Sales acceleration company InsideSales.com raises $60M

InsideSales.com helps sales teams accelerate revenue by applying data science to the sales process

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Cloud-based sales acceleration platform InsideSales.com has raised a new $60 million round, it was announced on Wednesday.

It was led by Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce’s global corporate investment group, with participation from Microsoft as well as existing venture investors Polaris Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Hummer Winblad, U.S. Venture Partners and Zetta Venture Partners.

The company has previously raised around $140 million, including a $100 million round in April of last year. This latest round brings its total funding to around $200 million.

Founded in 2004, the Provo, Utah-based InsideSales.com helps sales teams accelerate revenue by applying data science to the sales process.

"Our platform prescribes what actions to take with which leads, prospects and opportunities to close more deals," Michael Plante, VP of Demand Generation at InsideSales.com, told me in an interview. 

For example, in 2013, Double Dutch, a private social networking application for conference and events, had to prove to its investors that they were a good return on their investment. They found the solution in predictive analytics and Inside Sales. Within 18 months of using InsideSales.com, Double Dutch saw its revenue increase by 200 percent and its sales conversions rise by 37 percent by using the data science integrated into Local Presence of PowerDialer to dynamically sort targeted contacts.

"Essentially machine learning was used to identify salespatterns by analyzing millions of anonymized profiles and sales interactions, increasing productivity across the team and resulting in increased revenue," Plante said. 

In another case, OutboundEngine, an Austin-based email and social media marketing solutions company, needed to find a way to close more deals by optimizing their pitches, dials and connect rates.

"They needed to find a way to increase their connection and close rates without complicating their system," Plante explained.

After only a few months of using InsideSales.com's NeuralView feature, OutsideEngine saw a 27 percent increase in connection rates, an improvement in close rates at a higher deal size, and revenues were increased by over 12 percent.

The company's technology has proven to increase sales revenue by as much as 30 percent for the approximately 2,000 companies, including large enterprise organizations like ADP, Sprint, Fidelity, Microsoft, Groupon and Marketo, it counts as customers.

"InsideSales.com is using the power of data science to change the industry. Its breakthrough technology harnesses the power of more than 13 billion sales interactions in Neuralytics, the industry’s first comprehensive sales acceleration platform," Plante said. "The Neuralytics platform provides both predictive and prescriptive insights to help sales teams not only identify the best contact leads but also offer actionable results including how to best contact leads and even which words to say to contact more leads and close more sales."

InsideSales.com is not just doing things differently than the companies that support the traditional, non-data-driven approach to sales, it is "is actively disrupting" them.

:The company’s Neuralytics engine drives revenue growth through increased salesproductivity, visibility and efficiency. InsideSales.com is the leading company in the rapidly emerging salesacceleration technology space, which bridges the gap between marketing automation and CRM," said Plante. "The status quo for sales agents today is to go by “intuition,” but our Neuralytics technology injects data science into the mix, elevating the game to new heights."

The company will use the new funding in order to deepen its relationships, in order to accelerate growth and broaden its current platform.  It will increase support for the Salesforce and Microsoft platforms, expand our reach and ability to serve larger enterprise customers and fuel international expansion for the company.

InsideSales.com also plans to grow its 600 employees by between another 300 and 400 this year. 

"The company is just getting started. The power of data science and predictive analytics is already having top and bottom line impact for our 2,000+ customers, but the opportunity is still in the early stages," Plante said. "We are building the team and technology for the long term and see tremendous opportunity to move more deeply into the enterprise and expand internationally. Strategic acquisitions will be part of our growth plan as we create a broad platform experience."

(Image source: InsideSales.com)