I was recently asked, “As a chief product officer, what do you think the future of artificial intelligence (AI) will look like in 2-5 years?” My immediate response was that 2-5 years is a very long time in the AI space and it is hard to predict that far out. What we do know is that AI is going to transform selling entirely and the pace of this will be very rapid. AI has always been part of Outreach’s DNA, and now, we’ve entered the next stage of how we leverage it to help our customers create and close more pipeline.
Why I think generative AI is such a fundamental change
I believe the emergence of generative AI stands shoulder to shoulder with monumental innovations like the printing press way back in 1454, the internet in 1971, and the smartphone in 2008. The common thread here is that these were all massive revolutions in the content arena - beginning with content replication with the printing press, content transmission with the internet, and content consumption with the smartphone. Generative AI is a revolution in content creation and content synthesis. Just like these preceding technologies, generative AI will have a massive transformational impact on technology and society at large lasting many decades.
How Outreach’s mission aligns with the future of AI
Leveraging AI to increase seller productivity and efficiency is nothing new at Outreach. Since the beginning, Outreach’s sales execution platform has always been heavily powered by AI. Our AI journey started with our sentiment analysis in emails several years ago. Our journey continued with Kaia, our conversational intelligence AI that assists sellers in live calls and meetings. With generative AI, there is now a quantum leap in the ability of computers to more deeply understand these conversations and synthesize insights from them. Accordingly, Outreach is actively bringing these new capabilities to our customers to help them improve seller productivity across the entire sales cycle.
Our Sales Execution Intelligence automatically helps every member of your sales org make data-driven decisions, execute the right actions, and drive winning outcomes. Our workflows leverage several types of AI models to alleviate sellers from tedious, convoluted processes of the past. Specifically, we use AI to extract data from customer interactions like meetings and emails to analyze buyer topics, reactions, and sentiment. We also provide a Deal Health Score fed by a large number of activity and interaction signals in the deal. Additionally, we are working to improve revenue forecasting accuracy by including buyer and seller activity in the forecast model. These insights fuel more targeted next-best actions to ultimately deliver more predictable revenue. AI has always been integral to Outreach and we continue to invest heavily in it.
Taking AI one step further to create content on behalf of the seller
In the past, we’ve used AI to understand customer interactions. Now, we are taking it one step further and leveraging AI to create those interactions on behalf of the seller. Smart Email Assist, which uses generative AI to auto-generate accurate and relevant email copy based on the prior context of conversations between buyers and sellers, is one example of how we are doing this. Reps gain efficiency and keep deals moving forward faster by becoming editors instead of authors, without sacrificing quality or the ability to personalize.
However, AI recommendations are only as good as the data and content you feed them. Because Outreach has a foundation of more than 33 million weekly action-outcome pairings and a massive database with more than 6,000 customers and all of their millions of customer interactions at every stage of the sales cycle, we are able to create a deep specialization in our AI recommendations.
Outreach does this by leveraging:
- History-based context: The specific context of your buyer/seller interactions that have already occurred is essential to generate relevant output. This includes the actual timing and content of emails, meetings, calls, etc.
- Seller-based accuracy: This includes information like pricing and packaging, competitive comparison, data sheets, content cards, templates, and the like. This ensures accuracy because the correct and freshest information is used.
- Buyer-based specificity: For each seller in Outreach, each buyer’s specific information like pricing, discounts, specific steps of the mutual action plan, specific account notes, etc. are extremely important.
Boosting seller performance
Every sales leader struggles with consistent execution across their sales team. AI capabilities in Outreach can help uplevel the entire sales team and make all your reps as good as your best reps.
Here are some examples of how an AI-powered sales execution platform like Outreach can assist sales teams across the entire sales cycle:
- Auto-generate more accurate and relevant email copy based on the context of past buyer and seller conversations, so reps gain efficiency and buyers get faster and more accurate responsiveness.
- Extract information to surface deal insights and make very specific recommendations to the buyer early on in the sales process.
- Help increase your prospecting outcomes by dynamically constructing sequences and variations.
- Surface a gap in your existing pipeline before it’s too late — and get specific actions to close it.
- Use AI to go beyond simple quantitative questions, so you can answer more complex, open-ended queries like:
- “Is this deal really on track to close in Q3?”
- “Give me the list of opportunities that is larger than $100k and in the ‘Proposal’ phase of my pipeline that has a Champion and is really expected to close this quarter.”
- “How likely is it that [X Prospect] will buy our product?”
The only AI-powered sales execution platform
AI has been built into the fabric of Outreach’s platform for years, while other companies are just starting out. We’re the only company that’s been in this race for nearly a decade, backed by the largest data set in the sales industry.
When you use a platform with a massive database and millions of customer interactions at every stage of the sales cycle, you receive deeper, stronger AI recommendations. By investing in an established AI-powered sales execution platform, you can also benefit from the company’s years of testing, updating, and advancing its AI capabilities.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out our webinar: How AI unlocks sales productivity to learn how AI will help sales leaders:
- Boost team efficiency and expedite follow-up — to move winnable deals forward, faster
- Guide reps with AI information and insights they need, at the exact moment they need it
- Win more deals with Outreach’s powerful AI capabilities — and get a sneak peek at what’s new and upcoming
