August 5, 2025 • 15 mins
This week's show is entitled, "What's Next for Agents in Sales? Are They Here to Stay?"" and my guest is Abhijit Mitra, CEO at Outreach.
Tune in to learn:
- The role of agentic AI in enhancing sales productivity and standardizing methodologies.
- How AI-driven forecasting can deliver accurate insights and reduce surprises in sales outcomes.
- Why choosing a trusted platform partner is imperative for effective AI implementation in sales processes.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:15):
All right.
Welcome everybody to anotherepisode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
Very excited to have you here onthe last day of the month for some
of you, last day of the quarter.
It's our guest last day of the quarterhere today, so appreciate him joining us.
If you are joining today's episodelive on LinkedIn, we are really
excited to have you join us in themiddle of your workday and work week.
(00:36):
You could be part of the show if youhear something you wanna comment on, if
you've got a question for our guest today.
If you've got a rebuttal, if you've gota rant on any topic related to sales
and marketing, we'd love to hear that.
We will see that we can respond to that.
We can put you in the show as well.
So thank you for that.
If you are listening or watching ondemand, thank you so much for subscribing.
I think we're a little over 300,000downloads now of Sales Pipeline Radio.
(00:58):
So thank you so much forbeing a part of that.
Every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio,past, present, and future, uh, is always
available at Sales Pipeline Radio dot com.
Very excited on the last day ofhis month and last day of his
quarter to be joined by the CEO ofOutreach, Abhijit Mitra, Abhijit,
thanks so much for joining us today.
Abhijit Mitra (01:15):
Thanks for having me here, Matt.
Yes, super excited to be here.
Yes, it's the last day of thequarter and I'm here with you.
Matt Heinz (01:21):
And, we're gonna get into why you're not like as hair on
fire because you're drinking yourown champagne a little bit here.
I will say, just as full disclosure,I am an Outreach customer.
I'm a happy Outreach customer.
I literally use it every dayand have for almost 10 years.
Uh, it's just a key part ofour workflow and my workflow.
So I was excited to have ya on today.
And in addition to the end of the quarter,I know it also, you guys are just coming
(01:43):
down off of the big Unleash conference,which Outreach has been doing forever.
So talk a little bit about that andwhat you heard and learned there.
Abhijit Mitra (01:50):
Yeah, so we, um, actually announced our
AI revenue workflow platform.
This is something new.
It's not the same oldthing, a new, uh, bottle.
So basically we talked about how AIagents are gonna help uh, revenue
teams, um, across the company.
Um, automate a lot of thework through agentic AI.
(02:12):
And then we also announceda few key partnerships.
One of them was with SAP.
And we had customers on stagetalking about outcomes that
they're getting by using Outreach.
So these are some of the, sortof the exciting moments of the
Unleash customer conference,
Matt Heinz (02:27):
I would imagine among a lot of the attendees that were there that
there's a lot of conversation aroundthat balance between agents and humans.
Yeah.
Uh, I was told three years ago that by nowinside sales, uh, BDRs would be extinct.
That has not happened.
I have seen people try to completelyreplace BDRs in many cases with
technology, and that in manycases has not worked really well.
(02:50):
It seems like there's a balancethat needs to happen here.
What are you hearing from yourcustomers, from people at Unleash
and then what's your perspective onsort of, you know, how agents and
humans will interact moving forward?
Abhijit Mitra (03:00):
Yeah, so I mean, with every new technology there is a prediction.
There's a doomsday predictionthat, hey, it's, uh, you know,
you know, humans aren't needed,not needed anymore, and uh, right.
Yeah.
Granted, generative AI is truly,truly a differentiating technology.
If we, it can do a lot more, for us.
But you know, my belief has always beenthat technology is in the service of
(03:21):
people and it's not the other way around.
And we invent technology so it helps us.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, you know, that's why we do it.
So there's always a balance.
And if the technology is really goodwe will see more adoption of that.
It's like, uh, you know, uh,using this device that I have
here, you know, the more I useit, the more I get attached to it.
And I can't go from room A to roomB without this, uh, next to me.
(03:42):
And I'm just a lot moreproductive because of this.
Imagine when this was being, youknow, uh, you know, people were
starting to use cell phones and wewere saying that, Hey, you know, you
shouldn't hold this to your head.
You know, you've got abrain tumor, you'll die.
That was a prediction.
So it's somewhat same for AI andgenerative and agentic AI as well.
It's still I would say in early stagesit's still maturing quite a bit.
(04:05):
Yeah.
But we are seeing internally, weare using this in Outreach as well.
We are seeing a lot of productivity, alot of helpful work, meaning all the grunt
work that AI agents are doing for us.
So one example of that you mentionedis that today's the end of quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Do you see me frazzled?
Do you see me?
You're remark.
Matt Heinz (04:23):
You're remarkably calm, Abhijit.
I'm just, I'm very impressed.
Abhijit Mitra (04:27):
So, not to market too much, but like, one of the
things that that we do here iswith use Outreach to run Outreach.
And I look at my AI predictionon my pipeline summary.
By the way, I posted a versionof that on LinkedIn today.
So it's my actual life of a dashboardthat I posted, obviously grayed out
a few numbers, but, uh, so it's mylive dashboard and the AI prediction
(04:48):
actually tells me how I'm gonna do in myquarter, and it's been really accurate.
And the reason why that is happeningis because of how agentic AI
is driving our sales process.
That's why we can predictall of that stuff.
It's being, you know, theinsights are, you know, real.
That's, that's what I need to say, andit's helping me and it's helping us.
(05:09):
So it's not making me redundant,and I don't think it's
gonna make humans redundant.
Matt Heinz (05:13):
Well, let's just use that, that, that example as
sort of like, you know, the, thedouble click on that a little bit.
I think, you know, forecasts in termshave been notoriously unpredictable
and inconsistent and incorrectover time for every company.
Big company, small companies.
It Why?
Because, because I think there'stoo much human emotion and
guessing that goes into it, right?
(05:35):
And so if you can actually use AI to,to objectively look at the data and
look at the trends and be really clearabout what is and isn't gonna close.
You might not like the answer, it maynot give you the answer you want, right?
Sound.
It gives you the reality.
You have something to react to anddo something about as opposed to
being surprised or unhappy later.
Abhijit Mitra (05:56):
So, um, Siemens, um, Scot Gardner was up on stage
at Unleash and he talked about.
How they're using Outreach forstandardizing their sales methodology,
essentially for forecastingacross all parts of the business,
which is across 190 countries.
And the reason it is so important forSiemens is because when you have a
standardized process and that drivespredictability, that drives visibility
(06:21):
in the business and the way it works,the way AI works in this process is that.
Because AI is involvedin every step of the way.
It's helping you figure outwho you want to connect with.
Mm-hmm.
It's helping you figureout what you want to say.
It's helping you figure outwhat your action items are.
Matt Heinz (06:38):
Mm-hmm.
Abhijit Mitra (06:39):
Um, it's helping you give insights from your conversations
in real time and post conversation.
All of this data is coming up inthe forecasting, in the pipeline,
analytics, in the pipeline summary view.
For you to know, okay,how is my team doing?
How is my quarter doing?
So once you are doing all ofthis work in one platform.
That's when you get the insight.
Otherwise, if it's disconnected platformwith a bunch of different tools.
(07:01):
Yeah.
It doesn't matter what you do,you'll not get that insight.
Matt Heinz (07:05):
Yeah.
Well, and, and I think, you know, inthe past we've had to ask explicit
questions of the tools we have.
Right?
You have to, you have to knowenough about what you're looking
for to ask the right question.
What I love about most platforms,including Outreach, now you,
you can ask a broader question.
And, and not have it be as structuredas you needed to before to get to,
(07:27):
to have the agents do the work foryou to help figure that out and in
as you train those agents, to havethe agents start to question your
questions as well and say like, whatare you actually trying to achieve?
And let me suggest a differentway of coming about that as well.
So as an augmentation.
Of what we're doing and as to,as an augmentation of some of,
quite frankly, the limitationswe have in our linear thinking.
(07:49):
The sky's the limit it feels likein terms of what it can do for us.
Abhijit Mitra (07:52):
So it's very interesting you say that.
Um, because traditionally how,uh, people have worked is they
looked at a whole bunch of data.
And then you try to make sense outof, okay, what should I do next?
Matt Heinz (08:03):
Mm-hmm.
Abhijit Mitra (08:03):
Um, even most CEOs or CROs are at this time today
actually looking at staring at a bigdashboard and trying to figure out,
okay, which graph is going which way?
Right now with the AI,it's very different.
The paradigm is very different becauseAI is looking at all the data you
are not, and it's coming and tellingyou that, Hey, you know what, this
is what where needs your attention?
(08:25):
This is what you need to do next.
The next is the best next action thatAI is recommending for you because a lot
of the reasoning is been done, the dataprocessing is done by the AI, right?
So that's the whole idea, thewhole promise of agentic AI and
autonomous AI and how that works.
And we want to make that a reality'cause that makes a lot of sense.
Matt Heinz (08:46):
Really excited to have on Sales Pipeline Radio today.
We've got Abhijit Mitra,he's the CEO of Outreach.
Talking about the future, really thefuture of selling, you know, what are
humans doing, what are agents doing?
Um, there's obviously a wide adoptioncurve right now of people using AI.
There's some people that are sortof way ahead in sort of adopting it
in every level of their business.
(09:06):
Um, still figuring things out.
There's some that kind ofhave their head in the sand.
And say like, I like my status quo.
I like the way I've always done things.
Um, I imagine there's even Outreachcustomers, right, like myself,
that, you know, been been doing itfor a long time, where adopting new
things can be exciting and scary.
As you talk to people that are sortof in those early stages of adopting
(09:27):
AI as part of their go-to marketrhythms, what are your recommendations
to them and what do they need toknow as they start down that path?
Abhijit Mitra (09:35):
Basically, Matt, I think every company of every size is
looking at AI in some shape or form.
And, you know, there have been differentforms of AI, predictive AI assistive
AI, and most recently, agentic AIpowered by generative AI, right?
Um, so everybody's trying tofigure out what makes sense.
Now, the problem with that, there'sa lot of noise in the market.
Everybody says, oh, we got it.
(09:57):
Come to us.
We'll help you solve world hunger.
That's not true.
Okay, so the, so that actually createssome challenges for customers of ours.
Or other customers or generallyany company in the market as to
what, what should I do with AI?
What should I look for?
What works, what doesn't work?
Where should I apply?
Where should I not apply?
Um, what I tell my customersalways is that, first of all,
(10:18):
choose a partner you can trust.
Mm-hmm.
Um, choose a partner who has a platformvision and not a point solution vendor.
So that's one.
Because you are looking at not oneuse case, you're looking at a platform
which can basically, you know, runall your different use cases tomorrow,
as long as they're connected by data.
Right?
The second thing that we tell them is,okay, let's, let's help you identify
(10:39):
what use case you're looking for.
Um, the use cases really matter a lot.
Um, 'cause AI, agentic AI today, inspite of whatever people may come claim.
Uh, it doesn't work verywell for everything.
So there are certain use cases.
For example, one of the onesthat we hear quite a bit is,
uh, MQL to SAL conversions.
Mm-hmm.
(11:00):
Leads, I don't have enough people.
They're just like, falling on the floor.
What can I do?
Well, you can run my AI agentsthat's going to, you know,
filter them out for you.
They're gonna enrich them, follow up andtell you which ones you should focus on.
The improvement, the help in productivitysaving is just tremendous out there.
So this is just an example.
Identify the use case.
Make sure you pick the right vendor.
And the last one that I think is superimportant that many people don't think
(11:24):
about is get your data strategy together.
'cause it's like garbage in garbage out.
Mm-hmm.
Garbage agents, they'lldo garbage for you also.
So you need to have theright data strategy.
You need to make sure, like, okay,where is the data coming from?
Do I even have clean data?
Most people don't.
So then what am I gonna do about that?
Now, one of the ways in which we helpin Outreach is that we say that, look,
(11:47):
even if you have garbage data in yourCRM, Outreach, the data that you are
getting through your interaction withyour customers, that's not garbage.
That's fresh, that's real time.
That's real data actually, and we canhelp you and enrich that data also
with our data connectors, with ourpartners, with data partners as well.
And finally, in the end, even afterdoing all that, let's say you don't
have the right data, turn the agentson because they'll filter out.
(12:11):
Yeah, the noise from the signalfor you, whatever you don't
have right data, it's noise.
Throw it out of the system whereyou have the right data it signal.
Act on that.
Matt Heinz (12:20):
But we could have a whole nother episode just on data and like the
importance of data and the lack of dataso many companies have to make this work.
I did wanna go back to something you saidearlier in that, in those comments around
the need and value of the platform, right?
Yeah.
Because I see a lot, there's somany tools out there right now.
Yeah.
And with the variety of tools andthen the vibe coding people have, I
hear a lot of people saying, well,I'll just, I'll stitch some things
(12:41):
together and I'll do it myself.
And my reaction is alwayslike, well, here we go again.
Yeah, because every time we see sortof some innovation, some, some, some
innovations in the space in variousdifferent technologies, people say
like, well, I can do this myself.
Yes.
Like, no, you can't because like,this isn't really what you do.
Right?
You may have the capacity to do it,but are you going to really be able to
(13:02):
continue to invest in making that work?
Is this really what you are bestat, and is this really where you
should be spending your time?
So, you know, I'm sure you guys seethis as well, like from a platform
standpoint and as a category leader,like how, talk about why a proven
platform is still so important.
Abhijit Mitra (13:20):
So, um, so I tell my customers that, look, um, if you're
looking for a partner, so if you'relooking for AI, first of all, come to us.
Why?
Because we are technologists, we areengineers, we are looking at this day
in and day out, and we are best at this.
Um, unfortunately you are not, so, yeah.
Yeah.
So, so come to us.
(13:41):
We'll figure this out for you.
We'll give you pre-configured agents.
Mm-hmm.
We'll customize and make it work in yourheterogeneous landscape to make sure that
it does what you are wanting it to do.
If you go out and do it on yourown, you can, you can, you can buy a
bunch of tools and do it on your own.
Yes, you can put somethings together for sure.
And many people aredoing that, by the way.
I'm not saying that's the wrongstrategy, it's just that it's not
(14:04):
a scalable strategy because we seethe use cases across every customer,
across all our 5,000 customers.
We see those use cases, and we areproductizing those and bringing out those
best practices to everybody out thereusing the best technology out there.
But individually, a customer cannotdo that customer by customer.
They cannot do that.
Now it's to some extent, it istrue whenever you have a technology
(14:25):
disruption in any industry.
Matt Heinz (14:26):
Mm-hmm.
Abhijit Mitra (14:27):
That's how you know it.
It was true for like mobile for example.
That's how it was true for SaaS andnow it's true for generative AI tools.
Whenever you have a new technology, ittakes a time, little bit of time before
you know, the market figures out that, oh,this can be packaged into a pre-packaged
software that I can buy and deploy.
And I don't have to own that.
(14:47):
And, uh, it's cheaper for me.
It's better for me.
So that's going to pan out,I think over some months.
Uh, I think we'll see that.
But that's the situation thatis true in the landscape today.
Yeah.
So we tell, we tell our customers.
Trust us.
We know what do and what we're doing.
Uh, just deploy a platform.
Matt Heinz (15:05):
Yeah.
No, I like that.
Well, as, as calm as you appear andas generous as you've been with your
time, it is still the last day of thequarter, so we're gonna let you go.
Uh, Abhijit Mitra, CEO of Outreach.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Abhijit Mitra (15:16):
Thanks for having me here, Matt.
I really appreciate it.
Matt Heinz (15:18):
Yeah, great conversation.
Shout out to Haley Flanagan, whoprefers to be in the background,
but help make this possible as well.
Thank you everyone for joiningus today, listening and watching.
We'll see you next timeon Sales Pipeline Radio.
Take care.
All right.
Welcome everybody to anotherepisode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
Very excited to have you here onthe last day of the month for some
of you, last day of the quarter.
It's our guest last day of the quarterhere today, so appreciate him joining us.
If you are joining today's episodelive on LinkedIn, we are really
excited to have you join us in themiddle of your workday and work week.
(00:36):
You could be part of the show if youhear something you wanna comment on, if
you've got a question for our guest today.
If you've got a rebuttal, if you've gota rant on any topic related to sales
and marketing, we'd love to hear that.
We will see that we can respond to that.
We can put you in the show as well.
So thank you for that.
If you are listening or watching ondemand, thank you so much for subscribing.
I think we're a little over 300,000downloads now of Sales Pipeline Radio.
(00:58):
So thank you so much forbeing a part of that.
Every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio,past, present, and future, uh, is always
available at Sales Pipeline Radio dot com.
Very excited on the last day ofhis month and last day of his
quarter to be joined by the CEO ofOutreach, Abhijit Mitra, Abhijit,
thanks so much for joining us today.
Abhijit Mitra (01:15):
Thanks for having me here, Matt.
Yes, super excited to be here.
Yes, it's the last day of thequarter and I'm here with you.
Matt Heinz (01:21):
And, we're gonna get into why you're not like as hair on
fire because you're drinking yourown champagne a little bit here.
I will say, just as full disclosure,I am an Outreach customer.
I'm a happy Outreach customer.
I literally use it every dayand have for almost 10 years.
Uh, it's just a key part ofour workflow and my workflow.
So I was excited to have ya on today.
And in addition to the end of the quarter,I know it also, you guys are just coming
(01:43):
down off of the big Unleash conference,which Outreach has been doing forever.
So talk a little bit about that andwhat you heard and learned there.
Abhijit Mitra (01:50):
Yeah, so we, um, actually announced our
AI revenue workflow platform.
This is something new.
It's not the same oldthing, a new, uh, bottle.
So basically we talked about how AIagents are gonna help uh, revenue
teams, um, across the company.
Um, automate a lot of thework through agentic AI.
(02:12):
And then we also announceda few key partnerships.
One of them was with SAP.
And we had customers on stagetalking about outcomes that
they're getting by using Outreach.
So these are some of the, sortof the exciting moments of the
Unleash customer conference,
Matt Heinz (02:27):
I would imagine among a lot of the attendees that were there that
there's a lot of conversation aroundthat balance between agents and humans.
Yeah.
Uh, I was told three years ago that by nowinside sales, uh, BDRs would be extinct.
That has not happened.
I have seen people try to completelyreplace BDRs in many cases with
technology, and that in manycases has not worked really well.
(02:50):
It seems like there's a balancethat needs to happen here.
What are you hearing from yourcustomers, from people at Unleash
and then what's your perspective onsort of, you know, how agents and
humans will interact moving forward?
Abhijit Mitra (03:00):
Yeah, so I mean, with every new technology there is a prediction.
There's a doomsday predictionthat, hey, it's, uh, you know,
you know, humans aren't needed,not needed anymore, and uh, right.
Yeah.
Granted, generative AI is truly,truly a differentiating technology.
If we, it can do a lot more, for us.
But you know, my belief has always beenthat technology is in the service of
(03:21):
people and it's not the other way around.
And we invent technology so it helps us.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, you know, that's why we do it.
So there's always a balance.
And if the technology is really goodwe will see more adoption of that.
It's like, uh, you know, uh,using this device that I have
here, you know, the more I useit, the more I get attached to it.
And I can't go from room A to roomB without this, uh, next to me.
(03:42):
And I'm just a lot moreproductive because of this.
Imagine when this was being, youknow, uh, you know, people were
starting to use cell phones and wewere saying that, Hey, you know, you
shouldn't hold this to your head.
You know, you've got abrain tumor, you'll die.
That was a prediction.
So it's somewhat same for AI andgenerative and agentic AI as well.
It's still I would say in early stagesit's still maturing quite a bit.
(04:05):
Yeah.
But we are seeing internally, weare using this in Outreach as well.
We are seeing a lot of productivity, alot of helpful work, meaning all the grunt
work that AI agents are doing for us.
So one example of that you mentionedis that today's the end of quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Do you see me frazzled?
Do you see me?
You're remark.
Matt Heinz (04:23):
You're remarkably calm, Abhijit.
I'm just, I'm very impressed.
Abhijit Mitra (04:27):
So, not to market too much, but like, one of the
things that that we do here iswith use Outreach to run Outreach.
And I look at my AI predictionon my pipeline summary.
By the way, I posted a versionof that on LinkedIn today.
So it's my actual life of a dashboardthat I posted, obviously grayed out
a few numbers, but, uh, so it's mylive dashboard and the AI prediction
(04:48):
actually tells me how I'm gonna do in myquarter, and it's been really accurate.
And the reason why that is happeningis because of how agentic AI
is driving our sales process.
That's why we can predictall of that stuff.
It's being, you know, theinsights are, you know, real.
That's, that's what I need to say, andit's helping me and it's helping us.
(05:09):
So it's not making me redundant,and I don't think it's
gonna make humans redundant.
Matt Heinz (05:13):
Well, let's just use that, that, that example as
sort of like, you know, the, thedouble click on that a little bit.
I think, you know, forecasts in termshave been notoriously unpredictable
and inconsistent and incorrectover time for every company.
Big company, small companies.
It Why?
Because, because I think there'stoo much human emotion and
guessing that goes into it, right?
(05:35):
And so if you can actually use AI to,to objectively look at the data and
look at the trends and be really clearabout what is and isn't gonna close.
You might not like the answer, it maynot give you the answer you want, right?
Sound.
It gives you the reality.
You have something to react to anddo something about as opposed to
being surprised or unhappy later.
Abhijit Mitra (05:56):
So, um, Siemens, um, Scot Gardner was up on stage
at Unleash and he talked about.
How they're using Outreach forstandardizing their sales methodology,
essentially for forecastingacross all parts of the business,
which is across 190 countries.
And the reason it is so important forSiemens is because when you have a
standardized process and that drivespredictability, that drives visibility
(06:21):
in the business and the way it works,the way AI works in this process is that.
Because AI is involvedin every step of the way.
It's helping you figure outwho you want to connect with.
Mm-hmm.
It's helping you figureout what you want to say.
It's helping you figure outwhat your action items are.
Matt Heinz (06:38):
Mm-hmm.
Abhijit Mitra (06:39):
Um, it's helping you give insights from your conversations
in real time and post conversation.
All of this data is coming up inthe forecasting, in the pipeline,
analytics, in the pipeline summary view.
For you to know, okay,how is my team doing?
How is my quarter doing?
So once you are doing all ofthis work in one platform.
That's when you get the insight.
Otherwise, if it's disconnected platformwith a bunch of different tools.
(07:01):
Yeah.
It doesn't matter what you do,you'll not get that insight.
Matt Heinz (07:05):
Yeah.
Well, and, and I think, you know, inthe past we've had to ask explicit
questions of the tools we have.
Right?
You have to, you have to knowenough about what you're looking
for to ask the right question.
What I love about most platforms,including Outreach, now you,
you can ask a broader question.
And, and not have it be as structuredas you needed to before to get to,
(07:27):
to have the agents do the work foryou to help figure that out and in
as you train those agents, to havethe agents start to question your
questions as well and say like, whatare you actually trying to achieve?
And let me suggest a differentway of coming about that as well.
So as an augmentation.
Of what we're doing and as to,as an augmentation of some of,
quite frankly, the limitationswe have in our linear thinking.
(07:49):
The sky's the limit it feels likein terms of what it can do for us.
Abhijit Mitra (07:52):
So it's very interesting you say that.
Um, because traditionally how,uh, people have worked is they
looked at a whole bunch of data.
And then you try to make sense outof, okay, what should I do next?
Matt Heinz (08:03):
Mm-hmm.
Abhijit Mitra (08:03):
Um, even most CEOs or CROs are at this time today
actually looking at staring at a bigdashboard and trying to figure out,
okay, which graph is going which way?
Right now with the AI,it's very different.
The paradigm is very different becauseAI is looking at all the data you
are not, and it's coming and tellingyou that, Hey, you know what, this
is what where needs your attention?
(08:25):
This is what you need to do next.
The next is the best next action thatAI is recommending for you because a lot
of the reasoning is been done, the dataprocessing is done by the AI, right?
So that's the whole idea, thewhole promise of agentic AI and
autonomous AI and how that works.
And we want to make that a reality'cause that makes a lot of sense.
Matt Heinz (08:46):
Really excited to have on Sales Pipeline Radio today.
We've got Abhijit Mitra,he's the CEO of Outreach.
Talking about the future, really thefuture of selling, you know, what are
humans doing, what are agents doing?
Um, there's obviously a wide adoptioncurve right now of people using AI.
There's some people that are sortof way ahead in sort of adopting it
in every level of their business.
(09:06):
Um, still figuring things out.
There's some that kind ofhave their head in the sand.
And say like, I like my status quo.
I like the way I've always done things.
Um, I imagine there's even Outreachcustomers, right, like myself,
that, you know, been been doing itfor a long time, where adopting new
things can be exciting and scary.
As you talk to people that are sortof in those early stages of adopting
(09:27):
AI as part of their go-to marketrhythms, what are your recommendations
to them and what do they need toknow as they start down that path?
Abhijit Mitra (09:35):
Basically, Matt, I think every company of every size is
looking at AI in some shape or form.
And, you know, there have been differentforms of AI, predictive AI assistive
AI, and most recently, agentic AIpowered by generative AI, right?
Um, so everybody's trying tofigure out what makes sense.
Now, the problem with that, there'sa lot of noise in the market.
Everybody says, oh, we got it.
(09:57):
Come to us.
We'll help you solve world hunger.
That's not true.
Okay, so the, so that actually createssome challenges for customers of ours.
Or other customers or generallyany company in the market as to
what, what should I do with AI?
What should I look for?
What works, what doesn't work?
Where should I apply?
Where should I not apply?
Um, what I tell my customersalways is that, first of all,
(10:18):
choose a partner you can trust.
Mm-hmm.
Um, choose a partner who has a platformvision and not a point solution vendor.
So that's one.
Because you are looking at not oneuse case, you're looking at a platform
which can basically, you know, runall your different use cases tomorrow,
as long as they're connected by data.
Right?
The second thing that we tell them is,okay, let's, let's help you identify
(10:39):
what use case you're looking for.
Um, the use cases really matter a lot.
Um, 'cause AI, agentic AI today, inspite of whatever people may come claim.
Uh, it doesn't work verywell for everything.
So there are certain use cases.
For example, one of the onesthat we hear quite a bit is,
uh, MQL to SAL conversions.
Mm-hmm.
(11:00):
Leads, I don't have enough people.
They're just like, falling on the floor.
What can I do?
Well, you can run my AI agentsthat's going to, you know,
filter them out for you.
They're gonna enrich them, follow up andtell you which ones you should focus on.
The improvement, the help in productivitysaving is just tremendous out there.
So this is just an example.
Identify the use case.
Make sure you pick the right vendor.
And the last one that I think is superimportant that many people don't think
(11:24):
about is get your data strategy together.
'cause it's like garbage in garbage out.
Mm-hmm.
Garbage agents, they'lldo garbage for you also.
So you need to have theright data strategy.
You need to make sure, like, okay,where is the data coming from?
Do I even have clean data?
Most people don't.
So then what am I gonna do about that?
Now, one of the ways in which we helpin Outreach is that we say that, look,
(11:47):
even if you have garbage data in yourCRM, Outreach, the data that you are
getting through your interaction withyour customers, that's not garbage.
That's fresh, that's real time.
That's real data actually, and we canhelp you and enrich that data also
with our data connectors, with ourpartners, with data partners as well.
And finally, in the end, even afterdoing all that, let's say you don't
have the right data, turn the agentson because they'll filter out.
(12:11):
Yeah, the noise from the signalfor you, whatever you don't
have right data, it's noise.
Throw it out of the system whereyou have the right data it signal.
Act on that.
Matt Heinz (12:20):
But we could have a whole nother episode just on data and like the
importance of data and the lack of dataso many companies have to make this work.
I did wanna go back to something you saidearlier in that, in those comments around
the need and value of the platform, right?
Yeah.
Because I see a lot, there's somany tools out there right now.
Yeah.
And with the variety of tools andthen the vibe coding people have, I
hear a lot of people saying, well,I'll just, I'll stitch some things
(12:41):
together and I'll do it myself.
And my reaction is alwayslike, well, here we go again.
Yeah, because every time we see sortof some innovation, some, some, some
innovations in the space in variousdifferent technologies, people say
like, well, I can do this myself.
Yes.
Like, no, you can't because like,this isn't really what you do.
Right?
You may have the capacity to do it,but are you going to really be able to
(13:02):
continue to invest in making that work?
Is this really what you are bestat, and is this really where you
should be spending your time?
So, you know, I'm sure you guys seethis as well, like from a platform
standpoint and as a category leader,like how, talk about why a proven
platform is still so important.
Abhijit Mitra (13:20):
So, um, so I tell my customers that, look, um, if you're
looking for a partner, so if you'relooking for AI, first of all, come to us.
Why?
Because we are technologists, we areengineers, we are looking at this day
in and day out, and we are best at this.
Um, unfortunately you are not, so, yeah.
Yeah.
So, so come to us.
(13:41):
We'll figure this out for you.
We'll give you pre-configured agents.
Mm-hmm.
We'll customize and make it work in yourheterogeneous landscape to make sure that
it does what you are wanting it to do.
If you go out and do it on yourown, you can, you can, you can buy a
bunch of tools and do it on your own.
Yes, you can put somethings together for sure.
And many people aredoing that, by the way.
I'm not saying that's the wrongstrategy, it's just that it's not
(14:04):
a scalable strategy because we seethe use cases across every customer,
across all our 5,000 customers.
We see those use cases, and we areproductizing those and bringing out those
best practices to everybody out thereusing the best technology out there.
But individually, a customer cannotdo that customer by customer.
They cannot do that.
Now it's to some extent, it istrue whenever you have a technology
(14:25):
disruption in any industry.
Matt Heinz (14:26):
Mm-hmm.
Abhijit Mitra (14:27):
That's how you know it.
It was true for like mobile for example.
That's how it was true for SaaS andnow it's true for generative AI tools.
Whenever you have a new technology, ittakes a time, little bit of time before
you know, the market figures out that, oh,this can be packaged into a pre-packaged
software that I can buy and deploy.
And I don't have to own that.
(14:47):
And, uh, it's cheaper for me.
It's better for me.
So that's going to pan out,I think over some months.
Uh, I think we'll see that.
But that's the situation thatis true in the landscape today.
Yeah.
So we tell, we tell our customers.
Trust us.
We know what do and what we're doing.
Uh, just deploy a platform.
Matt Heinz (15:05):
Yeah.
No, I like that.
Well, as, as calm as you appear andas generous as you've been with your
time, it is still the last day of thequarter, so we're gonna let you go.
Uh, Abhijit Mitra, CEO of Outreach.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Abhijit Mitra (15:16):
Thanks for having me here, Matt.
I really appreciate it.
Matt Heinz (15:18):
Yeah, great conversation.
Shout out to Haley Flanagan, whoprefers to be in the background,
but help make this possible as well.
Thank you everyone for joiningus today, listening and watching.
We'll see you next timeon Sales Pipeline Radio.
Take care.
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