The news broke yesterday that SalesLoft raised $800k from Tom Noonan. Back in January I took Kyle Porter up on his call for an entrepreneur in residence at the SalesLoft office. What this really meant is that I had a great place to sit in Atlanta Tech Village at no cost and from time to time could throw in my thoughts on some challenge that SalesLoft was facing. Over the past six months I have had a great opportunity to observe SalesLoft’s growth from about $400k to $2.5 million in annual recurring revenue. Here are ten things that have contributed to their success.

1. Eating the dog food. The SalesLoft sales team uses their product to find the decision makers that buy their product. It is a pretty effective sales pitch when the objection becomes something like “how do I know it works?” and the answer is “how do you think I found you?”
2. Reachable target. Not only is Prospector an effective tool but the target SalesLoft is after are in sales. People in sales answer their phones.
3. Predictable revenue practices. SalesLoft follows predictable revenue best practices. Watching and learning this has been the most interesting part of being in the SalesLoft office.
4. Sales development. SalesLoft practices sales development and has become a leader in the space.
5. Early on Kyle made a concerted effort to connect with and do business with the key influencers in his market. These influencers give SalesLoft credibility by association.
6. Open and objective results only work environment. The SalesLoft office has four 70″ LEDs. These LEDs display key metrics for all to see. That is unless they are being used to play Call of Duty.
7. Hiring smart people and letting them do their job. The founding team is excellent at this and giving the people they hire the ability to grow into larger roles.
8. Organized for success. The company is comprised of sales development, sales, marketing, client success, and engineering. That organization works well for a SaaS company. Oddly enough, I don’t think I have ever seen an accountant or attorney in the office.
9. Strong dev team. SalesLoft has two engineers that could be CTOs. They work well together and crank out good product.
10. Vision. That engineering team is currently cranking out a product that is going to make a real difference and give SalesLoft the ability to scale beyond its current customer and solution set. Any sales team practicing sales development and predictable revenue is going to want it.

It has been fun to watch SalesLoft grow from nine people to 20 some odd over the past six months. The entire team deserves kudos for scaling the company so quickly. It will be interesting to see how the injection of $800k fuels the fire.