This is my first blog post about the most active players going after the consolidation of the sales stack.
At last week's Outreach Explore+ event, I had the opportunity to preview their latest release, which prompted me to start with them.
While Outreach wasn't among the first providers in the market, they can be credited alongside SalesLoft for creating the Sales Engagement Platform category.
The company was established in 2014 as a pivot from GroupTalent (a talent marketplace) to focus on sales communications and lead-to-sale conversion.
Since then, Outreach has experienced exponential growth and raised close to $500 million. Therefore, it's not surprising that the company has expanded into adjacent areas.
Outreach is renowned for its strong engineering background and for building feature-rich capabilities. They've primarily expanded their product offerings organically but have also made two tuck-in acquisitions, Sameplan for mutual success plans and Canopy for forecasting. Notably, the company has developed Kaia, a conversation intelligence assistant.
In 2022, Outreach repositioned itself as a Sales Execution Platform, reflecting the expansion of its product suite.