Salesloft MCP Demo Server

# Customer Interview Transcript: Donna Martinez, VP Sales **Date:** January 15, 2026 **Time:** 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM CST **Duration:** 30 minutes **Participants:** - **Donna Martinez** - VP Sales, Corporate Training Division - **Marcus Chen** - Regional Sales Director, Salesloft - **Sarah Williams** - Solution Engineer, Clari **Company Profile:** - Organization: Mid-market B2B SaaS training provider - Annual Revenue: $45M ARR - Sales Team Size: 120 reps across 5 regions - Training Division: Dedicated department, 3 FTEs, $8M annual budget --- ## OPENING (00:00-02:30) **Marcus:** Donna, thanks so much for taking the time this morning. We've been excited to connect with you since our mutual friend at TechCorp mentioned you were exploring new solutions for your sales enablement program. How are things going in your world? **Donna:** Good, Marcus. Honestly, it's been a pretty chaotic year. We're at this inflection point where everything we thought we knew about training is being questioned—both internally and by our customers. I'm guessing that's probably not unique right now? **Marcus:** Not at all. Actually, that's exactly what we're seeing across our customer base. Before we dive into anything, I'm curious—when you think about your biggest challenge over the next 12 months, what keeps you up at night? **Donna:** *laughs* Where do I start? Okay, so the elephant in the room: our Chief Learning Officer left six months ago, and we didn't replace her. That was intentional—the CFO wanted to consolidate, reduce headcount, and frankly, there's been this creeping feeling that the traditional CLO function is becoming obsolete. So now I'm inheriting all the training strategy, but I'm also trying to figure out how to do more with less while the business scales. **Sarah:** That's fascinating actually. So the CLO role disappearing—is that a budget decision, or do you think the function itself has changed? **Donna:** It's... both? I think what's happening is the business has become way more distributed. We have product teams running their own training. Sales has their own needs. Customer success has theirs. The CLO used to be the quarterback for all of that, but honestly, when you have five different stakeholders with five different priorities, a single person coordinating everything breaks down pretty quickly. **Marcus:** Right. And I'd imagine that creates a challenge because nobody's really owning the overall strategy, the messaging alignment, that kind of thing? **Donna:** Exactly. That's one of the problems we're trying to solve now. We've got sales enablement content being created in five different places. Some of it's in our LMS. Some of it's in Salesforce. Some of it's literally in Google Docs that people are sharing. There's no cohesion. So my first job is basically to map out who all the stakeholders are, what they actually need versus what they think they need, and then figure out if we can consolidate enough to actually prove value to the finance team. --- ## CHALLENGE 1: CLO ROLE & STAKEHOLDER MAPPING (02:30-08:45) **Marcus:** Let's dig into that stakeholder mapping piece because I think that's really where the complexity lives now. Who are the key stakeholders you're trying to coordinate? **Donna:** So at the top level, there's sales—that's my world. Product has their own training needs for new feature launches. Customer success wants to build their own curriculum because they're hitting different use cases. We have a people ops team that owns the corporate compliance and onboarding piece. And then the business units—we have six of them—they each want customized content around their specific metrics and KPIs. When the CLO was here, she had a staff of five people managing all these relationships. Now it's just me. **Sarah:** And what's the consequence when that isn't managed well? What happens? **Donna:** Redundancy, mainly. People are building the same content five times. We have conflicting messaging—one team says the product works a certain way, another team says it works differently. Reps get confused. And from a compliance and governance perspective, we're a nightmare. I literally can't tell you if all our content is up to date or if we're teaching anything that's inaccurate. **Marcus:** So when you think about proving the value of better coordination, how do you frame that to your executive team? **Donna:** That's the hard part. For a long time, training was just this cost center. The ROI conversation was always fuzzy. You spend money, people go to training, they're theoretically more productive. But nobody was measuring it. Now I'm supposed to consolidate, but I also need to show that consolidation actually improves business outcomes. That's where I'm stuck. **Sarah:** What would success actually look like to you? If you could wave a magic wand and fix this stakeholder problem, what's the outcome? **Donna:** Honestly? One source of truth for all sales enablement content. Consistent messaging across the business. The ability to track who's using what, when they're using it, and what impact that's having. Right now, we buy an LMS, but half our sales reps won't even log into it. They get their training through email, through Slack, from their manager's personal documents. The platform isn't the solution—the culture is. **Marcus:** So culture change is probably a bigger lift than technology change? **Donna:** Way bigger. But technology can make the culture change easier if it's not in the way. The LMS we had before was terrible—clunky, slow, mobile access was broken. So reps just stopped using it. The new platform we're evaluating needs to be good enough that reps *want* to use it, not just tolerate it. **Sarah:** That's a really important distinction. Let me ask—when you're evaluating platforms, are you looking at this as a CLO function replacement, or as a tool to support better decision-making around training? **Donna:** The latter. I don't want to be a training expert. I want to enable the people who are training to be better at their jobs. So the platform needs to help the sales team quickly find and consume what they need. It needs to help the product team distribute training without needing technical skills. And it needs to give me visibility into what's working and what's not so I can make smart decisions. --- ## CHALLENGE 2: TRAINING BUDGET & ROI DEFENSE (08:45-16:20) **Marcus:** Okay, so let's talk about the money side. You mentioned the CFO wanted to consolidate and reduce headcount. I'm guessing that's not the only pressure you're under on budget? **Donna:** *sighs* No. So our budget went from $12M three years ago to $8M now. We've been through two rounds of cuts. The third round is probably coming. Every quarter, finance asks me to justify the spend. "Did training drive revenue? Did it improve retention? What's the payback period?" I don't have good answers to those questions, which makes it really hard to defend. **Sarah:** And that's across the entire training organization, or specific to sales? **Donna:** Specific to sales training. The corporate compliance and onboarding stuff is non-negotiable—that's legal and HR mandated. But sales training is discretionary. When the business gets tight, that's what gets cut first. **Marcus:** So when the CFO comes to you and says "prove that this training investment is paying off," what do you actually have to show? **Donna:** Completion rates, mostly. We track how many people finished the program, how many hours they spent on it, average scores if there's an assessment. But that doesn't prove anything about whether they're actually better at their jobs or if it's driving revenue. **Sarah:** Right. And I'm guessing the CFO isn't satisfied with that? **Donna:** Not at all. She wants to see correlation between training investment and pipeline growth, close rates, that kind of thing. The problem is there's usually a 6-to-12-month lag between when someone completes training and when you can see the impact on their deals. By then, the business context has changed, they've had other experiences, gotten coaching from their manager—you can't isolate the impact of the training. **Marcus:** So how are you defending the budget right now? What's your pitch to finance? **Donna:** Honestly, it's mostly "this is the cost of doing business." We point to industry benchmarks—most companies at our size are spending 2-3% of payroll on training. We're at about 1.5%, so we try to argue we're underinvesting, not overinvesting. We also talk about risks—high performers leave us because they feel like they're not developing. Reps feel like they're not getting support. Those are soft arguments though. Finance wants numbers. **Sarah:** Is there an executive sponsor in the business? Like a COO or Chief Revenue Officer who sees the value? **Donna:** Our CRO is supportive, but he's not going to battle finance for us. He's got bigger battles. What I really need is executive sponsorship from someone who has budget and sees training as strategic, not tactical. Right now, I don't have that. The CEO likes the idea of a learning culture, but he's not willing to fund it. **Marcus:** So if we think about defense strategy for future budget cuts, what would actually make a difference? What evidence would get the CFO off your back? **Donna:** A few things, actually. One: attribution. If I can show that people who complete our sales methodology training close deals faster or at higher deal values, that's really credible. Two: leading indicators. If I can show that training completion correlates with activity levels, or early pipeline health, or deal progression velocity—those are things we measure in real time, not six months out. Three: case studies. If I can identify a team or a region that did the training and compare their performance to a control group, that's powerful. **Sarah:** Are you tracking any of that data right now? **Donna:** Some of it. We have Salesforce data on deal velocity, close rates, rep productivity. We have LMS data on training completion. But they're in completely separate systems. Nobody's stitching them together to see if there's a correlation. **Marcus:** So part of this is a data infrastructure problem? **Donna:** Huge part. We have the data we need, but we can't connect it because our systems don't talk to each other. And frankly, the people who would do that analysis are swamped. My team is two people right now doing the work of five. I don't have anyone who can sit down and do proper analytics. **Sarah:** What if you could automate that analysis? What if the platform you're using could pull Salesforce data and correlate it to training completion and just give you the answer? **Donna:** That would change everything. That would go straight to the CFO. That would probably save my budget for the next cycle. --- ## CHALLENGE 3: MEASURING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT ROI (16:20-22:15) **Marcus:** Let's zoom in on skills development specifically because that seems to be getting harder to measure and defend. Walk me through what you're trying to do there. **Donna:** So we run a sales methodology program—consultative selling, discovery conversations, that kind of thing. We teach reps a framework, they do some role plays, they take a quiz. Then they go back to their jobs and, theoretically, they start using the framework in their deals. But how do you measure that? Do you listen to calls? Do you review deal memos? Do you ask reps to self-report? **Sarah:** Have you tried any of those approaches? **Donna:** We tried call listening. We had a vendor who would pull a sample of calls and grade them against our framework. That worked okay, but it was expensive—like $200k a year. And the results were qualitative and subjective. Two different listeners would grade the same call differently. Plus, the sample size was small—we couldn't score every rep on every skill. So we couldn't correlate that back to deals or revenue. **Marcus:** So the measurement methodology broke down? **Donna:** Yeah. And then there's the chicken-and-egg problem. You teach a skill in a training program, but reps also get coaching from their managers. They get feedback from their peers. They learn from doing deals. You can't isolate the impact of the training program alone. It's all connected. **Sarah:** Right. So what would a better approach look like to you? **Donna:** I think it starts with leading indicators. Instead of trying to measure the ultimate outcome—did training drive revenue—you measure the intermediate steps. Did reps actually change their behavior? Are they using the framework we taught? Are they having better conversations? Those are things you can measure more quickly and with more precision. **Marcus:** How would you measure "better conversations"? **Donna:** That's the question, isn't it? You could use call intelligence to identify specific behaviors. Like, are they asking open-ended discovery questions? Are they uncovering pain? Are they talking about value early versus price late? Those are observable behaviors that correlate with better outcomes. If the training moves the needle on those behaviors, that's evidence it's working. **Sarah:** And then you assume that better behaviors lead to better deals? **Donna:** Right. You need to make that connection explicit. We've done some analysis—not as much as I'd like—where we've shown that reps who ask more discovery questions have higher deal values. So if training increases discovery questions, and we can show that in the call data, then we've created a logical chain: training improved this behavior, this behavior correlates with better outcomes, therefore training is working. **Marcus:** But you'd need access to the call intelligence data, the training data, and the deal data, all connected? **Donna:** All of it. And ideally, the platform would do that stitching for you. Right now, we're doing it manually, on an ad hoc basis, and it takes forever. **Sarah:** What about case studies? Are you building those? **Donna:** We're trying to. We've identified a few high-performing reps who did the training and are crushing their numbers. But we don't have a control group to compare against. And even if we did, there are so many variables—tenure, territory quality, manager quality, market conditions—that it's hard to isolate what's driving the results. It's a nice story to tell at a sales conference, but it's not evidence. **Marcus:** So the ideal case study would be comparing trained versus untrained reps in similar territories with similar tenure and manager quality? **Donna:** Exactly. If we could run a proper experiment—some regions do the training, some don't, and we compare the results—that would be gold. But we've never actually done that. It feels like too much risk. What if the control group underperforms? Then we're proving training matters by handicapping part of our team. **Sarah:** Fair point. So meanwhile, how are you talking about skills development internally? What's the story you're telling? **Donna:** Right now, it's very aspirational. "We're going to develop consultative selling skills in our team." But I don't have good proof points to back it up. I have some quotes from reps saying the training was useful. I have pass rates on assessments. But nothing that actually proves skills changed in a meaningful way. --- ## CHALLENGE 4: CONTENT VS. PLATFORM BUYING (22:15-27:40) **Marcus:** Okay, so this is a fun question. When you think about what to invest in next—and assume you could only invest in one thing—would you rather have better content or a better platform to deliver it? **Donna:** *pauses* That's tough because they're not independent. Bad content on a great platform is useless. And great content on a terrible platform might as well not exist because nobody will use it. But if I'm forced to choose? **Sarah:** You have to choose. **Donna:** I'd choose the platform. Here's why: we already have good content. We have a sales methodology that works. We have playbooks. We have battle cards. The content is fine. What we don't have is a way to get reps to actually *use* it. And we don't have a way to see whether the content is moving the needle. So a platform that makes it dead simple to access content and that gives us visibility into usage and impact—that solves bigger problems for us right now. **Marcus:** So product positioning for you is really about consumption and visibility, not content quality? **Donna:** Right. Now, that said, there's a minimum bar for content. If the platform came with a bunch of generic sales training that's mediocre, that doesn't help me. I need content that's specifically aligned with our business, our product, our industry. But the platform is the differentiator for me. **Sarah:** What does "alignment" mean to you? What makes content feel like it's built for your business versus generic? **Donna:** It understands our use cases. We're in the B2B SaaS space, selling to mid-market companies. The training talks about those scenarios. It uses our product terminology. It references our competitors. It's not generic corporate training that could apply to any company selling anything. **Marcus:** So you're not looking for a platform to do all your content creation? **Donna:** No. We have in-house subject matter experts who know our business better than any vendor. But I want the platform to make it easy for them to create and distribute. And I want it to be flexible enough that when product launches a new feature, we can quickly create training around it without a huge lift. **Sarah:** That makes sense. So let's talk about bundling. Are you looking for an all-in-one solution, or do you prefer best-of-breed? **Donna:** I like best-of-breed in theory, but in practice, it creates too much integration work. We tried the best-of-breed approach a few years ago—separate tools for content creation, learning management, call intelligence, coaching. It was a nightmare to integrate them. So now I'm more open to "good enough" all-in-one solutions if it means we don't have to spend engineering resources on integrations. **Marcus:** What's your technology stack look like right now? **Donna:** We have Salesforce as our CRM. We have a call intelligence tool called Gong. We have an LMS that we switched to about two years ago. We have a coaching platform that we're pretty new to. Each of these tools has data we need, but they don't talk to each other. So we're constantly exporting data, importing data, trying to stitch things together. **Sarah:** And who owns that integration work? **Donna:** Our marketing operations team, which is already stretched. That's another reason I want a platform that can reduce our integration burden. **Marcus:** So when we're pitching to you, the story can't just be "better content" or "better training." It has to be "easier operations." **Donna:** Bingo. I don't care about the training for training's sake. I care about training being a lever for business growth, and I care about not drowning in operational overhead. **Sarah:** What's your buying process going to look like? Who else do you need to get aligned? **Donna:** My CRO needs to see that it aligns with his growth goals. Finance needs to see ROI. Product needs to see that it works with our current stack and doesn't create new integration headaches. And I need to have a champion in the field sales org—someone who will use it and evangelize it to peers. **Marcus:** And the budget for this? What are you authorized to spend? **Donna:** We have $500k set aside for new tools this fiscal year. That would cover software licenses and implementation. But it has to come out of my $8M training budget, so it's not free money. Every dollar I spend on tools is a dollar I'm not spending on content or coaching or other programs. --- ## CHALLENGE 5: LMS COMMODITIZATION & DIFFERENTIATION (27:40-29:50) **Marcus:** Last thing I want to dig into—you mentioned you switched LMS platforms a couple of years ago. How's that working out? **Donna:** It's fine, honestly. It does what it's supposed to do. Reps can log in, find courses, take the training, get a certificate. Mobile works okay. The admin interface is pretty intuitive. But is it a competitive advantage? No. Does it differentiate us from competitors? Absolutely not. Every company has an LMS now. Some are better than others, but the delta isn't that big. **Sarah:** So in a world where LMS is commoditized, where does the value actually live? **Donna:** The value is in two places. One: integrations and data. The best LMS is the one that connects to your CRM, your call intelligence tool, your coaching platform, and gives you one dashboard to understand training effectiveness. That's where I see differentiation happening now. Two: curation and intelligence. Not all training content is equal. The best platforms are getting smarter about recommending the right content to the right person at the right time, based on what they're actually struggling with. **Marcus:** So it's less about the LMS itself and more about the ecosystem around it? **Donna:** Right. The LMS is table stakes. It's like asking if a CRM is good. At this point, every CRM is pretty good. The differentiation is in how well it orchestrates everything else. **Sarah:** And your current LMS—does it do that? **Donna:** No. It's a content repository. That's it. I want something that's a command center for all sales development activities. Training is part of it, but so is coaching, so is peer learning, so is knowledge management. Right now, those are all separate systems. **Marcus:** So your ideal platform is like a nexus that brings all of those together? **Donna:** Exactly. Something that helps me answer the question: "How do I develop my team faster and better?" And the answer isn't just training. It's training plus coaching plus peer learning plus structured practice plus feedback loops. A good platform orchestrates all of that. **Sarah:** And that would be compelling enough to justify a new technology investment? **Donna:** Yeah, if the ROI is there. If I can show that it improves time-to-productivity, or reduces ramp time, or improves retention, or moves the needle on quality metrics—then it pays for itself pretty quickly. --- ## CLOSING (29:50-30:00) **Marcus:** Donna, this has been really insightful. I think we have a much better sense of where you are and what you're trying to solve. Let's take a step back—if we could address one of these challenges for you in the next 90 days, which would have the most impact? **Donna:** Honestly? If you could help me build a proof of concept showing correlation between training and deal outcomes, that changes my entire strategy. That unlocks everything else. Because if I can show the CFO that training investment drives revenue, the budget question goes away. Then I can invest in better tools, better content, everything. But right now, I'm playing defense on a $8M budget that's only going to get smaller. **Sarah:** So the proof of concept is really about proving value to the CFO? **Donna:** It's about that, but it's also about proving value to myself. Because right now, I'm not even sure we're having the impact we think we are. Maybe training does drive outcomes. Maybe it doesn't. I need to know, because if it doesn't, we need to pivot our entire strategy. **Marcus:** That's a really honest thing to say. I respect that. So our next step would be to understand your data better, figure out what correlations we can actually surface, and see if we can run a small pilot that gives you that proof. **Donna:** I'm game. But I want to be realistic about timelines. I can't spend a ton of engineering resources on this. If it takes six months to get an answer, that doesn't help me. **Sarah:** Understood. We can probably get initial insights in 30-45 days if you're willing to do some light data pulls. **Donna:** I can do that. Let's set up a follow-up next week and start mapping out what data we'd need. **Marcus:** Perfect. We'll send you a small scope document on data integration, you'll take a look, and we'll reconvene. Donna, thanks again for the time. **Donna:** Thanks for actually listening and not just pitching. That's refreshing. --- ## KEY TAKEAWAYS ### Strategic Insights 1. **CLO Function Transformation** - Traditional CLO role is being distributed across product, sales, and business units - Stakeholder management is now the bottleneck, not content creation - Single source of truth for sales enablement is a critical need - Culture change matters more than platform selection 2. **Budget Defense Under Pressure** - Training budget declining (from $12M to $8M over 3 years) - Finance demands correlation between training and revenue - Executive sponsorship is missing (CRO supportive but not willing to advocate) - Next budget cut is expected; new tools must justify themselves quickly 3. **ROI Measurement Gaps** - Completion rates and assessment scores don't prove skill development - 6-12 month lag between training and measurable business impact - Call intelligence data exists but isn't connected to training data - Proof of concept showing training-to-revenue correlation would unlock budget defense 4. **Platform vs. Content Trade-off** - Donna prioritizes platform over content (consumption > quality at margin) - Content alignment with business is table stakes (B2B SaaS context, company-specific) - Current pain is lack of visibility into usage and impact - Integration overhead is a hidden cost of best-of-breed approach 5. **LMS Commoditization** - LMS itself is table stakes; differentiation lives in orchestration - Desired state is a "command center" connecting training, coaching, peer learning, knowledge - Data integration (Salesforce + call intelligence + LMS) is the competitive moat - Smart recommendations based on performance data would be differentiating ### Buyer Dynamics - **Primary motivation:** Operational efficiency and budget justification - **Secondary motivation:** Faster team development and time-to-productivity - **Decision criteria:** ROI proof, low integration complexity, cross-functional alignment - **Buying power:** Controls $500k annual tools budget; needs CFO and CRO alignment for larger spend - **Timeline:** Wants proof of concept in 30-45 days, full decision in next 90 days - **Implementation constraint:** No spare engineering resources for integrations; needs pre-built connectors ### Messaging Angles 1. **"Prove training ROI faster"** - Address her biggest CFO conversation 2. **"Reduce integration burden"** - Solve her ops team's pain 3. **"Orchestrate the full development cycle"** - Go beyond LMS thinking 4. **"Connect Salesforce data to training outcomes"** - Give her the proof she needs 5. **"Support stakeholder alignment"** - Help her coordinate across product, sales, CS, HR ### Next Steps - Send scope document for data integration and correlation analysis - Schedule follow-up for next week - Identify quick win (30-45 day proof of concept) - Map technical requirements for Salesforce + LMS + call intelligence integration - Build business case template for CFO pitch