How a Solutions Consultant uses Outreach to empower pre-sales teams

Corey O'Brien, from Outreach’s Solutions Consulting (SC) team, is ready to reveal the platform's best-kept secret: how it empowers pre-sales teams to excel in their roles. A key part of Corey’s role is to bring in new customers, and he relies on Outreach to manage those opportunities, streamline communication, and ensure alignment with SC leadership. From updating SC notes to leveraging AI insights, in this video, you’ll discover how Corey and his teammates use Outreach every day to stay ahead and deliver exceptional results.

Hi, I'm Corey. I'm on the solutions consulting team at Outreach. And what I'm going to show you today is the best kept secret in Outreach, which is how it helps pre-sales teams do their job. And, how I use it (and how my teammates use it) every day. 

Managing opportunities with Outreach

So, the first thing that we look at, honestly, is a lot of the same overlap with sellers because my job, from a new logo team perspective, is to help bring in new customers. So, I'm managing a lot of opportunities in the same way, and luckily I have Outreach to sort of dig into those and make sure that I'm doing the right things that my SC leadership wants me to do — as well as not bugging my sellers every time I want an update on an opportunity. 

Updating opportunity notes

This is a view that I have saved. I'll look at opportunities that I'm assigned to and I get certain pieces of information. Our leadership team wants us to update a field called “SC notes,” which is kind of like the SC's take on what's going on in the deal, because a lot of times that might be a little different than the sellers. And it also just adds a flavor of sorts, I guess, technical components to the deal that might be otherwise missed — aside from next steps, what's going on, who's involved, and also anything that could be at risk for a deal from a SC's point of view. 

Updating and understanding deal progress

So, I go through and I inline edit these opportunity notes. I look at what my sellers are also putting in, so I have that saved as a field. And then I go in and look at, okay, well, when was the last meeting? When is the next meeting? Is my seller reaching out to these folks? How engaged are they? Because the last thing I want to do if I'm working a high value opportunity is bug my seller about what's going on — because I guarantee our CEO, VP of sales, and their managers are also doing the same thing. So, I try to be as kind as I can be in that regard. If I'm trying to figure out what's going on in a deal or updating a deal, I live in this view. 

Preparing for meetings

Then I'll also dive into a particular deal, which gives me more insight that I can then get more answers to. So things like: what was the last email that was sent, do I need to be replying on top of an email with my seller, do I need to include anything, as well as when the last meeting was. Because a lot of times, depending on the meeting, I have to manage some of that follow-up or I have to prep for an upcoming call that maybe I wasn't on the previous one. So, I look at a call that a seller had run, and I'll come into our AI component here to get a lay of the land of what was discussed on that call. I'll also ask questions, like “what were the next steps?” Or if my AEs gave me really good notes (which they always do), I'll also ask “what was promised” by way of “what is the customer or prospect excited about seeing for the next call?”

Understanding Account History

So, I'll go through and make sure that I have those dialed in. And then, that's a lot of prepping for the actual conversations that are upcoming. But also what I have to do is (again, I've worked on the new logo side), and sometimes I'll be meeting with a customer for the first time, but it might not be that customer or prospect’s first time engaging with us. So, I'll jump into the actual account view, which is separating the opportunity view, because it's going to take into account everything that has ever happened with that account.

So everything that our SDR team has done, if they've had previous opportunities with us, I look at those because that's going to give me a good understanding of how to add value immediately — and come into that conversation as a trusted advisor. I work with seven sellers, but I don't have nearly as much time as a seller to prep for these meetings, and I want to go into my prep calls with ease with information. So, I usually start here and then I can dive in and say, okay, I'm going to ask our AI assist “what were the key takeaways from the last meeting?” It's going to link me in there or link me to previous conversations.

And then I basically just take down those notes and make sure I show up as best as I can to these calls. So, I'd say those are the biggest ways that I myself as an SC and other SCs use the platform and I think it's highly, highly valuable.