Workiva's Transformation: Achieving 1900% ROI with Drift

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Workiva, a global SaaS company, faced several challenges in 2020. The sales team, led by Melissa Raber, Senior Director of Global Inside Sales, was struggling with the complexity of assembling larger buyer groups, long sales cycles, and difficulty converting top-of-the-funnel buyers. They also lacked visibility into high intent buyers. Tasked with generating 40% of the pipeline for their organization, the team needed a tool that could address these issues, provide visibility to intent data, and engage with conversation-ready, high-intent leads. Workiva had previously invested in an email-based conversational marketing tool, but it was ineffective for generating new business. Melissa knew it was time to find a tried-and-true conversational marketing and sales solution that would help them achieve their pipeline goals by shortening their sales cycle.

Workiva is a global SaaS company that builds and delivers the world’s leading regulatory, financial, and ESG reporting solutions to meet stakeholder demands for action, transparency, and disclosure of financial and non-financial data. Their cloud-based platform simplifies the most complex reporting and disclosure challenges by streamlining processes, connecting data and teams, and ensuring consistency. The company's sales team, led by Melissa Raber, Senior Director of Global Inside Sales, is responsible for generating 40% of the pipeline for their organization. The team comprises roughly 60 employees in inside sales and business development, globally.

Workiva turned to Drift, a conversational sales product, to solve their buyer challenges. Melissa was familiar with Drift, having followed the company from a marketing perspective and having purchased Drift Email back in 2017. What stood out to Melissa initially was the sales process; Drift not only helped Workiva build out a list of required capabilities during their evaluation, but also considered each individual stakeholder’s needs. In December of 2020, Workiva officially went live with Drift. The solution offered by Drift included Drift Chat, which allowed Workiva to meet prospects where they were, and Drift Prospector, which automatically centralized insights on behavior across the buying committee, prioritized reps’ target accounts, and gave them direct access to follow up – all from a single interface. Workiva also utilized Drift Video for more personalized outreach and Drift Fastlane to speed up prospects into the right place at the right time.

• The implementation of Drift transformed Workiva's sales process and business model. The onboarding experience with Drift was highly appreciated by the Workiva team, setting a new standard for onboarding with other vendors. The Drift team was praised for their ability to bring fresh ideas, recognize when something doesn't work, and tweak it accordingly. The use of Drift Chat and Drift Prospector accelerated the sales cycle and provided valuable insights on buyer behavior. The team was able to prioritize higher-intent accounts with hyper-personalized outreach to build their pipeline. The use of Drift Video allowed for more personalized and attention-grabbing outreach. The introduction of Drift Fastlane allowed buyers to skip the form queue and speak directly to sales, significantly increasing inbound activity. The success with Drift led to its expansion into Workiva's EMEA sales organization, which operates on a different sales model.

• Sales cycle became 2X faster

• Achieved a 1900%+ ROI

• Generated $13M in incremental pipeline