Salesloft MCP Demo Server

# Interview: Stephanie Clark - Commercial Lending Tech VP Sales ## Metadata | Field | Value | |-------|-------| | **Date** | January 15, 2026 | | **Duration** | 32 minutes | | **Interviewer** | Marcus Chen, Enterprise Sales Manager, Salesloft + Clari | | **Interviewee** | Stephanie Clark, VP Sales, Commercial Lending Tech | | **Company Size** | ~180 employees | | **ARR** | $50M | | **Primary Market** | Regional banks, credit unions, commercial lending divisions | | **Location** | Boston, MA (Virtual) | --- ## Interview Transcript **[MARCUS]** Stephanie, thanks so much for taking the time today. I've been looking forward to this conversation. I know you're busy, and I really appreciate you carving out 30 minutes. **[STEPHANIE]** Of course, Marcus. Happy to chat. I've heard good things about Salesloft from a few peers, so I'm curious to see how it might fit for us. Fair warning though—we're in a weird spot right now with pricing and product strategy, so I might be a little all over the place. **[MARCUS]** That's actually perfect context. That's exactly what I want to understand. Let me start with the highest level question: What does your sales team look like right now, and what are the biggest pain points you're trying to solve in 2026? **[STEPHANIE]** So we have a sales team of about 35 people. We've got a mix of AE's, SA's, and customer success folks spread across different segments. Historically, we've done really well with regional banks and some credit unions, but the dynamics are shifting pretty dramatically. Our biggest pain point? It's pipeline visibility and rep productivity. We're still largely manual on forecasting, we're losing deals we shouldn't lose, and frankly, a lot of our reps are spending time on activities that don't move the needle. But—and this is the important part—the economics of our customer base is making everything harder. **[MARCUS]** Walk me through that. What do you mean by the economics are getting harder? **[STEPHANIE]** Okay, so let me paint the picture. Our core customer is a regional bank with maybe $3 to $15 billion in assets. These aren't JPMorgan. These are the community and mid-market banks that do commercial lending. The reality is their IT budgets are microscopic. We're talking $50K to $150K annual software spend for some of these institutions. When you're trying to sell a $50K, $75K, or $100K solution to that market, the buying process is excruciating. You've got to justify ROI to three or four different stakeholders. The CEO is worried about budget. The CIO is worried about integration. The head of lending is worried about whether it actually works. And half the time, they're not even sure who the decision maker is. **[MARCUS]** That's a huge constraint. So let me ask: what percentage of your bookings come from that sub-$200M ARR bank segment versus the larger institutions? **[STEPHANIE]** Honestly? About 70% of our revenue comes from the small regional bank segment. And that's the trap we're in. It's not that we've lost focus on larger banks—it's that our product and our go-to-market are built around solving problems for smaller institutions. But those institutions are getting squeezed economically. They're not hiring aggressively. Capital spending is way down. And when they do spend, they're looking for solutions that integrate with their core system rather than bolt-ons. **[MARCUS]** That's the integration question, right? Let me dig into that. You mentioned they want core system integration. What does that actually mean for you operationally? **[STEPHANIE]** So most of these banks—95% of them—are running one of five or six core banking systems. Temenos, Jack Henry, FIS, Fiserv, FIT...maybe one or two others depending on the region. These cores have been in place for 15, 20, sometimes 30 years. The bank's entire operation runs on them. Lending workflows, account management, reporting, everything. When a prospect talks to us about implementing our solution, what they're really asking is: "Will this work with our core system?" And the answer, frankly, is complicated. We have pre-built connectors for maybe three of them. The others require custom integration work. And custom integration work costs money, takes time, and introduces risk. We've built the integration muscle over time, but the sales team—they don't always understand the implications. They'll promise a 4-week implementation, and then the customer realizes they need custom middleware. Suddenly it's 16 weeks and $75K in integration costs on top of the software license. The ROI conversation falls apart. **[MARCUS]** So there's a gap between what the sales team is selling and what's actually deliverable? **[STEPHANIE]** Exactly. And that's where the friction is coming from. The customer gets frustrated. The delivery team gets overloaded. And then we look like we were overselling, when really, the problem is nobody had complete visibility into the integration complexity upfront. This is something I'm hoping a tool like Salesloft could help with—making sure the right questions get asked early, before we're in a 4-week sales cycle and too deep to back out. **[MARCUS]** That makes sense. Let me shift gears a bit. You mentioned credit unions as part of your market. How are they different from the regional banks? **[STEPHANIE]** Oh man, credit unions are a totally different beast. So credit unions have a different buying culture. They're member-owned, not shareholder-owned. That means the board is often made up of members or community leaders, not experienced executives. The decision-making committee is much more conservative and slower-moving. With a bank, you typically have a CIO or a head of IT who owns technology decisions. With credit unions, it's murkier. You might be working with an operations manager, or a lending director, or sometimes even the CEO directly. They're less likely to have sophisticated procurement processes. They're more relationship-driven. They want to talk to peers who've implemented something successfully before they'll even consider a purchase. The buying cycles are also longer. We're talking 6 to 9 months from first conversation to close, not 3 to 4 months like with banks. And the budgets, if anything, are even more constrained than the smallest banks. A credit union with $500M in assets might have a total IT budget of $30K to $50K annually. That's it. **[MARCUS]** So with those constraints, how are you selling into that market profitably? **[STEPHANIE]** Honestly? We're not optimizing for profitability on individual deals right now. We're optimizing for land-and-expand. We get our solution in the door with a small initial deal—maybe $25K or $30K—and then we build the relationship over time. Upsells, add-ons, adjacent modules. The LTV depends on them staying with us for 4, 5, maybe 6 years. But here's the challenge: that model is breaking down because of the broader economic environment. We're seeing credit unions sit on contracts. They're asking for discounts. Some of them are actually pushing pause on deals mid-cycle because of rising interest rates and deposit pressures. When the economy is tight, even a $25K decision becomes a big deal for them. **[MARCUS]** So you're seeing buying behavior shift in real time? **[STEPHANIE]** Absolutely. And it's not just credit unions. The regional banks are doing the same thing. We had a prospect in Q4 that was ready to move forward. Everything was aligned. And then they got new guidance from their board on capital allocation, and suddenly the deal froze. The sponsor couldn't justify new spending. That's when I started really worrying about our pipeline health. **[MARCUS]** Let me ask about competition. I know digital-first banks are emerging—companies like Marcus, Revolut, Chime. Are they a threat to your traditional customer base? **[STEPHANIE]** That's where it gets really interesting. So digitally-native banks operate completely differently. They don't have legacy infrastructure. They use cloud-native core systems, modern APIs, and they sell primarily through digital channels. They're built for a different customer segment—retail banking, mostly. But here's what's happening: some of these digital-first banks are now moving into commercial lending. Stripe, Square, some others. And they're doing it more efficiently than traditional banks because they were built from the ground up with that in mind. They don't have the legacy integration problems. They don't have the massive IT departments. They're lean. Now, for our customers—the regional banks and credit unions—this is both a threat and an opportunity. The threat is obvious: these new competitors are pulling customer deposits and market share. The opportunity is that our traditional customers are desperate to modernize and compete. They want to look more like the digital-first banks without completely rebuilding their entire operation. But that's the hard part. They can't just rebuild. They're stuck with their 20-year-old core banking systems. So what they want from us is the ability to make that legacy system feel modern and competitive. Pre-built integrations so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. Quick implementations. Proven playbooks from peers. **[MARCUS]** So the value prop shifts depending on whether they feel the threat? **[STEPHANIE]** Right. When times are good and the economy is strong, regional banks feel less pressure to change. They'll stick with what they know. But when they feel threatened—either by digital-first banks or by economic headwinds—they want solutions that reduce risk. They want to move faster. They want proof points that other banks like them have already done this. **[MARCUS]** Let's talk about support and service delivery. With 35 AEs selling into this market, and given the integration complexity you've described, how are you scaling support? **[STEPHANIE]** That's where we're stretched thin. We have a customer success team, but they're primarily focused on onboarding and adoption. When customers hit issues—especially integration issues—it gets escalated. And the escalation process is slow. We don't have enough senior engineers to diagnose problems quickly. The small banks and credit unions don't have big IT departments on their end either. So when something breaks, both sides are scrambling. We've had situations where a customer issue sits in our queue for a week because we're understaffed. The customer's frustrated because their lending team can't do their job. And meanwhile, we're trying to sell them an upsell. It's not sustainable. I know we need to either invest heavily in support or be more selective about which customers we take on. But being selective is hard when your business model depends on land-and-expand. **[MARCUS]** So if you had a magic wand, what would you change about your sales process to address some of these challenges? **[STEPHANIE]** Three things. First, I want better qualification early. I want to know before we go deep into a deal whether the customer's core system can actually integrate with our solution without custom work. That changes the whole value prop and the deal structure. Second, I want my reps to have better intelligence about which customers are most likely to churn or expand. Right now, we're flying blind a bit. We're selling and hoping for the best. If I had visibility into which customers are struggling, which ones are outgrowing our solution, which ones are considering alternatives—that would change how I deploy my sales effort. Third, I want to be able to run more efficient trials. A lot of our sales cycles are long because the customer wants to see it work in their environment first. But setting up trials is time-consuming and expensive. If we could make that process faster and more self-service without losing the consultative piece, that would be huge. **[MARCUS]** Those are really concrete. Now let me ask the harder question: How are you thinking about pricing in this environment? **[STEPHANIE]** *[pauses]* That's the million-dollar question. Literally. Our current model is usage-based with a minimum commitment. It works okay when customers are growing and using the product more. But when they're in contraction mode, they're using it less, so the economics flip. We're experimenting with seat-based pricing to smooth out that volatility. That way, even if usage dips, we know what we're getting. But the credit union segment is resistant. They say it forces them to commit to a number of users, and if their business shrinks, they're stuck paying for seats they're not using. And then there's the discount question. Do we discount heavily to get deals done in a tight market? If we do, we create a precedent that's hard to reverse. If we don't, we lose deals to competitors or to customers who just decide to stick with their existing tools. I'm honestly not sure what the right answer is. I think the answer is probably market-segmented. For digital-forward customers or larger banks, maybe we stick with usage-based pricing. For the small regional banks and credit unions, maybe we go with a different model that's more predictable for them. **[MARCUS]** What about the implementation efficiency piece? How much is implementation costing you as a percentage of contract value? **[STEPHANIE]** *[sighs]* For the customers where the integration is straightforward—the ones running the pre-integrated core systems—we're at about 15-20% of ACV. For the custom integration deals, we're at 35-45%. And in some cases, we're actually losing money on implementation because the customer expects something we didn't scope correctly. This is where I think there's an opportunity for a tool that helps us scope better and manage expectations. If a customer knows upfront, "Hey, here's what pre-built integration looks like, here's what custom integration costs," they can make a real decision instead of getting surprised downstream. **[MARCUS]** You mentioned the economic environment freezing deals. How is that playing out in your pipeline specifically? **[STEPHANIE]** So we had a pretty healthy pipeline at the end of 2025. I'd say 50 to 60 qualified opportunities. But when the market softened in the last quarter, we saw stalls at almost every stage. Deals that were in "assess" or "demo" phase just went dormant. Sponsors lost conviction because they couldn't justify the spending to their boards. The deals that are still moving are ones where the pain is existential. So if a customer has a compliance issue or they're losing market share to a competitor, they'll find the budget. But if the deal is about operational efficiency or incremental capability improvements, those are the ones that are freezing. It's changed how I'm thinking about qualification. I need to understand not just whether a customer has a problem, but whether that problem is urgent enough to override budget constraints. I need to understand their capital allocation process. I need to know whether they're in growth mode or retrenchment mode. **[MARCUS]** So urgency messaging becomes more important? **[STEPHANIE]** Way more important. And I think this is where a lot of sales tools miss the mark. They help you manage activity and forecast accuracy, which is great. But they don't really help you create urgency or navigate the economic context. They don't help you understand the customer's financial situation or competitive pressures. In a market like this, sales is about more than hitting calls and emails. It's about being a strategic advisor. It's about understanding why they need to move now, not six months from now. And if I'm being honest, a lot of my reps aren't equipped to do that yet. **[MARCUS]** That's a really insightful observation. Let me ask: if you were to implement something like Salesloft and Clari, what would success look like for you? **[STEPHANIE]** I'd have three metrics I'd be watching. First, cycle time. I want to see a reduction in average sales cycle from where we are now—I'd say it's about 120 to 150 days for the competitive deals—down to 90 to 110 days. That's meaningful when you're trying to hit quarterly targets. Second, win rate. We're probably at 25-30% on qualified opportunities right now. I'd like to see that move to 35-40% by having better visibility into what's actually happening in deals and being able to intervene earlier when something is going sideways. Third, and maybe most important, forecast accuracy. We forecast quarterly, and I'd say we're off by 20-25% on a regular basis. Getting to within 10-15% would give me credibility with our board and help me plan better. **[MARCUS]** Those are all achievable with the right process and tooling. Let me ask about integration with your existing stack. What are you using right now? **[STEPHANIE]** We're on Salesforce, of course. We've got HubSpot for some marketing automation. We're trying to implement Vitally for customer success management, though that's still in beta. And we're using Slack for internal comms, obviously. The problem is nothing really talks to each other well. Our reps are logging stuff into Salesforce, but it's incomplete. Marketing is running campaigns in HubSpot but doesn't have clean visibility into what the sales team is doing. And our CS team is flying blind on customer health. **[MARCUS]** So data integration and a single source of truth would be valuable? **[STEPHANIE]** Extremely. Honestly, that might be more valuable than the core features. If I could have confidence that the pipeline in Salesforce is actually accurate and up-to-date, that would change everything. Right now, I spend 20% of my time just trying to figure out what's real in our system of record. **[MARCUS]** One more thing I want to dive into: your support scaling question. You mentioned being understaffed on the CS side. How are you thinking about solving that? **[STEPHANIE]** In the short term, we're hiring. We're bringing on two new customer success managers. But I think the longer-term answer is making the product easier to implement and maintain. We're working with product on better documentation, better onboarding, and trying to build more self-service capability. But here's the reality: the customers who need the most support—the small regional banks and credit unions with minimal IT staff—are the ones who can afford it the least. They can't hire someone to manage our solution. They want us to do it. This is another place where I think there's a tension in our business model. We're trying to serve a market that needs white-glove service while building a product that assumes some level of internal capability. That's not sustainable. **[MARCUS]** So maybe the tool conversation is less about Salesloft and more about rethinking your whole GTM strategy? **[STEPHANIE]** *[laughs]* Yeah, honestly. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think Salesloft could be valuable. Better pipeline management, better rep productivity—that's good. But what I really need to figure out is: are we the right company to serve the small regional bank market at scale? Or do we need to pivot up-market to larger banks and financial services companies that have bigger budgets and IT capacity? That's a board-level conversation, not a sales ops conversation. But I'm starting to think that's where the energy should be. **[MARCUS]** That's actually a really important insight. And I think it informs how we'd approach implementation. If you're not sure about your market strategy, then a tool like Salesloft should be flexible enough to support different scenarios. Let me ask one final question: given everything you've laid out—the pricing uncertainty, the economic headwinds, the integration complexity, the market positioning questions—what would it take to get a pilot off the ground? **[STEPHANIE]** Honestly? I'd want to run it with a subset of my team first. Maybe five or six of our best reps. I'd want to see whether the workflow actually reduces friction for them and whether it gives us better visibility. I'd want to run it for two quarters and see if we hit those metrics I mentioned—cycle time, win rate, forecast accuracy. I'd also want a partner who understands our market dynamics. Your pitch has been good, but I need to know that you get the difference between selling to a $10B regional bank and selling to a fintech startup. Those are completely different conversations. **[MARCUS]** Totally fair. And that's something we can absolutely support. Let me propose this: we do a 60-day pilot with your top five AEs. We focus on deal-specific things first—better note-taking, better call tracking, better visibility into deal stage. Then we layer in the forecasting and intelligence stuff after they've built confidence in the tool. **[STEPHANIE]** That works for me. But I want to be clear: this has to be low-lift for the team. They're busy, they're selling, and if I jam a new tool into their workflow and it adds work instead of reducing it, I'll hear about it immediately. **[MARCUS]** Understood. Let me send over a pilot proposal with specific success criteria and implementation plan. We'll map it to the exact workflow your team is using right now. **[STEPHANIE]** Perfect. Appreciate it, Marcus. This was a good conversation. I feel like you actually understand the challenges, not just the features. **[MARCUS]** Thanks, Stephanie. I really appreciate your openness here. This is incredibly valuable. Let me follow up with that pilot plan by end of week, and we'll schedule a call with your ops team to nail down the details. **[STEPHANIE]** Sounds good. Looking forward to it. --- ## Key Takeaways ### Business Context - **Revenue concentration**: 70% of bookings from small regional banks ($3-15B assets) with IT budgets of only $50K-$150K annually - **Market segment**: Mix of regional banks and credit unions; credit union buying cycles are 6-9 months vs. 3-4 months for banks - **Team composition**: 35-person sales organization with 5-person customer success team (insufficient for current service model) ### Sales & Operational Challenges 1. **Integration Complexity as Deal Blocker** - 95% of prospects run one of 5-6 legacy core banking systems (Temenos, Jack Henry, FIS, Fiserv) - Pre-built integrations available for only 3 of these core systems - Custom integration adds 12+ weeks to timeline and $75K+ to deal value - Sales team oversells implementation timelines without integration scoping 2. **Support Scalability Crisis** - CS team stretched thin; customer issues sit in queue for 1+ weeks - Small customers can't afford internal resources to manage solution - Model assumes internal IT capability that doesn't exist with target market 3. **Pricing Model Misalignment** - Current usage-based model creates volatility during customer contraction - Credit unions resist seat-based pricing due to budget unpredictability - Implementation costs 15-20% of ACV for straightforward integrations, 35-45% for custom work - Discounting pressure high due to economic constraints ### Market & Economic Headwinds 1. **Economic Uncertainty Freezing Deals** - Q4 2025 saw 50% of pipeline stall or freeze - Only existential pain points justify spending in current environment - Board-level capital allocation scrutiny increasing - Requires urgency-based qualification approach 2. **Competitive Threats from Digital-First Banks** - Emerging competitors (Stripe, Square, digital-native banks) don't have legacy integration problems - Traditional customers feel pressure to modernize but are constrained by legacy systems - Value prop shifting toward "make legacy systems feel modern" rather than "replace old tooling" ### Buying Behavior Insights **Regional Banks:** - Decision maker typically CIO or head of IT - Buying process involves 3-4 stakeholders (CEO, CIO, lending director, operations) - Procurement process relatively structured - ROI focus high given budget constraints - 3-4 month sales cycle typical; longer for complex integrations **Credit Unions:** - Decision maker less clear—could be operations manager, lending director, or CEO - Board-driven purchasing; many board members are lay leaders without tech experience - Relationship-driven; want peer references before committing - More conservative and slower decision-making - 6-9 month sales cycle typical - Smaller budgets ($30K-50K IT annual budget) ### Sales Effectiveness Metrics Needed - **Current win rate**: 25-30% on qualified opportunities - **Current cycle time**: 120-150 days - **Current forecast accuracy**: Off by 20-25% quarterly - **Target win rate**: 35-40% - **Target cycle time**: 90-110 days - **Target forecast accuracy**: Within 10-15% ### Tool Requirements & Success Criteria 1. **Qualification improvement** - Early visibility into core system integration requirements before deep sales investment 2. **Customer intelligence** - Churn risk prediction, expansion potential, competitive threats, financial health indicators 3. **Efficient trials** - Self-service trial setup without losing consultative engagement 4. **Data integration** - Single source of truth across Salesforce, HubSpot, and Vitally 5. **Market-specific workflows** - Tool must understand regional bank vs. credit union vs. enterprise bank dynamics 6. **Low-friction adoption** - Cannot add work to already-busy sales team ### Strategic Questions Emerging - Is the small regional bank market the right long-term focus given service/support requirements and pricing constraints? - Should company pivot up-market to larger banks and financial services with bigger budgets and IT capacity? - Is the land-and-expand model sustainable in a contracting economy where churn risk is high? - Can support model scale to serve current market profitably? ### Next Steps Proposed - **60-day pilot** with 5 top AEs - **Focus first on deal-specific features** (note-taking, call tracking, visibility) - **Layer in forecasting and intelligence** after team confidence is established - **Success measured against** cycle time, win rate, and forecast accuracy improvements