How Zoom created a ‘Prospecting Machine’ that is accelerating conversions

About Zoom Video Communications: Zoom serves more than half a million organizations worldwide with its frictionless communication experience.

“How do we enable reps and give them time back to actually go sell?”

In 2020, Zoom became a household name overnight. Demand for a proven video conferencing solution was incredibly high, and so sales reps essentially became order-takers. Or in the words of Pam Kong, Manager of GTM Acceleration, sales reps were “winning new customers through inertia.”

As demand began to wane, Zoom saw a decrease in its inbound pipeline. Reps could no longer rely on that “inertia” to win new customers and meet quota. As they shifted focus to outbound prospecting, leaders like Pam saw that Zoom’s sales technology wasn't setting reps up for success.

"Our biggest challenge was, ‘how do we enable reps and give them time back to actually go sell?'" Pam says. "Without the right data in place, without the right tools in place, they end up spending a lot of time doing administrative tasks rather than selling."

Zoom’s sales tech stack comprised different tools, meaning multiple data sources that had conflicting data — or no data at all. Reps were using spreadsheets to manually track activities and capture successful messaging.

These disparate data sources and labor intensive tracking processes not only led to inefficiencies, but also a disconnect between marketing and sales. As Pam says, “Without data, sales and marketing leaders couldn’t be precise about which prospects to target, what messaging would be most effective with them, and what our sellers could help them with.”

Content standardization and optimization increase the likelihood of conversion

Zoom has teamed up with Outreach to mature its sales processes, equipping SDRs to respond to inbound leads with the right message at the right time. Outreach is also at the center of their newer outbound programs.

“Outreach is fundamental to our sales communication strategy,” Pam says. “It’s enabling us to finetune our messaging and help our reps with what is sometimes the hardest part of their jobs: getting a person to respond.”

Outreach now serves as a system-of-execution for sales reps, simplifying and automating their workflows to optimize pipeline generation and seller success. Tested templates, snippets, and account-based workflows help reps engage buyers with personalized interactions throughout their buying journey. They also leverage Outreach to stratify its messaging by persona, equipping reps to deliver relevant and valuable content no matter who they’re speaking to.

With sales engagement data guiding every step of their sales process, Zoom has increased the likelihood of converting prospects.

But they’re not stopping there. Native A/B testing is helping Zoom test their messaging and change it to optimize their reach. “The data helps us understand how best to engage with our customer, how best to start that conversation, and what resonates the most,” Pam says. “We’re going to be continually learning, and that learning will help us be better at engaging and helping the customer.”

Data helps accelerate conversations and convert them into dollars

With Outreach, Zoom has created a “prospecting machine” that helps new and tenured reps engage with inbound and outbound prospects and customers in a consistent and trusted manner that’s true to its brand. Standardized messaging allows sales leaders to learn what works and implement best practices throughout the organization.

With more visibility into data, sales leaders can identify root causes of problems, making it less risky to push new initiatives. That means they’re seeing acceleration throughout the prospecting process.

“Outreach helps us accelerate the conversations we’re having with customers,” Pam says. “It also helps accelerate converting those conversations into dollars.”

New sales reps onboard and quickly become successful, while established reps see greater impact from their efforts. Without increasing their effort, sales reps are engaging with and converting more prospects. This gives them more confidence that they can succeed in a competitive market.

“Outreach is reducing the mental load for our sales reps when they’re trying to engage a new prospect,” Pam says. “They’re using the sequences to manage the communication flow versus wondering, ‘Did I talk to this person this week? Do I need to talk to them next week?’”

With the prospecting machine in place, Zoom sees potential to create their own “inertia” rather than relying on the market. “Data from Outreach is bringing more context around our prospecting efforts so we have a complete view of what works and how we can continually improve our efforts and efficiency,” Pam says.