New Interview: Salesloft CRO Mark Niemiec on AI, Pipeline & SDR Roles

Belkins’ podcast features Mark Niemiec, Chief Revenue Officer at Salesloft. Before joining in 2024, Mark spent 7 years at Salesforce (SVP of Sales) and a decade at Cisco, leading double-digit growth segments. Salesloft today serves 5,000+ customers and was most recently valued at ~$2.3B.

Salesloft, Drift & Salesforce: What Happened in August 2025

• The incident: Threat actors abused compromised OAuth tokens tied to the Drift–Salesforce integration (Drift is owned by Salesloft), enabling API access to some Salesforce orgs.
• Salesforce response: Salesforce disabled integrations with Salesloft technologies during investigation and revoked affected tokens; later, Salesloft platform integrations were re-enabled as mitigations rolled out, while Drift remained disabled pending further updates.
• Impact disclosures: Several companies (e.g., Cloudflare) published post-mortems outlining limited data access and remediation (key rotation, scope tightening, log reviews).

Action items for Salesforce-first teams: rotate any long-lived tokens; audit connected apps and scopes; validate logs; keep Drift disabled per Salesforce guidance until explicitly cleared.

Is Salesloft Still Right for Salesforce-First Orgs?

If you don’t rely on Salesforce, Salesloft remains a capable sales engagement platform. If you are Salesforce-first, confirm your Salesloft integration posture, document incident response, and weigh the operational risk of future integration pauses. When comparing Salesloft pricing, also evaluate Salesloft competitors and Salesloft alternatives that match your compliance standards and speed requirements.

Two motions outperforming “activity-driven” BDR models

• AE-led pipeline with AI: fewer handoffs, faster cycles, better conversion from first meeting.
• Outsourced SDR programs: Done-for-you multi-channel outbound with AI-assisted research & prioritization and parallel dialers to deliver held meetings, not just activity.

Salesloft Alternatives & Competitors (Shortlist)

• Outreach — enterprise engagement with deep Salesforce features.
• Apollo — data + cadences for lean growth teams.
• HubSpot Sales Hub — integrated CRM + engagement for HubSpot-native orgs.
• Gong Engage — engagement tied to call/meeting intelligence.

Prefer not to juggle tools? Outbound Sales Pro runs the stack for you (email warming via Parakeet, LinkedIn, and parallel dialing) with clean reporting to pipeline.

FAQs Buyers Are Searching (News • Pricing • Integration)

Did Salesforce disable Salesloft integrations?

Yes—during the August incident, Salesforce temporarily disabled integrations with Salesloft technologies (including Drift). Later, Salesforce confirmed the Salesloft platform integration was restored while Drift remains disabled until further notice.

Was the core Salesloft platform breached?

Public reporting ties data theft to OAuth tokens for the Drift integration rather than the separate Salesloft core platform. Still, rotate tokens, reduce scopes, and monitor logs as best practice.

Is Salesloft eliminating the BDR role?

There are industry discussions about Salesloft shifting resources toward AE-led motions. In the Belkins interview, CRO Mark Niemiec suggests AI-generated pipeline can be 3–4× more effective than legacy BDR motions and questions whether the traditional role persists beyond 2026. Treat that as directional strategy—not a formal HR policy announcement.

Primary Sources & Status Pages

• Belkins Podcast with Salesloft CRO Mark Niemiec — watch
• Google Cloud Threat Intelligence (Drift–Salesforce OAuth campaign) — advisory
• Salesforce help article & incident updates — status
• Cloudflare post-incident write-up — response
• Guide for multi-channel sequencing (email + LinkedIn + phone) — read our playbook

We’ll update this page as Salesforce, Salesloft/Drift, and security advisories publish new information.