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Editor's note: This story is part of our coverage of Pacesetter, the fastest-growing privately held Atlanta companies.
Company: Salesloft
The List: No. 7
Principal: David Obrand, CEO
Year established in Atlanta: 2011
David Obrand took over as Saleloft’s CEO in February 2023.
Since then, the sales engagement platform has been busy. In June 2023, Salesloft rolled out its newest AI innovation, Salesloft Rhythm. In January 2024, the company announced a partnership with IBM, and a month later it acquired the marketing platform Drift.
In 2023 alone, Salesloft’s revenue grew 132% and its workforce nearly doubled. Currently, 1,000 Saleloft employees operate out of the U.S., United Kingdom, Poland, South Africa and Mexico. Customers include Google, 3M, Shopify, Square, Cisco and IBM.
Since 2011, Salesloft’s revenue orchestration platform has enabled sales teams to automate workflows, effectively engage with prospects, accelerate sales cycles, and drive more revenue. Rhythm, its latest platform iteration, uses proprietary AI to translate real-time buyer signals across the Salesloft platform and then guide sellers on how and when to execute impactful actions.
“We’ve had AI in our products for four years—many companies have,” said Obrand, adding that AI has allowed vendors like Salesloft “to bring science to the art of selling.”
Performance metrics released by Salesloft in October 2023 showed that sellers using Rhythm experienced a 25% increase in close rates.
Weighted average growth index
| Rank | Prior Rank | Business name |
|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Momnt Technologies |
2 | 2 | Rreal Tacos |
3 | 3 | CENTEGIX |
The company’s growth in 2023 is a sign of things to come. Salesloft’s partnership with IBM will accelerate IBM watsonx AI-powered workflow adoption across the enterprise, allowing Saleloft’s platform—from an architecture perspective—”to plug and play,” said Obrand.
Orbrand says: “It’s our job to make sure we work within the environments of our customers and not force them to make massive changes to their architecture and technology footprint.”
With the acquisition of the B2B buyer experience AI company Drift, Salesloft’s platform can now synthesize the buyer’s and the seller’s journey. “We can make the sales cycle far more efficient for both parties,” said Obrand.
With growth has come the need for different capabilities.
“We’ve continued to evolve our executive team such that they can act as river guides for the rest of the organization,” said Obrand. “We believe the best culture is a combination of bringing in new perspectives and new learnings from the outside while also having a consistent focus on developing our own people internally.”