Qualified raises $12M Series A financing

Today we announced our $12M Series A financing led by Norwest Venture Partners, with additional investment from Salesforce Ventures & Redpoint Ventures. The news was originally covered in TechCrunch. ‍

First things first, thank you

Today is a big day for Qualified. We closed our Series A financing, a milestone that will open new doors and help us grow every aspect of the business. With this new funding, we continue to be laser-focused on delivering the industry’s #1 conversational marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce.

I want to start by saying thank you to our customers. We wouldn’t have reached this milestone without you. We now have an even greater opportunity to serve you, to bring you more innovation, additional services, an expanded product portfolio, and even deeper ties into your Salesforce CRM platform. We’re so excited to be on this journey together.

B2B sales pipeline: A multi-billion dollar problem

We founded Qualified to solve a big – and costly – problem. For decades, the process of building B2B sales pipeline has been slow and inefficient, with delayed handoffs and missed opportunities to meet with real buyers. 

Every year, B2B marketers spend more than $6 billion driving buyers to their website, but sales teams have no way of knowing when a qualified buyer has arrived, and no way of speaking with that buyer in that pivotal moment. The result is that B2B brands are wasting their marketing budget, and leaving pipeline and revenue on the table.  In today’s world of instant, personalized experiences, this process simply won’t cut it anymore. 

As we all know, speed matters in B2B selling. Waiting even five minutes after a buyer leaves a website decreases the chance of making contact by 10x. With the traditional process of form-fills and email follow-ups, it takes salespeople 38 hours on average to respond to an inbound lead, and studies show that 78% of B2B customers buy from the company that responds to them first. 

COVID-19 is turning this already urgent issue into an existential one. Marketing and sales teams are scrambling to meet pipeline goals without in-person events. As a result, sales teams need to maximize conversations with potential buyers through their digital channels, and their most important digital asset is the company’s website. 

So we asked ourselves: What if you knew when a qualified buyer arrived on your website, and had the tools to meet with them instantly, at the magic moment they’re looking to connect? Shouldn’t your website be your biggest marketing asset, and not your biggest blindspot? 

Qualified turns your website into a real-time sales meeting

Those are the questions that led us to Qualified. Our mission is simple. We want to help marketers generate more pipeline from their website. And we want to arm sales teams with a better, faster way to connect with buyers. Qualified ties directly into Salesforce to give companies a 360-degree view of their website visitors, and arms them with tools to identify their target buyers and instantly start a conversation. 

‍The impact of Conversational Marketing for Salesforce

It’s been an incredible journey so far. We’ve been working with some of the most forward-thinking CMOs and Demand Gen leaders who are already making a huge revenue impact with conversational marketing.  Here are a few quotes from our customers: 

“Qualified has been a total home run. We implemented the solution in under 30 days and had it working with our heavily customized instance of Salesforce. The solution is allowing us to have 10x more conversations with our target “Diamond” accounts, which are global, billion-dollar plus companies.” - Scott Holden, CMO, ThoughtSpot

“Within 6 months of go-live, Qualified has already driven more than $2.5 million in new business pipeline. As a CMO, conversational marketing is the single-most valuable investment you can make in times like these.” - Joe Leverson, Head of Digital Marketing, Gamma

A bit on our new investor: Norwest Venture Partners

In addition to our existing investors at Redpoint and Salesforce, we’re thrilled to now be part of Norwest Venture Partners portfolio. My co-founder Sean and I have a long history with Scott Beechuk, a partner at NVP who will be joining our Board of Directors. We’ve worked alongside Scott for more than a decade, including our time together at Salesforce.  Scott’s enthusiasm for this company and the market opportunity is unparalleled.

“The conversational model is simply a better way to connect with new customers.  Buyers love the real-time engagement, sellers love the instant connections, and marketers have the confidence that every dollar spent on demand generation is maximized,” said Scott, partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “The multi-billion-dollar market for Salesforce automation software is going to adopt this new model, and Qualified is perfectly positioned to capture that demand."

‍What’s next? 

Now we put our heads down. We're focused on building the best team in the business and delivering to you, our customers, the #1 conversational marketing platform in our industry. A platform that is designed to work with every nuance and every customization you have made to your selling process in Salesforce, combined with the enterprise-level trust, privacy, and security you've come to expect from Qualified.

Thanks again for your support, here’s to the next chapter!