Outreach Layoffs 2023 – Outreach is a Seattle-based provider of sales technology. It confirmed on September 20, 2023, that it had let go of 12% of its workforce or about 120 workers. This is the company’s fourth round of layoffs this year. Following a 5% layoff in August, Outreach had about 1,000 workers left when this most recent reduction occurred. In addition to the layoffs in August, Outreach also fired over 70 workers in February.
A representative for Outreach stated that “the business made this choice. It is moving some limited business functions to Mexico City and India,” adding that the company hopes to turn a profit in 2024.
Outreach is a 2014-founded company. It helps sales professionals with the creation of playbooks, deal management, and sales pipeline analysis. The business claims to have more than 5,500 customers, including Zoom and DocuSign. Let us view the layoffs at Outreach in brief in this article.
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About the company
Outreach offers revenue management software and technology that uses predictive analytics. They are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to boost sales efficiency. Andrew Kinzer, Wes Hather, Gordon Hempton, and Manuel Medina launched the business in 2014.
It became a unicorn startup in 2019. This was after raising $114 million and exceeding a $1 billion value. In the years 2020 and 2021, it raised money in two more fundraising rounds.
Outreach raised $200 million and was valued at more than $4.4 billion in June 2021. Outreach bought Indianapolis-based revenue intelligence software startup Canopy.io in October of that year. However, the financial terms were not disclosed.
Several Seattle unicorn businesses have also made cutbacks this year. This includes Rad Power Bikes, Highspot, Karat, and Convoy.
Outreach laid off 70 employees
In February, Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, spoke with GeekWire. “The company operates on a per-user basis, so the huge layoffs in IT had an impact on its sales. The restricted spending environment also forced sales representatives to rely more heavily on the startup’s technologies for customer qualification. It is somewhat making up for that decline in demand,” he continued.
In February 2023, Outreach let go of 70 employees. About 7% of the workforce is affected. The Seattle-based sales software business had already made one round of cutbacks in the previous six months.
On February 27, a company representative announced the reduction in staff. The spokesperson stated, “Outreach regularly identifies the need for operational and organizational changes. This is to align with our strategic growth plan and path to profitability.”
Outreach CEO Manny Medina informed his team through email. He mentioned that the business had fallen short of its most recent fiscal year’s annual recurring revenue goals.
In the email got by the GeekWire, he wrote,
“Even given the decrease in projected spending, we must find other savings in efficiencies and cut deeper.” “Headcount is one of our biggest expenses in a software company. This regrettably means more layoffs within our outreach team.”
According to Medina’s email, Outreach will halt merit raises as well as any further office growth or relocation. In August 2022, the corporation let go of 5% of its workforce. In addition to its Seattle headquarters, it also maintains offices in Prague, London, Atlanta, and Indianapolis.
The news is being made in the midst of a tech slump that is having an impact on business sales teams and lowering demand for sales tools.
In an effort to cut costs and extend cash runways, it is advised that many startups lay off employees. The Seattle Unicorn Outreach is the most recent to make job cuts. Others, like Karat, Icertis, Rad Power Bikes, Convoy, Qumulo, and Highspot, have done the same.
Outreach announces new features across the sales execution platform
The best platform for sales execution is known as Outreach. It aids revenue-generating enterprises in opening and closing more pipelines. On March 15, 2023, the Outreach Sales Execution Platform received seven additional platform advancements.
The goal of these new features is to give sales leaders the tools they need to boost seller productivity, deal velocity, conversion rates, and rep participation and attainment. Over 7,000 people registered for the company’s Explore event. In that event, announcements were made to learn how to succeed in this new era of B2B sales.
“Today’s Chief Revenue Officers encounter two major issues: pipeline coverage and conversion.” Manny Medina, CEO and co-founder of Outreach, stated that they needed to build an adequate number of pipelines and close them more quickly.
“Because of this, Outreach has been working to diversify its services. This is to address the greatest challenges facing its clients. To help sales executives manage all of their deals, from building more pipelines to closing more deals, we want to offer them a single platform. The innovations made today at Explore+ mark a major turning point for our platform. We look forward to keeping up the innovation for the 30 million B2B salespeople around the world so that they can maximize their sales.”
In the past, sales leaders were compelled to rely on point solutions. This is to help them develop healthy pipeline coverage and boost pipeline conversion. Typically, they bought one solution for prospecting, another for call recording, or rep coaching. Also, there are extra ones for forecasting and pipeline management.
To work on just one deal, salespeople must access many different systems. It is expensive due to the sales technology sprawl. Additionally, it creates data silos that make it nearly impossible to provide accurate answers to crucial issues. It includes what activities result in outcomes that generate income.
Until now, the industry lacked a single point of contact where it could:
- create and manage pipelines,
- manage sales cycles from start to finish,
- coach salespeople, and
- forecast.
On a single platform, Outreach’s Sales Execution Platform offers never-before-seen capabilities. It is for managing the workflows of a sales force, from pipeline creation to deal closure. As their organization’s basis, sales leaders of all sizes are using the Outreach Sales Execution Platform. They use it to operationalize, check, and maximize their investments in sales methods and procedures.
The platform offers complete transparency throughout the buyer journey. It also produces great insights that inspire reps to take focused actions. This is to boost conversion rates and close more pipelines. By converting signals into actions, Outreach’s unique AI and ML models enhance deal management.
Outreach recently revealed two new developments
Smart Email Assist: It is an AI-powered email response generator. It goes beyond email templates and automatically generates suitable and useful email prose. It will be created based on the previous context of interactions among buyers and sellers. It can increase seller productivity through generative AI. Sales representatives can now respond to customers more quickly and advance deals.
Snowflake Data Cloud: It gains fresh insights by sharing outreach data on the cloud. This is the new product, which is now in public beta. It helps joint customers find efficiency and identify new opportunities throughout the whole sales cycle. It is done by fusing data from Outreach’s sales with data from other corporate applications on the Snowflake Data Cloud.
Outreach conducted a third wave of layoffs
Outreach, a provider of sales enablement software, downsized by 5% in August 2023. It was done through its third wave of layoffs in a year. The Seattle office of Outreach presently employs 1,000 people, in addition to locations in Atlanta, Indianapolis, London, and Prague. The staff decrease comes after two previous layoffs of 7% in February and 5% in August 2022.
Outreach reduces headcount by 12%:
12% of Outreach’s employees were let go in September 2023. At the Seattle-based startup, this is the most recent round of layoffs. In response to a GeekWire query, a corporate spokesperson confirmed the headcount cut.
According to Outreach, the sales technology firm has implemented a wide range of cost-cutting measures as a result of the economy’s changing conditions. Outreach did not provide an updated headcount. Certain corporate operations will be offshored to Mexico City and India.
The statement said, “This decision was not taken lightly.” Over the past year, the overall economic climate has altered dramatically. We are implementing a number of changes to maintain our costs in line with a business of our size and scope. This is done in order to ensure the long-term success of Outreach.”
The spokesperson continued, “Our balance sheet is strong. We’re sure that these changes, coupled with ones we’re carrying out internally, will help. Thus, we can achieve our goal of attaining profitability next year.”
Additionally, Amritansh Raghav, executive vice president of engineering, left the business on September 21. Outreach confirmed this. “We’re thankful for Amritansh’s numerous efforts to build a great engineering team. We appreciate his dedication to ensuring a successful transition to new engineering leadership,” the business stated in a statement.
After making an offensive remark, an outreach executive resigns
After making an offensive remark in a staff meeting, Amritansh Raghav abruptly resigned from his position. He was executive vice president of engineering at Seattle-based Outreach.
On September 19, Raghav apologized in an email to the Outreach team for “commenting on bad taste.” In the email acquired by the Business Journal, Raghav stated,
“I understand that while I intended to make light of a question at all hands this morning with a joke, it wasn’t received that way.” I’ll try harder to choose my words carefully because I’m constantly learning, too.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Raghav spent more than four years working at Outreach. He worked at Microsoft for more than 16 years in total, between many assignments. His most recent position there was corporate vice president.
Conclusion
A representative for Outreach confirmed Raghav’s departure from the organization. But, he declined to provide any extra information about the comments that caused his resignation. On the same day that Raghav sent his email of regret, Outreach chose to let go of 120 employees or 12% of its workforce. When the Business Journal contacted Raghav about the incident, he declined to comment.
However, Outreach acknowledged in August 2022 that it had let go fewer than 5% of its workforce and then roughly 70 workers in February of this year. After that, in August of this year, the corporation let go of 5% of its workforce, leaving Outreach with roughly 1,000 workers.
A spokesman for Outreach stated at the time that in addition to the most recent layoffs in September, the business was “moving some limited business functions to Mexico City and India.” He added that the company hopes to turn a profit next year.
