Apricorn: How ZoomInfo Copilot Helps Reps Win Faster with AI

Derion McGriff used to spend hours on the drudgery of email outreach. From pinpointing the right prospects to crafting a standout message, it was tedious, time-consuming — and absolutely essential.

McGriff is a business development manager at Apricorn, a manufacturer of hardware-encrypted external data storage. Like countless companies, Apricorn relies on email as a cornerstone of its sales motion. But there’s a tradeoff: Every hour spent on email takes time away from conversations with qualified prospects or satisfied customers. 

“We’re in sales. Really, the biggest thing for us is time,” McGriff says.

Revolutionizing Outreach with Copilot

That changed dramatically when McGriff’s team began using ZoomInfo Copilot. The AI-powered platform’s ability to proactively surface key accounts and craft compelling, personalized emails has cut his typical outreach motion from two hours to just 20 minutes, saving him about five hours every week.

And he’s not just sending more email — he’s getting better responses. With Copilot’s ability to target good-fit prospects and call out high-value deal signals, McGriff has seen an immediate 10% jump in response rates to his cold outreach.

“Copilot is crafting really great emails, and it doesn’t feel like an AI wrote it. It feels like it was personally written,” he says. “We’ve gotten more responses and more opportunities, because we’re reaching more people.”

“Copilot is crafting really great emails, and it doesn’t feel like an AI wrote it. It feels like it was personally written. We’ve gotten more responses and more opportunities, because we’re reaching more people.”

Derion McGriff
Business Development Manager

Don’t Just Do More. Get Better Results 

McGriff is an early adopter of Copilot, helping us bring to life an AI-fueled ZoomInfo platform that turns every seller into your best seller.

With Copilot, sellers don’t just send more emails, make more calls, and find more contacts. They actually get more out of the sales process, at scale and faster than ever. 

And with Copilot’s AI email generator, reps can jump-start their outreach with relevant, targeted language, staying ahead of competitive encroachment and proactively solving the needs of their existing customers faster than ever.

“Having everything right there just makes it easier to get the information right away and do everything I need to,” McGriff says.

Copilot at Work: Features Driving Success

Copilot’s buying groups also highlight the key decision-makers and influencers — and even detractors — within an account, helping sales pros identify the right contacts to engage at scale with Copilot’s tailored email outreach suggestions. 

“I can go hit ‘find buying group,’ see 20 of the top contacts, click them all, and go down each one and send an email. And that only takes me 20 minutes, even with making different customizations to each one. So it’s definitely saving time,” McGriff says.

In a matter of seconds, sales teams can access and analyze account information for answers and actionable guidance, including pain points and use cases for your solutions, important contacts, and a summary of engagements with your teams. 

Enhancing Engagement: Real-World Applications

“Now, I find myself using the ZoomInfo Chrome extension more. I can go into LinkedIn, find a prospect, get company information, and craft an email with so much more information,” McGriff says.

Customers can designate the offerings that Copilot weaves into its AI-generated emails, alongside relevant contact, account, and signal data, giving prospects a compelling outreach message at scale, in moments.

“I struggled to get a response from a prospect in Australia, so I enlisted the help of Copilot to reframe my message in a more Australian tone and the prospect actually responded to that email! It was great that I finally got his attention — and Copilot helped me do that,” McGriff says.