Salesbots Serving You With Leads

Will the SDR (Sales Development Representative) acronym be known as Sales Development Robot by 2020? It's less than two years away but real progress is being made by very clever, well-funded people who are cracking the sales funnel creation code. The reason it's important they succeed is that lack of sales pipeline is the #1 problem in businesses around the world. In this article, I will review the companies to watch in the field of SDR (Sales Development Representative) augmentation and automation.

Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler broke amazing ground with Predictable Prospecting but the model of separating 'sales lead development' from 'sales opportunity management' needs a re-think. We need to automate the job of sifting through huge amounts of data and then empower experienced sellers to execute efficiently and effectively for high-value conversations with relevant context and at the right time in the buyer's journey.

Rather than the old model of less experienced sellers on the phone and more experienced sellers in the field; we need a blend of intelligent technology enabling insightful humans who orchestrate automation that leads to real human engagement

Every inside salesperson (SDR) needs to get themselves promoted to 'sales development management' or a more senior field sales role before automation culls the herd. AI with blended toolsets are coming that will provide 'salesbot assistants' for senior salespeople to feed them with the equivalent of the leads currently generated by dozens of SDRs who, by comparison, thrash around in the dark.

The SDR of the future will be an orchestrator of tools and manager of messaging to drive salesbots that deliver leads at scale

According to Justin Michael from OutboundWorks; "Modern prospecting requires sifting and analyzing huge bodies of information fast. No human will ever be as good at that as a machine. SDRs are being wasted on prospecting instead of doing real sales development work, and prospecting isn’t getting done right. The solution is to switch to automated prospecting, and while for some large teams they’ll build in-house, the vast majority will buy this in as a service." Justin is right (full article here). Salespeople are drowning in a sea of data and struggling to break through to those new customers who need their help. Bottom line... failure abounds concerning the creation of meaningful conversations with new potential customers.

"SDR-AE model is a dinosaur, and it’s time to evolve." Justin Michael

The people that can overcome this business problem will become legends. Imagine if CRM we're not static. Instead, AI sat inside it prioritizing leads (even reaching out and going back and forth and setting your best meeting. Actionable AI Driven CRM is the next Event Horizon. Beyond mere predictive analytics, it goes out and finds leads based on the best deals already won and then serves up pipeline... all happening behind the scenes. This necessitates AI breaking out of its own firewall to scour the outside web for the best sales opportunities. Einstein from Salesforce is not yet doing this but the mash-up of technologies and algorithms are coming... I predict the best company working on this will be acquired by Salesforce within 2 years. Microsoft, Oracle, and others will follow.

"The startup that disrupts Salesforce will be worth much much more because instead of simply recording leads and sales, the next CRM will create business for its customers leveraging social proof. It won’t be enough for a CRM to inform a salesperson which potential customer to call the way Salesforce’s task list operates today. This new CRM will scour the web to find potential customers, discover points of social proof with potential customers increasing close rates and finally record the transactions in the system. Today, Salesforce only solves the last problem, which is by far the least valuable of the three." - Tom Tunguz

The key to a prosperous future in sales is to blend technology with human experience. It's a fundamental COMBO in business and professional selling. Technology is changing everything. Big data and deep learning, AI algorithms and human instincts, man and machine, social and the phone, art with science... blended compilations of touches that warm the person so they are receptive to your real human voice at exactly the right time. Automation that paves the way, sets the scene, warms them up, brings you into their orbit... technology interacting with them at the right cadence and then prompting you to call them at the best time based on content interaction, trigger events or relational context.

In this video, we see the reincarnated Steve Jobs. Watch and then I'll list the companies to watch when it comes to disrupting or enhancing the sales development (SDR) function for lead generation in B2B sales.

While many claim to be 'AI disruptors' of SDRs; most are merely boiler room agencies with email campaign engine. Some include their own contacts database and staff who bash away on the phone. But some are going deep on blended models where technology and humans craft tailored messages, monitor for trigger events and then drive outreach at the perfect time through the right communication channel. Here is a summary (alphabetical order) of the companies that I believe are making real progress.

ConnectAndSell: Their cloud platform uses a combination of patented dialing technology and minimal human agent touch. It goes way beyond mere auto-dialing technology with salespeople logging into the cloud app, dialing into a conference bridge, picking a list, and pushing GO. Within minutes the seller is talking to someone on that list. To the person they’re talking to, it’s a perfectly normal phone call but the salesperson just saved a frustrating hour of navigating phone systems & gatekeepers only to end up in voicemail. It's a great example of technology creating human-to-human conversations in the most efficient manner possible.

Engagio: Founded in early 2015 by Jon Miller, co-founder of marketing automation company Marketo, and Brian Babcock. Their software helps Account Based Marketing and Sales Development teams maintain a human experience amidst automation. Their account-based platform works with existing CRM & marketing automation platforms to surface account-centric analytics and orchestrate team-based outbound interactions across departments and channels.

Groove.co: They extend CRM by revealing how sales activities relate to results. They have background activity tracking technology that silently identifies the data that gives insights on activity effectiveness. In essence, this is machine learning on human behavior to identify activities and sequences that are most likely to create the best results.

Growbots: They use machine learning to increase the efficiency of a demand generation team by using their own contact database, combined with filtered search, to generate tailored contact lists. Their outreach campaigns include the management of the inbox of individual sellers with 'personalized' email campaigns at scale. A message can be crafted for a whole customer segment with the platform automatically contacting hundreds of people every day. My view is that Growbots is primarily a database provider with email campaigns and they have a long way to go to be an AI-based outbound lead generator that could transform the SDR function.

Hexa.ai: This is genuine AI that works with big data to craft personalization at scale in email outreach. The technology is embedded in other solutions in this article and makes the message all about the target persona, rather than about the seller. From what I've seen, Hexa leads the pack with AI applied to 'social listening' to create personalization in outreach campaigns like no other. Make no mistake, personalization is the key to effective email and outreach for lead generation.

Node.io: Founded by Falon Fatemi, Node works with the ideal target profiles to then source and validate the contact database for sales campaign execution. Node has a unique approach to indexing the web with a focus on people and organizations as the critical 'nodes' and uses AI to 'signal match' the links between buyer and seller, investor and investee, employer and employee and countless other connections. The focus is to find the right person at the right business at the right time with the right message.

OutboundWorks: Founded by Bryan Franklin and Ben Sardella (cofounder and CRO Datanyze), they focus on blending humans and technology to deliver new business opportunities in a 'Sales Development as a Service' platform backed by True Ventures. OutboundWorks selects the right accounts and targets buyers within them to then execute the right punchy messaging via emails. They are trigger-event-driven with contextualized outreach across multiple channels to break through. The best SDR on the planet, Justin Michael, recently joined as VP Operations. This company is building sophisticated scalable prospecting automation models that predictably and methodically deliver leads. This company is the one I am watching most closely because they seem to do the best job at leveraging AI with big data and machine learning algorithms to create hyper-personalization at scale.

Outreach.io: Designed for companies and organizations of all sizes, Outreach is a sales engagement software/platform that provides lead generators, sales representatives, and sales managers an account-based sales communication solution in order for them to secure prospects and identify and increase sales opportunities. Semi-automated or fully automated sequences are the wave of the future and they own this market next to SalesLoft with Groove close behind.

Salesforce Einstein: This is the giant player in CRM with AI capability. Their Einstein AI is powerful and impressive, having been applied to forecasting and predictive analytics for lead scoring, next best steps and other areas. The big limitation is that it depends on the data inside the CRM... once they unleash it beyond the firewall or find a way to leverage LinkedIn data being imported from Sales Navigator, it can potentially drive top of funnel opportunities for sellers to then progress to close.

Salesloft: Founded by Kyle Porter, they provide the tools, workflows, expertise and support for your own SDR team in driving sales pipeline. They bring everything needed into one place and with integration to the apps that salespeople use. It's a very intelligent and effective stack combined with deep expertise and guidance on building winning sales teams.

ScaleX.ai: The name means 'scale to the power of AI' and is founded by Chad Burmeister. This company has blended the outbound approach of ConnectAndSell (Chris Beall) with multiple AI technologies. The result with ScaleX.ai is personalized campaigns from people dialing combined with personalized emails that lead to chatbots for a hand-off to real salespeople from your own organization.

Troops.ai: They deliver task automation for sales and marketing with integration to CRM. The focus is to dramatically lift the productivity and effectiveness of SDR and other sales roles once opportunities have been created within your CRM.

I am curious about what you prefer and why? Please comment below.

I discuss the future of sales in my new book, COMBO Prospecting, published by The American Management Association (AMACOM) and you can purchase it here on Amazon. If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' button and also share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions so feel free to add a comment. Please also follow my LinkedIn post page for all my articles.

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