SAN FRANCISCO, May 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Qualified, the conversational sales and marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce, today announced $51 million in financing led by Salesforce Ventures, with additional participation from existing investors including Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures. The investment reinforces Salesforce's commitment to Qualified as the only conversational sales and marketing platform purpose-built for Salesforce Sales Cloud, and comes shortly after Salesforce CMO Sarah Franklin joined Qualified as a board of directors observer and former Salesforce SVP Dan Darcy joined Qualified as Chief Customer Officer. The funding will be used to fuel product innovation and expand the Qualified team in all key functions including engineering, sales, marketing and customer success. Qualified plans to more than double its headcount by the end of the year.
Since its Series A funding in August 2020, Qualified has:
Virtual selling is here to stay: By 2025, Gartner expects 80% of B2B sales interactions to occur in digital channels. As companies doubled down on digital engagements this past year, they realized the untapped potential of their biggest digital channel — the corporate website. Qualified alerts companies the moment an important buyer arrives on the website, arming sales teams with the tools to meet with them instantly via live chat, chatbots, voice calls and screen sharing. With Qualified, the corporate website is no longer only marketing real estate; it's now the place to have sales conversations with important buyers. Qualified customers report massive ROI: Within months of go-live, OwnBackup generated over $6 million in pipeline, Gamma generated over $13 million in pipeline and Bitly reported a 6X increase in pipeline.
"Conversational sales and marketing is no longer a 'nice to have.' It's mission critical for fast-growing businesses, and table stakes for modern buyers," said Kraig Swensrud, co-founder and CEO at Qualified. "The world's top CMOs and demand gen leaders are turning to Qualified as a new way to meet with their most important buyers the moment they arrive on the website. There's no better partner than Salesforce Ventures to help us accelerate Qualified's growth and bring this solution to Salesforce customers around the world."
"Qualified represents an entirely new way for B2B companies to engage buyers," said Bill Patterson, EVP of CRM Applications at Salesforce. "When marketing and inbound sales teams use this solution with Sales Cloud, the #1 growth platform for sales, they see a notable impact on pipeline. We are thrilled about our growing partnership with Qualified and their success within the Salesforce ecosystem."
To learn more about Qualified's conversational sales and marketing solutions, visit qualified.com.
About Qualified
Qualified is the conversational sales and marketing platform for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Leading B2B brands such as Adobe, Bitly, SurveyMonkey, ThoughtSpot and VMware trust Qualified to grow their pipeline by tapping into their greatest sales & marketing asset — their corporate website — to identify their most valuable buyers, understand their intent and instantly start a sales conversation. Customers that use Qualified report a 10X increase in sales meetings, a 4X increase in lead conversion, and a 6X increase in pipeline. Qualified runs natively on Salesforce to give companies a 360-degree view of their website visitors, and is ranked #1 in its category on the Salesforce AppExchange. Headquartered in San Francisco, Qualified is led by former Salesforce CMO Kraig Swensrud and former Salesforce product SVP Sean Whiteley, and funded by Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. To learn more, visit qualified.com.
About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Salesforce Ventures, the global investment arm of Salesforce, invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Platform. Salesforce Ventures is building the world's largest ecosystem of enterprise cloud companies and extending that technology to customers. Portfolio companies receive funding, strategic advisory, and operating support, and can easily join Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 400 companies, including DocuSign, GoCardless, Guild Education, nCino, Twilio, Zoom, and others across 22 countries since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.
CONTACT:
Mission North for Qualified
qualified@missionnorth.com
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