Welcome to Rainmaker 2016! We are beyond thrilled that the one and only conference 100% dedicated to sales development is officially underway.
Kicking us off, we have Kyle Porter and friends on the main stage sharing their gratitude for you — our partners, customers, and the entire sales development community — and giving an overview of our history, what’s new, and what’s coming with Salesloft.
This is the evolution of sales development.
In the beginning days of the sales development movement, we were in the Pioneering era, with a new frontier of specialization to navigate. It was viewed as a stepping stone into the sales role, and specialization was new on the scene. As it evolved, we entered Batch-and-Blast territory — the templatized era of mass emails and predictable revenue. But that was over a decade ago. That era is now coming to an end, making way for the new way of sales development: an account-based, personalized, agile sales development process. This era is targeted, sincere, and scalable.
This is Salesloft.
Born in 2011, the OG Salesloft team had that dream and desire. But we crashed and burned. We were operating on an antiquated business model that neglected things like culture and scalability. So we rebooted the company from scratch. And now, in 2016, we’re Atlanta’s Best Place to Work. Over 80+ employees wide, and six core values deep, together, Salesloft delivering the most comprehensive Sales Development Platform in the world.
This benefits you — the customer — because we have a team that’s excited every day to come in and do Salesloft, and make your lives easier by improving your workflow.” -Kyle Porter
This is the Salesloft customer.
Steven Broudy, Head of Account Development at MuleSoft, is just one example of a customer of the Salesloft platform. Steven understands our mission of taking a templated, over-automated sales game and turning it into a personalized, repeatable, scalable process. With the help of Salesloft, the MuleSoft team has grown their revenue, and become a top leader in the sales development community.
This is the Salesloft platform.
In line with the ever evolving sales development community, the Salesloft product has evolved. With the leadership of our Head of Product Sean Kester, the platform has become a single pane of glass where modern Sales Development Reps live and breath process. To illustrate this workflow, Sean is sharing a story about an early-stage SaaS company called Revenu.com:
Like many of you, Revenu.com was having success with their sales process, with an influx of inbound leads and a healthy revenue flow, until, one day, they weren’t. They hit a point where their team couldn’t scale.
Meet Jack — a brand new SDR at Revenu.com. He’s been tasked to create new qualified opportunities, managing a list of target accounts by connecting, qualifying and converting. He’s set up with a basic tool set: SalesForce.com, a desktop dialer, a whiteboard, post-its.
Then one day, his buddy Craig Rosenberg suggested Salesloft, a centralized workspace for sales development. With Salesloft, Jack was able to work in a live feed, connecting, qualifying, and converting his prospects in one pane of glass. With phone features like LocalDial, and an email tracking tool with the best reply detection in the game, Jack has become a customer acquisition machine.
The ongoing goal of Salesloft is to maintain a product fit for the environment of a modern sales development team. On the roadmap for Salesloft, there is so much more to come. From Bi-Directional Sync, to Account Workflow, Gmail and Salesforce Plugin, and end-to-end appointment scheduling, the Salesloft product is always moving to create a platform that works with the modern SDR workflow.
This is the future of Salesloft.
When it comes to creating an environment for Sales Development Reps, we know we’re doing it. But we need to know it’s working. It’s Salesloft Co-founder and COO Rob Forman’s mission to make sure that we’re achieving our customers goals every single day.
Back to the Revenu.com story:
Meet Karen — Jack’s SDR Director. She needs to be able to track her teams data, to see what is working and what’s not, and who’s leading the pack. And with the new Salesloft analytics dashboard, all of her reporting can be done in a single, efficient workspace.
You can’t analyze what you don’t have.” – Rob Forman
We’ve spent countless hours investing in the power behind the Salesloft analytics package. We want to give managers a baseline to leverage their reps’ activity metrics, and insights to allow them to manage their people and make the best coaching decisions for their sales development team.
This is the Salesloft community.
We have a command center for workflow. We have a centralized reporting zone for analytics. And now, we have a one stop shop for the Salesloft community. Salesloft VP of Client Services Katie Rogers’ main focus for this community is building an internal strategy for the people, their process, and the technology for sales development.
We want to give you a little time back in your day.” -Katie Rogers
For sales development managers, the best way to do this, is to streamline the community for learning best practices. This community is the Salesloft Forum. At Community.Salesloft.com, Salesloft clients can connect with high level sales development leaders across the globe, browse topics, and learn about things like recruiting, managing, and sales development best practices.
And now, to supplement that community, we have Salesloft U: the number one place on the web to learn the basics of the Salesloft platform, and advance overall sales development strategy. Chart your course, own your training, and lead the way.
This is the Sales Development Cloud.
The top of the funnel sales industry is blossoming, with a flurry of tools and technology available to modern sales development professionals. Based on customer feedback and demand, Salesloft has invited critical technology providers to join to integrate and expand the functionality and value generation of the Salesloft sales development platform.
Sales development is the biggest innovation to happen to the sales world in the last decade. Its emergence brings a multitude of challenges and opportunities that are being served by amazing companies in the ecosystem.” -Kyle Porter
We are striving to add value to the sales development community. And through data integration, cadence personalization, and direct management tools within the Salesloft platform, the Sales Development Cloud is rising up in the community as the best place to improve the way your sales development team works together.
This is Salesloft. This is Rainmaker.
Welcome to the team.
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Stay tuned — we’re live blogging the entire Rainmaker experience — right here from your one stop shop for all things sales development. Comment below with your thoughts on the keynotes, sessions, and events throughout the event!
