The Company: One Integrated Physical Security Platform

Verkada develops cloud-based building security and operating systems, using machine vision and AI. Verkada serves over 24,000 customers, has raised >$400M in funding, and has over 1,800 employees globally.

The Challenge: Scaling Pipeline Generation Efficiently

Verkada leadership always cites the importance of growing as fast as possible, as efficiently as possible. As a result, their growth + demand generation team faces very lofty pipeline goals that continue to increase each quarter and has to figure out how to do more with less.

The team conducted internal analysis and found that MDRs/SDRs spend 15+ hours a week deciding which accounts and contacts to focus on, reading through any prior interactions (ex. Outreach email replies, Closed Lost notes, etc.), and then crafting an email for that specific persona/industry. 

To maximize pipeline, Verkada concluded they need to:

• minimize the time spent researching who to contact and why, and

• maximize the time that MDRs calling prospects and responding to emails

The Solution: Scaled Outbound with Actively AI

To achieve this goal, Verkada partnered with Actively AI to help orchestrate a world-class scaled outbound engine for their mid-market and enterprise growth team.

The idea, according to Dithi Ganjam, one of Verkada’s growth leads and the pioneer behind the automated outbound program, is that, “Every single week, prospects should be automatically sequenced into relevant, personalized cadences at the right timing. MDRs should then spend their entire day focusing on call tasks, answering objections/questions via email, and booking meetings. 0 minutes should be spent deciding which accounts to focus on and drafting initial emails.”

How does Actively AI make this a reality? Every single day, Actively’s AI agents automate the process of:

• Discovering the Best Accounts: Actively’s models are trained on Verkada’s Closed Won examples and analyze technographic, firmographic, and intent data to determine which accounts are the best fit for Verkada.

• Identifying the Best People: By intelligently learning the ICP, Actively can identify the best prospects within the CRM and verify their LinkedIn/email. Using the ZoomInfo API, Actively’s prospecting agent can also automatically pull more ICP fit contacts that aren’t already in the CRM!

• When to Reach Out: Actively agents process the millions of valuable data points locked up in Gong transcripts, Outreach email replies, call dispositions, and Salesforce notes to determine when the right time is to engage/re-engage a prospect. For example, if prospects requested a follow up at a specific time or were waiting on a specific feature integration, Actively can surface those people up at the right time.

• What to Say: Actively’s AI email writer can auto-personalize sequences based on its ability to extract information from the various internal data sources, referring to what was mentioned in prior interactions. For pure cold leads, Actively AI intelligently segments recommendations by industry and persona specific value propositions so they can be applied to relevant sequences.

To fully optimize the auto-outbound motion, Verkada uses Hightouch to automatically enroll individuals in Outreach sequences, Orum to parallel and power dial prospects, and Looker to report on and analyze performance.

The result? Michael Beisheim, a growth lead, says, “Actively delivers us the best leads and email copy every single day. We trigger sequences through Outreach, our MDRs wake up to call tasks and monitor their email inbox for replies, and this books tons of high quality meetings.”

The Payoff: Highest ROI Sales Tech

Dithi finds Actively to be one of the highest ROI tools in Verkada’s robust technology stack. The numbers don’t lie:

• Verkada’s ‘scaled outbound’ program drives $14M in quarterly pipeline for the mid-market segment... with only 5 MDRs!

• ~250 meetings are booked a month, almost 50 per rep! To book that sort of volume without the ‘scaled outbound’ engine, that process would likely require almost 15 productive SDRs averaging ~17 meetings a month!

• Because of the success of the program, Verkada has now expanded the ‘scaled outbound program’ from their mid-market corporate segment to both enterprise and SLED. Furthermore, Verkada enrolls the top Actively AI scored leads + accounts into an ABM program, leveraging direct mail and strategic outreach, to further boost pipeline. Michael mentions, “The hyper-targeted multi-channel approach that Actively AI helps us with has been a game-changer in reaching our highest-value prospects.”

David Betty, Director of Verkada’s MDR program, says, “I’ve been in sales for over 8 years. What we’ve built at Verkada with Actively AI is the future of outbound. My reps are waking up to a list of clean contacts and companies, don’t waste hours on research or prospect verification, and are able to personalize at scale. This will be a model for every ambitious growth stage company out there.”