Defined the vision and prototype for Clari’s next-generation AI-driven AE experience — the foundation for post-merger platform strategy.
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In late 2025, I led a four-week initiative to define the AE Workspace—a unified, action-first “sales cockpit” adopted as the North Star vision for the Clari × Salesloft product ecosystem post-merger. Before this work, Account Executives (AEs) were forced to switch constantly between disjointed tools—Groove for actions, Copilot for calls, Align for mutual plans, and Clari Core for inspection and forecasting. The proposed AE Workspace consolidated the most important daily workflows into one adaptive view where reps could prepare for meetings, access contextual insights, and take both internal (forecasting, pipeline updates) and external (calls, emails, outreach) actions without leaving the surface.
Strategically, the work signaled a shift toward elevating the sales-rep persona as a first-class customer instead of designing primarily for leadership and RevOps. My unique leverage came from combining AI-assisted research synthesis with high-fidelity, multi-surface design—web, extension, and mobile—to articulate an actionable and intuitive future vision leadership could immediately align around.
Clari entered this effort amid major transformation. A new VP of Product from competitor Outreach brought a strong persona-first perspective and was rethinking the product organization around cross-functional journeys. At the same time, the merger with Salesloft created urgency to define how two sales-engagement ecosystems would unify. Competition from Gong intensified the stakes; their AI-driven workflows and integrated UI were winning deals where Clari lacked a cohesive AE experience.
AEs consistently felt underserved. Groove, though acquired to strengthen Clari’s sales-engagement story, had not been unified across the platform. Guide—the new “homepage”—was optimized for manager inspection, not daily AE execution. Reps repeatedly told us, “I just want to know exactly what I need to do next.” RO Workspace, positioned as a deep inspection surface, “checked the box” but did not reflect how AEs actually worked.
If we didn’t intervene, Clari risked continuing to invest heavily in the RO Workspace effort without addressing core AE needs. In a post-merger landscape where Salesloft is deeply aligned with sales-rep workflows, this misalignment could have widened experience gaps and reduced competitive credibility.
Joyce’s initial ask was intentionally ambiguous: “We need to think about AEs—and what the ideal experience should be for them.” She asked Andrew (PM) and me to begin exploring a new concept, but it quickly became clear the deeper need was to rebuild trust with our own AEs. Internal reps often didn’t use Clari’s tools, describing Clari as a “leadership platform” rather than one built for them. Negative feedback wasn’t reaching leadership forums, creating an optimism bias around Guide.
Non-goals:
Success test: Produce a validated, intuitive concept strong enough to be adopted as the AE North Star vision across Clari × Salesloft leadership.
The core team consisted of:
Scope I owned:
End-to-end design strategy, research synthesis, differentiation between AE and RO Workspaces, IA and workflow definition, high-fidelity visual design, and the vision presentation for C-level review.
We operated in a tight cadence: daily design reviews between Aaron, Andrew, and me; and every few days, strategic alignment with Joyce. My decision rights spanned design direction, narrative framing, and cross-workspace definition. I delegated early explorations, but took a hands-on role in structuring the concept, building high-fidelity screens, and preparing the executive materials.
This was full-field leadership—balancing delegation with direct contribution to accelerate clarity.
Across 13 sessions—four with Competitive Intel, eight with internal AEs, and one external AE—patterns emerged quickly:
AI-assisted transcript analysis accelerated our synthesis. Instead of spending weeks manually clustering themes, I used AI to pull patterns, visualize relationships via mind-maps, and identify core opportunity areas. These insights directly shaped the IA—prioritizing action queues, contextual intelligence, and adaptive workflows.
Our design strategy anchored on three principles:
Through continuous feedback, we iterated on how actions were grouped and represented—evaluating multiple patterns before settling on unified cards with progress indicators and contextual insights.
The North Star storyboard followed an AE through a full day: morning prioritization → meeting prep → customer conversation → AI-generated summary → post-call actions. Each frame reinforced the value of having all relevant data and actions in one place.
For v1, we expect existing Salesloft Rhythm components to play a role, with future iterations moving toward the full AE Workspace vision.
We designed the AE Workspace as a central “sales cockpit” that anchors the AE’s workday. The experience architecture aligned to seven modes of work: morning planning, meeting prep, in-meeting context, outbound engagement, internal collaboration, deal updates, and end-of-day cleanup. Each mode informed a capability cluster—tasking, insights, timeline, account context, and meeting actions—reducing reliance on deeper surfaces like RO Workspace or Copilot.
The primary wireflow tracked the AE from initial login to post-meeting actions. We focused on collapsing context switching by surfacing historical context, recommended next steps, meeting details, and account signals in one adaptive view.
Craft decisions emphasized hierarchy and clarity: grouped action cards, simplified microcopy, IRIS-based patterns for consistency, and subtle motion to signal state without distraction.
We evaluated two strong options but did not ship them. Expanding RO Workspace for AEs aligned with sunk cost but created friction by requiring deep navigation. A dashboard-heavy variant showed comprehensive data but failed the action-first principle and overloaded cognitive load.
The chosen direction aligned with user needs—speed, clarity, and contextual intelligence.
We ran a four-week sprint with a tight review rhythm. Daily critiques with Aaron and Andrew ensured rapid iteration; periodic alignment with Joyce kept the work strategically grounded and prepared for executive review.
We led with a risk-first approach. The largest risk—confusion between AE and RO Workspaces—was surfaced and resolved early through the “daily flow vs. deep work” framing that became foundational.
Quality safeguards included IRIS design system use, meticulous annotation of states and behaviors, and structured critique focused on cognitive load reduction. Despite the pace, this ensured conceptual integrity.
We proceeded in a scrappy, high-velocity manner—building first, validating fast, and course-correcting as needed. Waiting for formal alignment would have slowed progress; instead, the concept served as the catalyst for alignment.
Internal AE feedback validated the direction. Reps immediately understood the intent: less navigation, more action. The VP of Product relayed positive feedback from Salesloft leaders, the CEO, and board-level participants—the concept required minimal explanation and mapped cleanly to how Salesloft thinks about seller workflows.
Because this was a vision initiative, outcomes were measured through alignment rather than metrics. The AE Workspace is now referenced as a key component of the unified sales-engagement direction.
As tensions rose between the AE Workspace and RO Workspace initiatives, I reframed the conversation from ownership to user value. By defining the boundary between daily flow and deep inspection, I provided a shared model that helped both teams see their work as complementary rather than competitive. This clarity reduced friction and enabled faster alignment across product leadership.
With ambiguity high and timelines short, I made the decision to move forward without waiting for formal approvals. Building tangible concepts early gave AEs, PMs, and executives something concrete to react to. This judgment call prevented delay and created momentum at a critical moment.
I modeled a modern, accelerated research → insight → concept loop using AI-driven transcript analysis. This demonstrated that rigor and speed can coexist and helped the team recalibrate expectations around how quickly insights can drive strategy. It raised the bar for how we synthesize learning across the organization.
I would incorporate external AE feedback earlier to validate the breadth of workflows across different selling motions. While internal AE validation was strong, external voices would have added more nuance up front.
I would also introduce lightweight metrics to measure friction reduction—steps removed, time-to-action, and perceived clarity. These signals weren’t necessary for executive alignment, but they would strengthen the transition into roadmap planning and future validation cycles.
