Suggestions
• Skip Balch
B2B Sales Leader | Expert in Product Development, Data Application & Product Market Fit | VP, Client Advisor at Growth Acceleration Partners | Grace+Gratitude+Generosity | "nothing happens without a conversation"
Professional Background
Skip Balch is a seasoned expert in B2B data analytic sales and product development, boasting an impressive career that spans over 35 years. He has demonstrated a remarkable ability to identify and respond to the evolving needs of consumers and businesses alike. This unique skill has been evident throughout his various roles in high-stakes environments, allowing him to consistently drive revenue growth for his clients.
Skip's journey began with his significant contribution to the launch of GCI, the first alternative long-distance telephone company in Alaska. Working alongside his team, Skip was instrumental in laying the groundwork for GCI to emerge as the leading provider of voice, data, and video services within the state of Alaska. This pioneering opportunity helped shape his understanding of the telecommunications landscape and set the stage for his future successes in sales and product development.
One of the highlights of his extensive career is Skip's early involvement with CIC in 1989, where he was at the forefront of customer data mining. His keen foresight in recognizing the potential of new technologies made him a valuable asset at Broadcast.com and later at Yahoo, where he transitioned to embrace the world of streaming media. These formative experiences enabled him to market and sell innovative products and services that yielded substantial revenue, positioning both him and his clients as leaders in their respective industries.
Skip considers himself a life-long learner and value-seeker. His diverse experiences extend beyond data analytics and sales, as evidenced by his brief yet successful ventures into investment services, political consulting, multi-media production, and consulting services. This exploration into various markets and disciplines has enriched his strategic business acumen, allowing him to refine his skills as a business and marketing consultant.
Education and Achievements
Skip Balch holds a foundational education in Business and Political Science from Stephen F. Austin State University, which provided him with the analytical and strategic insights necessary for his career. His quest for knowledge is evident in his hands-on approach to professional development as he takes on new challenges and expands his horizons whenever possible.
Throughout his career, Skip has held several significant leadership positions, demonstrating his ability to empower sales teams and drive success in competitive markets. He has served as Vice President/Client Advisor at Growth Acceleration Partners, where he applied his wealth of experience to help accelerate client growth through innovative solutions. As a former Startup Mentor at MassChallenge and Business Mentor at Capital Factory, Skip has found considerable joy in guiding emerging entrepreneurs and startups, sharing his valuable insights and experiences to help them navigate their own paths to success.
Skip's notable roles include:
- Senior Vice President of Sales at Iconixx - spearheading innovative sales strategies and fostering strong client relationships.
- Senior Vice President of Sales at Networked Insights, which was later acquired by American Family, showcasing his ability to succeed in acquisitions and integrations.
- Executive Vice President of Sales at KnowledgeBase Marketing, further evidencing his grasp of the intricacies of sales management.
Skip also held critical positions such as Senior National Account Manager for Broadcast Services at Yahoo, a role he stepped into following the acquisition of Broadcast.com, and Senior Sales Executive at Gartner Group, Inc. These positions reflect his extensive network and experience in high-growth tech firms and the tech analytics space.
Mentorship and Community Engagement
In addition to his professional achievements, Skip is passionate about mentorship. He has dedicated a substantial portion of his career to building and nurturing successful sales teams, recognizing that teaching and mentoring the next generation of leaders is among the most rewarding aspects of his journey. His commitment to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship is evident through his contributions as a mentor at organizations like Capital Factory and MassChallenge. These platforms allow him to engage with aspiring entrepreneurs, guiding them in honing their skills and devising successful strategies.
Achievements
Skip Balch's career highlights validate his influence on the evolving landscape of B2B sales and data analytics. His successful leadership and strategic foresight have generated millions in revenue and established a clear trajectory of success.
His keen understanding of emerging technologies, coupled with an unwavering desire to embrace new opportunities, has positioned him as a trailblazer in the telecommunications and data industries. As a proud advocate for training and mentoring, Skip has made a lasting impact not only on the businesses he has worked with but also on the individuals he has mentored throughout his extensive career.
As he moves forward in his career, Skip Balch remains dedicated to expanding his knowledge, finding innovative solutions to existing challenges, and fostering a spirit of collaboration and growth within the tech and business communities.
Location
People also viewed
Related People
Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
People also viewed