SalesLoft User Experiences – How Effective Is It Really?

Hey @prakashhinduja,

My name’s Errol. I’m a GTM Operations Analyst at Dext and was part of the team that implemented Salesloft around two years ago. Here’s my honest feedback:

Daily Usability:

We’ve found the interface very intuitive, especially Rhythm, which is essentially an AI-powered to-do list that helps the Sales team prioritise their actions. Since implementing automated cadences and training the team on how to use Rhythm, we’ve seen a 28.5% decrease in time to action, from 3 days to 2.14 days year-to-date. Last month, we averaged just 0.8 days — it’s been a huge time saver.

Impact on Results:

The New Business team has seen improved pipeline coverage and achieved their best revenue month in February, marking the highest performance in the past 18 months.

From a management and sales rep perspective, reporting works well. However, from an operations standpoint, it's a bit limited and restrictive in terms of what you can customise. That said, we combine Salesloft’s Insights Dashboard (Salesforce) with custom Salesforce reporting, which works just fine for us.

Integration & Workflow:

We use Salesforce as our main connector. It works well for triggering automation, although it's restricted in terms of which objects and formula fields can be used. To work around this, I build Salesforce Flows to stamp dates in text format or pull in data from other objects. I know there are other workarounds using APIs and Zapier — I just haven’t got around to exploring them yet.

Pricing vs. Value:

If you'd asked me two years ago, I would’ve said Salesloft was “nice to have”. It was good, but I didn’t see the full benefits — especially coming from a sales background, where I initially saw it as just a mass marketing tool. At the time, the reps we implemented it for were using it that way too. But the real issue was that we didn’t implement it properly — we gave reps access, provided some training, and left it at that. We didn’t get the buy-in, and some reps even had their emails blocked as spam.

Now, however, it’s a must-have for New Business and a nice-to-have for Existing Business — only because we’ve focused heavily on NB and haven’t done much for EB yet.

My Take:

One thing Salesloft does very well is support — our CSM and Consultant have been fantastic. Their advice and assistance have been invaluable.

Another strength is how the product constantly evolves — they’re always adding new features.

One area for improvement is its lack of flexibility when it comes to customisation. If you come from a Salesforce background, where you can customise almost anything, it can feel quite restrictive. There are quite a few workarounds needed to get everything mapped to the objects that Salesloft syncs with.

My Advice on Implementation:

Start small and gradually scale. For example, begin with team cadences and templates, and get reps involved in the creation process so they understand the standards. Then roll out personal cadences.

Also, make sure to involve stakeholders — especially Marketing — right from the beginning.

Let me know if you’d like to chat more!

Thank you so much for your response! This will help.

Warm Regards,
Prakash Hinduja
Strategic Advisor | Geneva, Switzerland
Global Finance | Sustainable Innovation | Digital Assets

Hi Prakash,

my name is Stefan and I’m Digital Sales Manager for Western Europe at Medtronic Surgical. We’ve been working with Salesloft to establish it as the main sales execution tool for the remote sales team since 2022. Here’s my feedback for you:

Daily Usability:

We launched in August 2022, rolling out the tool for 70 remote sellers. In September 2022, the team performed approximately 300 activities throughout the month. A year later the same team performed 12.500 in one month and currently our average is 210+ activities per day! And it’s still increasing with a lot of room to grow. I have never seen a digital tool being adopted so quickly, so willingly and with enthusiasm from both managers and reps. The sellers have established Salesloft as their main tool for daily sales activities and we are constantly “feeding” them with centralized initiatives as well. It’s intuitive and easy to learn. The learning curve was more for sales and marketing leadership, learning what works and what doesn’t in cadences, according to your market and type of customer.

Impact on Results:

Looking at business results, the annual ROI is spectacular. Besides licenses we invested in consultancy services, which was a gamechanger. Our opportunity conversion rates oscillate between 30 and 50%. Comparing this year vs. last year, we have more than doubled activity, added 1.5 times more customers to cadences, our reply rates are at 30% and more than 50% of our phone call steps have been answered by customers. 

Reporting and analytics in the platform are exhaustive. I agree with Errol that the Insights Package for Salesforce is a great tool to manage reporting and analytics in our CRM with more possibilities of customization and aligning the KPIs with our standard reporting.

Integration & Workflow:

We have a highly customized Salesforce Lightning instance. That is a disadvantage when it comes to integrating any tool. The Salesloft IT team has gone to great lengths to mitigate this handicap. Salesloft integrates very well into Salesforce and gives little to no trouble. 

Other integrations we use are the Outlook plug-in, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, MS Teams, Highspot and we will integrate Drift.

In general, I would recommend to go for a broad integration into Salesforce, bi-directionally synching as much as possible as this benefits reporting, analytics and automation. 

Pricing vs. Value:

Looking at ROI, it’s not an expensive tool. Consultancy services are costly but worth it, as they accelerate adoption, maximize results and give you access to IT architects to further optimize the tool set-up and integration. 

My Take:

For a remote sales team it is a must-have. Especially if your reps manage a lot of accounts and stakeholders. Salesloft gives you the structure and process to work more efficiently while maintaining the freedom of each seller to adapt the tool and tasks to his/her working style. For field sales I see the biggest benefit in regaining time you spent in admin previously, and can now use for proactive sales activities. Combining manual outreach with cadence e-mail automation to reinforce F2F visits is also a big plus. And the most popular features for field and remote reps are the customer engagement notifications, the calendar integration, meeting management and the use of templates for routine outreach. In proactive sales it enables them to keep track of every potential or existing customer they have reached out to and need to follow-up. Our marketers love it because they can ensure that the right message is being delivered to the right stakeholder and they receive feedback about their content quality. 

Lastly, you’re also covered for the rise of AI, with everything that’s possible already and the exciting tech roadmap they have in the pipeline.

My Advice on Implementation:

Ensure executive sponsorship and leadership buy-in. Both marketing and sales. Separate the technical implementation team from the rep engagement and initiative creating team. That ensures the person closest to sellers can focus on delivering valuable initiatives and campaigns, while boosting engagement with a lot of hand-holding in the beginning. The technical implementation takes up time and is best at home with a specific team. 

Be patient and start small, with concrete initiatives. Don’t try to fit the whole customer buying journey into a single cadence. Always have a clear cadence goal. It’s better to have follow-up cadences than one long cadence. Involve sellers and sales managers in building the initiatives.

Incentivize daily use of the tool by the reps. It’s crucial for them to see the value and not just as a campaign execution tool. The more they use it to structure their day, plan their own initiatives and explore the features that benefit their workflow, the higher their engagement. 

Hope that was helpful! Feel free to reach out if you have any specific doubts or questions.

Cheers,

Stefan 

Hey Prakash, 
My name’s Ben and I oversee Salesloft at Justworks on our Revenue Operations team. Hope my answers below help you in your journey to finding the right fit for your team! 

Daily Usability:

How intuitive is the interface for your sales team? Any steep learning curves?

Our sales reps and other users have found Salesloft to be an easy to use platform. Intuitive interface and the automations we created on the backend allow us to ensure there are simple steps for our end users. 

Does the cadence automation actually save time compared to manual outreach?

Yes, not only can we automate step completion and email sends from Salesloft cadences. We’ve also been able to automate assigning and adding leads directly into the platform for our reps plus send out time sensitive documents to prospects and customers as they move through our sales process. 

Impact on Results:

What measurable improvements have you seen in response rates or pipeline growth?

We’ve been able to improve our personalization in emails and corresponding open rates/ reply rates astronomically (think 1000% increase in our personalization and 300% increase in reply rates). 

Any surprising limitations in reporting/analytics?

As long as the setup is done correctly in the beginning by your team then the reporting will be accurate and insightful. 

Integration & Workflow:

How well does it play with your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.) in practice? 

Salesloft allows you to sync your CRM and other platforms through their integrations. This ensures the platforms mirror one another both ways.

Any clever hacks to maximize efficiency?

The automations are where our team likes to get creative. With Saleslofts ‘Automation Rules’ and ‘Object and Field Configuration’ tabs you can build out robust workflows and triggers that save your team time and ensures accuracy (removing human error and spead to lead). 

Pricing vs. Value:

For the cost, would you say it’s a ‘must-have’ or ‘nice-to-have’ for SMBs vs. enterprises?

For us this platform is a must have and it’s positioned very competitively price wise against their competitors. 

My Initial Take:

Testing showed strong email sequencing, but I’m curious about long-term deliverability.

The ‘Phone & Video’ tools seem promising—do they work as seamlessly as advertised?

Yes, for us the phone ability is consistent, clear, and trackable. Plus they have added benefits like transcriptions and insights based off calls. 

Your expert opinion is required:

What’s one thing SalesLoft does exceptionally well—and one area where it falls short?

Salesloft does exceptionally well in virtually everything we use it for from call and email tracking, sequence creation, and automations both natively and cross platform. Another big plus is their customer support, we’ve always had knowledgeable and quick to answer CSM’s that proactively partner with us. Their general support is also very strong with a team of Salesloft experts that get to any question from our entire team with a solution. One drawback I would like to see them come out with is report sharing. While I can build out in depth reporting and create csv’s or slideshows, I’m not able to simply share a saved report for another teammate to view. 

Would you recommend it over competitors like Outreach or HubSpot Sales Hub? 

For us yes, Salesloft is better priced competitively and provides all the tools we require from it. 

Thanks, BenHigh.