Salesloft MCP Demo Server

# Interview: Helen Cooper - Supply Chain Software VP Sales ## Metadata **Date:** January 2, 2026 **Duration:** 28 minutes **Interviewer:** Marcus Chen, Enterprise Account Executive, Salesloft + Clari **Interviewee:** Helen Cooper, VP of Sales, Supply Chain Software (94.7M ARR) **Location:** Virtual (Zoom) **Context:** Quarterly business review & exploration of sales technology modernization --- ## Transcript [SALESLOFT REP] Thanks so much for making time, Helen. I know you're busy. I wanted to check in on how things are going with your sales team heading into 2026, and specifically, I've been hearing from a lot of peers in the supply chain space that the market dynamics are pretty different than they were even six months ago. [HELEN] Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for reaching out. Honestly, it's been an interesting ride. 2024 felt like everyone was in crisis mode—customers were desperate, they had supply chain nightmares, they were willing to buy anything that solved their immediate problem. But... I'd be lying if I said that urgency is still there across the board. [SALESLOFT REP] That's the pattern I'm seeing everywhere. Walk me through what changed for you specifically. [HELEN] Well, there's a few things happening at once. First, the post-pandemic tailwinds are really fading. Our customers got through the worst of it. Their supply chains stabilized. Logistics costs came down. They're not in emergency mode anymore. So the "we need this now or we're going under" pitch—that doesn't land like it used to. It's much more of a "this would be nice to have" conversation now. [SALESLOFT REP] Right. So the natural urgency is gone. How are your reps responding to that? [HELEN] That's actually been the biggest challenge. Our sales team grew really fast in 2023 and 2024, and a lot of them were really good at selling to panic. They'd come into a customer with a real problem, the customer was desperate, and boom—deal done. Now, they have to actually build business cases. They have to show ROI. They have to navigate more stakeholders because finance is asking harder questions. Some of our reps have really struggled with that shift. [SALESLOFT REP] Have you been able to reskill them, or are you looking at turnover? [HELEN] Mix of both, honestly. We've done some training on value-based selling and business case development, but some of the reps who were fantastic at hunting in a crisis... they're finding it harder to consultatively sell. We've had some churn. I'd say maybe 15% of the team that was here two years ago is still here. That's partly market, partly just the nature of how the selling changed. [SALESLOFT REP] That makes sense. And beyond the reps, are you seeing your win rates affected? [HELEN] Absolutely. Our close rates are down about 20 percentage points from 2024. Average sales cycle is stretched from about 4-5 months to more like 6-8 months now. And we're seeing more competitive displacement—which actually ties into what I think is the bigger structural challenge we're facing. [SALESLOFT REP] Tell me more about that. [HELEN] The ERP vendors are coming after us. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft—they're all expanding their supply chain modules. We used to have pretty clear differentiation because we were best-of-breed, we were agile, we could move fast. But now, if you're a customer already in SAP or Oracle for your core ERP, the buyer is asking, "Why can't my ERP vendor handle this? Why do I need a separate tool?" [SALESLOFT REP] How much are you losing deals to that objection? [HELEN] I'd say it's maybe 30-35% of deals where ERP consolidation comes up as a serious objection in the discovery process. And it's not always a deal loser—sometimes we can navigate it—but it means we have to position much more around our specific capabilities and integration, rather than just the value of supply chain visibility or whatever. [SALESLOFT REP] And how are your sales conversations evolving to handle that? Are you positioning against the ERP vendors directly, or are you positioning as a complement? [HELEN] That's actually where I think we've been inconsistent as a team. Some reps lean into "we're better than SAP at this," which I think is arrogant and doesn't land. Others position us as "we integrate seamlessly with SAP," which is true, but it diminishes our value. I think the right position is something like, "We're the purpose-built platform for supply chain that works with your ERP, not instead of it." But I haven't seen that land consistently across my team. [SALESLOFT REP] That's a classic positioning challenge. And I imagine the customers asking that question—are they typically the procurement person, the supply chain officer, or is it coming from the CIO side? [HELEN] Good question. It's actually more and more coming from the CFO or even the CEO's office now. The procurement person wants us. The supply chain person wants us. But their CFO is saying, "Hold on, we're spending $2M a year on SAP licenses, why are we adding another $500K tool?" So we're having to thread the needle with multiple buyers, and we're definitely not set up for that conversation as well as we should be. [SALESLOFT REP] That's a board-level question now, essentially. [HELEN] Exactly. And I'll be honest, our sales team isn't trained for that. We have a couple of senior enterprise reps who can navigate it, but most of our team was trained to sell to practitioners, not to CFOs. That's a gap. [SALESLOFT REP] Let's pivot a bit. Beyond the positioning challenge, I've been hearing from several supply chain software companies that implementation is becoming a bigger part of the buying conversation. Are you seeing that? [HELEN] Oh my god, yes. And this is actually where some of our customers who buy from us end up frustrated. We used to position really fast implementation—"We can get you live in 90 days," that kind of thing. And that was true when customers just wanted basic visibility. But now, customers want deeper integration. They want to automate their workflows. They want AI-driven insights. That stuff takes time. [SALESLOFT REP] So your sales team is still selling the 90-day implementation? [HELEN] Some are, yeah. And then our implementation team has to have that awkward conversation six months in. "We know we said 90 days, but we're looking at a 12-18 month roadmap to get the full value." It's damaging to our credibility, and it's definitely leading to churn or poor net revenue retention. [SALESLOFT REP] How are your best reps handling that disconnect? [HELEN] The ones who are winning are being much more explicit about the phased approach upfront. Like, "Phase 1, we get you live with core functionality in 90 days. That solves immediate problem X. Then Phase 2, over the next 6 months, we build out advanced analytics and automation." And when you frame it that way, customers actually feel better about the longer timeline because they understand what they're getting and when. [SALESLOFT REP] And the quick wins in that phase approach—are those built into your sales pitch, or are you figuring them out on a deal-by-deal basis? [HELEN] Honestly, it's pretty ad hoc. We have some methodologies documented, but they're not consistently used. I think that's actually a big opportunity for us. If we had a cleaner methodology that our reps could reference and customize—like, "For a company like yours in the automotive industry, here's a typical Phase 1 quick win"—I think we'd close faster and have happier customers. [SALESLOFT REP] That makes sense. Now, one more thing I've been curious about: supply chain is global, right? But how global is your sales motion? [HELEN] That's a painful conversation. Our customers are global. Like, some of our biggest accounts have operations across 20 countries. But our sales team is mostly based in the U.S. We have a handful of people in Europe, like two or three in APAC. So what happens is, we'll get a whale account that's global, and we close the deal with the U.S.-based supply chain director. But then we struggle to expand into their regional operations because we don't have local presence, local language capability, local knowledge of how supply chain works in those regions. [SALESLOFT REP] Are you losing expansions because of that? [HELEN] I think we're leaving money on the table for sure. We had a customer in Mexico that wanted to buy from us—they were already using us in the States—but they wanted support in Spanish, they wanted someone who understood Mexican supply chain regulations. We didn't have that. They went to a competitor. [SALESLOFT REP] So it's almost like your account management strategy is set up for the U.S. deal, but not for the global expansion. [HELEN] Exactly. We don't have account managers who can coordinate across regions. We don't have a playbook for handoffs between our U.S. team and our international team. We don't even have a clearly defined "global account" structure. It's chaos, honestly. And I know from talking to CFO and founder that we're thinking about investing in that—hiring regional VPs, maybe some in-region reps—but we haven't committed yet. [SALESLOFT REP] That's a big move. What's holding you back? [HELEN] Margin pressure, partly. We're not at the scale in those regions yet where we can support dedicated teams. And there's also a cultural piece—like, our company is very U.S.-centric. The idea of empowering regional leaders to make decisions about pricing and packaging for their market... that's a bigger organizational shift than some people want to commit to. [SALESLOFT REP] But you can see the revenue opportunity? [HELEN] 100%. Our CAM—our global accounts are typically 3-4X the value of our single-region deals. And they're stickier. So if we could figure out the global sales motion, I think we could drive meaningful uplift in both ACV and NRR. [SALESLOFT REP] Let me ask you about something else. I've been hearing a lot of talk in the supply chain space about point solution fatigue. Like, customers are tired of having fifteen different tools. Are you seeing that pressure? [HELEN] Yes and no. On one hand, yes—customers are definitely consolidating their tech stacks. They want fewer vendors, they want better integration. But here's the thing: we're actually one of the point solutions they're consolidating against. We're competing with SAP, Oracle, but we're also competing with fifteen other supply chain startups, all doing slightly different things. [SALESLOFT REP] So the consolidation pressure is coming at you from above and below? [HELEN] Right. From above, it's the ERP vendors wanting to own the whole stack. From below, it's that customers want an integrated platform, not a best-of-breed mix. And we're kind of in the middle, which is uncomfortable. [SALESLOFT REP] How are you positioning against that? Are you expanding your platform, or are you leaning into integration as your value prop? [HELEN] We're trying to do both, which I think is diluting our message. We've added some demand planning capabilities, some procurement functionality, trying to look more like a comprehensive platform. But we're not Oracle—we can't be everything. And customers kind of sense that. They're asking, "Are you a point solution or a platform?" and we're not giving a clear answer. [SALESLOFT REP] That's a brand and positioning issue then. [HELEN] Absolutely. And it's a sales issue too. Our reps are confused about what to lead with. Do we lead with supply chain visibility? Demand planning? Network optimization? We should have a really clear platform narrative that helps reps understand how all of those fit together and deliver strategic value. Right now, it's just a feature list. [SALESLOFT REP] And when you're in a competitive situation against, say, an SAP pitch, how does that feature list hold up? [HELEN] Not great. SAP comes in and talks about the integrated business process, the data model, the entire ecosystem. We come in and show screens and say, "Look at this dashboard." They win on vision and architecture. We win on specific capabilities in specific scenarios. [SALESLOFT REP] Which means your sales conversations are reactive, not proactive? [HELEN] Yeah. We're answering problems the customer brings to us, rather than reframing their problem in a way that positions us as the strategic solution. That's a rep skill issue, but it's also an enablement issue. We don't give them the frameworks and stories to do strategic selling. [SALESLOFT REP] Let's talk about executive engagement. How much of your sales process involves CxOs? [HELEN] More and more. Probably 70-80% of our bigger deals now require at least one CxO conversation—CFO or CEO, usually. And those conversations are... they're not going great, to be honest. [SALESLOFT REP] What's not working? [HELEN] Well, most of the time, the CxO is being pulled in by someone on the implementation team or an account manager saying, "This isn't working as promised, we need to talk to them." So it's a defensive conversation. Or, we're trying to expand an account, and the CFO is like, "Why?" We don't have many proactive conversations where we're genuinely adding value at the executive level. [SALESLOFT REP] So it's not baked into your sales process? [HELEN] Not really, no. We have a couple of enterprise account executives who are great at that—they'll get the CEO on the phone and talk about supply chain as a competitive differentiator, but it's not systematic. And honestly, I don't think our VP of Product or our founders are that involved in closing deals or expanding accounts. That sends a signal to the market that supply chain software is operational, not strategic. [SALESLOFT REP] That's interesting. Because from what I'm seeing in the market, the customers who position supply chain as strategic—as a competitive moat, as a revenue driver—those are the ones winning bigger deals with better terms. [HELEN] I believe it. And I think that's where we need to evolve. We need to help our reps see supply chain not as "here's a tool that helps you run your operations better" but as "here's how you reduce working capital, improve cash conversion, accelerate time to market." Those are CFO and CEO conversations. [SALESLOFT REP] That's a pretty significant sales enablement lift. [HELEN] Huge. And honestly, with everything else we're juggling—the competitive pressure, the implementation challenges, the global expansion—I'm not sure where sales enablement sits on my priority list. [SALESLOFT REP] What would it take to move it higher? [HELEN] Probably results. Like, if I could pilot this approach with our top 5 enterprise reps and show that it moved close rates or deal size, then I'd have data to go back to the CEO and say, "We need to invest here." But I don't have the bandwidth to experiment right now. [SALESLOFT REP] What if you had a partner who could help you design and run that pilot? [HELEN] Honestly? That would be valuable. Because right now, I'm managing the team, I'm fielding complaints about tooling, I'm trying to fill gaps with hiring. Actually designing a new sales motion? That's something I'd love to delegate. [SALESLOFT REP] Let me back up and ask you about your tech stack. What are you using today to manage your sales process? [HELEN] We're in Salesforce for CRM. We have a pretty basic setup—like, no custom objects, no advanced reporting. Sales team uses it mostly as a pipeline tool. We just implemented a sales engagement platform, actually, but I have to say... we're not using it that well yet. [SALESLOFT REP] What do you mean? [HELEN] Well, we implemented it thinking it would help with prospecting and cadences, right? But we didn't do a lot of change management. So most of our team is still using email and calendar, not the engagement tool. And the tool itself doesn't connect that well to our product information or our playbooks, so it feels like another system to maintain rather than something that actually makes selling easier. [SALESLOFT REP] So you've got tooling but not adoption. [HELEN] Yeah. And I suspect there are features that could actually help us—like, I don't know, maybe sequence different pitches for different customer segments, or help us build those methodologies I mentioned earlier. But I don't have someone on my team whose job is to learn the tool deeply and figure out how to leverage it. We hired the tool, but we didn't hire for the operational side of it. [SALESLOFT REP] That's a pretty common pattern. And I think that's actually where there's opportunity. Not just the tool, but helping you operationalize it in a way that supports the sales motion you want to build. [HELEN] Yeah. I'd be interested in that. Like, if you guys could come in and say, "Here's how we see your sales process, here's where the tool could actually add value, and here's how we'd recommend you roll it out without creating more chaos"—that would be useful. [SALESLOFT REP] One more thing before we wrap. How are your reps feeling? Are they stressed? Burned out? Optimistic? [HELEN] Mix. Our quota carriers who are still hitting numbers—they're pretty okay. They figured out how to navigate the longer sales cycle, they're building business cases, they're not stressed about the environment. But the ones who are struggling, they're frustrated. They're wondering if they're in the wrong job, or if the product is right, or if the market is still there. We've had some good reps leave because they just lost faith. [SALESLOFT REP] And what's your narrative to them about the market? Like, is supply chain software still a good place to be? [HELEN] I believe it is. I think we're just in a normalized phase. The panic phase is over, but the structural need for supply chain solutions is still there. Customers need visibility, they need agility, they need to manage costs. The sell is just harder now. It's not a market problem, it's an execution problem. [SALESLOFT REP] Do your reps believe that? [HELEN] Some do. Some don't. I think if we could show them—like, really show them—how a consultative, value-based approach can work in this market, that would rebuild confidence. Right now, they're kind of white-knuckling it. [SALESLOFT REP] Last question. If you could fix one thing about your sales organization in 2026, what would it be? [HELEN] Honestly? I'd invest in sales enablement and methodology. Not a tool, not hiring—just clarity. Clear positioning on what we are, clear methodologies for different deal types and customer segments, clear frameworks for executives to use when they're selling upmarket. I think we'd close better and faster, and honestly, I think our team would be happier. Because right now, everyone's kind of figuring it out as they go. [SALESLOFT REP] That's really helpful, Helen. I think there's real opportunity there, and I'd love to come back with some ideas on how we might support that. Can we set something up in a couple of weeks? [HELEN] Yeah, let's do it. I'll have my calendar opened up by then. Thanks for asking smart questions—this was helpful to think through out loud. [SALESLOFT REP] Thanks so much for your time. --- ## Key Takeaways ### Market Dynamics - **Urgency normalization:** Post-pandemic crisis urgency has faded, shifting from panic buying to rationalized ROI-based purchasing - **Extended sales cycles:** Deal velocity slowed from 4-5 months to 6-8 months; win rates declined ~20 percentage points - **Increased stakeholder complexity:** CFO/CEO now involved in buying decisions to prevent "tool sprawl" and consolidation pressure ### Competitive Positioning Challenges - **ERP vendor threat:** 30-35% of deals now surface ERP consolidation as serious objection; SAP/Oracle expanding supply chain modules - **Best-of-breed positioning gap:** Inconsistent messaging on whether product is standalone best-of-breed or integrated complement - **Platform vs. point solution confusion:** Team unclear on primary value driver; competitor wins on vision and integrated business process narrative ### Sales Organization Gaps - **Reps trained for crisis selling, not consultative selling:** High churn (85%) of team from 2 years ago; old cohort struggling with extended cycles - **Executive engagement not baked in:** CxO conversations happen defensively or during problems; no systematic strategic selling motion - **Implementation methodology fragmentation:** Phased approach works but applied ad-hoc; no standardized playbooks for different segments or industries ### Global Account Management Opportunity - **Regional expansion blocked:** Lost deals to lack of local language/cultural expertise; no coordinated global account management - **Revenue whitespace:** Global accounts worth 3-4X single-region deals but organizational structure doesn't support - **Handoff challenges:** No clear accountability for regional sales motions; U.S.-centric culture limits empowerment of regional leaders ### Sales Enablement Priorities 1. Clear platform positioning and narrative (not feature list) 2. Value-based selling frameworks for extended sales cycles 3. CxO conversation playbooks and executive engagement motion 4. Phased implementation methodology with documented quick wins 5. Sales engagement tool operationalization (tool exists but underutilized) ### Rep Sentiment & Retention - Confidence cracking as old selling motion no longer works - Need tangible evidence that consultative approach can succeed in normalized market - Would rebuild morale with clarity on positioning and methodology