founded and led Salesloft for the past dozen years, stepped down from the CEO role and was named Salesloft’s Chairman last week.  In his place, the firm named SaaS veteran David Obrand its new CEO.  Obrand is also joining Salesloft’s board.

Porter grew Salesloft into a unicorn with a $2.3 billion valuation.  In December 2021, Vista Equity Partners took a controlling interest in Salesloft. 

Over the past six years, the company grew ARR 20-fold and now supports 4,500 customers.  It also began its international expansion with offices in London and Singapore.

The firm began as a contact email enrichment service based on email guessing but expanded its vision to Sales Engagement with the launch of its Cadence service.  It continues to widen its scope, with the addition of modules for Deals and Conversations.  Functionality includes sales engagement, conversational sales, meeting scheduling, a partner ecosystem, and forecasting.  Its Rhythm service, which dynamically provides prioritizes a sales rep’s day, was announced at its August Saleslove conference.

I’ve known Kyle Porter for around a decade. I was impressed when he mothballed his first email guessing product because it wasn’t aligned with his belief in sales authenticity. It was a gutsy move. While he didn’t burn his boats (i.e., immediately remove the product from the market), he stopped selling the service and phased out the product while fulfilling current contracts.

Porter is also a gifted storyteller, which he emphasizes as a skill that sales reps should hone.  His personal story is embedded into his management style.

I had the opportunity to interview Kyle on Friday. The conversation below was edited for length.

Why have you chosen to move upstairs?

There are two major reasons.  The first is for the greater good of the business.  I’ve seen this market unfold and the opportunity that we have in front of us just open up.  It’s unlimited what we can do in sales and revenue generation.  And our mission has always been to fundamentally change the profession of sales forever and really build a world where sellers are loved by the buyers they serve.  I want every Lofter to have our mission as their primary focus within this business.  And that means I need to have it as well.  My goal is to always do that.  And when I looked out to the future of everything that we could achieve, the biggest fear I had was that I wouldn’t be the right person to help us get there – that I would leave something on the table.  

My skills are always growing, always developing.  I consider myself a lifelong learner.  And I’ve worked really hard to be just as good as I can at this stage as I was when there were zero people at the company. That evolution, however, is hard work.  And that self-development is a deep investment.

Tangerine Groves, Winter Haven, FL

The second piece of this is more of a personal perspective.  On my very first date with my now wife…she asked me what my dream was, and I told her it was to run a technology company that makes a dent in the universe.  I asked her hers, and she said it was to restore the glory that was the Florida citrus industry…

Now with someone like David, he’s already gained that wisdom, experience, know-how, and recall.  It’s so natural for him.  And I felt like we could accelerate the development of the CEO’s capability to take us to the next level by bringing in someone like David.  So really, it’s based on my limitations as CEO.  The opportunity ahead of us is just so big.  And we have an amazing future in this business.  We do the right things, and we serve our customers with excellence.  There’s no limit to what we can achieve, so I wanted to accelerate the office of the CEO’s capabilities and really improve the handicapped chances to achieve our mission. 

Porter with his family.

Some opportunities came up to really achieve that mission that she’s been on.  And I realized that my talents and resources could greatly assist her just as she sat on the sidelines and helped me achieve my mission for over twelve years.  I realized that it’s not right for this organization with so much growth ahead to have a CEO that’s not singularly focused on the mission of the business…I’m going to do tangerines with my wife, and that meant that it was the best decision to have someone that would be singularly focused on the mission of this business…

Of course, there are also my three children. While my daughter Brooklyn (8) is still going through the change curve of me no longer being CEO, I’m incredibly excited to pour more time and attention into her, my son Clark (5), and daughter Abby (1) as well!

How active will you be as the chairman?

Pretty active.  We have a founder lunch that I’m going to continue.  I’ve been corresponding with many customers this week, and I will retain those relationships and meet with them continuously.  I’ll be a board member.  David has asked for a once-a-week meeting indefinitely with him.

I just have really deep relationships with so many people inside the organization and with so many of our customers and partners.  My enjoyment and my passion are to continue to work with those people.  So customer meetings, board meetings, and one-on-ones with the CEO.

We got some really fun content projects that we’re working on.  We’re going to be doing some work together to really show the market what’s happening and what’s changed and how to be more effective in this new world of modern sales.

What were the top criteria for selecting your successor?

Number one is that they are aligned with the mission of the business.  When we talk about fundamentally transforming sales and revenue forever, this person that we brought on board had to have that in their heart already.  Number two is they have to realize and understand that organizational health is the biggest sustainable differentiating advantage that any company can have.  So when we love on our Lofters, they turn around and love on our customers, and the CEO needed to understand those dynamics and be willing to continue running this business with that framework and mindset.  Three, I wanted someone that was well-rounded functionally.  Not just a sales leader, but someone that understood product engineering, finance, marketing, [and] customer success.

I saw it firsthand when David Obrand got up and spoke with the product and engineering team.  I sat, and I listened to someone say things that I wish I had thought of saying to them in the past.  Things that I didn’t know and didn’t experience.  And the way he connected with them was on a very deep level.  And it was really refreshing for them to see someone that understands them even better than I did.  So that was really cool.

When you think about succession as a founder, there’s a point at which your skillset, knowledge, or experience isn’t the right fit for taking the company to the next level.  And many executives, out of hubris, choose to continue in that role, even though they may not be the best person for that role.

I believe exactly what you said.  But I also believe that we really don’t have any limits except for those imposed upon us by ourselves.  I’ve always believed that we can grow and develop into that next stage, and I’ve always believed that for myself, but that investment sometimes takes time.  And if you have other things that you’re focused on, it’s more difficult to get down that development path.

You had a quiet layoff last week.  Usually, you’re more transparent about these things.  Why the shift away from the prior transparency, and why was it necessary to do so?

Necessary is an interesting word.  I teach our leadership team that they don’t need to do anything; they always choose to do certain things.

On the transparency front, we did have a layoff after COVID.  And we didn’t make a public announcement on that, as well.  We believe that’s a private thing for the people that are part of the organization.  We want to be super transparent internally about everything that happened.  And if someone goes out and posts something, we don’t stop them or send them a note saying, don’t write that by any means.  But that is a private kind of situation for the people who are impacted and affected.

Now, I am certainly helping people to find jobs.  And we’ve assembled a list.  And I’ve made many introductions.  I’ve brought a lot of investors in, And we are helping those folks to find their next path.

SalesLoft, like many companies, saw lots of growth in the market and then saw some headwinds in front of us.  And the way we think about it is that you’re in an airplane, and when the headwinds come, you can do two things: you can accelerate through and burn all your fuel, or you can lay back a little bit, let the headwinds pass, and pick back up.  The decision we made was to lay back a little bit, let the headwinds pass, and then pick back up with the business.

What advice would you give founders of technology startups?

Really obsessing over the problem you solve is the first and foremost most critical thing that founders need to do.  And when I say obsessed, I mean you need to get everybody in the organization on board with caring so much that they love their customer; they love solving the pains for them.  And the company that cares the most is the one that’s going to win.  Number one is that customer obsession and a really deep focus on the problem that you solve to the point where it becomes just a daily rhythm of your life.

The second one is aligning your organization to go after your mission.  The mission statement is something where you’re one stop short of changing the world.  We want to fundamentally transform sales forever.  And that’s what we’re here to do.  And so we need to hire people who believe in that mission, even down to the engineer.

We’ve created this whole community of people from every walk of life who love sellers and who understand the beauty of what sales is and how it transforms economies and markets.  How it helps companies hire, invent, bring new products to life, and really change the fabric of our society.  Making sure that your team is focused on that mission is critical.  Then you got to have the rhythms in place where they’re being held accountable [and] where you’re achieving your goals.

You’ve emphasized the importance of culture.  How did Salesloft benefit from your five core values?

Salesloft’s values are listed on its “Who We Are” page.

What we’re looking for when we hire people is not that they’re five out of five A+, but that they have many of the core values [and] also believe that the other ones that maybe they’re not as strong in are important enough to work towards.

The other thing is that core values are a way to stop yourself before you make a mistake.  Once a mentor told me [that] a good leader makes a mistake and quickly fixes it, [but] a great leader is about to make a mistake and fixes it before they do.  And for me, that’s what the core values are.  If we say that we want to be glass half-full, and I find myself about to say something negative.  In the old days, I would say it, learn it, and fix it.  But now, before it even comes out of my mouth, my head says, “glass half-full,” and I change the way I deliver that message.

Or if I’ve got a decision where I can go left, and it’s maybe better for money and then go right, and it’s better for customer experience.  Then, customer obsession comes into my mind before I make that decision so that I can go right for the customer.  We look at core values as triggering mnemonic messages in your head that help you to be the person you want to be.

As a CEO, you’ve got to repeat those [values] over and over again.  Reward people who exhibit it.  You’ve got to praise those who showcase it.  Repetition is persuasion in that regard.

What is one mistake you wish you could have avoided?

We never anticipated the market would come back so fast post-COVID.  Nobody did.  Had I understood that, we wouldn’t have slowed down like we did.  But then, we also never anticipated that the SaaS market would crash the way that it did.  Had we understood that, we would have slowed down a little bit more before we did.  Hindsight is 20/20.  If you can predict those things, you can be a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund manager. 

We’re always trying to align market demand with the resource supply of the organization.  So that’s a continual trade-off that we’re working to make.

Are you looking forward to more time on the citrus farm?

Tangerine Gift Box from Salesloft

I’m really excited.  One of the things we do is send tangerines out to our customers.  Every single year we do it, and I’m not going to miss that.  We’ve got to keep producing great tangerines, so we can keep getting them into the hands of our customers. It is a joy and a passion of mine and my wife’s.  She’s been so helpful to me on this journey, and I’m excited to help her follow her dreams.

Any last thoughts?

Yeah, we’re in a great spot.  As a company, even with what we’ve seen in the downturn in the marketplace, we saw a really strong end to our Q4, and Q1 is off to a great start.  Our CEO is highly capable.  He’s wise.  He’s been welcomed with a huge Salesloft hug inside the organization, and I’ve seen our customers and market participants really appreciate who he is and what he’s going to do.  We’ve got a big opportunity to fundamentally transform the sales profession ahead of us.  And we’re going to do it.

Resources

Vidyard Hires Lister as COO; 2022 Product Enhancements

Asynchronous video vendor Vidyard announced the appointment of Jonathan Lister as its new COO.  Lister joins from LinkedIn, where he served as VP of Global Sales Solutions.  Prior to LinkedIn, Lister was the Country Manager for Google Canada and held multiple executive positions at AOL.

“We’re incredibly excited to welcome Jonathan to the Vidyard team,” said Vidyard CEO Michael Litt.  “His unique experience as a global leader at LinkedIn will be a tremendous asset as we build on our mission to empower every go-to-market professional with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful in the new world of digital customer communication.”

While at LinkedIn, Lister increased the division’s customer base to one million users paying $1,000 per year for Sales Navigator.

“So, he drove it to a billion dollars a year in revenue,” said Litt.  “And we have the same user — the sales professional using video to communicate with their customers.”

“The next stage is, how do we commercialize and value at scale?” continued Litt.  “And that is exactly what Jonathan is here to help us with.”

Video adoption remains strong among sales and marketing organizations.  According to Demand Metric’s 2022 State of Video Report, 82% of go-to-market teams report that video is becoming increasingly important when connecting with buyers.  Furthermore, 70% of sales reps stated that video converts better than other content formats.

“There are few SalesTech companies that are truly focused on empowering the individual sales professional,” said Lister.  “That’s really what drew me to Vidyard.  I believe the company is uniquely positioned in that its products can be used by any go-to-market professional in the world to impact every stage of the customer journey.  I’m looking forward to building on Vidyard’s strong momentum and reputation as a world-class provider of sales technology and community education.”

Vidyard also provided a summary of its 2022 enhancements

  • Video Templates: Video Templates guide sellers on how to use videos across various including getting in front of a new prospect, recording a custom demo, or closing out a deal.  Video Templates include sample scripts, example videos, recording tips, and related best practices.  There are also community-contributed templates from Shari Levitan, Sales Gravy, Katherine Caldwell, Todd Caponi, and Salesloft.
  • Enhanced Editing: Enhanced video trimming and cutting features.
  • Video Chapters: Add chapters to mark specific topics and improved navigation.
  • Salesloft Insights Integration: Salesloft users can discover which prospects are watching their videos natively within Salesloft. Vidyard video views are surfaced within the Salesloft activity feed to “empower sellers with timely customer insights.”
  • Sales Feed Learning Hub: Vidyard launched a new learning hub, accessible within the Vidyard app, powered by its Sales Feed media network.  Vidyard users can access sales learning content, including cold calling, prospecting, discovery and qualification, negotiation and proposals, and selling with video.

“Our singular focus with Sales Feed is to help B2B sales professionals learn, laugh, and live a better life in sales,” said Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing at Vidyard and Head of Sales Feed.  “The response we’ve received from our community has been nothing short of incredible, and we’re thrilled to put our top-rated content into the hands of every Vidyard user.  At the end of the day, if we can help one more sales rep close one more deal – and feel good about how they did it – we feel like we’ve done our jobs.”

Litt argued that field sales reps were already in decline in 2020 and that “the pandemic basically killed field selling,”  The pandemic forced firms to sell remotely, benefiting Vidyard, which offered a personalized communications channel that allowed sales reps to stand out in the inbox.

“That story played out again, and again, and again,” said Litt.  “That enabled us to accelerate our trajectory through to profitability, invest as much as we could back into [research and development], and totally embrace this video messaging story.”

Vidyard now supports 12 million business professionals at 250,000 companies.  At this point, the firm can either operate on a cash flow neutral basis or be more aggressive to foster growth.

Vidyard has not had a funding round since 2019, as the firm did not look for an “insane valuation.”  Litt said, “[this] means not doing big financial raises at crazy valuations because we want our employees to have upside.  We want all of our stakeholders to be engaged with the same outcome.”

Litt said Vidyard has been “judicious” about its spending.  The CEO noted that the company has kept its focus on retaining “really strong delta option value,” adding, “[this] means not doing big financial raises at crazy valuations because we want our employees to have upside [and] we want all of our stakeholders to be engaged with the same outcome.”

Although the firm did not state its current revenue, Litt sees $100 million as Vidyard’s “next meaningful milestone.”

Litt sees a great opportunity in asynchronous video.  Vidyard’s R&D efforts center around more compelling video content, including AI assistance to improve content efficacy.

As firms face a challenging market, Litt is eyeing potential acquisitions, “especially in the next couple of quarters as businesses look for a soft landing.  We think there’s going to be some opportunities to pick up some interesting tech to better complete our vision, and again, come out of this cycle with a really, really amazing suite of products that benefit our go-to-market teams.”

With firms cutting travel budgets during the recession, demand for Vidyard should remain strong. “Fortunes are built in bear markets and harvested in bull markets, and we’re in a bear market.  But we have the balance sheet and financials to invest heavily in product and value for our users,” said Litt.

Sources

Bigtincan Acquires SalesDirector.AI

Australian RevTech vendor Bigtincan acquired SalesDirector.AI, a Revenue Intelligence and Data Capture company based in Irvine, California.  SalesDirector offers automated activity capture from emails, calls, SMS, and meetings.  It also offers pipeline analytics and sales coaching.

“The acquisition extends Bigtincan’s lead in AI-driven revenue intelligence by improving B2B sales organization’s ability to scale by delivering insights and recommendations directly to sales reps for better decision-making to increase revenue,” the firm told investors.  “The SalesDirector.ai technology links people, activity, and engagement across the buyer’s journey to derive insights, including opportunity risk and relationship strength, and then makes intelligent recommendations.  By capturing all sales, marketing, and customer success activity the technology drives actionable revenue insights required to make the right business decisions.”

Bigtincan stated that SalesDirector’s technology would improve its AI-powered insights capabilities and forecasting accuracy.

SalesDirector ingests data from GSuite/Gmail, Slack, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Exchange and feeds contact data (e.g., Title, Department, Level, Phone) to Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.  SalesDirector also captures Engagement Signals and writes them back to CRMs as custom fields:

  • Executive Engaged on Opportunity / Account
  • Single or Multi-Threaded Opportunity Relationship
  • Last QBR Complete / Next QBR Scheduled
  • Partner / Sales Engineer Engaged on Opportunity
  • Next Step / Meeting Scheduled

AI tools include stakeholder identification, individuals who are supporters or detractors, disengaged stakeholders, account risk scoring, sentiment analysis, and deal health.

SalesDirector.AI Account Insights and Next Best Actions.

“Every organization has to be more productive,” said Bigtincan CEO David Keane.  “With the Sales Enablement market shifting towards a more holistic approach encompassing Revenue Enablement, we can deliver more value to our customers by providing full-cycle sellers with AI-driven recommendations on the next best actions based on intelligent sales analytics from SalesDirector.ai.”

SalesDirector pricing begins at $29 per user per month for activity capture.  Revenue Insights pricing is not published.

AI-assisted stakeholder mapping.

Bigtincan will incorporate SalesDirector’s functionality into its product suite and phase out the SalesDirector brand.

“Traditionally, when we do small tech-focused acquisitions, they become part of the Bigtincan product suite, so that capability gets added to the existing platform we have,” said Keane.  “We don’t tend to run these things as separate businesses, mostly because we miss out on some of the benefits for our shareholders of taking it all together and taking that technology and really getting in the platform.  This is no different than our existing strategy – embed, connect it all together and make it something that our customers can choose to add.  We do believe that it is all about choice, and we want people to be able to buy these technologies from us as additional value-added options.  I think that’s going to be the case here as well.”

Bigtincan paid $1.2 million in cash and equity for SalesDirector. 

The entire SalesDirector team is joining Bigtincan.

Bigtincan, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, has acquired a series of RevTech companies, including ClearSlide, Brainshark, and VoiceVibes.

Salesloft Winter 2022 Release

Salesloft released a trio of enterprise-grade features to its Sales Engagement platform.  New Enhancements support account-based team selling, improved governance and access controls, and mobile app improvements.

Salesloft User Relationships

Account-based team selling allows multiple team members to work on an account and set multiple account owners with a single, shared view.  Furthermore, Salesloft automation rules support team selling with automated role assignments and account relationships across the customer lifecycle “so that reps can easily follow rules of engagement without losing time to admin tasks and workarounds.”

Expanded access controls provide complete control over which data customers have access across Cadences, Conversations, and Deals.  Organizations can limit access to sensitive opportunity data, call recordings, and customer records, ensuring security, compliance, and privacy.

Data access is based on the principle of least privilege, so users only have access to data required to do their job.  Thus, sales managers have access to all data relevant to their direct reports, while AEs can only view their data.

Salesloft Mobile App

Recognizing that field sales reps are returning to the road, the Salesloft Mobile App supports immediate customer engagement in support of time-sensitive communications.  Features include a Mobile Live Feed similar to the Salesloft Live Feed, person searching, email sending, and messaging (text).

The Mobile app lets sales reps make and log calls, send messages, and send emails directly from the mobile app using the mobile phone’s network.  The mobile app places a pair of calls that bridges the mobile device through the Salesloft dialer, with caller id displaying the dedicated Salesloft number.  Call recording, Live Call Studio, and voicemail drops are not supported.

Email enhancements are available now, with broader cadence step support in early 2023.

“Sales teams have adopted technology quickly, often at the expense of critical governance capabilities.  This exposes companies to policy or compliance violations,” said Salesloft CPO Ellie Fields.  “We believe it is Salesloft’s job to provide sales teams with technology they need to sell, and to make sure that technology is governed.  Especially in tight markets, our customers want to spend time selling, not managing disparate systems.”

Salesloft also announced that it rearchitected its Google Chrome extension, providing the “full Salesloft platform through one, consistent sidebar across Salesforce, Dynamics 365, and Gmail.”  The redesigned extension will be available in early 2023.

Other platform enhancements include automated data enrichment based on email signatures; out-of-office detection for Spanish, French, and German; Slack notifications for one-off tasks; improved email sentiment analysis; future period forecasts in Deals; and improved Deal Engagement Scores.

New integrations include Gryphon.ai (phone and email certifications), EveryoneSocial, Salesfinitiy (dialer), and StoryDoc (build presentations and share prospects via cadences).

Enhanced integrations include HubSpot (syncing of ownership data) and Vidyard (Live Feed notifications when a Vidyard video is shared).