[Editor's note: The Partner Spotlight blog series introduces the new partners who have recently joined the Clari Partner Program. During these insightful Q&As, our partners will explore common opportunity-to-close (OTC) challenges that their clients face and the exciting role that artificial intelligence plays in the sales process. Welcome, partners!]
Cristina: Joining us today is Gary Galvin, CEO of Galvin Technologies, a Salesforce consulting partner known for creating solutions that increase revenue and improve business processes.
Q: What are the most common challenges that your clients face throughout the opportunity-to-close (OTC) process?
Gary: Opportunity-to-close process challenges often stem from the quality of a salesperson's training and the type of skillset he or she has, what sales technology is being used, and the type of metrics available to improve the OTC process. More often than not, salespeople spend too much time on the wrong opportunities. The goal is to make sure the salesperson is focused on the opportunities most likely to close or at risk of slipping so they close more of them faster. Ideally, you want to see how many opportunities are being worked on, how many are brand new, how many sales reps are spending time on the wrong opportunities vs. the ones that are more important, so managers can spend their 1:1s coaching the reps and helping them drive deals to close.
Q: Why are you excited about bringing artificial intelligence (AI) to your clients?
Gary: Bringing artificial intelligence to our client base is great, but in my perspective, it's also about helping our clients overcome pipeline visibility challenges and giving them the end-to-end detailed view into their pipeline. Companies often struggle to understand the true health of their pipeline, where there is risk, and where there is upside, and when they don't have a clear understanding of their pipeline, data becomes less accurate and very subjective. This is why we find Clari's pipeline inspection story truly significant—at a glance, I can see every opportunity's story and key insights about the deal that have transformed the way our clients execute in sales and how we execute our own processes and weekly Monday meetings so that we're more focused on driving accurate data and revenue.
Q: What is your favorite part about Clari's capabilities?
Gary: When I tried Clari for the first time and used it on my own pipeline, I saw a phenomenal graphical representation of our pipeline and opportunities. We always get an update of our pipeline story and Clari always lets us know what is going on so we are never left in the dark.
Q: Why are you excited about your partnership with Clari?
Gary: We are SI partners with Salesforce, and we often receive many calls from others who would like to be our SI partners, but most of the time they're tossing contracts at us without providing any knowledge about their programs or insight into the personal relationships that we'd be building. When we first got introduced to Clari and we started recommending the platform to clients, it opened a great opportunity for our partnership. Many of our clients were struggling to understand their pipeline within Salesforce—and that's where Clari made all the difference. Clari is truly dedicated to the partners and the team is world-class.