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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene (00:00):
Hey everybody. Welcome to V5 where we spend about five minutes getting on our soapbox. Some of the hottest takes in all of B2B sales and all things go to market. It's going to be a fun one. I got Ann Davis, CRO of Crunchbase and tell the folks on your mind this morning.
Ann Davis (00:18):
Hi. So yes, my hot take in sales is that sellers, it's not just about closing, it's about forecasting. Sales today is really about pattern recognition, anticipating needs and understanding outcomes. So great sellers can spot these signals before competitors and potentially even before the buyers realize the need. That's why predictive intelligence is replacing a lot of these spray-and-pray tactics. There's a lot of noise in the market today, and I think that the real differentiator is through this pattern recognition. We have effective reps being able to spot those signals before other people and whether it's a company about to raise funding or they're hiring aggressively or they're launching a new product. So we're trying to give sales the tools to become forecasters, which means empowering them with predictive intelligence to prioritize where the high feeds are, see where the people are not doing well and potentially they're going out of business, but being able to anticipate those business needs and move faster than the competition.
(01:28):
That's really where it's at today. I think AI has helped sales a lot to process historical data, but they still is not getting there yet in terms of predicting where it's going. I look at companies that have hundreds of salespeople and they're focused on a target group of 50,000 companies. It's like, how do you weed through that data? Where as leaders, we're trying to make sure that we're keeping our reps focused on selling and getting them out of all of the research and admin tasks. So there's so many tools, but how can we really use data to direct them where they should be spending their time because it's going to get the most bang for their buck versus where not. And I think that's something that's often overlooked today.
Jarod Greene (02:21):
Love it. Yeah, I think there's no shortage of tools out there in the market that say that they help sellers do their job more effectively. I think there's a good kind of tech infographic out there, probably north of like 2000 logos on the thing. It's just overwhelming. And again, I think with all those tools, there's a bunch of data and a bunch of data creates a lot of exhaust, both in terms of the smoke that's there, but also just the value. When you think about what types of signals, give us an example of one or two that a intuitive seller would see and know and act on versus maybe a novice wouldn't see as quickly and maybe not be as profitable when it's all said and done.
Ann Davis (03:03):
Yeah, so a great one I think is the growth score or the growth trajectory of the company. Obviously because Crunchbase is built upon 80 million users of our platform and 17 years of doing this, we have a lot of proprietary data that we could use AI to put together what these predictions are, and they're quite accurate. So I think from the standpoint of if I can see that this company is growing and we are predicting that they're going to be doing a raise in let's say the next three to six months, that would be a prospect to get into early on because startup companies don't typically write RFPs. They find a tool that's going to work for their needs at that point in time, and they jump in, but often need to wait for the funding to buy it. So I think that's how we're seeing a lot of our customers get to these companies in advance of their competition because their competition is typically looking at historical data, which is in the rear view mirror and they're missing out on the prediction aspect of this.
Jarod Greene (04:06):
Totally. So lemme ask you this then. How do you and the team do it in a way where you don't freak people out if you're being intuitive and you're sensing what's about to happen in ways that maybe even that buying team isn't aware of? How do you make them aware of the fact that you are aware of something that might create a need in the future and then get them to act on it? To me feels like a really delicate dance. I'm fascinated at how you work that.
Ann Davis (04:34):
Yeah, I think it's just salespeople and marketing folks doing what they do, but it's more about targeting the right teams and companies based upon where they're at in their own growth trajectory and the need for your product. So if we've identified our ICP as X and I can now use this data to say, okay, out of these 4 million companies that we're potentially going after, these 10,000 are the ones we need to focus our efforts on, because that is what's going to multiply our pipeline and increase our top line revenue because we're hitting these people at the right time where based upon where they're at in their own journey, our product is needed.
Jarod Greene (05:18):
Got it. Makes a ton of sense. And then what do you think, again, you talked a little bit about AI. AI allows us to do all this at this massive scale, and so one of the things we spend a lot of time on is how do you arm sales teams with the AI in a way that makes it a friend and not a foe, but also allows them to bring their unique skillset, their unique humanness to the deal who we're working with, where we're still working with people at the end of the day. So how do you think about balancing the need of AI for massive scale, but also the humanness that allows us to get things transacted?
Ann Davis (05:56):
And I've been in sales for over 30 years and I don't think the human aspect is ever going to completely go out of it specifically in technology sales because you need the ability to connect with the humans and help answer their questions and help them understand the value in the business outcomes that your solution is going to deliver. And I just don't feel like interacting with an AI bot to get all that is going to happen in the next five years. Who knows? Maybe it will. I don't think just throwing the word AI in sells itself.
(06:32):
So I think that where it's really helping salespeople is a lot of that backend research, like helping them drop in the 10-K and everything about a company and being able to learn if your company is advanced in AI, they're doing this for you. So cutting again out of your time that you're spending and giving you more time to actually sell. I've seen areas where plugging in the AI SDRs really just trying to connect with people that have shown interest to book the meeting because booking a meeting, that's not necessarily something that is going to require as much of a human touch as I think the sales process still does.
Jarod Greene (07:12):
Absolutely. Yeah, he's a great insight. So we appreciate it. Five minutes goes quick. So let me ask you this thing. If folks wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about you, about what Crunchbase is up to, where do they find you?
Ann Davis (07:24):
Crunchbase.com is where to start. And my email address is adavis@crunchbase.com
Jarod Greene (07:30):
Just give you to email y'all. So feel free to reach out and leverage any of your presence on LinkedIn. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for the insights and we wish you well. Thank you so much.
Ann Davis (07:41):
Thank you. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.