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Terry Ford
Managing Solutions Architect at NTT Ltd.
Professional Background
Terry Ford is a seasoned professional specializing in mapping technology to meet business needs and improve customer experience. With a remarkable career spanning multiple roles in technology and sales engineering, Terry exemplifies how a human-centered design approach can revolutionize operations and client satisfaction. Currently serving as the Assistant Vice President of Solutions Engineering at Acqueon Technologies Inc, Terry leverages extensive experience to guide organizations through technological and operational transformations. His expertise lies in tackling the unique challenges that businesses face today, and he utilizes a strong foundation in data analytics to support decision-making processes.
Throughout his career, Terry has embraced several key positions that have greatly contributed to his well-rounded understanding of customer experience (CX) strategies and cloud technologies. His previous roles include Director of Sales Engineering at Uniphore Software Systems, where he played a vital role in developing competitive strategies and enhancing customer engagement through innovative solutions. Before that, he held leadership positions at NTT Ltd., 8X8, Inc., and Masergy, where he was instrumental in establishing practices that improved client relationships and streamlined operations.
His career began at Edge Communications as the Head of Presales, Go-To-Market (GTM), and DevOps, showcasing his entrepreneurial spirit as the second employee of the company. Terry's journey reflects a commitment to continuous improvement and the critical need for technology to become a facilitator of business success.
Education and Achievements
Terry's educational background lays the groundwork for his extensive technical knowledge and sales acumen. He studied at The Sip School, where he received training relevant to telecommunications. Alongside this, he pursued studies at Hood Community College and completed his Associates degree at the Sip School and the Cisco Networking Academy. His foundational education is enriched by high school studies at Plano East Senior High School, establishing a strong base that supports his career in technology and business.
Terry's accomplishments are a testament to his ability to deliver meaningful outcomes in competitive environments. He is noted for his exceptional skills in strategic sales and business planning, allowing him to craft effective go-to-market strategies and coach teams toward success. With a focus on human-centered design, Terry has made a significant impact in leading customer journey mapping initiatives, improving workforce optimization, and integrating various cloud technologies.
Notable Skills and Domains of Expertise
Terry’s professional skills span many critical areas in technology and sales, including:
- PreSales Leadership: His expertise in leading presales initiatives showcases his ability to guide teams and engage clients effectively in the sales process.
- Strategic Sales & Business Planning: Terry understands the importance of aligning technology with business goals to drive growth and improve customer satisfaction.
- Coaching & Training: He takes pride in mentoring and uplifting his team, believing that their success is intertwined with his own.
- Cloud Migration Consultation: With the growing trend of cloud adoption, Terry provides invaluable consultation services that facilitate seamless transitions for clients.
- Go-To-Market Strategy: Developing GTM strategies has become a key strength, allowing him to position organizations effectively within competitive markets.
- Technology Startups: Terry’s involvement in startups has endowed him with the agility required to adapt to rapidly changing environments, ensuring prompt and effective responses to emerging challenges.
His domain knowledge encompasses various technologies pivotal to enhancing customer experience:
- Customer Experience (CX) Strategy: By placing customers at the heart of technological solutions, Terry ensures that his clients can serve their customers better than ever before.
- Conversational AI: His understanding of conversational AI supports organizations in automating interactions and improving response times.
- CRM & Application Integration: Terry’s proficiency in integrating applications allows businesses to unify their data systems and enhance efficiency.
Technology Platforms
Terry is well-versed in several technology platforms that enhance contact centers and customer interactions. His experience spans widely recognized platforms such as 8x8, Amazon Connect, and Cisco Webex, to name a few. His capability to utilize tools like Genesys Cloud and NICE inContact enables him to provide customized solutions that best fit clients' needs.
In conclusion, Terry Ford's extensive background in mapping technology to align with business needs, his customer-centric approach, and his commitment to leading teams towards success set him apart as a leader in the technology sector. With a wealth of knowledge across various domains and a strong foundation in strategic sales and technological implementation, Terry continues to drive transformative changes in the organizations he collaborates with.
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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.
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.