Why Salesloft Is Buying Drift

By Amit Chowdhry • Feb 15, 2024

Salesloft (a provider of one of the first AI-powered Revenue Orchestration Platforms) announced the acquisition of Drift, the buyer experience and Conversational AI company. And the combination of Salesloft and Drift enables companies to orchestrate a personalized, omnichannel buyer journey powered by AI, providing an optimal buying experience that drives higher quality pipeline and revenue outcomes.

Research has shown that typical buyers are 60 to 70% of the way through their journey before they ever talk to a seller. And during this time, they have had several digital experiences via websites, online events, and ads.

Sellers currently lack the technical capabilities to understand the buyer’s needs and timing across all those experiences. Salesloft and Drift will enable sellers to engage earlier, throughout the buyer journey, and across channels with tailored messages for personalized buying experiences that increase trust, conversion rates, and, ultimately, revenue outcomes.

This combined company will have nearly 6,000 global customers and employees based in Atlanta, Boston, Tampa, San Francisco, London, Warsaw, Capetown, South Africa, and Guadalajara, Mexico.

This deal comes on the heels of banner years for both companies. For example, Salesloft released its newest AI innovation, Rhythm – which translates real-time buyer signals into a single prioritized workflow, and expanded its footprint in several large enterprises, including IBM. In October, Drift announced an evolution of its buyer engagement platform and introduced three new products (Drift Engage, Site Concierge, and Bionic Chatbots) that use AI to connect with and guide buyers and deliver significant outcomes for customers.

KEY QUOTES:

“This acquisition will fundamentally change how B2B buyers and sellers engage, but also how sales and marketing teams come together to drive pipeline efficiency and revenue outcomes. We are both focused on continued innovation, and together, our customers will experience improved consistency and repeatability throughout the entire buying journey all while allowing them to focus on what only they can do – guiding buyers, forming relationships, and establishing trust.”

  • David Obrand, CEO of Salesloft

“Drift was founded to address an emerging market need for better B2B buyer experiences. Since then, buyer expectations have continued to grow and AI has changed how we work and interact with each other. Salesloft shares our vision for the future of go-to-market, and together we will accelerate our ability to transform the entire customer experience.”

  • Scott Ernst, CEO of Drift