United States
51-200
Software

Armory speeds up its sales cycle with a single platform for creating and closing pipeline

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A more productive salesforce is creating 3x opportunities and shortening sales cycles.
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Sales reps execute critical meeting follow-up tasks in half the time, saving them several hours each week.
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Outreach helps sales managers identify pipeline risk early and more effectively coach their reps.

About Armory:

Armory helps companies securely deploy software at enterprise scale. It provides best-of-breed continuous deployment tools that enable companies to build a sustainable competitive advantage through software.

Armory historically relied on an outsourced team to generate leads, and the more the company grew, the more sales leaders considered bringing this outbound prospecting function in-house. Would an in-house sales development team be more effective than an outsourced team? Would owning these workflows deliver more pipeline to the business?

These questions prompted leaders to evaluate not just their prospecting, but also the larger system in place for managing opportunities across the lifecycle. Because pipeline generation efforts were outsourced, they anticipated some top-of-funnel blind spots. Yet according to Veronica Matini, Inside Sales and Sales Development Manager, Armory’s challenges ran deeper.

“Sales execution happens when the sales team and supporting teams can come together to move created opportunities to closed-won revenue,” Veronica says. “So it’s not just that we didn’t have a system for prospecting. We did, but it was separate from how we managed opportunities. And that was separate from how we were forecasting.”

Sales execution happens when the sales team and supporting teams can come together to move created opportunities to closed-won revenue. So it’s not just that we didn’t have a system for prospecting. We did, but it was separate from how we managed opportunities. And that was separate from how we were forecasting.
Veronica Matini
Inside Sales and Sales Development Manager

These disparate systems meant disjointed data sets— and, more often than not, a disjointed experience for prospects and fewer opportunities advancing down the funnel. “It was difficult to know what touchpoints the lead was receiving, which touchpoints worked, and how many touchpoints it takes to close a deal,” Veronica says. “We weren’t even sure our messages were consistent and aligned with what reps were looking to accomplish, making it even harder to execute like we needed to.”

Bringing prospecting in-house would unlock the top-of-funnel visibility missing from Armory’s processes. But this exploration led sales leaders to a bigger realization. It became vital for them to rethink how Armory’s sales technology stack would set up the entire sales organization for success. Sellers had to be more productive and efficient with their limited time and provide best-in-class buying experiences that would move the needle on conversions.

What Armory needed was a single system of action for Armory’s go-to-market team, uniting all their sales activity data under one platform and unlocking data-driven insights across the entire lifecycle of a deal—from create to close.

“When we began our evaluation of looking for the right sales execution platform, we were really focused on consolidating as much as possible. And we wanted to get everything, from prospecting, deal management, and even forecasting, in one place,” Veronica says. “Which, honestly, we didn’t think was possible.”

But Armory found a platform that made it possible: Outreach.

Optimizing revenue outcomes with a single platform for sales execution

Sales is a team sport at Armory, with opportunities often worked by multiple members of the sales organization. In-house sales development reps (SDRs) and account executives (AEs) often collaborate in the earlier stages, with solution architects and other technical stakeholders brought in at later stages to ensure that a deal is set to close.

With Outreach, all of Armory’s sellers can conduct their work within a unified platform. Outreach’s automated sequences ensure that reps are taking the right actions with the right message— content that sellers can customize to address each lead’s specific needs. Instead of creating their own content or chasing down their next action item, sellers are spending their time researching and honing their craft so they can provide value during each interaction.

With new features like Multi-User Assignment making team-based selling easier than ever, Veronica sees Outreach unlocking more meaningful collaboration at Armory. “That collaboration was something we were missing before. We used to have people stepping on each other’s toes,” Veronica says. “Now our AEs can more effectively collaborate on prospecting and opportunity management with the teams that focus exclusively on pipeline generation.”

Because all these actions are tracked through a single pane of glass, Armory’s sales leaders are equipped with data to keep their teams on-track to hit their goals. By understanding which activities make an impact on positive responses and bookings, they can then replicate those across other sequences. They also use Outreach reporting to drill-down into why some messaging isn’t working, then refine those to improve conversion rates, ensuring the best messages are being used and increasing the likelihood of booking a meeting or converting a sale.

With these actionable insights coming from across the revenue cycle, sales managers are also more predictable in their forecasting. Like many organizations, Armory used to forecast out of a multitude of spreadsheets, and without direct access to data from other parts of their revenue cycle. Now sales leaders can identify pipeline risk early and make more informed calls on which deals should be included.

“Our forecasting is a much smoother process,” Veronica says. “And now that we have all our sales activity data in one place, we can give our board the most up-to-date, realistic information about where we stand against our goals and what we have left.”

Sellers are more productive and confident when managing deals

Not only are Armory’s sales reps more productive. They’re also becoming the most effective version of themselves at every touch, especially during crucial moments that lead up to a deal’s closure.

“As a sales manager, Outreach is one of the best coaching tools I have at my disposal,” Veronica says. “Our reps used to spend way too much time listening to an entire call just to make sure that they captured action items, challenges, and other key information. Kaia has really enabled them to do that in at least half the time, if not less, and gives them back several hours a week.”

Our reps used to spend way too much time listening to an entire call just to make sure that they captured action items, challenges, and other key information. Kaia has really enabled them to do that in at least half the time, if not less, and gives them back several hours a week.
Veronica Matini
Inside Sales and Sales Development Manager

There’s no way a manager can listen to every call that happens throughout the day, Veronica points out. Now they can retroactively coach teams on what they could change and acknowledge what they’re doing well. And with Kaia, Outreach’s AI-powered virtual assistant, reps have real-time coaching and live insights into what they should say next during a live conversation.

“Our product is highly technical and specific,” Veronica says. “Our AEs have much more confidence on their calls when they see a Kaia content card pop up to help them through a technical conversation or to discuss pricing. That confidence and accuracy is helping them convert more leads and close more deals.”

Shortening the sales cycle and delivering predictable revenue results

Armory initially turned to Outreach to be the system of action for its new in-house prospecting efforts. But by leveraging Outreach to orchestrate their sales cycle, sales leaders have seen incredible results that go beyond increasing sales activity volume.

“Since using Outreach, we can definitely identify a shortened sales cycle,” Veronica says. “And ultimately, we’re bringing triple the opportunities to the organization than we were before Outreach.”

Visibility into sequence effectiveness (and the revamping of what’s not working) has led to massive improvements in the sales teams’ open email rate. “We’re well above baseline industry standards,” Veronica says. “We’ve seen tons of improvements in every metric that you evaluate throughout a sequence or engagement attempt.”

With Outreach, we’re able to prospect, manage our opportunities, and forecast in one place. We can all collaborate on the same sequence and opportunity, and if we remove that, we’re going back 10 steps and costing ourselves a lot of time and money.
Veronica Matini
Inside Sales and Sales Development Manager

By evolving their sales technology, teams can predictably create and close deals while also delivering more predictable forecasts. Veronica and sales leaders are proud of how far Armory has come and is excited for continued successes.

“With Outreach, we’re able to prospect, manage our opportunities, and forecast in one place,” Veronica says. “We can all collaborate on the same sequence and opportunity, and if we remove that, we’re going back 10 steps and costing ourselves a lot of time and money.”


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