Databook raises $16M to automate key sales processes

Databook, a customer intelligence platform tailored for enterprise applications, today announced that it raised $16 million in series A funding. The company plans to put the funds toward developing new products and expanding its workforce, in addition to acquiring new clients around the world.

When McKinsey surveyed 1,500 executives across industries and regions in 2018, 66% said addressing skills gaps related to automation and digitization was a “top 10” priority. Forrester predicts that 57% of business-to-business sales leaders will invest more heavily in tools with automation.  And that’s perhaps why Salesforce anticipates the addressable market for customer intelligence will grow to $13.4 billion by 2025, up from several billion today.

Palo Alto, California-based Databook, which was founded in 2017 by Anand Shah and Alex Barrett, offers a dashboard that lets sales teams determine the strengths and weaknesses of their prospects. Each salesperson is able to see how likely prospects are to make a purchase and estimate the impact of sales solutions, as well as view recommendations and suggestions that might help to drive the next steps.

Customer intelligence

Teams using Databook get notifications about account events and news including buyer names and responsibilities. They’re also afforded access to Databook’s automated content creation tools, which can generate documents like executive one-pagers, emails, and benchmarking books. Leveraging algorithms, templates, and big data analytics, Databook can deliver an overview of a customer’s financial and operational performance compared with its industry peer group or an account plan deck for the customer in question.

Beyond this, Databook features a module that analyzes publicly available company data across different accounts. It can cross-reference prospect data against a team’s performance and pipeline activities, and highlight deals requiring further inspection and possible adjustments to forecasts. Moreover, the module can show which prospects are at the right stage of their budgeting cycle and outline priorities that rank highest for leadership at the companies.

“In the sales and marketing tech space, we are defining a new category of customer intelligence focused on enabling a highly consultative, enterprise selling motion that’s designed to originate and close large opportunities,” a spokesperson told VentureBeat via email. “The vast majority of other tools in sales and marketing tech are designed to accelerate or automate the high volume, transactional selling motion that’s predominant in B2B organizations today. Since this is a necessary motion for companies to maintain in some capacity, we view Databook as additive and a complement to these solutions.”

Databook squares off against a number of rivals in a sales enablement market that’s anticipated to be worth $2.6 billion by 2024, according to Markets and Markets. Seismic has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to build out its automated sales and marketing enablement suite. Highspot nabbed $60 million in June 2019 for a sales enablement toolset that taps AI to power features like semantic search. In June 2019, Showpad secured $70 million for its cloud-based sales tools, and that April, Outreach raked in a cool $114 million to grow its semiautomated sales engagement software.

But in spite of the competition, Databook claims to have experienced 300% year-over-year growth since its founding.

Microsoft’s M12 and Salesforce Ventures led Databook’s latest tranche, which saw participation from Threshold Ventures, Haystack, and Firebolt. The new capital follows a seed round raised in January 2020 and brings Databook’s total investment to $22 million.

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