According to Transparency Market Research, the global sales performance management market grew 17.1% annually from $2.3 billion in 2017 to $8.1 billion by the end of 2025. Utah-based InsideSales.com is a Billion Dollar Unicorn in the sales performance enhancement space. It has been toying with the idea of an IPO for a while. Maybe 2018 is the year that it lists.

InsideSales.com’s Financials

InsideSales.com was founded by David Elkington, Ken Krogue, and Rob Christensen as an outsourced web application development firm to build HR, inventory, and accounting systems based on consumer demand. Driven by the market’s demands though, the company pivoted to develop a web-based sales management solution. Its offerings leverage predictive analysis, data visualization, communication, and gamification technologies to deliver a comprehensive sales team performance enhancement solution.

InsideSales is privately held and does not disclose its financials. Three years ago, when I had met with co-founder Dave, he had mentioned that revenues for the company had doubled steadily since 2004. Recent reports suggest that the company was generating $25 million in revenues in 2013. By that logic, it should have crossed the $100 million revenue mark in 2015.

InsideSales has raised $251.2 million in funding from investments from QuestMark Partners, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Salesforce Ventures, HWVP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Microsoft, Polaris Partners, U.S. Venture Partners, Zetta Venture Partners, Acadia Woods Partners, and EPIC Ventures. Its last round was held in January 2017 when it raised $50 million from Polaris Partners, Microsoft, and Ireland Strategic Investment Fund at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

InsideSales.com’s Growing Partnerships

InsideSales has been entering into strategic tie-ups with several key technology players to grow its market reach. Last year, it expanded its partnership with Microsoft to provide call recording storage for Predictive PowerDialer. The partnership will allow InsideSales’s customers to leverage Azure’s cloud services to retain recorded copies of sales conversations. These recordings can be used for coaching or compliance purposes and can be reviewed through its seamless integration with Microsoft Azure.

Continuing its partnership with Microsoft, the company also entered into an agreement with LinkedIn to integrate its Predictive Playbooks with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Predictive Playbooks is its proprietary AI-powered SaaS application for enterprise sales teams that helps increase sales conversions and builds a pipeline for the sales team. The integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator will allow Playbook’s users to seamlessly see Sales Navigator insights inside of Predictive Playbooks.

InsideSales.com’s Expanding Products

The company relies extensively on research that it conducts in its labs to identify more opportunities to improve sales performance. Earlier this year, I had met with Gabe Larson, VP of InsideSales Labs who discussed the company’s AI initiatives. Driven by the results from this Lab, InsideSales recently introduced InsideSales.com High Impact Mailer, a new direct mail feature to its Predictive PowerDialer software. The service offers sales reps a more personal and effective way to connect with sales prospects and contacts as they can send by mail auto-generated personalized, physical cards to the right prospects, at the right time, with a simple click of a button.

Questions for InsideSales.com’s Board

We have been expecting InsideSales to go public for a few years now. But the company hasn’t announced any plans yet. Meanwhile, given the consistently expanding relationships that the company has with Microsoft, might it be looking to be acquired instead? Is InsideSales.com looking to go public, or looking for an exit through an acquisition by Microsoft? The SaaS market is really booming, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Microsoft is evaluating the addition of InsideSales.com to its portfolio. If so, it would make a hell of a lot of sense.