On this week in sales we’ll be looking at:
- All the sales tech companies getting funding
- Chorus.ai doing conversational intelligence within Zoom meetings
- If this is the end of the traveling salesman
And much more!
News:
Outplay gets $7.3M from Sequoia Capital India to help outbound sales team scale their campaigns
The new capital will be used for tech development and hiring, and brings Outplay’s total raised so far to $9.3 million. Its previous funding was a $2 million raise from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge announced in March after Outplay took part in the program’s fourth cohort.
One major new feature is Magic Outbound Chat, a web chat box that is launched when a prospective customer clicks on an email link. Salespeople are notified and provided with context about the prospect. Laxman told TechCrunch that most chat boxes are designed for inbound sales teams, and Magic Outbound Chat has helped some of its teams grow their sales pipeline by 300%.
Magic outbound chat looks like a strong play moving forward.
Chorus.ai Launches Conversational Intelligence App Within Zoom Meetings

Chorus.ai, a ZoomInfo company and Conversational Intelligence Platform leader for high-growth revenue teams, today announced the availability of the Chorus app for Zoom Video Communications, Inc. The new app brings Chorus’ Conversation Intelligence capabilities directly into the Zoom Meeting experience.
As an embedded experience accessible within Zoom Meetings, the Chorus app for Zoom enables revenue teams to be more engaged on calls, leading to stronger relationships and, in turn, higher conversion rates:
Sales Impact Academy receives boost from Stage 2 Capital with $4 million investment

A growing go-to-market learning platform received a major boost forward today with the announcement that Stage 2 Capital would provide a $3 million seed round and $1 million in debt financing to fund additional educational content.
Sales Impact Academy Ltd., which started in 2019, has seen 900% growth in subscription revenue over the past 12 months by creating a live curriculum for sales teams taught by leading experts in the field.
Can Sales Assessments Help Address High Sales Turnover Rates?
Would it surprise you to learn that the average turnover rate for salespeople is 34% and that nearly two-thirds of that churn is a result of “involuntary turnover”? Those are the findings of a 2015 Bridge Group study
The same research suggests that one in 10 companies has sales turnover rates above 55%.
A 2015-2016 study from a professor at DePaul University found that the average cost to replace a salesperson is $97,690.
cquisition costs usually account for around $29,000 of that amount. The average training cost is typically around $36,000. So that’s a total of $65,000 of the $97,690. What makes up the rest?
I believe the difference between those two numbers is due to “lost opportunity” in a territory when looking for the next rep.
Corporate Visions Launches New Sales Engagement Services Solution for Expanding Inside Selling Teams
Corporate Visions adds implementation services and expands content offering to include creating and certifying custom cadences and sales plays to ensure impact of technology investments.
The End of the Traveling Salesman? Covid’s Permanent Transformation of the Sales Industry
less than 6% of those surveyed were taking in-person meetings at the time of the survey, and over 60% of respondents indicated that they wouldn’t resume in-person meetings until the fourth quarter of this year, or 2022 and beyond.
Challenge: 42% of survey respondents indicated that customer churn from organizations impacted by COVID-19 was the biggest challenge facing their revenue team
81% of survey respondents reported that they have either delivered or outperformed on their goals as a result.