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AE workflows for performance

Kelly Hansen
Updated

Overview

As an AE, maintaining your performance and optimizing your selling strategies ensures your ongoing success. With Outreach, you have access to the metrics, actionable insights, and features you need to achieve this goal. To do this, we’ve rounded up the key workflows every AE needs when evaluating their performance.

Table of contents

Use the links below to jump to a relevant section

Workflows

Workflows for KPI reviews

Use these workflows to evaluate your performance and content against your peers to pinpoint areas where you need to make improvements. 

Use the Sales Execution Report to review top to bottom funnel metrics and conversion rates

  1. Navigate to the Reports tab in Outreach and select Sales Execution Report
  2. At the top of the Sales Execution Report page, update the Compare drop-down to: Timeframes
  3. Define the specific time frame you want to analyze by adjusting the dates in the drop-down to the right of the Compare selection
  4. Find the drop-down menu on the right-hand side that says No Filter Applied and filter the report by selecting your name from the “Users” drop-down
  5. The report will then generate nearly 20 key funnel metrics. Compare or review the following metrics to see:
    • Prospects contacted to meetings booked: Compare these to metrics to see your overall conversion meeting conversion rate.
    • Through Sequences: Percentage of prospects invited that had a meeting due to a sequence. Use this metric to ensure you get into the best practice of using sequences to generate engagement and follow-up tasks.
    • % Ratio of Prospects invited to Prospects responded: The ratio of total prospects invited to meetings to prospects who responded expressed as a percentage. Use this metric to see how effective your messaging strategy is.
    • Email objection sentiment: Percentage of email responses from prospects in a sequence that were classified as objections
  6. Use the conversion metrics to pinpoint areas where you need to make changes to improve performance. Use the following strategies to boost your performance:
    • Identify top-performing teammates from the Team Performance report to review strategies and content they’re using
    • Review sequence content to identify which ones your top-performing teammates use
    • Make adjustments to your overall content strategy by reviewing insights from your response rates and email objection sentiment metrics

Use the Team Performance report to track activity and meetings metrics across your team 

  1. Navigate to the Reports tab in Outreach and select Team Performance Report
  2. At the top of the page in the right-hand corner, update the timeframe you want to review using the dropdown menu. 
  3. Select Filters and apply a Filter for your specific team, or a group of Users you are interested in
  4. Using insights you’ve collected during your performance review above, sort the report by clicking on the column header of the metric you want to influence or review (i.e., meetings booked, meeting conversion rate, etc.)
  5. Compare your metrics against your teammates to see how you’re performing overall and if you’re hitting your goals.
  6. Identify top performers and use this workflow to review their strategies

Use the Sequence Performance report to book more meetings

  1. Navigate to the Reports tab in Outreach and select the Sequence Performance report 
  2. Update the timeframe you want to review using the dropdown menu in the right-hand corner of the Sequence Performance Report page
  3. Filter the report from the Filters hamburger menu in the upper right corner of the report. In the Users drop-down, search for the names of top performers you’ve identified.
  4. Scroll down to see the Sequences that are being leveraged by these users and are leading to the most booked meetings
  5. Or, in the upper left-hand corner of the report, select the Email Sentiment button to see sequences that are leading to the highest number of positive responses
  6. Scroll down the page to the section titled How Are Prospects Responding to Sequences and sort by positive email sentiment by clicking on the Positive column
  7. Click on the positive percentage to dive deeper into the types of positive responses received
  8. For further context, examine the structure and content of top-performing sequences by looking them up in the Sequence library
  9. Use the insights gained to improve your own sequence usage and email strategies and increase your meeting booked rate

Workflows for monitoring and assessing deal health

Use these workflows when monitoring your deal health for insights and actions you can take to get deals back on track.

Use smart filters to surface at-risk deals

  1. Navigate to the Records tab in Outreach and select Opportunities
  2. Click the Add Filter button next to the search bar in the Opportunities tab
  3. Select the applicable filters you want to create a saved view for at risk deals. Be sure to include health score to set a threshold for when you want to review (i.e. Needs Review or At Risk deals). Deals that fall into the selected category will automatically surface for you to review and take action.
  4. Click Save View.
  5. Input a new name for the view. We suggest something like “At-risk deals” or “Low deal health”
  6. Configure the owner and sharing options as applicable.
  7. Use the checkbox to select or unselect this view as your default.
  8. Click Save.

Review deals to determine next best action

  1. Navigate to the Records tab in Outreach and select Opportunities
  2. Apply your saved view to surface at-risk deals
  3. Drill down into opportunities with low health scores by hovering over the red or yellow circle in the Health column to see their Deal Health Card. Here you can see deeper insights on:
    • Health status: Based on the deal health score, classified into three categories:
      • On track: Deals are relatively healthy
      • Needs review: Deals with a moderate amount of risk
      • At-risk: Deals that are relatively unhealthy compared to deals at a similar stage
    • Health trend: The trend indicator in the upper right of the Deal Health card shows which direction the score has moved and by how much the health score has changed in the last 7 days.
    • What’s going well: Every deal is evaluated against many positive factors using machine learning. This is an overview of some of the positive factors that have been identified for this deal.
    • Where to focus: Every deal is evaluated against many negative factors using machine learning. This is an overview of some of the negative factors that have been identified for this deal.
    • Suggested actions: Based on Deal Heath factors that were identified as impacting the deal negatively, Outreach will suggest actions to take within the Outreach ecosystem to de-risk the deal.
  4. Using these findings, determine the next best action to de-risk deals. We suggest:
    • Taking the suggested actions recommended in the deal health score
    • Refocus on areas recommended in the “Where to focus” category of the deal health card
    • Reviewing what’s going well and seeing if you can take any actions, insights, or learnings and applying them to focus areas

Review your deals with low health scores by digging into their account

  1. Navigate to the Records tab in Outreach and select Opportunities
  2. Apply your saved view to surface at-risk deals
  3. Dig into the details of at risk deals by selecting the opportunity’s name. This will pull up the Deal Overview page. Here you’ll find the deeper context you need to review this specific deal. Review the following sections and metrics in the overview page:
    • Next meeting: Confirm if there is an upcoming meeting scheduled 
    • Engagement: Review the last time a prospect was engaged and how
    • Kaia recordings: Review any Kaia recordings for overall sentiment and ensure you’ve followed up on any action items
    • Health insights: Look at health insights over the last 7 days for an overall deal health score, overview of what’s going well and where to focus, and review suggested actions.
    • Next steps: Confirm that there are next steps in place and ensure your making progress
    • Plan: Confirm that a Success Plan is in place for the deal and review any in-app notifications or flags

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