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Steven Beno
National Sales Manager at Emkat
Professional Background
Steven Beno is a passionate and accomplished Sales Professional and Leader with a rich experience of over 16 years in the domains of B2B Sales, Marketing, Service, and Leadership. His career showcases a profound dedication to creating cultures of success and collaboration within sales teams and customer service units. Steven has an exceptional ability to drive results and increase revenues for organizations through strategic relationship-building and innovative problem-solving solutions.
Over the course of his career, Steven has held prestigious positions at leading companies. As the current National Sales Manager at Emkat, a Barcodes Group Company, he leads initiatives that enhance client engagement and foster substantial revenue growth. Steven's previous roles include Director of Sales and Customer Success at Airborne Athletics, where he played a critical role in uplifting brand visibility and ensuring customer satisfaction through tailored service offerings. His knack for leading sales teams and cultivating high-performance cultures is evident in his work at the Minnesota Timberwolves, where he structured sales operations for ticketing and premium seating.
In his tenure with the Timberwolves, Steven ascended through various roles, including Director of Lynx Ticket Sales and Service and Senior Account Executive for Premium Seating. His contributions significantly impacted the overall sales performance and customer retention strategies, translating into remarkable financial success for the organization. His expertise is further complemented by his leadership role as Vice President of Ticket Sales at Albany River Rats, where he masterminded impactful sales strategies that resulted in substantial revenue enhancements.
Education and Achievements
Steven Beno earned his Bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota, where he honed his skills in business strategy, marketing, and client relations. His education laid the foundation for a career marked by leadership and a consistent track record of achieving sales targets and developing innovative service approaches that resonate well within the competitive B2B landscape.
Throughout his career journey, Steven has also been an influential figure outside of his direct sales roles. His commitment to mentorship is illustrated by his time as the Chapter Advisor at Delta Tau Delta Fraternity, where he guided young leaders in their academic and professional pursuits. Steven believes in giving back to the community and fostering growth in future generations by sharing insights from his extensive sales experience.
Key Achievements
Steven's contributions to various organizations and his distinguished career trajectory demonstrate his profound impact on sales practices and team performance. Notable achievements include:
- Spearheading innovative sales training programs at Emkat that promoted engagement and resulted in increased team productivity.
- Successfully implementing customer success initiatives at Airborne Athletics that significantly boosted client satisfaction ratings.
- Building a robust ticket sales framework at the Minnesota Timberwolves, ultimately leading to a peak in ticket revenue and improved fan engagement.
- Pioneering strategic marketing campaigns at Albany River Rats, ensuring consistent revenue growth year after year.
Steven Beno exemplifies the qualities of a forward-thinking sales leader, driven by a vision to create successful sales cultures that celebrate winning through collaboration and creativity.
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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:
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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