People.ai, the revenue operations and intelligence platform, has acquired Hero Research, Inc., a Salesforce user productivity app. The acquisition redefines the Salesforce user experience for sales reps using People.ai with a Google Sheets-style interface for pipeline management and effortless CRM updates. In addition, People.ai is launching a new way to use its platform within Salesforce. Now, sales teams can access leading indicators related to deal and pipeline health, AI-powered insights to improve rep and team performance, and digital account plans based on proven sales methodologies such as MEDDIC, all from within CRM or their browser. The acquisition of Hero Research, in tandem with People.ai’s embedded Salesforce experience, will allow enterprise organizations to maximize the productivity and performance of their sales reps, dramatically reducing time spent on Salesforce workflows.
“People.ai’s acquisition of Hero Research is changing the game for enterprise sales teams who use Salesforce,” said Oleg Rogynskyy, founder and CEO at People.ai. “Companies run sales on CRM, yet virtually every rep and manager we meet runs a shadow spreadsheet to manage what’s actually happening in their territories. Finally, we’re able to bring the two worlds together with People.ai and Hero Research’s best-in-class solution, so sales teams have the flexibility to manage their pipeline, territories, and activities in an optimal way, ultimately closing more deals.”
The combination of Hero Research and People.ai removes decades of tension between the rep and the sales organization, allowing reps to take a highly customized approach to the way they run their territory while still respecting the systems and processes companies implement to scale their business. With the acquisition, reps can create a personalized Salesforce interface as easily as creating a Google Sheet — the entire experience is consolidated behind a single, easy-to-use view with ultra-efficient read-write access to Salesforce.
“We immediately saw the value in joining forces with People.ai,” said Daniel Chen, co-founder and CEO at Hero Research and former partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We think there’s a huge opportunity in redefining the day-to-day sales rep experience and look forward to solidifying our leadership in the revenue operations and intelligence market.”
“Combining our unique dataset with People.ai’s AI-driven insights creates a sales productivity solution unlike any other vendor in the market. Customers who have used the solution are reporting an increase of up to 25% in selling time,” added Morgan Bender, co-founder at Hero Research and former partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “I’m excited to be rejoining the People.ai team and looking forward to taking the market by storm.”
In addition to acquiring Hero Research, People.ai is launching a new embedded Salesforce experience that gives sales reps and managers the ability to increase sales productivity, consume AI-driven insights, drive repeatable coaching cadence, and close more deals faster, all natively inside Salesforce. This includes the People.ai coaching console, an AI-driven cockpit that consolidates team performance, deal health, and sales rep-specific recommendations.
“CRM is the place where most sales organizations want their reps and managers to spend their time. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a rep that isn’t trying to fill critical CRM gaps by stitching together a patchwork of other siloed sales tools without a cohesive workflow,” said Thomas Wyatt, chief product and strategy officer at People.ai. “With the People.ai experience available inside of Salesforce, sales teams gain access to all of the data and insights they love incorporated into their daily workflows in a simple and unified way. That has a massive impact on CRM adoption and utilization.”
“People.ai has become the platform that every level of our sales team relies on to drive sales productivity,” said Nick Bogaty, chief revenue and customer officer at AppDynamics. “The new Salesforce experience is another example of how People.ai is delivering the value we can’t get from any other vendor. It’s going to be a game-changer for our reps.”
People.ai’s acquisition of Hero Research and the launch of its new embedded Salesforce experience follow its acquisition of ClosePlan in October 2020. Collectively, these moves reinforce the company’s commitment to spearhead the consolidation of enterprise sales productivity applications, a critical trend highlighted by Forrester Research.
According to Forrester, in a world where Business Technographics® data shows that 38% of global purchase influencers want to reduce costs, sales technology buyers will push their core partners to deliver more value. Forrester predicts that 2021 will be the year of sales tech consolidation, with mergers and acquisitions, rollups, and at least one IPO all leading to the emergence of multiple robust end-to-end SEA platforms.
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