Funding

• Cordless raised more than EUR 2.1 million (~USD 2.3 million) in a seed funding round led by Fly Ventures, with participation from Passion Capital, Entrepreneur First, and TrueSight for further platform development. (March 1, 2023; EU-Startups)

Partnerships

• Allego partnered with The Brooks Group, a sales training platform, to provide the latter's clients with access to Allego's interactive digital library containing various learning and practice resources that align with the Brooks Group’s IMPACT training methodology. (March 1, 2023; Company press release) 

• Outreach expanded its partnership with Snowflake, a data platform, to introduce a new offering called “Outreach Data Sharing,” which enables organizations to connect Outreach's datasets with other enterprise data and improve sales cycle. The new solution is currently in private-beta testing. (March 9, 2023; Company Press Release)

Management News

• Mindtickle announced that Eric Anderson has been appointed as the president with the goal of enhancing the company's go-to-market (GTM) strategy and improving the overall customer experience. In addition, Mindtickle's two primary solutions, Call AI, reported a 110% increase in clients and a 97.3% increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR), while its Asset Hub reported a 223% increase in the number of clients and a 185% increase in ARR; the company achieved a net retention rate exceeding 100%. (February 28, 2023; Company press release)

New Product 

• Groove launched Groove Plays, a new feature that will enable sales leaders to input their strategies into the Groove sales engagement platform, helping sales representatives to follow the correct approach in real-time. This feature is set to be available to all customers in the summer and will be fully integrated into the Groove platform. (February 28, 2023; Company Press Release)

• Databook launched the first-ever strategic relationship management (SRM) platform, allowing sellers to manage and maintain strategic relationships on a large scale. It provides sellers with the ability to interpret financial data and market insights to create strategic account plans, sales materials, and narratives that resonate with executive buyers. (March 6, 2023; CustomerThink)

• Salesforce introduced Einstein GPT, a generative AI technology that can create custom content for various interactions in sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT. It can help sales representatives to send personalized emails, customer service professionals to provide quick responses, marketers to improve campaign response rates, and developers to generate code. (March 8, 2023; CX Scoop)

• 6sense has launched a new sales platform called 6sense Revenue AI for Sales, which allows sellers to prioritize in-market accounts and access complete buyer intelligence and contact data. It provides sellers with visibility into anonymous buyer research, comprehensive data on accounts and buying teams, and efficient prospecting workflows with seamless integration into existing sales tech. (March 14, 2023; Company press release)

• Bigtincan launched GenieAI, an AI-driven technology that utilizes large language model tools to provide features such as copywriting, content summarization, Q&A-style search, and a virtual personal assistant to enhance productivity and efficiency for sales, customer-facing teams, partners, and employees, with the goal of improving the buying experience. (March 14, 2023; Company press release)

• Outreach introduced multiple new features to improve sales pipeline performance and efficiency, including the Create and Close Dashboard, Create Pipeline Calculator, Buyer Topics and Reactions, Success Plans Methodologies, Deal Grid, and Deal Overview. Additionally, the Pipeline Dashboard provides critical revenue data, while Smart Email Assist and Outreach Data Sharing on the Snowflake Data Cloud increase seller productivity and provide new insights. (March 15, 2023; Company press release)

Earnings/results

• 6sense reported a 70% YoY increase in overall revenue growth for FY2023, driven by new customer acquisition, and higher net revenue retention rates. The company attributes its success to new product introductions, market expansion, and ecosystem growth, including the launch of Conversational Email, which enhances team efficiency. (March 9, 2023; Company Press Release)

Industry News 

• Outreach announced that it will be reducing its workforce by 7%, laying off ~70 employees. This is the second time the company has implemented job cuts within the past six months, with the previous round in August resulting in less than 5% of its employees being laid off. (February 28, 2023; The Business Journals)