TechBytes with Bernie Kassar, Chief Customer Officer at Xactly

Hi, please tell us about your role and the team/technology at Xactly.

As chief customer officer at Xactly, I lead Xactly’s customer success, support, account management and business development teams and drive our customer acquisition pipeline.

Xactly’s sales performance management (SPM) software delivers planning, execution and optimization to sales organizations across industries. We partner with the world’s top enterprises to clear roadblocks for their sales teams. Our unique, 15-year data set allows us to give customers the real-world insights they need to improve sales performance.

You recently announced free access to territory design and SPM tool- AlignStar. What is AlignStar all about?

AlignStar is our territory design and planning solution software. Using AI and data analytics, AlignStar eliminates uncertainty in quota, capacity and territory planning so that sales organizations can hit revenue targets and drive top-line growth amidst changing market conditions, like we’ve seen lately in light of COVID-19. Specifically, it allows customers to accomplish three crucial real-time initiatives:

1. Automate Territory Alignment – Sales ops professionals can easily upload their data and quickly visualize recommended territory alignments based on company requirements.
2. Identify “White-Space” Opportunities – AlignStar’s built-in thematic maps help to identify opportunities that may have been overlooked.
3. Build & Compare “What-if” Models – It’s critical to quickly build and compare multiple territory scenarios to make educated decisions about the right next step.

COVID-19 has wrecked businesses of all sizes and scales. As the Chief Customer Officer at Xactly, what has been your response to the various disruptions?

Our entire organization is focused first and foremost on showing empathy and helping our customers navigate these difficult and uncertain times. We are connecting on a very human level and asking what they need from us right now. The reality of the situation is that we are in an economic crisis, and businesses across the board have become even more reliant on their salespeople to meet their numbers and drive revenue. Our central mission has always been to help sales organizations reach their full potential, and that mission carries even greater weight today.

Much of our focus lately has been on helping customers pivot their sales plans quickly based on the new challenges they’re facing under heightened pressure and with limited resources.

How does Xactly enable customers to dynamically adjust to changing sales scenarios?

Territory planning has been especially crucial to our customers during this time. When the economic impacts of COVID-19 hit, many of them had to immediately redirect their sales teams in order to drive more revenue. Our AlignStar product enabled them to take a critical look at their existing territories and repurpose them. The software quickly models and visualizes the different what-if scenarios that customers are considering so they can make an informed decision on how to pivot and better align their sales teams with available opportunities.

When customers are picking convenience over experience, how do you balance the two at Xactly?

At Xactly, we have an imperative to combine convenience and experience, giving our customers simple, user-friendly and effective tools that leverage data to motivate sales reps and foster their success.

One example of how we’re applying this is through a new Slack integration we recently announced, which enhances transparency and productivity across sales teams by providing a new avenue for reps to track their performance, directly in their Slack workflow — meeting them exactly where they are during this remote work era.

Read Also: Maximizing Sales Performance is No Longer Just About Compensation

 

Which Marketing and Sales platforms are you currently integrating with — CRM, Customer support, and Communication?

Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Slack and many others based off of our open API architecture.

Thank you Bernie for sharing your insights.