Our 6 favorite Outreach.io features

Sales reps are busy people – we have a million things to do every day, and there are only so many hours to get them done (if you want to, you know, sleep and eat and maybe occasionally talk to someone who isn’t your manager). 

But did you know it doesn’t have to be this way?

Use Outreach – a tool built to help AEs and their managers streamline their sales activities into one intelligent workflow – and your days will start to handle themselves.

In this article, you’ll find out about our 6 favorite Outreach features, and come away brimming with ideas for your next day at work. Here’s what we’ll cover: 

• Powerful Email Sequences
• AI-Powered Analytics and Sentiment Analysis
• Integrated Call and Meeting Scheduler
• Email Tracking and Reporting
• Sales Pipeline Management and Deal Intelligence
• Outreach Chrome Extension

Ready to go? Let’s get started: 

Powerful Email Sequences

OutreachIO has some pretty impressive sequence powers, which help you engage with your prospects at the right stage of their buying journey. They’ll make your days more efficient and more productive – are you sold yet? 

In the world of B2B sales, we all know that the process isn’t as easy as speak to a prospect, make the sale. Instead, you’re going to be meeting – and impressing- multiple stakeholders, while trying to figure out who the decision-maker actually is and fielding questions from anyone who might block the deal. 

With Outreach, you can make this part of your job a little more easy to manage. It’s advanced sequence capabilities allow you to manage multiple stakeholders within the same sequence, and consolidate responses across multiple emails into a single thread. That’s some powerful time-saving right there. Plus, you don’t need to spend any more time manually figuring out who hasn’t replied and needs a follow-up. With Outreach, you can automate your follow-ups and bring any cool leads back up to room temperature. Easy. 

AI-Powered Analytics and Sentiment Analysis

Outreach is right ahead of the curve – and by that, we mean it makes use of cutting-edge AI capabilities to help you do your best work without any extra effort. 

Outreach uses AI to scan each prospect’s email response and identify it as: 

• A positive response
• An objection
• A referral
• An unsubscribe (boooo) 
• Something else

From there, you can easily tell your manager what type of responses you’re getting and make tweaks accordingly to improve your conversion rates.  

Outreach also uses Kaia, an AI-powered virtual assistant, to join, record and transcribe your meetings. Kaia’s a clever one – it automatically deep dives into your meetings and records key moments, prospect behavior and any actions you need to take afterward. It’ll also pass on any insights into trends from your calls, meaning you can enjoy a bird’s eye view of what’s going on without having to add anything else to your plate.

Integrated Call and Meeting Scheduler 

Sometimes, it’s the little things that add up to derail our day. Switching between tools and tabs is one of them – fine as a one-off, but if you’re regularly jumping between a million different pages, you’re wasting time and harming your productivity. Plus, there’s the risk that amongst all the switching, you might miss something and end up not actioning a vital follow-up. 

With the Outreach-Google Calendar integration, you can: 

• Use pre-written calendar invite templates 
• Set up bookable time blocks so your prospects can arrange to see you instantly 
• Book a meeting for someone else – useful if you are an SDR and BDR who passes prospects onto an AE 
• Keep track of meeting no-shows 

With the Outreach-Outlook Calendar integration, you can: 

• Use and save pre-written calendar invite templates 
• Have time blocks ready and waiting for your prospects to book as and when they please
• Make your calendar public with a link, so your prospects can book in or reschedule a call without additional back-and-forth
• Book a call on behalf of someone else on your team 
• Keep track of no-shows and automatically reschedule them, too 
• Have all of the above synced to your CRM – no more manual data migration

Email Tracking and Reporting 

When you’re sending out hundreds of emails a day, it can be really hard to keep track of what’s working, what’s not, who’s replied, who’s ghosted, which subject line performed best…you get the picture. 

Outreach (very kindly) makes this problem a thing of the past, by doing it all for you. It tracks email opens, clicks and replies, giving you and your team valuable insights into your outreach effectiveness. Its reporting capabilities allow users to analyze the performance of their campaigns and make data-driven adjustments to improve their results. We’re all about a continuous growth mindset at Surfe, and we love how easy it Outreach makes it to make continuous adjustments until you have a well-oiled email machine. 

Outreach also uses email tracking software to help you understand exactly where a prospect is in the sales cycle. This is useful because 1) you might not remember, depending on how many prospects you’re working with at once and 2) you can make tweaks to your following messages to maximize your engagement rates. 

You can also set things up to suit your unique business, by using tags and lists to categorize and prioritize prospects.

Sales Pipeline Management and Deal Intelligence

When you’re working with a complicated pipeline day in, day out it can sometimes be difficult to see the wood through the trees. You’re heavily invested in your outreach and deals in progress…but when was the last time you thought of the big picture? 

Outreach makes it easy for you to focus on the micro and the macro with features like deal health scoring, pipeline forecasting, and automated data syncing with CRM systems. These tools give you a comprehensive view of the sales process – so you can identify risks and opportunities and manage deals more effectively.  

Outreach’s pipeline management capabilities also help managers keep an eye on individual team performance. They’ll be able to see progress for every sales rep as well as each team, and use coverage modeling to make sure everyone’s on track. 

Let’s quickly jump into what these features actually look like: 

• Pipeline dashboard: so you can see everything at a glance, and filter as you need to 

• Pipeline movement: understand what’s changing, so you can stay ahead of the game

• Weighted pipeline: use historical data to predict your future success, and avoid any upcoming pitfalls 

• Current and next period coverage: make sure you’ve got enough coverage right now and in the future based on historical performance 

• Team and rep scorecard: make sure everyone’s on track to hit their goals, week-by-week 

• Win/loss modeling: see how efficient your team’s pipeline conversion is in each sales stage or forecast category 

• Deal pacing: check your team’s performance tracking as expected against your team’s win model 

• Revenue attainment: keep an eye on your revenue trends, and compare them to previous time periods to make sure you’re progressing

Outreach Chrome Extension 

So far, we’ve talked a lot about how Outreach helps you handle your leads during the prospecting and sales funnel process. But how do you find these contacts in the first place? 

Outreach has an answer for that too. Surprise, it’s Surfe- the Outreach Chrome Extension that makes finding contact data and migrating it to outreach a breeze. You can think of Surfe as the bridge between Outreach and LinkedIn: it makes your transition from prospecting to outreaching so smooth you’ll barely notice it’s happening. Here’s how: 

Once you’ve downloaded the Surfe Chrome extension, and connected it to your LinkedIn, you’ll have the option to connect it to Outreach. That’s all it takes to get your Outreach extension ready to go. 

From there, you can find prospects’ contact details by either going to their individual LinkedIn profiles or using Sales Navigator to build a nice big list of ICP-alikes. Next, just hit ‘Add as contact’ and Surfe will work its magic – finding accurate email addresses and phone numbers in literally seconds. 

Here’s the most exciting bit of the Surfe – Outreach Chrome Extension. You can then add prospects to Outreach cadences directly from LinkedIn. Say goodbye to wasted time switching between tabs, and hello to one single click to bring a prospect into the right cadence for them. That’s not all, though (yes, we mean it) – going forward, you can view, track, add and edit Outreach information from a prospect’s LinkedIn profile page. Say hello to always-up-to-date cadences and records from here on out.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Here’s the thing: as sales reps we’re always going to be busy. But Outreach makes sure that you’re the right type of busy, by making each and every one of your activities as efficient, and powerful as possible. You’ll have smoother workdays, more productive conversations and more successful quarters – what are you waiting for?

FAQs about Outreach 

Is Outreach.io a good tool? 

In our humble (ok, maybe not that humble) opinion: yes. Outreach is one of the best tools out there for sales teams, because it makes every day as efficient and as powerful as possible. It helps with execution throughout prospecting, outreach and the sales funnel, and backs its tools up with powerful analytics so teams can test and learn as they go. 

What does Outreach.io cost? 

How much Outreach costs will depend on the size of your business and the package you select. Its pricing is based on a per-user basis, meaning costs will increase with the number of team members you have use the tool. 

What are the benefits of Outreach.io?

In a nutshell, Outreach helps sales teams close more deals. It does this by streamlining sales operations and workflows, and providing valuable insights that allow sales teams to keep track of where they are versus their targets, and make adjustments to their strategy and actions as they go. Another advantage of Outreach is it has great integrations. The Outreach Chrome Extension, Surfe, is one of these – use both tools in tandem, and you’ll make the transition from prospecting to outreach seamless. 

What is Outreach.io used for? 

Outreach is used by sales and marketing teams to manage interactions with prospects. Teams can use it to automate email cadences, schedule meetings with contacts, keep track of email performance and understand their pipeline. It can also be used to make prospecting a breeze: the Outreach Chrome Extension Surfe connects Outreach to LinkedIn, which in turn makes prospecting faster and easier, and eliminates admin.