Salesloft MCP Demo Server

# Customer Interview Transcript: Mark Johnson, VP Sales ## Consulting Tech (Consulting Services, $55M ARR) --- ## Metadata **Date:** January 2, 2026 **Duration:** 32 minutes **Participants:** - **Sarah Chen** - Enterprise Sales Director, Salesloft + Clari Platform - **Mark Johnson** - VP Sales, Consulting Tech **Context:** Initial discovery call following inbound lead from industry event. Consulting Tech is a mid-market professional services firm specializing in digital transformation consulting. They currently use Salesforce for CRM and are evaluating revenue intelligence and sales forecasting solutions. --- ## Transcript **[00:00]** **Sarah:** Hey Mark, thanks so much for taking the time today. I know you're busy. I really appreciate it. **Mark:** No problem, Sarah. Happy to chat. We've been looking at our sales process and, you know, there's always room for improvement. What are we talking about today? **Sarah:** So I did some research on Consulting Tech before our call, and I noticed something interesting—your revenue model is pretty different from a typical SaaS company. You've got project-based work, client engagements that vary in length and scope. I wanted to understand how that works for you operationally, especially when it comes to forecasting revenue. **Mark:** Yeah, that's the challenge, right? So we're not subscription-based. Most of our revenue comes from these discrete project engagements that can run anywhere from three months to eighteen months. Some are fixed-price, some are time-and-materials. It's a completely different animal from recurring revenue. **Sarah:** And that's where I think we can help. But before I jump into a pitch, I'm curious—what does your current forecasting process look like? **Mark:** Honestly? It's pretty manual. My team uses Salesforce, obviously, but we've had to build custom fields and processes to try to capture revenue timing. The problem is that our projects don't close like deals. They get negotiated, there's often a Statement of Work that goes back and forth, and then we have milestone-based billing built into most contracts. So we might win a $500K engagement but it gets billed over twelve months in phases. **Sarah:** Right. And how does that affect your forecast accuracy? **Mark:** It's brutal, honestly. CFO hates it. We're constantly revising our forecast because project start dates slip, clients request scope changes mid-engagement, or we're waiting for approval from their side. We often don't know our actual quarterly revenue until the month is nearly done. It's frustrating because we're making business decisions without good visibility. **Sarah:** That's a really common pain point for professional services firms. So you're managing the deal lifecycle in Salesforce, but you're also tracking things like milestone scheduling, revenue recognition timing, and billing phases outside the system? **Mark:** Exactly. We've got some projects tracked in our internal project management tool—we use Monday.com for that—and then financial folks are using Excel to map out when they think revenue will actually be recognized. It's decentralized. My sales team doesn't have good visibility into when cash actually comes in versus when we recognize revenue for accounting purposes. **[03:15]** **Sarah:** That's a big gap. How big is your sales team, by the way? **Mark:** We've got about twelve sales reps right now, including myself and our VP Business Development. We also have a Chief Solutions Architect who sits in on most deals because our offerings are complex and clients want to understand the technical approach. **Sarah:** Got it. So decision-making is pretty collaborative. Is there a formal sales ops function? **Mark:** We don't have a dedicated sales ops person yet. That's been something we've talked about, but for now that responsibility is split between me, our finance team, and the office manager. It's not ideal. **Sarah:** I can imagine. OK so let's zoom out for a second. What are your strategic priorities for 2026? **Mark:** That's a great question. So, three big things: One, we want to improve our pipeline generation. Right now we're doing okay with referrals and repeat customers, but we want to scale beyond that. We need more proactive outbound and better marketing alignment. Two, we want to professionalize our forecasting and reduce surprises to the CFO and board. And three—this is important—we're looking at potentially developing a white-label offering. **Sarah:** White-label? That's interesting. Tell me more about that. **Mark:** So we've had some interest from larger system integrators and consulting firms who want to embed our expertise into their own services. Instead of referring clients to us, they want to white-label some of our capabilities. It could be a significant revenue stream, but it's complicated. The economics have to make sense, we need to protect our brand somehow, and the contract structures are totally different. **[05:30]** **Sarah:** OK, that's a big one. Let me ask you this—have you done any white-label work before? **Mark:** We've had some pilot conversations with two larger firms. One is a Big 4 partner who wants us to staff and deliver work under their brand. Another is a mid-market consulting firm who wants to offer our service as a white-label add-on to their existing engagements. The challenge is figuring out what makes sense economically for us while they're also protecting their margins and their client relationships. **Sarah:** Right. So if you do white-label, those deals would look structurally very different from your direct engagements. **Mark:** Completely different. A direct engagement, the client knows they're hiring Consulting Tech, they're paying us, we manage the relationship. With white-label, the partner is the relationship owner, they're billing the end-client, and we're just executing. Which means we need to think about staffing differently, pricing differently, maybe even contracting differently. And there's a brand piece—how much do we let our brand fade into the background? We've built something we're proud of, right? You don't want to give that away. **Sarah:** That's a really smart concern. I've seen this with other professional services firms. The economics and the brand strategy have to be aligned. So are you leaning toward doing it or hesitant? **Mark:** I think we do it, but selectively. The Big 4 interest, that could be a real opportunity to scale our delivery capacity without having to hire and manage as many people ourselves. But we need to be careful about who we partner with and how we structure these deals. We can't white-label for everyone—our best people have limited capacity. **Sarah:** Makes sense. So if you did white-label work, how would you forecast that revenue differently than your direct work? **Mark:** Honestly, that's part of why we'd need better tools. Right now my forecast is hard enough with direct work. If we layer in white-label partnerships where we don't own the client relationship, where maybe the contract is between the partner and us, and the partner's billing their client... that's a whole new complexity layer. **[07:45]** **Sarah:** So you'd need to track multiple revenue recognition methods in parallel. **Mark:** Exactly. GAAP revenue recognition is already complicated for us. With white-label, we'd need to track when the partner bills us or when they achieve certain milestones, which then triggers our revenue recognition. It's not the same as our direct deals at all. **Sarah:** Right. And your CFO would need good visibility into that. **Mark:** Absolutely. And honestly, we haven't even had that conversation yet with finance about what the accounting treatment would be. We probably need to talk to our accountants before we structure any of these deals. **Sarah:** That's actually really important. So here's what I'm hearing: You've got a manual, fragmented forecasting process for your core business right now. Your team is split between Salesforce and other tools. You're looking to improve pipeline generation and forecasting accuracy. And you're exploring a white-label channel that's going to add complexity to your revenue model. Have I got that right? **Mark:** Yeah, that's pretty accurate. The white-label thing is new, so it's not urgent, but it's on the roadmap. The immediate pain is just better visibility into what we're actually going to deliver and when. And better alignment between sales and finance. **Sarah:** OK, so let me tell you what we're seeing with other professional services firms. A lot of them are in a similar situation. They use Salesforce, but Salesforce wasn't really built for milestone-based or project-based revenue recognition. It's built for deal-based sales. So they end up with either very complex custom configurations or they're running parallel systems. What Clari does is sit on top of your existing systems—so you keep using Salesforce—but we give you visibility into when revenue is actually going to recognize based on project timelines, contract terms, and billing milestones. **Mark:** OK, so you're not replacing Salesforce. **Sarah:** No, not at all. We integrate with Salesforce. Clari pulls in your opportunity data, your contract terms, and with a little setup, your project milestone data. Then we show you what your revenue actually looks like for the next six quarters based on when things are actually going to bill. **[09:30]** **Mark:** And the forecast refreshes automatically? **Sarah:** It can. You can set it up to pull in real-time data from Salesforce, or you can manually input certain data points. For your business, I'd probably recommend pulling opportunity data automatically, but you'd probably want to manually input milestone and billing information because that's specific to your SOWs. **Mark:** And what about the white-label stuff? Can it handle multiple contract types? **Sarah:** Yes, actually. We have customers doing exactly that. They have direct engagements, they have reseller or channel relationships, some even have licensing models. You can set up different revenue recognition logic for different deal types. So a white-label engagement would have different logic than a direct engagement. **Mark:** Interesting. That's actually really helpful. **Sarah:** I'm glad. Now, let me ask—when you think about rolling something like this out in your organization, what's your concern? **Mark:** Adoption, honestly. My sales team is used to Salesforce. Getting them to use another tool, checking another dashboard... I don't want to just add more work for them. And my CFO is going to want to understand it before she signs off on it. She's going to ask if it's better than what they're doing now in Excel. **Sarah:** Fair. So you need a clear value prop for your sales team and a clear value prop for finance. **Mark:** Right. For sales, it's got to save them time or give them better insights that help them close more deals. For finance, it's got to make their job easier. Right now they're doing a lot of manual work to figure out revenue timing. **[11:00]** **Sarah:** Got it. So what does a sales rep need to see to find value in a tool like this? **Mark:** They want to know their pipeline health. They want to know which deals are at risk. They want to understand how much revenue is actually on track to close in the quarter. And frankly, they want to be better at forecasting so that our CEO stops putting pressure on them when we miss projections. **Sarah:** Makes sense. Clari does a lot of that. We actually have AI-powered anomaly detection, so if a deal hasn't had activity in a while, we'll flag it. We show pipeline health by stage. We give you deal-by-deal revenue timing. So your team can quickly see, "OK, this deal is closing in Q2, it's going to bill 40% upfront and 60% over four quarters." **Mark:** And then I as the VP Sales can see a roll-up view of all my reps' deals? **Sarah:** Exactly. You can filter by rep, by industry, by deal size, by revenue timing. You can see if your team's forecasts are realistic compared to historical close rates and pipeline velocity. **Mark:** That's actually appealing. I spend a lot of time right now manually asking my reps for updates, chasing them for forecast numbers. If I had a dashboard... **Sarah:** You wouldn't have to chase as much. Yeah. Now, let me ask about something else. You mentioned you've been looking at pipeline generation. We have a product that integrates with Salesloft, which is an engagement and cadence tool. So you could have Clari helping you forecast revenue accurately, and you could have Salesloft helping your team run outbound campaigns, automate follow-ups, and manage their sales sequences. **Mark:** So you work with Salesloft? **Sarah:** We do. We're partners. They focus on execution and engagement; we focus on forecasting and revenue intelligence. A lot of customers use both. **Mark:** Do they play nice together? **Sarah:** Really well, actually. Your data flows from Salesforce into both systems, but they're doing different things with it. Salesloft is helping your reps execute pipeline-building activities. Clari is helping you see and forecast the revenue from that pipeline once it lands in your forecast. **[13:00]** **Mark:** And I assume that's an additional cost on top of Clari? **Sarah:** It is, but there's a bundled pricing option if you commit to both. I'd want to understand your pipeline generation challenges better before I quote anything, but yeah, this would be an investment. **Mark:** OK. Well, pipeline is definitely something we need to improve. Right now it's pretty organic—it's referrals, it's me out there having conversations, attending events. It's not systematic. We need to be more intentional about prospecting. **Sarah:** What would systematic look like to you? **Mark:** Honestly, we'd want to focus on certain industries and company sizes where we have successful case studies and deep expertise. Maybe we do some targeted LinkedIn outreach, maybe we do some email campaigns to companies in those verticals. And then we have a sequence of follow-ups, maybe phone calls, maybe lunch meetings. We haven't built this out yet. **Sarah:** And who would be executing that? **Mark:** Probably three of my sales reps would own outbound while the other reps focus on managing existing relationships and closing larger strategic deals. So you'd have an outbound team and an account management side. **Sarah:** That's a really common structure. And is there budget for this? **Mark:** There is. We know we need to grow revenue faster, and right now we're kind of limited by pipeline. Our delivery is solid, our close rates are good, but we're not generating enough opportunities to hit the growth we want. **Sarah:** What's your growth target? **Mark:** We're aiming for 35% year-over-year growth. To do that, we probably need to grow our average deal size a little bit, but more importantly, we need more deals in the pipeline. Probably 60% more opportunities than we have today. **[14:45]** **Sarah:** OK, so meaningful growth. Let me ask about your hiring plan. How many reps are you looking to add this year? **Mark:** We're planning to hire two new reps and maybe a sales development rep. So three people total on the revenue side. We also want to hire a couple of delivery people because we're getting pinched on the delivery side—there's good demand, but we can't staff it. **Sarah:** And what does your hiring timeline look like? **Mark:** We usually do most of our hiring in Q1 and Q3. That's just the nature of our business. Consulting hiring is seasonal because a lot of our clients have fiscal year budgets that reset at certain times. So if we're going to do outbound campaigns or step up our business development, timing matters. **Sarah:** Interesting. So there's seasonality to your demand? **Mark:** Totally. We see big upticks in Q1 and Q4 when companies are planning for the new year or wrapping up budget before year-end. Summer is slow. And then Q3, there's another wave when companies are revising their strategy for the back half of the year. **Sarah:** That's really useful context. So if you're going to launch a new outbound program, you'd want to start that in... when? **Mark:** Probably now, actually. Q1 is our best quarter, so we'd want to have campaigns running to capture that demand. If we wait until March, we've missed the window. **Sarah:** So you'd want to start ramping these activities pretty soon. **Mark:** Yeah, like January or early February ideally. **Sarah:** Got it. Now, let me go back to something you mentioned earlier—you're getting interest in white-label offerings. How serious is that conversation? Is it a nice-to-have or is it something you want to pursue this year? **[16:15]** **Mark:** I'd say it's serious but not urgent. The Big 4 firm we're talking to, they want us to do a small pilot first—maybe $100K to $200K of work. Use that as a proof of concept. If it works, we'd talk about a bigger engagement. The other firm is a bit more exploratory. **Sarah:** And who inside your organization is championing the white-label idea? **Mark:** That's actually a good question. It's me and our Chief Solutions Architect. We see the opportunity. But we haven't brought in our CEO and CFO in a detailed way yet. We've just said, "Hey, we're getting inbound interest, we should explore this." **Sarah:** Are they on board with it? **Mark:** I think they would be, but we'd need to make a clear business case. The CFO is always conservative about anything that diverts resources from our core business. And the CEO wants to make sure we're not damaging the Consulting Tech brand by hiding behind partners' brands. **Sarah:** That's actually a really important concern. Have you thought through how you'd position white-label in terms of your brand strategy? **Mark:** Not deeply, no. We'd probably want to have a tiered approach—some partners we're willing to be completely white-label for, others we might want to maintain some brand visibility. Like, internally they know it's Consulting Tech, but externally the partner's logo is on everything. **Sarah:** That's actually smart. And from a pricing perspective, would you charge differently for white-label work? **Mark:** Probably. We'd need lower pricing because the partner is taking the margin, they're taking the client relationship risk, they're handling support. We'd be the delivery engine. So our margin might be 35-40%, whereas on a direct engagement we might be 50-60%. **[18:00]** **Sarah:** Right. And you'd be okay with that tradeoff because it's predictable revenue and lower client acquisition cost. **Mark:** Exactly. If it's a Big 4 partnership, that's a long-term revenue stream with a known partner. That's interesting to us. We don't have to do business development with the end-client. We just deliver. **Sarah:** Got it. So here's what I'm thinking: If you're going to explore white-label, you're going to need the ability to forecast that revenue accurately in parallel with your direct business. And you're going to need clarity on what your economics look like—what your markup should be, what the contract terms should be. This is actually a really good use case for Clari because you could model different white-label scenarios and see the revenue impact. **Mark:** How would that work? **Sarah:** So let's say you do the Big 4 pilot. You'd want to track it as a separate revenue stream. You can set up white-label as a deal type in Clari, and then when you're evaluating future white-label partnerships, you can see, "OK, pilot delivered $150K. If we scale to three partners at this economics, we'd expect $3M of white-label revenue by year-end." That helps you decide if it's worth pursuing. **Mark:** That's actually really valuable. Right now we can't easily model that kind of thing. **Sarah:** I know. So that's one more reason why having revenue intelligence matters. It's not just about forecasting what you've already got; it's about modeling new business models and understanding their impact. **[19:30]** **Mark:** OK so I'm getting a clearer picture of how this could help. Let me ask you this though—and I don't mean this as a brush-off—but why should we buy Clari instead of building a solution in-house? We're a consulting firm. We have smart people. We could probably build a tool that does exactly what we need for our business. **Sarah:** That's a fair question. And honestly, some of our competitors say the same thing. Here's what I'd argue: One, speed. If you want to improve your forecasting and pipeline visibility in Q1, you're not going to build that in-house by Q1. You might start the project, but you're not going to have something production-ready. Two, expertise. We've built this for hundreds of professional services firms. We understand the edge cases, the revenue recognition complexities, the contract term variations. You'd have to learn all that. Three, maintenance. Once you build it, you have to maintain it. When Salesforce changes their API, we update our integration. You'd have to do that yourself. And four, you'd be pulling your best people off other projects. **Mark:** Fair points. But speed is just about time-to-value, right? If we're going to adopt something, we need to change our sales process and our forecasting discipline anyway. **Sarah:** That's true. You do need to change your process. But you can do that with a product like Clari without the burden of building and maintaining the tool yourself. Think of it this way: Is forecasting accuracy a core competitive advantage for Consulting Tech? **Mark:** No, honestly. Our competitive advantage is our delivery expertise and our people. We want good forecasting, but it's not what we're trying to sell to clients. **Sarah:** Right. So why would you want to build it? You're diverting smart people from building IP that clients actually value. You're maintaining a system that's not part of your core offering. It's a resource allocation question. **[21:15]** **Mark:** I hear you. I guess I was thinking about it from a "we have the technical chops" angle, but you're right—even if we can build it, should we build it is the real question. **Sarah:** Exactly. And the answer for most consulting firms is no. They'd rather buy a solution and focus their engineering and product resources on offerings that generate revenue. **Mark:** OK, that's fair. So assuming we wanted to move forward, what would the next steps look like? **Sarah:** So, a few things. First, I'd want to do a deeper discovery with you, your CFO, and maybe your finance team. Understand your revenue recognition policies, your contract structure, your deal stages. Second, we'd probably want to do a proof-of-concept with a subset of your data. So we'd connect to your Salesforce environment, pull in data from three or four of your largest deals, and show you what the forecast looks like in Clari versus what you have today. Third, we'd talk pricing and implementation. **Mark:** How long would a POC take? **Sarah:** Typically two to three weeks. We'd need a little bit of IT time from you to set up the Salesforce integration, and we'd need you to provide contract information for those sample deals. But nothing too heavy. **Mark:** And then if we want to go ahead, how long is implementation? **Sarah:** Depends on complexity. For a firm your size with your deal structure, I'd estimate four to six weeks to full rollout. That includes data migration, custom configuration for your revenue recognition logic, some training for your team, and stabilization. **Mark:** And cost? **Sarah:** I don't want to throw a number at you without understanding your needs better, but for a firm your size, Clari typically runs between $15K and $30K per month depending on configuration and data volume. And if you add Salesloft for the pipeline generation piece, that's another $5K to $10K per month. **[23:00]** **Mark:** So $20K to $40K per month combined. **Sarah:** That's in the ballpark. But here's the thing—if you're adding $3M to $5M of white-label revenue that you're forecasting more accurately, or if you're improving your pipeline by 30-40% because you're running more systematic outbound campaigns, the ROI is pretty straightforward. **Mark:** Yeah, I mean, if Salesloft helps us generate 20% more pipeline, that's huge. And if Clari helps our CFO stop losing sleep about surprise revenue shortfalls, that's worth something too. **Sarah:** Exactly. So what I'd suggest is, let's do that deeper discovery call. I'd love to talk to your CFO and your finance team. We can walk through your revenue recognition policies, your contract terms. And then we can put together a proposal for a POC. **Mark:** When would you want to do that? **Sarah:** How about next week? I can coordinate with your team. We'd probably need an hour, hour and a half. **Mark:** Yeah, that could work. Let me check with my calendar and my CFO, and I'll send you a few options. **Sarah:** Perfect. And just so I'm clear on some next steps and what we should dig into—so we've got your core business, which is project-based consulting engagements with milestone billing. You want better forecasting and better visibility into revenue timing. You're exploring white-label partnerships, which would add a new revenue stream with different economics. You want to improve your pipeline generation with more systematic outbound. And you're thinking about hiring a few new people to support that growth. Does that capture it? **Mark:** That's exactly right. I'm also curious, when we talk to your team—do you have people who've worked with other consulting firms? Because I'd like to learn from their playbooks. **[24:45]** **Sarah:** Absolutely. We can definitely bring in someone who's worked with similar firms. They can walk you through what other professional services companies are doing, what's worked, what hasn't. I think that would be really valuable context for you. **Mark:** Great. That's helpful. I have one more question before we wrap up. You mentioned the partnership with Salesloft. If we're going to do outbound pipeline generation, is Salesloft the only option, or should we be looking at other tools? **Sarah:** That's a good question. Salesloft is strong for outbound execution—cadences, email, sequencing, tracking engagement. There are other options like Outreach or Reply. The value of the Salesloft partnership is that we integrate closely, so your data flows between Clari and Salesloft. But ultimately, you should pick the best tool for your needs. Some teams prefer Outreach, some prefer Reply. And we integrate with them too, though not as deeply as with Salesloft. **Mark:** OK, so it's not a requirement? **Sarah:** No. But if you go with Salesloft, we can offer some bundled pricing, and the integration is seamless. So it does make sense from a cost and integration standpoint. **Mark:** Got it. I think that's helpful. Let me think about it, and I'll send you those calendar options for next week. **Sarah:** Sounds great. And Mark, I appreciate your openness to exploring this. I think there's a real opportunity here, especially as you scale. The firms that get forecasting and pipeline generation right tend to hit their growth targets more consistently. And that's what I want to see for Consulting Tech. **Mark:** Thanks, Sarah. I appreciate it. This was a really thoughtful conversation. It's not just you pitching me on software; you're asking the right questions about our business. **Sarah:** That's the goal. We can't help you unless we understand what you're really trying to do. So let's dig in next week, and we'll figure out if Clari and Salesloft are the right fit. **Mark:** Sounds good. Talk to you next week. **[26:15]** --- ## Key Takeaways & Insights ### 1. **Project-Based Revenue Recognition is a Real Pain Point** - Mark's team manages complex revenue timing across multiple billing scenarios (fixed-price, T&M, milestone-based) - Current process is highly manual: Salesforce + Monday.com + Excel spreadsheets - Revenue recognition happens at a different cadence than deal close, causing forecasting friction - CFO involvement and approval is critical—finance needs visibility into timing and accounting treatment - **Opportunity**: Clari's ability to model multiple revenue recognition methods simultaneously is a direct solution ### 2. **White-Label Strategy is Emerging and Creates New Complexity** - Mark sees significant upside in partnership models (Big 4 firm pilot: $100K-$200K) - White-label economics are fundamentally different (lower margins ~35-40% vs. 50-60% on direct work) - Brand strategy needs to be defined alongside business model (internal visibility vs. external co-branding) - **Executive buy-in is NOT yet complete** on white-label (CEO and CFO haven't been deeply engaged) - This creates an opportunity to position revenue intelligence as a tool for modeling new business scenarios - **Opportunity**: Help Mark make the business case for white-label by showing revenue impact modeling ### 3. **Pipeline Generation is a Systematic Weakness** - Currently relies on organic growth (referrals, personal networks, events) - Recognition that this is limiting growth to current targets (35% YoY) - Identified need: $3M of additional pipeline (60% increase) to hit growth targets - Structure being considered: Dedicated outbound team (3 reps) + account management focus for senior reps - Timing matters: Q1 and Q3 are strongest seasons; Q1 campaigns need to launch immediately (Jan/Feb) - **Opportunity**: Salesloft + Clari bundle positions as growth accelerant (outbound execution + revenue forecasting) ### 4. **Build vs. Buy Decision Has Already Been Made (Somewhat)** - Mark's initial instinct: "We're a consulting firm, we could build this ourselves" - Counter was effective: Speed, expertise, resource allocation, and maintenance burden - Key insight: **Forecasting is not a core competitive advantage** for Consulting Tech - Implication: Mark is open to buying if the ROI is clear - **Risk mitigation**: Bring in reference customers from similar professional services firms to share playbooks ### 5. **Organizational Buy-In Requirements** - **Mark's role**: Sees the opportunity, understands sales and business development needs, pushing forward - **CFO's concerns**: Visibility into accounting treatment, revenue recognition policy alignment, ROI on investment - **CEO's concerns**: Brand strategy, resource diversion from core business, partnership criteria - **Sales team's adoption**: Want pipeline health visibility and forecast clarity (not just another tool to manage) - **Action item**: Next week's discovery call MUST include CFO and finance team—without their buy-in, deal won't move ### 6. **Contract Structure and Economics Insights** - Direct deals: 12-18 month engagements, milestone billing, often 40% upfront / 60% over time - White-label deals: Partner-owned relationships, lower margins, predictable volumes with known partners - Deal sizes: Ranging from $100K to $500K+ (based on Mark's references) - Pricing sensitivity: Not expressed; Mark seems more interested in value than cost - Key metric for white-label: Big 4 pilot, then scale to 3+ partners for $3M run-rate ### 7. **Integration and Tool Preferences** - Current stack: Salesforce (CRM) + Monday.com (project management) + Excel (forecasting) - Open to adding new tools if they reduce manual work and improve accuracy - Salesloft integration appeal: Bundled pricing + seamless data flow - Not a religious preference for any particular tool—open to alternatives (Outreach, Reply) if better fit - IT support needed for integrations, but not positioned as a blocker ### 8. **Implementation Timeline Expectations** - POC timeline: 2-3 weeks (aggressive, which is good) - Full implementation: 4-6 weeks for firm of this size and complexity - Next steps: Discovery call next week with CFO, then POC proposal if aligned - Mark wants peer insights from other consulting firms before committing --- ## Sales Strategy & Next Steps ### Immediate Actions 1. **Schedule CFO discovery call** (target: Within 5 business days) - Must cover: Revenue recognition policies, contract terms, accounting treatment for white-label - Bring in Clari architect to discuss technical approach 2. **Prepare POC proposal** with: - Sample deals (3-4 largest current engagements) - White-label scenario modeling (if Big 4 pilot is documented) - Comparison: Clari forecast vs. current Excel/Salesforce process 3. **Develop ROI model** showing: - Pipeline generation impact: 60% increase = X% revenue growth - Forecasting accuracy improvement: Reduce surprises to CFO - White-label enablement: New $3M+ revenue stream 4. **Prepare reference strategy**: - Identify 2-3 Clari customers in professional services (similar size/complexity) - Have them available for Mark to reference before final decision ### Key Risk Factors - **Executive alignment not yet complete**: CEO and CFO need more time to warm to white-label strategy - **Competitive alternatives**: Mark may evaluate other forecast/pipeline tools during POC - **Timeline pressure**: If Mark waits on CEO/CFO alignment, POC could slip into Feb/March when pipeline season is less urgent - **Price sensitivity**: $20K-$40K/month is not insignificant for a $55M ARR firm—ROI case must be airtight ### Strengths in This Deal - **Clear pain point**: Manual, error-prone forecasting with no single source of truth - **Growth driver**: Pipeline generation is acknowledged weakness with resources to fix it - **Forward-looking opportunity**: White-label strategy creates need for new forecasting capability - **Champion in place**: Mark is enthusiastic, understands the business case, and has credibility to move it internally - **Budget awareness**: No budget constraints mentioned; growth targets suggest investment capacity - **Timeline alignment**: Need to launch outbound campaigns in Jan/Feb suggests urgency on pipeline solution --- ## Quote & Conversation Notes **Most telling quote from Mark:** > "We're aiming for 35% year-over-year growth. To do that, we probably need to grow our average deal size a little bit, but more importantly, we need more deals in the pipeline. Probably 60% more opportunities than we have today." This directly validates the Salesloft + Clari bundle value prop: Salesloft generates the pipeline, Clari forecasts it accurately and models white-label scenarios. **CFO's implied concern (from Mark's mention):** > "CFO hates it. We're constantly revising our forecast because project start dates slip, clients request scope changes mid-engagement... It's frustrating because we're making business decisions without good visibility." This is the financial urgency driver. CFO will be the decision-maker for forecasting tools, and she's clearly frustrated with status quo.