Word on the Street: SalesLoft

As always, we are impressed with the guests we interview on the Tech Marketing Radio Show. In this case, Tami McQueen, Director of Marketing at SalesLoft, amazed us with the turnover SalesLoft has created in just a matter of a year. To give you an idea of the progress they have made, they kicked off with five employees in 2011 and are now at 39. They started with yearly revenue of $200,000 and now are just shy of $5 million. After speaking with her we really do believe anything is possible. 

Sales development is the biggest trend in sales industry today and SalesLoft focuses on specialization to execute. So, besides these phenomenal numbers she sparked a few questions about how exactly they do what it is they do so well.

It’s different than a traditional sales approach. Selling has changed so dramatically over the years and SalesLoft has done a stellar job at showing people what they can do to master the sales industry. They are not allowing the market to become too automated. When a company becomes robotic, it’s impossible to penetrate huge market without losing sincerity. We liked that. Their objective is to find the simplest way to set qualified appointments with targeted and accurate prospects. They find the right people at the right companies, almost instantly with their database.

 They determine who the right people are. Sales Prospector is the application that allows companies to search candidates by industry and geography. This allows companies to determine the right people they need to reach. For example, if your prime audience is VPs of sales, you can dive into this platform to get a comprehensive list of those people in the area. Easy enough.

 They tie in social. Tying in social media adds to that level of sincerity, not just within the sale industry, but also across the board. Before you even reach out to a prospect, the platform has already done the work for you. It is an all-in-one prospecting platform to make the sales team as efficient as possible and maximize the likelihood of turning a lead into a sale. In addition, the platform also tracks who opens an email, if they forwarded the email, where they clicked and sends notifications for all.

 It’s not overkill (we asked). They use a different approach than just email blasting people. What they are trying to do is understand pain points. Personalizing goes a long way in the sales process so when you are bringing value to someone, on top of finding out pain points, you allow them to function at a higher level. And that is what people want. They are able to identify a target audience based on the market who would use the tools. 

They execute an insane amount of content. SalesLoft is very lean on their marketing team. But even with only four people on their squad, they are still able to push out 6 blog posts a week, 72 over the last quarter – impressive! Yes, you read that right. Trello is the software of choice, which allows the team to map out the entire week, including what needs to be produced according to lead generation and who to target. An editorial calendar is also in place for the quarter so the team knows exactly what needs to be created in order to hit goals.

Marketing builds the brand. They pride their company on being completely transparent in what they do. Their vision is focusing on building a customer acquisition machine. And by using tech-marketing strategies, they are producing invaluable info for the industry to become top of mind. With daily blogs, bi-monthly newsletters, and various videos and podcasts, the inbound leads that are being generated are amazing. They have 2,000 leads PER MONTH generated solely through the content they create, whether it be whitepapers, ebooks, and more.

SalesLoft broadcasts what they have accomplished and how they want to grow. Tami says the secret is hiring incredible people, and their team is instrumental to growth of the company. There is no secret; they just want to care more than anyone else. Check out the rest of Tami’s interview, here.