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You’re unlikely to find a sales leader who is truly happy about the state of pipeline generation. After the end of COVID era boom in inbound demand and buyer fatigue from cold outbound “spray-and-pray,” organizations need to fundamentally rethink their approach to pipeline generation.
This was the challenge facing LaunchDarkly, the comprehensive feature management platform, as they looked to scale beyond their successful inbound and PLG motion. How do you orchestrate targeted outbound sales plays using data repeatably and consistently? LaunchDarkly’s GTM team began working with Pocus in early 2024 initially to run their product-led sales engine. Since then, as LaunchDarkly shifted focus to outbound prospecting, they’ve built playbooks to support both sides of the business in Pocus.
Recently, we caught up with Laura Gassaway, Senior Pipeline Program Manager at LaunchDarkly to understand how the GTM team went from siloed data and over reliance on inbound to a scalable outbound engine.
TL;DR
- LaunchDarkly and Pocus’ partnership began to help their sellers action high intent product usage data and has now expanded to include powerful outbound prospecting playbooks.
- 3.8x closed/won and 2.8x pipeline generated by reps who use Pocus vs. those who don’t use Pocus
- Transformed marketing and sales alignment through structured playbooks
Scaling beyond a powerful inbound engine
Like many other PLG businesses, LaunchDarkly has built an incredibly strong inbound engine. With a PLG product, they’ve generated a ton of top-of-funnel interest from product users, many of whom would eventually convert into enterprise deals.
When Laura joined LaunchDarkly, the company was ready to build their outbound engine to complement their existing inbound pipeline.
The problem? The existing processes weren't structured to support a robust outbound motion:
- Sales reps were struggling to act on available intent data (beyond product usage)
- Too many tools were being used in isolation rather than as part of a coordinated strategy
- As a result, there was fragmented visibility into sales activities and campaign effectiveness
- Marketing and sales execution was disjointed
“Reps were prospecting within CRM lists and pushing contacts into sequences. The Marketing team would provide messaging, but sales still lacked insights about the accounts or an understanding of what intent signals existed. It was part a rep enablement problem and part lack of precision on account selection.”
Unifying cold and warm prospecting in Pocus
LaunchDarkly partnered with Pocus to implement a comprehensive pipeline generation strategy that addressed their core challenges. The solution centered around three key pillars:
Unified platform for sales intelligence
Rather than having data scattered across multiple tools, Pocus became the single source of truth for sales activities, intent signals, and campaign execution. The platform consolidated LaunchDarkly’s existing data from customer interactions, product usage and keyword intent with external signals provided by Pocus’ AI Agents (10ks, podcasts, hiring signals). This made it easier for reps to make data-driven decisions about which accounts to prioritize and how to engage them effectively.
Structured Playbook framework
Laura and team knew that tooling was only half the battle, they also needed a framework for how sales plays would be created and rolled out to their team. They needed clear guidelines, priority tiering, and expectations for execution. This structure was operationalized in Pocus, but also within their sales enablement tools.
Cross-Functional alignment
Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams are all collaborating as a result of having a single source of truth for playbooks. While sales and marketing collaborated on new business playbooks focused on outbound, CSMs ran churn prevention and upsell playbooks.
"I set the expectation that our field sales team should use Pocus as the single source of truth of where they action every account and prospect," explains Laura. "Whether it’s a product signal or other intent data, I want everyone on the team to say, 'Okay, it has to go through Pocus.”
Here's how LaunchDarkly brought these elements together across three main use cases:
#1 Use Case: Quarterly outbound campaigns
Using their new structured approach and better alignment with Marketing, Laura launched LaunchDarkly’s first quarter-long outbound campaign. The goal was to use intent signals to target high-potential accounts with a coordinated effort. Reps all had a consistent playbook to run in Pocus where they didn’t need to go digging for this information or spend hours prioritizing and researching accounts.
Here’s how Laura used Pocus to setup this campaign:
- Create a target account list using intent data
- Assign reps to a book of business from that account list
- Build playbooks in Pocus aligned to the campaign
- Set up attribution tracking in CRM
- Created campaign in sales enablement platform with any relevant collateral and enablement materials aligned to the campaign
- Built out messaging sequences aligned to playbooks
"We put all the assets together, all of the directions, how we created the list, what we expected reps to do with their lists, where they could go and get enablement assets, etc," Laura explains.
This new structure also made it easier for Laura to track the campaigns’ effectiveness in Pocus.
“On a monthly basis we were able to say, this is how many accounts we surfaced. This is how many are adopted. We could tell by segment who was working the accounts and who weren't”
The results spoke for themselves: millions in pipeline generated from a single campaign.
#2 Use Case: “Inbox Zero” playbooks
Timing is critical with some types of outbound playbooks, some signals need to be actioned immediately while others can wait. Reps needed an easy way to know how to structure their day between high-priority alerts, strategic prospecting within their book of business, and always on plays that were less timely.
Rather than overwhelming reps, Laura built a clearly structured Inbox in Pocus with a tiered system of plays to help reps capitalize on low hanging fruit plays and strategic prospecting based on signals:
- "Inbox Zero" plays to action their highest intent signals
- Quarterly cross-functional campaigns aligned with marketing (like above)
- Intent-based plays for strategic account selection
For “inbox zero” plays, Laura expected reps to clear these out daily. With Pocus, reps were easily able to action these top prospects. Pocus gave them who to reach out to, insights about that person and their account, and quick action buttons to drop them into a sequence or send a personalized email.
"We kept those really small so that we could get high adoption," Laura notes. This focused approach ensured that high-priority opportunities weren't lost in the noise of day-to-day activities.
#3 Use Case: Territory planning & prioritization
Before Pocus, reps wasted time hopping around tools to build a complete picture of accounts in their book of business, often ignoring important signals that could help prioritize accounts ready to buy.
Now reps can easily see their book of business in Pocus with all important signals in one place all synthesized in an AI summary.
Pocus AI’s Knowledge Agents tap into both internal and external data to surface key intent signals and timely intel about accounts in reps book of business. All of these insights get synthesized and summarized for reps in AI-generated account strategy so they can easily collaborate with SDRs and plan their outreach.
The combination of intent signals and AI-powered research has transformed how reps approach their territories: "Reps use the AI strategy to get them 75% of the way there," Laura explains. "Then they can go heavy and do the research on accounts within that."
Reps can easily build, sort, and filter lists in Pocus to prioritize their territory based on signals and then follow a seamless workflow to identify the right personas to engage. For example, reps are able to easily create lists of product champions or recent engagement within their book of business. This type of prospecting in their book of business happens on top of the prescriptive “Inbox Zero” playbooks.
The Results: 3.8x closed/won by reps who use Pocus and 2.8x pipeline generated
The impact of this structured approach to pipeline generation has been substantial. There’s a clear lift for reps who use Pocus to prospect versus those who don’t.
Overall impact:
- 3.8x closed/won by reps
- 2.8x pipeline generated by reps
- 85% of reps say Pocus AI helps them be more strategic with accounts
Beyond the numbers, the overall pipe gen program Laura and team have built using Pocus helped them achieve several strategic objectives:
- Created a single source of truth for sales rep activity
- Improved visibility into campaign effectiveness
- Established a scalable framework for outbound campaigns
- Got strong adoption from reps on new AI tooling
Looking forward
Looking ahead, LaunchDarkly is expanding their use of Pocus’ AI tools for account selection and research, while maintaining their focus on structured, measurable campaigns. As Laura put it, “Sellers today have to keep up with AI and a new way of prospecting that has emerged. The bar is higher than ever. It's noisier than ever. So how can you make sure that you are part of this, so you don't get left behind?"
What Laura and the team at LaunchDarkly love about Pocus is that reps have more control over their destiny. With powerful outbound playbooks now at their fingertips in an intuitive tool, they can weather the storm of fluctuating inbound demand to hit their aggressive growth goals.
