亚特兰大的SalesLoft为其数字销售平台筹集了1亿美元，目前总值为1.1B美元

COVID-19大流行，特别是需要通过社交活动来减慢病毒的传播，这继续使我们许多人远离办公室。现在，越来越多的组织和人们相信，它可能会带来更永久的向远程，分布式和虚拟工作的转变。如今，一家初创公司已经建立了一套专门用于通过数字化销售方式帮助销售人员应对这种变化的工具，从而筹集了巨大的增长资金来满足这一需求。

SalesLoft是位于佐治亚州亚特兰大的销售平台，提供基于AI的工具，以帮助销售人员虚拟地运行他们的销售流程-从查找和跟踪线索到通过虚拟教练工具帮助他们销售，然后协助发布销售流程-已完成1亿美元的融资。

该公司的联合创始人兼首席执行官凯尔·波特（Kyle Porter）向TechCrunch证实，该公司目前的融资后市值为11亿美元，较之前的估值大幅提高。 2019年4月，在全球健康大流行之前，该公司已经筹集了7000万美元的D轮融资，估值约为6亿美元（我们当时证实这一数字的消息来源与该公司接近）。

最新一轮融资由Owl Rock Capital牵头，之前的投资者Insight Partners，HarbourVest和Emergence Capital（专门针对企业初创公司的风险投资，尤其是Zoom和许多其他公司的早期支持者）也参与其中。

SalesLoft现在已经筹集了约2.45亿美元，对于任何一家初创公司来说都是一笔不小的数目，但也值得指出的是，它不是基于硅谷，而是基于佐治亚州的亚特兰大市（由于其他原因，该州目前处于新闻状态）激烈竞争的美国参议院径流选举的焦点）。

作为所谓的“销售参与”领域的主要参与者之一，该公司几年来一直处于增长撕裂状态：帮助销售人员更好地向客户（或潜在客户）销售的工具，其中包括对交互进行时间监控，以提供指导以改善流程，提供补充内容的建议以提高音调，并提供更简单的软件来简单地管理记录和沟通。

甚至在大流行来临之前，这就是企业软件的关键增长领域，面对面的销售人员和在线/数字销售人员都依靠这类产品来帮助他们在工作中获得更多优势，但重点是确实从事内部销售（B2B销售侧重于更大的购买）。波特将COVID-19的影响描述为“尾随风”，推动了本已十分强劲的趋势。

他说：“由于数字销售的影响，COVID的影响一直是顺风。” “所有卖家立即变得遥不可及。但是现在，精灵宝藏已不复存在，而不再流连忘返。这意味着内部销售现在已全部实现销售。无论是机会中的渠道，还是升级或续签，我们都将自己打造为记录的参与平台，因为它已经变得数字化，所有卖家都在寻找更多的成功。”

他补充说，自大流行以来，SalesLoft自己的销售周期提高了40％，他说，这反映了对初创公司开发的工具的“紧迫性和需求”。

与SalesLoft合作的客户种类也发生了另一个变化。该公司最初专注于中端市场，但随着更多大型企业的加入，这种情况也发生了变化。谷歌，LinkedIn（支持SalesLoft并与之建立战略合作伙伴关系），思科，戴尔和IBM都是客户，波特表示，更多“主流”业务（如Cargil，3M和Standard＆Poor）也越来越成为客户。

这导致初创公司开发出更大的解决方案，超越了SalesLoft迄今为止的“销售参与”的基本原则。该公司与众多其他公司竞争，包括Clari，Chorus.ai，Gong，Conversica，Afiniti和Outreach，以及像Salesforce这样的大型公司。值得一提的是，外展活动本身在COVID中旬进行了很大的一轮融资，去年6月的估值为13亿美元，这标志着市场需求的扩大。波特指出，SalesLoft的最大卖点是，它为客户提供了越来越多的端到端销售解决方案，这意味着减少了购物。

Atlanta’s SalesLoft raises $100M for its digital sales platform, now valued at $1.1B

The COVID-19 pandemic and specifically need for social distancing to slow the spread of the virus have continued to keep many of us away from the office. Now, increasingly, many organizations and people believe that it could usher in a more permanent shift to remote, distributed and virtual work. Today, a startup that has built a set of tools specifically to help salespeople with that change — by way of digital sales — has raised a substantial growth round to meet that demand.

SalesLoft, a sales platform based out of Atlanta, Georgia that provides AI-based tools to help salespeople run their sales process virtually — from finding and following up on leads, through to helping them sell with virtual coaching tools, and then assisting in the post-sales process — has closed $100 million in funding.

The company’s co-founder and CEO Kyle Porter confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is now valued at $1.1 billion post-money, a substantial hike on its previous valuation. In April 2019, well before any global health pandemics, the company had raised a Series D of $70 million at around a $600 million valuation (a figure we confirmed at the time with sources close to the company).

This latest round is being led by Owl Rock Capital, with previous investors Insight Partners, HarbourVest, and Emergence Capital — a VC focused specifically on enterprise startups, which notably was an early backer of Zoom and many others — also participating.

SalesLoft  has now raised some $245 million, an impressive sum for any startup, but also worth pointing out for the fact that it’s not based out of the Valley but Atlanta, Georgia (a state in the news for other reasons at the moment, as the focus of a hotly contested U.S. Senate runoff election).

The company has been on a growth tear for several years now, as one of the big players in the area of so-called sales engagement: tools to help salespeople sell better to clients (or would-be clients), which can include real-time monitoring of interactions to provide coaching to improve the process, suggestions for supplementary content to enhance the pitch and more basic software simply to manage records and communications.

Even before the pandemic hit, this was a key growth area in enterprise software, with both in-person and online/digital salespeople relying on these kinds of products to help them get more of an edge with their work, but a lot of the focus had really been on inside sales (B2B sales focusing on bigger purchases). Porter described the effect of COVID-19 as a “tailwind” propelling that already strong trend.

“The effects of COVID have been a tailwind due to the effects of digital selling,” he said. “All sellers immediately became remote. But now the genie is out of the bottle and not going back in. It’s meant that inside sales are now all sales. Whether the opportunities are mid-funnel or upgrades or renewals, we are establishing ourselves as the engagement platform of record because it’s all becoming digital and all sellers are finding more success.”

He added that SalesLoft’s own sales cycle has improved by 40% since the pandemic, a reflection, he said, of the “urgency and need” for tools like those that the startup develops.

Another shift has been in terms of the kinds of customers SalesLoft works with. The company originally was focused on the mid-market, but that has changed with more larger enterprises also coming on board. Google, LinkedIn (which backs SalesLoft and is in a strategic partnership with it), Cisco, Dell and IBM are all customers, and Porter said that more “mainstream” businesses like Cargil, 3M and Standard & Poor are also increasingly becoming clients.

That is leading the startup to building out bigger solutions, beyond the basic pitch of “sales engagement” that has been SalesLoft’s mainstay up to now. The company competes against a plethora of others, including Clari, Chorus.ai, Gong, Conversica, Afinitiand Outreach, as well as biggies like Salesforce. Outreach, notably, had a big mid-COVID round of its own, raising at a $1.3 billion valuation in June last year, a mark of that wider market demand. Porter notes that SalesLoft’s big selling point is that it offers an increasingly end-to-end sales solution to customers, meaning less shopping around.