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Steve Milner
Sales Director, Northwest Region Manufacturing & Semiconductor Vertical at Microsoft
Professional Background
Steve Milner is a highly accomplished and experienced sales leader with an extensive professional background in sales strategy and execution spanning over two decades. His vast experience in developing, deploying, and executing sales models, particularly in the Wholesale and Enterprise segments, positions him as a prominent figure in sales leadership today. Having a profound understanding of large, complex deal pursuits, Steve is adept at territory build and planning, which has been a cornerstone of his successful career.
Steve has a remarkable track record of cultivating large-scale customer negotiations and building lasting relationships with clients. His commitment to leadership development, operational execution, and discipline has paved the way for his numerous successes in both the United States and international markets. Not only has Steve built several high-performing teams at scale, but he has also demonstrated expertise in new customer acquisition, growing under-penetrated accounts, and expanding relationships with key multinational enterprises.
Steve's experience spans multiple facets of sales, including the hiring, onboarding, training, and management of distributed field-based sales teams. His proficiency in selecting and rolling out various sales methodologies—such as Value Selling, Challenger, and MEDDIC—has allowed him to create effective compensation and incentive plans, as well as refined sales processes within Salesforce.com.
Specializing in Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and infrastructure sales targeting large and medium-sized enterprises, Steve leverages his technical knowledge in Cognitive AI, Machine Learning (ML), and cloud technologies to drive innovation and success.
Education and Achievements
Steve Milner earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His educational foundation has played a pivotal role in shaping his analytical and strategic thinking capabilities, which have been instrumental in his professional journey.
Over the years, Steve has held several key executive roles across leading technology firms. He has notably contributed to Microsoft as the Sales Director Northwest for the Manufacturing and Industry lead, focusing on the High Tech and Semiconductor Vertical. His tenure at Microsoft honed his skills in leading complex sales processes and solidified his reputation in the technology sector.
As a former Senior Vice President of Sales at CognitiveScale, Steve drove the company’s sales strategy, leading to significant growth and client acquisition. He also held the position of Vice President of Sales for the Americas at Comcast Technology Solutions, where he made a considerable impact on the company’s sales reservations and operational efficiency.
His impressive career includes roles at Dialpad as Vice President of Sales and Business Development, and at Rackspace—a recognized leader in managed cloud services—where he served as the Vice President Enterprise Sales for the US as well as Director of Enterprise Sales for the Western US. Steve’s diverse experience at Rackspace contributed to the company's prominence in the cloud market.
Moreover, Steve has held leadership roles at TATA Communications Limited and Level 3 Communications, where he excelled in managing global enterprise sales and wholesale markets, respectively. His capabilities have also stretched to advisory positions, where he actively contributes to startup advisory boards in Silicon Valley, further underscoring his commitment to fostering innovation and growth in the tech landscape.
Achievements
Steve Milner's career is marked by several notable achievements that highlight his expertise and leadership in sales and technology. He has a reputation for successfully scaling sales teams and crafting effective go-to-market strategies, which has significantly enhanced revenue growth for the organizations he has served.
His ability to negotiate and close large-scale deals with multinational enterprises has led to substantial sales successes, making him a driving force behind the companies he has worked with. Steve's strategic foresight and operational discipline have been key elements in executing sales plans that align with overall business objectives. His hands-on experience in a variety of technology domains, including cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, and network technologies, allows him to bring unique insights into sales operations.
Steve's engagement with various sales methodologies has equipped his teams with the tools they need to thrive in competitive environments. His focus on performance metrics and continuous improvement has also contributed to enhanced team performance and customer satisfaction, leading to long-term client retention and loyalty.
On a broader scale, his contributions to the technology community, especially through his participation in advisory boards, exemplify his leadership and commitment to the industry. Steve’s knowledge of market trends and technology advancements positions him as a vital asset for any sales organization looking to accelerate growth and innovate effectively.
In summary, Steve Milner is a dedicated, experienced sales leader with a rich background in technology sales. His education, extensive career history, and numerous achievements reflect his capability to drive results and nurture high-performing teams in challenging environments.
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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.