Salesloft unveils new AI-powered sales tool for more accurate forecasting

Sales engagement software maker Salesloft, which is determined to make CRMs obsolete, has launched a key feature for its “Modern Revenue Workspace” platform, Forecast by Salesloft. This new capability is designed to enable organizations to forecast sales more accurately and act quickly to close deals, all from the same platform.

For several businesses, forecasting is a disjointed and manual process that still takes place most often in spreadsheets. Sellers and sales leaders are forced to go through multiple steps in disconnected systems. As a result, forecasts are often inaccurate, valuable selling time is wasted and insights on how to improve sales results are limited, Salesloft chief product officer Ellie Fields told VentureBeat.

Using this new function, these processes are transformed from a dreary task into a strategic action plan to close more revenue, Fields said. As the customer information comes into the application, Forecast logs it and uses real-time data and multiple forecasting techniques to see where the team’s performance is trending. 

Built-in AI analyzes dozens of deal factors to help identify missed opportunities in the pipeline and deal-level engagement data allows sales leaders to quickly drill down into deals at risk of slipping, Fields said. 

Automatic capture of customer information is the key

“One of the key innovations in sales engagement, as opposed to CRM, is the automatic capture of interactions. So if you’re a customer and they call you up, or email you or we have a meeting on Zoom, or Teams or what have you, all that’s automatically logged in our platform,” Fields said. “That gives us a bunch of data to help understand what’s happening, but it also saves the rep time. You don’t end up with this whole ‘Go log all your activities at 5 pm’ thing, which everybody hates. It takes so much time and it’s error-prone. 

“Instead you gather the digital artifacts as they go by and this is critical. You get the intelligence from that and get it right back to the seller. I think that’s the link that CRM has missed – for the users of CRM; they didn’t get a lot from it, managers got a lot from it, execs got a lot from it, but for the actual sellers, it was just chores.”

Sales forecasts and follow-up in one place

Because Forecast is a native capability of the Modern Revenue Workspace, managers can assign follow-ups or add deal notes right in the workflow at any time. Sellers have the visibility, intelligence and workflow to close deals more consistently and act upon unrealized opportunities, Fields said.

The new feature also includes a strong data governance feature, so there’s less room for errors, Fields said. “Sellers can forecast and take action on those deals from the same platform. When sales managers have real-time visibility and the ability to drill down, coaching sellers and taking action happens naturally, leading to better deal outcomes,” she said.

According to software analysts G2.com, Atlanta, Georgia-based Salesloft competes in a market that includes Outreach, HubSpot Sales Hub, Revenue.io, Groove, Mixmax, InsideSales, Salesforce Sales Engagement and Chorus.ai.