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# Customer Interview Transcript: Emily Turner, VP Sales ## Higher Ed Technology Solutions **Date:** January 15, 2026 **Duration:** 32 minutes **Interviewer:** Marcus Chen, Sales Development Manager, Salesloft + Clari **Interviewee:** Emily Turner, VP Sales, ClassConnect (Higher Ed Technology Platform) **Company Overview:** ClassConnect is a $60M ARR student engagement and outcomes platform serving 200+ institutions **Key Stakeholders Discussed:** CEO, CFO, Provost, Faculty Department Heads, IT Director --- ## OPENING & CONTEXT SETTING (0:00-3:45) **MARCUS:** Emily, thanks so much for making time. I know you're busy running a pretty significant operation. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, can you give me a quick snapshot of where you are right now with your sales process? I'm curious what's working, what's not, and honestly, where you think there might be friction. **EMILY:** Happy to be here, Marcus. So, quick context: we're at $60 million ARR, which puts us in a good position, but we're trying to scale to $150 million in the next four years. That growth depends almost entirely on our ability to navigate a really specific sales environment. Higher ed is... well, it's not like enterprise SaaS. The buying dynamics are completely different, and frankly, our current tools don't account for that. Right now, we have about 18 people on the sales team. We're split between account management and new business development. What's crushing us is visibility into where deals actually stand in our pipeline. Our reps have a lot of context in their heads, some of it in Salesforce, and some just passed around in Slack. We're flying partially blind on forecasting. **MARCUS:** That's a really common challenge at your scale, especially in higher ed where I'd imagine the sales cycle is pretty unique. Before I dig into how we can help, I want to understand the specific obstacles you're hitting. Let me ask—when you think about your biggest revenue risks right now, what keeps you up at night? **EMILY:** Three things. First, we have zero predictability around timing. Higher ed institutions buy based on academic calendars, fiscal year cycles, and increasingly, grants. Our biggest deals can slip six months because a grant didn't come through or a purchasing committee didn't reconvene until the fall. Second, we're losing leverage in these deals because we can't show institutions their ROI clearly. Enrollment is declining across the sector—we're talking 2-4% annual declines at many institutions—so schools are cutting everything. Our pitch has to be laser-focused on efficiency and outcomes, but we're struggling to quantify that. Third, and maybe most frustrating: we have no systematic way to nurture relationships across multiple stakeholders at an institution. A provost might be sold on our solution, but if we can't get faculty aligned, the deal dies. And once it dies, we have no mechanism to know when to re-engage. **MARCUS:** Okay, that's really meaty. Let me just make sure I understand: You've got timing uncertainty baked into the sales cycle, you need better ROI messaging, and you're managing complex multiparty deals where stakeholder alignment isn't guaranteed. Those are three separate problems that probably feed into each other. Let's take them one at a time. Let me start with the first one—unpredictability around timing. --- ## TOPIC 1: BUDGET PRESSURES & ROI MESSAGING (3:45-11:20) **EMILY:** Yeah, so here's the reality: Higher ed budgets are under pressure like never before. Enrollment is down, state funding is down, endowments are volatile. That creates this weird dynamic where every dollar has to be justified against institutional outcomes. It's not enough to say, "This platform will improve student engagement." We need to say, "This will improve four-year graduation rates, which improves your standing with accreditors, which attracts donor interest and improves brand reputation." The institutions we're selling to are getting squeezed from every direction. Their provosts are being asked to do more with less. Faculty are already overworked. So when we come in with a new tool, the first reaction is always the same: "Why do we need this? What's going to break if we implement it? What's my ROI going to be?" **MARCUS:** And that ROI question—how are you answering it today? Because I'm guessing it's not straightforward. **EMILY:** It's not. We've created templates that show typical outcomes—engagement metrics, retention improvements, that kind of thing. But we can't customize that for each institution because we don't have the data infrastructure to do it. We're not integrated with their SIS, so we can't pull historical data on at-risk students, graduation rates by cohort, nothing. What we really need is a way to tell Emily's story and the story of every institution we're selling to. Like, "Here's what schools like you—similar size, similar demographics—have achieved with ClassConnect. Here's how their students performed. Here's how their faculty adopted it." But we're presenting these ROI arguments in a vacuum. **MARCUS:** So you're stuck in a position where you can't make the economic case concrete enough for a budget-constrained buyer. That's a huge blocker. I'm curious though—when you do land deals, how are institutions thinking about ROI? Are they looking at student outcomes? Are they looking at operational efficiency? Are they looking at both? **EMILY:** Both, but it depends on who we're talking to. The CFO is always thinking about the total cost of ownership and whether this reduces operational expense or helps generate new revenue. The provost is thinking about pedagogical outcomes—will this help our faculty teach better? Will students learn more? The VP of Enrollment is thinking, "Will this help us retain more students?" So we're actually dealing with three different ROI narratives. The challenge is that no two institutions measure success the same way. One school might track six-year graduation rates; another tracks three-year. One cares about first-generation student outcomes; another is obsessed with reducing DFW rates in gateway courses. We need a way to speak their language, but our current sales process doesn't support that level of customization. **MARCUS:** That's fascinating. So you're really dealing with multiple economic buyers who have different success metrics. That's where I think we can really help. But before I jump into solutions, let me ask this: When a deal dies, what's usually the reason? Is it that the ROI case didn't stick, or is it something else? **EMILY:** Honestly? It's usually one of two things. First, the deal stalls because the financial case isn't there. An institution realizes they can't fund it this year because of budget constraints or because other priorities trumped it. Second, it dies because we can't get faculty buy-in. I said this before, but it's worth emphasizing: Faculty are gatekeepers. They can kill a deal even after an administration approves it. We had this situation last spring. A large research university—maybe $800K ACV—their provost was sold on us. Their IT director was sold on us. But we never really engaged the engineering department heads or the chemistry faculty, because honestly, we didn't know who to talk to. By the time implementation was supposed to happen, the faculty Senate had questions, the department heads had concerns, and suddenly there's a six-month delay. We lost momentum. By fall, budget cycles had reset, and the deal wasn't a priority anymore. **MARCUS:** So it sounds like part of the ROI challenge is that you're not getting in front of the right people at the right time, and you're not arming your champions with the tools they need to advocate for you internally. Is that fair? **EMILY:** Exactly. Our best deals are when we have a champion—usually a vice provost or a dean—who's willing to run the ball inside. That person becomes our internal advocate. But we don't have a systematic way to identify who that champion should be, cultivate them, give them ammunition, or even understand whether they're succeeding in getting buy-in until it's too late. **MARCUS:** How are you currently thinking about this? Do you have sales plays or scripts for this? **EMILY:** Not really, and that's the gap. Our reps know they should "build champions," but it's not systematic. There's no sales play that says, "Here's how you identify a champion, here's what success looks like, here's when you should be hearing back from them." It's just intuition and relationship building. Which works sometimes, but it's not scalable. **MARCUS:** Okay, so you've got two revenue risks stacked on top of each other: One is the ROI case isn't customizable, and two is you don't have a system for building internal champions who can carry that case forward. Let me shift gears a bit. You mentioned that some deals die because of budget constraints or timing. Can you walk me through what a typical deal cycle looks like? --- ## TOPIC 2: FACULTY RESISTANCE & CHANGE MANAGEMENT (11:20-18:50) **EMILY:** Sure. So a typical deal starts with an outbound call to someone in the provost's office or maybe the VP of Academic Affairs. Usually, we've identified them through a combination of LinkedIn research and institutional websites. We say, "Hey, we help universities improve student outcomes through better engagement. Would you be open to a 20-minute conversation?" If they bite, we get a demo. The provost or dean watches it, and they usually see the value pretty quickly. They'll say something like, "This is great. Let me talk to IT and the registrar." That's where things get interesting. IT always has concerns about integration. The registrar has concerns about whether it's going to create more work. And then there's this informal step where the champion—let's say it's the provost—starts talking to faculty department heads. That's where deals die. **MARCUS:** Why do they die at that stage? **EMILY:** Because faculty don't trust new technology. They've been burned before. I don't know if you know this, but higher ed is littered with failed EdTech implementations. Every few years, there's a new platform that's supposed to transform teaching and learning. Faculty see it as busywork. They see it as extra tracking and reporting. They see it as Big Brother monitoring their classroom. So when a new tool gets proposed, their instinct is to resist. Our pitch to faculty is all about their benefit: "This helps you understand how students are actually learning. This gives you early signals when students are struggling. You can intervene early." But faculty don't care about the business case. They care about whether this makes their job easier or harder. **MARCUS:** So the faculty objection is really about adoption burden and perceived loss of autonomy. **EMILY:** Exactly. And here's the thing: If faculty don't adopt it, the deal is worthless. A institution can buy our platform, but if 60% of faculty don't use it, students don't engage, and the promised outcomes don't materialize. So we're in this weird position where we're selling to the administration, but we're completely dependent on faculty adoption. And faculty are basically saying, "I don't care what the provost decided. I'm not using this unless I'm convinced it helps me." **MARCUS:** How are you handling that today? Are you running faculty training sessions? Are you getting involved in change management? **EMILY:** Sort of, and that's the problem. Our implementations team does training, but it's usually after a deal is signed. By then, it's too late. We're not engaging faculty during the sales cycle when we could build their support. What we really need is a way to identify faculty influencers at each institution—the people who set the tone for their departments—and get them involved earlier. We need to show them, "Here's how this works. Here's how other faculty like you are using it. Here's why your students are going to be better off." We need to give them quick wins they can see in the first 30 days, not six months down the line. **MARCUS:** So the ideal state is: During the sales process, you're running parallel tracks—one with administration and one with faculty—and you're building faculty champions who advocate for adoption alongside your administrative champions. **EMILY:** Yes. And right now, we're doing the administrative track pretty well. We're not doing the faculty track at all. When you think about it, we're leaving money on the table in two ways: First, deals take longer because we're not managing faculty concerns early. Second, we're setting ourselves up for implementation failures because faculty adoption is weak. The other challenge is timing. Let me give you an example. We get a provost sold on us in April. They want to implement in the fall. But here's the thing: Faculty are scattered across the summer. They're teaching summer classes, they're on sabbatical, some of them check out completely. We can't run a proper change management campaign when half of faculty are unavailable. So we have to wait until August or September when everyone's back, which compresses the implementation timeline and creates risk. **MARCUS:** So you need a change management playbook that accounts for the academic calendar and the distributed nature of faculty. **EMILY:** Exactly. And honestly, Marcus, I think we need a way to track this. Right now, when a rep is working a deal, they might have notes like "Provost is a champion, but faculty concerns around tracking." But there's no systematic tracking of: Have we identified faculty influencers? Are we in contact with them? What are their concerns? Are we addressing them? That visibility would prevent deals from blowing up. **MARCUS:** That's insightful. Let me ask you something: Of the deals that do close, how much of your margin is eaten up by implementation complexity because faculty adoption is slower than expected? **EMILY:** (Pauses) Good question. Honestly, I don't have that number. Our implementation team will tell you stories about contracts where they thought adoption would happen in 90 days and it took 180 days. The customer is happy in the end, but our resource allocation is off. We're carrying that cost. **MARCUS:** So there's a financial impact of poor change management that you're not currently measuring. **EMILY:** Right. Which is a bigger problem because if you don't measure it, you can't improve it. We need to be able to say, "Okay, on average, when we have strong faculty buy-in, implementation takes X days and costs Y. When we have weak faculty buy-in, it takes X+90 days and costs Y+Z." Once we have that data, we can make smarter decisions about when to push a deal vs. when to slow down and do more change management work. **MARCUS:** Understood. So we've got the ROI messaging piece, we've got the faculty change management piece. Now let me shift to something you mentioned at the top: timing and predictability. Walk me through how that works given the academic calendar. --- ## TOPIC 3: ACADEMIC BUYING CYCLES & RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (18:50-25:15) **EMILY:** Okay, so this is where higher ed is really different from enterprise software. Most of your customers probably operate on a calendar year or a fiscal year. Higher ed operates on an academic year. So decisions get made based on when the relevant people are available, when budget cycles align, and when academic calendars allow for implementation. Here's a real example: We start talking to a prospect in January. The provost is interested. They say, "Let's move forward. I need to get approval from the budget committee." Budget committee doesn't meet until April because of course it doesn't. We get approval in April. They say, "Great, let's plan to implement this fall semester." So we think we have a deal. But summer happens. Faculty scatter. Budget circumstances change. Enrollment comes in lower than expected—summer is when early enrollment numbers come in. Suddenly, in July, the provost comes back and says, "Hey, we love this, but we can't fund it this year. Can we revisit in the fall?" By fall, it's a new fiscal year, new budget priorities, and our champion might be dealing with other fires. We're starting from scratch. **MARCUS:** So there's a rhythm to higher ed buying that's different from a typical 90-day enterprise cycle. **EMILY:** Much different. I'd say the real buying season for higher ed is July through October. That's when institutions are planning for the next academic year. That's when budget committees are active. That's when provosts are thinking about institutional initiatives. If we're not in those conversations in July, we've probably lost the window until the following year. But here's the kicker: Our budget and hiring is based on a calendar year. So we're hiring and building out the team in January and February, just when higher ed institutions are least interested in buying. By the time July rolls around, we're still ramping people, and we haven't prepared them for the specific dynamics of higher ed selling. **MARCUS:** So you've got a seasonal mismatch between when you're resourced to sell and when institutions are actually buying. **EMILY:** Bingo. And it's killing us. We're burning pipeline in Q1 and Q2 on conversations that aren't going anywhere because the customer isn't ready to buy. Then Q3 and Q4, we're scrambling to close deals because we don't have the coverage for the volume of opportunities that exist. What we need is a way to better understand where each opportunity sits relative to the academic calendar. Not just where it sits in our sales cycle, but literally: When does this institution make buying decisions? When is their budget committee active? When do they implement new systems? If we could answer those questions, we could actually be proactive instead of reactive. **MARCUS:** Do you currently have that data in Salesforce? **EMILY:** Not in a structured way. Our reps might know it, or they might have it written down somewhere, but it's not systematized. When a new rep joins the team, they have to learn it by talking to experienced reps or by just banging their head against closed doors for a quarter. **MARCUS:** How much time do you think reps are wasting on out-of-season opportunities? **EMILY:** God, a lot. I'd guess 30-40% of the time our reps spend on prospects, they're talking to people who won't be ready to buy for six months. That's not to say those conversations are wasted—relationships matter—but from a pure pipeline generation perspective, we're inefficient. And then there's the relationship management piece. Let me give you another example. We have a champion at a big university. They're sold on us. But because of the academic calendar disruption, they can't buy this year. So we say, "Okay, let's touch base in the fall." But here's what happens: We don't touch base. The rep moves on to other deals. By the time fall rolls around, the champion has moved to a different role or left the institution. We've lost our relationship. **MARCUS:** So you need a system that tracks these relationships not just by deal, but longitudinally across the actual buying cycle of higher ed institutions. **EMILY:** Yes. Right now, Salesforce helps us track deals. But what we need is pipeline management that factors in the academic calendar and helps us nurture relationships across institutional selling seasons. One more thing on this: We're increasingly dealing with grants. Federal grants, state grants, foundation grants. A lot of universities will tell us, "We love your product, but we can't afford it in our general fund. Can we use grant funding?" Sometimes that works out. But it introduces even more uncertainty because grant cycles are different from institutional budget cycles. **MARCUS:** Tell me more about the grant situation. **EMILY:** So a university might identify us in March, fall in love with us in May, and then say, "Actually, we could potentially fund this through an NSF grant." But the NSF grant cycle might not align with their budget cycle. They might need to apply in June for a grant that starts a year later. So suddenly, the deal that we thought would close in September gets pushed to 18 months out. The challenge is we have no visibility into whether a deal is funded by general funds or grants. We don't know which grants a prospect might be eligible for. We don't know the grant application deadlines or the timelines. So we're basically blind when it comes to forecasting deals that might be grant-funded. **MARCUS:** That's a significant forecasting risk. Do you have any way to understand what percentage of your pipeline is grant-dependent? **EMILY:** Not really. Some of our reps track it informally. But we don't have a field in Salesforce for "funding source" or anything like that. We should. **MARCUS:** Okay. So to summarize what I'm hearing on timing and pipeline management: You need visibility into academic calendar dynamics, institution-specific budget cycles, and grant funding sources. All of that needs to be visible in your pipeline so you can forecast more accurately. Is that fair? **EMILY:** Exactly. And here's the thing: Once you have that visibility, you can actually sequence deals strategically. Like, "This prospect's budget committee meets in April, so I need to have all my ducks in a row by March." Or, "This grant deadline is in June, so I should be talking about that as a funding option by May." You can build strategic plays around the actual buying calendar. --- ## TOPIC 4: GRANT DYNAMICS & FORECASTING (25:15-29:30) **MARCUS:** Let's dig into grants a little more because I think that's a unique challenge that most SaaS companies don't deal with. How often are you dealing with prospects who are considering grant funding? **EMILY:** I'd say it's in about 30% of our deals. Not all of them close that way, but it's a viable funding option that comes up. Federal grants, state grants, foundation grants—they all have different timelines and requirements. The NSF has competitive grant cycles. NEH has different cycles. Then there are foundation grants that might be one-time opportunities. **MARCUS:** And your reps are trying to navigate that without any systematic intelligence. **EMILY:** Exactly. We're relying on the institution to tell us about grant opportunities. A lot of times, a rep will say, "Is there grant funding we could use?" and the prospect will say, "Maybe. Let me check with our grants office." Then we never hear back. Either the grants office says no, or there's a timing mismatch, or the grant doesn't align with what we do. What we really need is grant intelligence. We need to be able to look at a prospect institution and say, "Here are the grants they might be eligible for. Here are the timelines. Here's who we should talk to in their grants office." **MARCUS:** Does that exist? Is there a grants database? **EMILY:** There is. There's a whole industry around grant intelligence for foundations and education nonprofits. But we're not using it. And honestly, even if we were, we'd need to integrate it with our sales process. Like, I need a rep in Salesforce to be able to see, "This prospect is eligible for an NSF Education & Human Resources grant with a deadline in June." Then I need them to be able to take action on that. **MARCUS:** So the ideal state is: You have grant intelligence integrated into your CRM, and it's helping you understand the funding timeline and the stakeholders you should be engaging. **EMILY:** Yes. And honestly, Marcus, I think grants could be a significant pipeline accelerator if we handled them right. Right now, we're leaving deals on the table because we don't know that a grant could fund it or we don't understand the timeline well enough. **MARCUS:** How much of your revenue do you think could be grant-funded if you optimized for it? **EMILY:** Honestly, I don't know. Maybe 15-20% of our total revenue? The thing is, it would probably take our average deal cycle from 9 months to 15 months, because you're dealing with grant application cycles. But the ACV might go up because institutions have grant budgets they might not have in their general fund. **MARCUS:** So you might close fewer deals per quarter but have higher average contract value. That's not a bad tradeoff if you can forecast it. **EMILY:** Right. But we need forecasting visibility. Otherwise, it's just chaos. --- ## TOPIC 5: TECHNICAL INTEGRATION & SIS VALIDATION (29:30-32:00) **MARCUS:** You mentioned earlier that IT always has concerns about integration. Let's talk about that because I think this is where technical and sales converge. **EMILY:** Yeah, so every institution we sell to has a Student Information System. Usually, it's something like Banner, Ellucian, or Colleague. Sometimes it's a custom-built system. The institution needs to know: Can ClassConnect integrate with our SIS? What does that integration look like? How much customization will it require? Will it create data quality issues? Right now, our answers to those questions are handled by our technical team, usually after a deal is signed. But that's too late. IT directors want to know this stuff during the evaluation process. **MARCUS:** So IT validation is happening late in the sales cycle. **EMILY:** Way too late. What we really need is a technical validation playbook that happens early. Like, a rep should be able to say, "Hey, let's get your IT director on a call with our technical team. We'll show you exactly how the integration works and answer your technical questions." That should happen in week two of the evaluation, not after a contract is negotiated. We've actually built some of that—like, a technical integration assessment template—but it's not systematized. Different reps are doing it different ways. And there's no handoff mechanism between sales and the pre-sales team. **MARCUS:** Do you have a pre-sales engineer role? **EMILY:** We have two pre-sales engineers for the whole company. They're overwhelmed. They're trying to do technical validation for deals at all stages of the pipeline. What we need is a way to empower sales to do more of the technical discovery work upfront, and then escalate to pre-sales only when we need deeper technical validation. **MARCUS:** What does a basic technical discovery conversation look like? **EMILY:** Questions like: What SIS are you running? What version? How is your student data structured? Do you have API access? Are you using single sign-on? What's your data security posture? Those are the foundational questions. Once we know the answers, we can say, "Great, we support Banner 9.0 natively. Here's what our integration does. Here's the implementation timeline." The problem is, our reps don't always know the right questions to ask. They're not technical people. So they'll have these conversations with IT without asking the right things, and then when we escalate to pre-sales, we're starting from scratch. **MARCUS:** So you need a technical discovery framework that guides your reps through the right conversation. **EMILY:** Exactly. And Marcus, here's the thing: If we had that framework, and if IT felt confident early that we could integrate, it would accelerate deals significantly. Right now, a lot of deals stall because IT is uncertain about integration, and that uncertainty prevents them from advocating for the deal internally. **MARCUS:** That makes total sense. So you need three things on the technical front: A discovery framework, early IT engagement, and pre-sales resources to validate at scale. **EMILY:** Yes. And if I'm being really honest, we probably need better documentation too. We should have case studies that show integration patterns. Like, "Here's how we integrated with Banner at a similar-sized institution. Here's the data structure we used. Here's the implementation timeline." Right now, each integration feels like a one-off. **MARCUS:** That's a great insight. You're basically saying that standardizing the technical approach would give IT confidence and speed up deals. **EMILY:** Exactly. And it would reduce implementation risk too because we'd have repeatable patterns instead of custom approaches every time. --- ## CLOSING & NEXT STEPS (32:00-32:15) **MARCUS:** Emily, this has been incredibly helpful. Let me just summarize what I'm hearing, and you tell me if I'm on track: You've got five major challenges: One, you need better ROI messaging that's customizable to each institution and each stakeholder. Two, you need a change management playbook that identifies faculty champions early and builds their support during the sales process. Three, you need pipeline visibility into academic calendar dynamics and institution-specific buying patterns so you can be proactive instead of reactive. Four, you need grant intelligence integrated into your CRM so you can understand funding timelines and stakeholders. And five, you need a technical discovery framework that accelerates IT validation early in the sales process. All of those challenges create forecast risk. You're closing deals later than you should, you're losing deals because you don't have the right stakeholders aligned, and you're unable to predict when a deal will actually close. **EMILY:** That's perfect. And honestly, I think there's a seventh problem I haven't articulated: We need better deal analytics. Like, for the deals we do close, what was the average cycle time? What stakeholders were involved? How long did faculty adoption take? What was the grant component? If we understood that, we could build better playbooks and forecast better. Right now, we're flying blind on the data side. **MARCUS:** That's a great point. So the underlying problem is that you don't have a system designed for the specific dynamics of higher ed selling. Most sales platforms are built for traditional enterprise sales. But higher ed is fundamentally different: It's seasonal, it's multistakeholder, it's influenced by grants and academic calendars, and it has unique technical validation requirements. **EMILY:** Yes. A hundred percent. We're trying to use a system built for enterprise SaaS to sell into an industry with completely different buying patterns. Something designed for higher ed selling would solve a lot of our problems. **MARCUS:** Awesome. Well, here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to come back with a specific proposal on how Salesloft and Clari can address these challenges. I'm thinking we probably need to talk about: One, how to customize your ROI messaging and track it per stakeholder; two, a change management tracking system so you know where faculty buy-in stands; three, academic calendar integration and forecasting; four, grant intelligence integration; and five, a technical discovery framework. Would that be helpful? **EMILY:** Absolutely. And Marcus, I'll be honest: If you can help us solve these problems, we'll be excited to use your tools. Because right now, we're trying to scale to $150 million with a sales process that's not built for higher ed. That's a recipe for missing forecast. **MARCUS:** Perfect. I'll put something together and we'll connect next week. Thanks again for your time. **EMILY:** Thanks, Marcus. I'm excited about this. --- ## KEY TAKEAWAYS ### Revenue Challenges Identified 1. **Forecast Unpredictability:** Average deal cycles of 9-18 months with high variance due to academic calendars, budget cycles, and grant funding sources 2. **Multiple Economic Buyers with Different ROI Metrics:** CFO (cost), Provost (pedagogy), VP Enrollment (retention) each require different messaging 3. **Faculty Adoption Risk:** 60-70% faculty adoption rates are occurring post-sale because buy-in isn't built during the sales cycle 4. **Grant Funding Opacity:** 30% of pipeline involves potential grant funding, but there's no systematic way to identify eligible grants or manage timeline expectations 5. **Technical Validation Delays:** IT validation is happening too late, creating deal delays and preventing early technical champions from advocating internally ### Operational Gaps 1. **No Structured Change Management:** Reps understand they need "champions" but lack a playbook for identifying, engaging, and supporting them 2. **Poor Deal Visibility:** Challenges tracked informally; no standardized fields for funding source, academic timeline alignment, or stakeholder engagement status 3. **Seasonal Resource Mismatch:** Sales hiring is calendar-year based, but institution buying season is July-October 4. **Limited Pre-Sales Capacity:** 2 pre-sales engineers for entire company; technical discovery happens too late in cycle 5. **No Institutional Buying Intelligence:** Reps don't have systematic visibility into institution-specific budget cycles, committee meeting schedules, or grant office contacts ### Success Metrics That Could Be Defined - **Forecast Accuracy:** Currently unable to predict close dates within 60 days; target: 85% accuracy within 30-day windows - **Change Management ROI:** Implementation timeline variance by faculty adoption quality; potential: 90-day reduction with strong early buy-in - **Pipeline Velocity:** 30-40% of rep time currently spent on out-of-season prospects; potential: 25% reallocation to seasonal opportunities - **Faculty Adoption Rate:** Currently 60-70% post-sale; target: 85%+ at go-live by building support during sales process - **Grant-Funded Revenue:** Currently unmeasured; potential: 15-20% of ARR if systematized ### Next Steps 1. Design customizable ROI framework per stakeholder type and institution demographics 2. Build change management tracking system with faculty champion identification and engagement metrics 3. Integrate academic calendar and institutional buying pattern intelligence into forecast models 4. Develop grant intelligence integration with SalesLoft CRM 5. Create technical discovery framework and pre-sales enablement playbook 6. Implement deal analytics dashboard to inform continuous process improvement --- **Prepared by:** Marcus Chen, Salesloft + Clari **Date:** January 15, 2026 **Status:** Proposal in development **Follow-up:** Week of January 20, 2026