Clari Live: A Day in the Life of an Inside Sales Leader

Want to see how your peers run revenue on a day-to-day basis? In this session, attendees learned how Clari’s Global Head of Inside Sales/Revenue Development, Maya Connet, runs her team — the secrets to collaboration, optimizations for predictability and growth, and how she has full visibility and control with Groove & Clari’s Revenue Platform. Maya shared:

• Pipeline generation forecasting and best practices
• How to turn revenue insights into action through deal inspection and effective coaching
• Pro tips for increasing AE and SDR productivity and collaboration

Watch the recording from this session below:

About the session

This session was a deep dive into the sales processes and tools used by Clari. Maya Connett, Global Inside Sales Leader, shared insights into how she manages the sales pipeline, from the initial lead generation to closing deals, and how she uses various tools such as Clari, Salesforce, and Groove to streamline and optimize these processes.

Key speakers

- Maya Connet, Global Inside Sales Leader at Clari

Agenda

- Overview of the sales process at Clari

- Explanation of how different tools are used in the sales process

- Demonstration of how these tools are used in a typical sales cycle

- Q&A

Takeaways

Takeaway 1: Flexible Dashboard and Analysis Tools for Pipe Generation

Clari's Pipeline Generation Dashboard represents an innovative tool for sales leaders, providing a flexible platform for tracking performance metrics on a daily, quarterly, or yearly basis. This self-service tool eliminates the need for leaders to request specific reports from their revenue operations team.

"We are not measured on individual meetings, but rather qualified opportunities," explained Maya. The dashboard allows the user to track these qualified opportunities as well as the meetings set, and performance can be measured across any region or segment. "I can simply add a widget as I need. I don't have to ask [the revenue operations team] for any specific reports," Maya explained.

Takeaway 2: AI-Driven Predictive Analysis for Pipeline Coverage

Clari uses AI to evaluate past sales performance and predict future outcomes, providing a valuable tool for assessing pipeline coverage. This predictive analysis draws on the company's entire sales history, offering insights into the pipeline's progress and suggesting strategies to improve performance.

"Pulse is really the machine looking back at all of our Salesforce history of how we move ops through the funnel and it is essentially giving me a projection of where we think we're going to land," said the speaker. The AI's suggestions can help identify gaps and strategies to bridge them, such as implementing webinars, reaching out to partners, or increasing activity on early stage opportunities.

Takeaway 3: Collaborative Forecasting for Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)

Clari encourages SDRs to participate in the forecasting process, which Maya believes is crucial for their professional growth. The platform facilitates this by offering a dedicated SDR Mode that allows them to review their performance and forecast future outcomes.

"We have our SDRs here at Clari forecasting," the speaker said. "Most SDRs want to be AEs or AMs someday. So the sooner they can start to really flex that muscle, the better." The platform also allows SDRs to check their deal progress and work closely with their assigned AEs, promoting greater collaboration and accountability.

Takeaway 4: Effective Deal Inspection with Clari's Collaborative Tools

Through Clari's collaborative tools, sales leaders can effectively inspect deals, providing a clear picture of deal progress and identifying potential risks. Features like the “smart summary” and the “ask AI” function help sales leaders understand the status of a deal without having to examine every detail manually.

The speaker noted, "I can see the Copilot recording that is our conversational intelligence platform. I can see that right here during the one-on-one when we're doing deal inspection." This approach facilitates a quick and comprehensive review of deals, enabling leaders to provide timely coaching and feedback to their team members.

Takeaway 5: Groove Spaces for Collaborative Account Planning

Groove Spaces, part of the acquired sales engagement platform Groove, provides a collaborative workspace for account planning. The platform ensures that important notes and account history are not lost, even when account alignments change.

"One of my favorite parts of Groove is something called Groove Spaces," Maya said. "Think of this as a collaborative account-planning workspace." This prevents valuable information from disappearing into forgotten spreadsheets and guarantees that the rich history of account interactions is preserved for future reference.

Insights surfaced

- Clari’s Global Inside Sales Leaders uses a combination of tools including Clari, Salesforce, and Groove to manage her sales process.

- Clari does not measure success based on individual meetings but rather on qualified opportunities.

- Clari uses a machine learning system to project where they think they're going to land in terms of sales for the next quarter.

- The company uses a forecasting tab that allows for easy updates and provides a clear picture of the sales pipeline.

- Clari uses a collaborative account-planning workspace called Groove Spaces for their sales teams.

- Clari places a lot of emphasis on accountability and transparency in the sales process.

- Clari uses Copilot for conversational intelligence, which provides real-time recording and analytics for sales calls.

Key quotes

- "Our team [at Clari], we are not measured on individual meetings, but rather qualified opportunities."

- "I rely on this heavily because again, it is the machine telling me, not my leaders telling me, what that coverage ratio should look like."

- "Once I see, hey, what's not progressing. And then for my ISRs, for my inside sales reps, it's really important for me to have an understanding of how much, what is that run rate business, how much is created and closed in-quarter."

- "Having your SDRs forecast too creates this cleaner pipe because essentially it is very granular in that they are looking at that every week to understand what is progressing to qualified."

- "One of my favorite parts of Groove is something called Groove Spaces. And think of this as a collaborative account-planning workspace."

- "A big factor with Groove is that we are Salesforce-native. That means there is no shadow CRM. So there is no ability to, for example, have, like a contact in another database and then not in Salesforce. It is the same at all times between Groove and Salesforce."