How NewtonX increased forecast accuracy by 45%

The better the data we have, the better we can make key business decisions that drive us forward

NewtonX is a young company with an ambitious mission: to become the top on-demand platform for professional knowledge. Ready to evangelize their offerings and build a loyal customer base, the company began building a best-in-class sales organization that could keep pace with the speed of NewtonX's innovations. Thats why NewtonX hired Kumbi Murinda as the Director of Revenue Operations, a new role that would become instrumental for this new sales organization.

One of Kumbi's first priorities as Director of Revenue Operations was to help sellers be as efficient and effective as possible, as soon as possible. For Kumbi, this meant equipping sellers with the Outreach Sales Execution Platform.

"I've implemented Outreach at every company I've worked for and I can't imagine a world without it," Kumbi says. "Implementing Outreach at NewtonX was a no-brainer. We knew we had to have it for sales engagement, especially with such a young and scrappy sales team. But even more critical was how Outreach could impact our ability to forecast because, especially as a startup, that's how we make our decisions."

Before Outreach, NewtonX relied on forecasts that were painstakingly built using multiple spreadsheets and disconnected data sources. "That's just not the ideal situation for accurately and dynamically forecasting and managing your pipeline," Kumbi says. "The better the data we have, the better we can make key business decisions that drive us forward."

Empowering sellers with the only platform that increases qualified pipeline and turns data into deals

NewtonX first deployed Outreach for sales engagement workflows, equipping Business Development Reps (BDRs) and Account Executives (AEs) to efficiently generate more pipeline. But NewtonX needed to do more than build pipeline they also needed to build quality pipeline that would convert to revenue growth. 

To achieve this goal, they paired sales engagement with Outreach's deal management capabilities to give AEs the ability to inspect all of their deals from within Outreach and view insights from the day opportunities are created to the day they are closed. Plus, sellers can make every call their best call with the help of Kaia, Outreach's AI-powered virtual assistant. Kaia surfaces real-time enablement during meetings and automatically captures action items, boosting productivity and moving deals forward faster. 

Kaia is supporting reps with content cards during their calls, Kumbi says. We also have libraries of calls for training, with examples of a good discovery call or a good proposal call. Its invaluable in teaching incoming sales reps how to be successful.

Outreach has also transformed NewtonX's deal review workflow. This transformation starts with all reps managing opportunities directly within the Outreach platform, which allows managers as well as senior sales leaders to have a single, accurate, up-to-date record of what is happening in key deals.

"Outreach empowers our sales VPs to know exactly what reps are doing in their pipeline," says Kumbi. "It also gives them guidance on what deals should be pushed back or moved forward, as well as what should be closed and moved out of the pipeline completely." 

Even when leaders can't spend time actively inspecting deals, Outreach has their back. Push notifications deliver updates directly to their inbox, identifying which deals might be at risk. That allows them to dive deeper into the issue and support their reps or update forecasting models for greater accuracy. Deal health scores are also surfaced directly in the platform, helping the entire team easily spot deals at risk, mitigate those risks early, and take recommended actions to get deals back on track.

"Ultimately, this data-driven deal inspection unlocks more impactful coaching that keeps reps focused on actions that accelerate deal velocity and boost conversion rates. We know our opportunities are real opportunities. So even when we have a little bit of a thinner pipeline, thats because were cutting out all these extra deals and our reps can focus on making sure they have a healthy pipeline."

Increased forecast accuracy helps revenue leaders steer the ship with confidence

"Over the past year, our forecasting accuracy has increased by 45% and thats only going to increase the longer we use Outreach," Kumbi says. "We wouldn't be where we are today if we hadn't had that forecast accuracy. I have a lot more confidence when making critical business decisions based on our forecasts, and the CRO does as well."

One example of how NewtonX applies their more accurate forecasting is in their sales capacity planning. Outreach is not only unlocking seller productivity, but also helping leaders make data-driven decisions on where to allocate their limited resources.

'We've already made some really great decisions based on our ability to forecast more accurately, in terms of creating quotas, dividing up territories, and how we are hiring for the upcoming year," Kumbi says. "Plus because Outreach increases the efficiency and effectiveness of our sales reps, we didn't have to consider doubling our salesforce to double our sales in the upcoming year."

As NewtonX continues to grow, the company plans to deepen its relationship with Outreach and extend the value of the platform to more departments. Kumbi already has his sights on additional functions to bring onto the Outreach platform in the near future: Marketing and Client Operations. According to Kumbi, the Client Operations is already preparing to incorporate Outreach into their account management workflow. 

"Outreach continues to push out new features so, every couple months, there's something new that we can utilize to up-level our sales processes. So our Outreach usage within NewtonX will continue to expand, especially as we grow and chase ever greater goals."