How Multithreading Closes More Enterprise Deals with Rachit Kataria
In this first episode of iQ², Nabeel Ahmed (LeadIQ) sits down with Rachit Kataria, Co-founder & CEO of Centralize, to talk about one of the most overlooked reasons deals fall apart: you're not talking to enough people. This episode breaks down: What multithreading actually looks like in enterprise sales Why messy data in your CRM ruins your sales motion How to balance personalization with automation Why selling is still about trust—and how to scale it
Nabeel Ahmed
00:06 - 01:06
everyone. Thank you for jumping in and listening.
We've got our very first thought leadership series from LeadiQ with our guy, Rachit. He is the man who has made a lot of things happening.
His history is really, really in-depth in the sense of the places he's gone, some pretty big brand names, to the things that he's trying to build today, all in a very short amount of time. Before I ruin that, I wanna give a quick intro on myself, and then I wanna hand it over, to Rachit to give a proper introduction on himself because I will do it no justice.
But I'm Nabeel Ahmed. I'm one of the heads of partnerships and head of growth here at LeadiQ.
At LeadiQ, we're a B2B prospecting platform, that gives people the right contact data so they can make the right conversations with the people they wanna talk to in the simplest form. And I wanna hand it over to Rachit.
Please introduce yourself. Give us the full breakdown and the history of even how you got to where you are today.
Rachit Kataria
01:06 - 02:57
Oh my. Appreciate the intro.
Happy to be here, man. I'm Rachit, cofounder and CEO of Centralized.
I like to say, jokingly, we're the R in your CRM. If it actually worked, it's it's the relationship player.
Funnily enough, you know, Salesforce Ventures is our lead, and so love you guys. Salesforce is amazing, but also is a very, very good database of names and contacts and opportunities, and you need it.
It's not gonna go anywhere. But Salesforce was not built for enterprise sales.
You know? You don't wake up, put in next steps and a closed date, and pop out with a 6-7 figure deal. Like, that's that's not how that's not how it's working.
You put things in there. We don't get out information that necessarily moves deals for you.
And the way we think about things is where is the relationship story? Where is that art? Where where is the multisigning answer of here's who I'm talking to. For every word they've actually ever spoken, the emails, calendar events, Gong calls, count course, query, wherever you're recording your information and having conversations, what actually matters to each individual in your deal cycle? Every stakeholder.
So where you are, what do they care about? Now the most important question, who's missing? Where is the white space around the information of, not just who you've got into, but the personas you need to be in if you have any chance of winning this deal? Like, if you have to go and make sure that sales, success, and marketing are all on your side, and you open your eyes and realize that, oh, the entire VPN C suite row is empty for all three of those. Odds are, you're not in a good spot.
But your CRM doesn't tell you that or give you that visualization or understanding. And so how we think about centralized is very simple.
It's operationalizing multi threading for enterprise sales and success teams. It's waking up and knowing who I'm talking to, what do they care about, who's missing, and who's actually one degree away from my extended network to help me fill in those gaps end to end.
Nabeel Ahmed
02:57 - 03:39
Yeah. Well, multithreading is probably more important today than it's ever been before.
Right? And and I almost think it's probably how people are purchasing or making purchasing decisions to get to that point. So your buying group or what we call buying groups is, in essence, an extension of multithreading.
Right? Meaning, like, if the market gets tighter, more people have to have the decision to approve a certain purchase, your buying group gets bigger, and the need for multithreaded gets stronger. Right? And kind of like a a nutshell of how I'm thinking about it.
So not only is it a product that you should have had ten years ago, it's a product that's probably more important today than ever. Totally.
I mean,.
Rachit Kataria
03:39 - 04:51
I think there are some stats where the, Pavilion, like, Sam Jacobs and team, they put out a I think it's AMSTA. And they've collab in a report recently, like, a benchmark for '26 for, '25, '20 '6 for SaaS.
And I think now the average for buyer committee size is eight people. And that's eight people that are deciding, not eight people that you had to talk to and navigate through to get to those eight people.
That might have been 20. It could have been 30.
It could have been people that you're engaging with that left. You had to go find their backfills and make sure you had their support.
So especially when you get into these six, seven, eight month deal cycles and people are coming and going at the scale of, you know, just one account. But then you just do some simple math experiment with me.
Like, let's just let's just do this for you, a quick experiment. I'm an enterprise rep.
Maybe I have a book of 40. It's a pretty sizable book, actually, but let's say it's a book of 40, and I conservatively have to understand, navigate, and learn, and work with maybe 20 people in each of those accounts.
That might even be on the lower end for some of these deals. If you're trying to close, like, at Oracle, you're probably talking to hundred people at this point.
Nabeel Ahmed
04:51 - 04:51
Yeah.
Rachit Kataria
04:51 - 05:50
So that's fine. That is for one rep, eight hundred people that at any given point in time, you have to make sure are not just feeling good, but are hearing the right language that matters to just them.
And in the grand scheme of where they land in the org, you have to know who's around them, where you're missing, where you're not. That's 800 people for one person.
What about that frontline manager that has 10 reps? Eight thousand individuals at skill that you have to understand, make sure do not fall through. What about the lead level of their VP, their director? Like, a CRO, in theory, has to understand if tens of thousands of individuals across their entire existing install base and net new prospects are feeling good.
That's just unscrew at scale. Like, it's only getting bigger, and it's only getting harder to manage that.
It's only more important to do so given to your point of view. Like, if you don't have that buyer committee today and it's getting bigger and bigger every day, you're not gonna win these deals.
So how do you that scale?
Nabeel Ahmed
05:50 - 06:00
The the the crazy thing is, like, even if I was a CRO and how do you how do you understand that type of sentiment even just from a dashboard today? That's hard.
Rachit Kataria
06:00 - 06:06
Yeah. Yeah.
It's very hard. It's definitely on a Salesforce report that just gives you names.
Like.
Nabeel Ahmed
06:06 - 06:10
Aw, shucks. Salesforce reports.
Rachit Kataria
06:10 - 06:44
Like, it's it's it's it's good. You can't get away from it.
Like, you need that kind of analytics. But, again, like, why is it called customer relationship management? It's the the relationship piece is what's why anyone is winning deals or losing deals.
Obviously, you need a great product, but do you have a good your decision maker, all of your stakeholders, knowing what they care about, who's changing underneath you, who's missing, who has a, like, a warm relationship to help you out there? Like, that is enterprise sales, and, you know, you need something purposeful to make sense of that story.
Nabeel Ahmed
06:44 - 08:05
Yeah. It and it's like a it's a great question, kinda in the future landscape of what we're seeing a lot of, like, things happening.
Right? So, like, for us, we're a massive data component. Right? Like, you almost call us a data cleansing house because we take a lot of the data that's out there and really try to understand if it's right.
Like, is that Rachit? Is that his number? Is what's the account? What are the firmographics and technographics? Like, all of that is really, really important to us. And it's a baseline foundational element to do a lot of workflows.
But what we're seeing today, like, with the rise of, you know, how consumable and easy to implement LLMs are, that you can wrap any workflow around data today and and make things work. And when you think about that in the larger scheme of what sales is, like, sales is a people relationship game.
Right? Like, you're you're the you're the r relationship and a lot of what we see in the CRM when it comes to centralized. But I think and this is my theory and hypothesis is that the more automation and workflows that we are starting to create as a market, you know, amount of companies that are doubling or coming out that are just building a lot of these workflows, we're getting to a point now where we're gonna try to automate everything to where the core value that we're gonna drive out of any go to market motion is, can I create a relationship with Rachit? Can I shake his hand? And can I close the deal? Mhmm.
Mhmm. Right?
Rachit Kataria
08:05 - 08:06
Yep.
Nabeel Ahmed
08:06 - 08:32
And I I don't mean to add too much, you know, when do your sales and, you know but this is how much of a fan of the product, even just from a concept perspective I am. But I almost think the automation that you create and and with centralized will allow you to do more in the field than ever before.
Because you know who you need to talk to and who you need to get to even from a location perspective.
Rachit Kataria
08:32 - 10:14
Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. Like, all the data to your point is the skeleton.
Without it, you don't have a product here because, yes, in theory, or describing is building relationships that digitally have to encode into what? The person's name, their work history, their background, their contact information so you can do something about it. That's that's kind of the baseline that you need to work off of.
Once you do have that baseline, then it is. Okay? Like, here is how I can build the best relationship and put my foot forward with Nabil.
And how could I have done that prior at scale if I had to otherwise read through all the past 10 emails that somebody else had with him, the foregone calls he was on before, you know, the new one that I jumped in on, and I have to figure out the entire story. Like, that's one person out of the 8,000 we talked about.
Yeah. How do you treat every single person like the special snowflake that they are they should feel like in your deal at that scale.
That is where AI gets so exciting because until last year, when we started centralized, you frankly couldn't build this business. Like, this wasn't possible until even, you know, GBT four came out.
And what gets super cool is now you get to start thinking about these really interesting use cases of, hey. If you have not just the contact information about a customer and, like, who they are, but actually marry that with the conversational data lake of what they've said so far, and you merge those together, that is actually the definition of a relationship.
It's it's who, it's the identity, and it's what actually matters to them and how you can speak to that to build a stronger relationship over time. And that's that's really where centralized plays.
It.
Nabeel Ahmed
10:14 - 11:29
it's still it's still a people people relationship. The the funny thing is is, you know, I think COVID, what what happened was, like, they kinda killed any type of face to face engagement from what I saw is my opinion.
Right? And I think almost, like, '24 and 2025, we're seeing this rise of, hey. How can I be in front of people as much as possible but still have my business run? And I think you're you're you're a guy who probably lives on a plane at this point from what I see when I watch your LinkedIn.
How important is your business today helping you do your job? Right? Because I saw you're at Sasser last week. You just tell me you're going to an event next week.
Week before that, you're somewhere else. I know you came to our event, which was amazing.
That, I almost think, not to rant too much, the key of face to face real like, conversations is like, hi. I'm Rachit.
Nice to meet you. Blah blah blah.
Is the initiator for having really in-depth conversations and create relationships to where you actually can close deals, expand product, right, do anything kinda under the sun is like, as long as I know who you are, I'm willing to have those conversations, and I think that's where the difference is. And so going back to the question is, like, how does Centralized help you in your day to day?
Rachit Kataria
11:29 - 11:35
Yeah. I mean, I like to say we drink our own champagne and use it all the time.
Even, you know, call Not.
Nabeel Ahmed
11:35 - 11:38
dog food. Right? It's it's a little boogier than that.
Rachit Kataria
11:38 - 11:45
A little boogier. I used to say eat your own dog food, and someone told me drink your own champagne.
I was like, that sounds kinda nice. Sounds nicer.
So I'm so dizzy on that now.
Nabeel Ahmed
11:45 - 11:49
I'm feeling thirsty at 9AM. That's great.
Rachit Kataria
11:49 - 14:00
Mimosas, pull up my centralized app. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we use it all the time, and and, you know, we have to have a leader in all of our deals too.
It it's simple. It's like, you know, who gets excited about centralized? It's BPs of sales, success, CROs, marketing teams.
You know, we're happy to give a shout out. You know, Sendoso is a happy customer, and we're wall to wall across AEs, AMs, SDRs.
Like, the entire team understanding what's the game plan we need to get to. From all the words who've spoken, what matters to them, who's one degree away that knows how we can help build those relationships.
And then a year later, as the the customer relationship has evolved and people have come and gone, where's the white space? How do we expand that as well? And most importantly, in that years long cycle, where is the one shared visual layer that all go to market can look at and have that story? So many people, like, the amount of time people spend just doing internal alignment on what the game plan is for a deal in of itself should not be to the effect of, like, someone sitting down and taking thirty minutes to recap everyone talk to, what are their back stories, like, here's who Jill is, who's Jack is. Because you jump in any conversation, especially with leadership, the first thing I'll ask, who are we talking to and what do they care about? Yeah.
Almost every time they they wanna know because it's people. It's like, what do they play in this company? Are are they gonna be your DM because they are the VP of sales? Do they have the purse strings, or is that the CFO? Have we talked to them yet? Has someone internally from our team talked to them yet? Why not? Like, that's how the conversation goes.
And so centralized, very simply, pulled all those existing conversations that you've already had, enriches them, thanks to amazing partners like LeadIQ. Wow.
The data that you need to build that skeleton we're talking about and turns it into a story of here's where we are, Here's their identity, their background, their work history, how you contact them. Here's who has talked to them internally versus externally.
And here's here's really just our chessboard. Like, here are the pieces at play.
Here's where we could have been. Here's where we should have been, and then here's how we fix it every day of the week.
That that is simply what we do.
Nabeel Ahmed
14:00 - 15:57
And I think I think you need to repeat this for everybody in case they didn't understand this. Centralize what it is.
It's not another swivel chair moment for your team to go into another tool, input work, and get things done. What it's doing is it's watching and understanding all the conversations you're having with different people on a certain account and creates a visual map of the people you're engaged with.
Is it are they detractors? Are they champions? And who are the people you haven't engaged with that you think are the right people to connect with? Safe assumption. Right? Safe assumption.
Spot on. Here we go.
And I think that's what the real value is. This is like and, again, I I go into this world and I'm not I don't wanna talk about any junk around any other of these new AI companies because I think all of everybody who's trying to build a company today has the aspiration to build something that can be game changing.
Right? But where I see the true value of AI is, like or or or any of these, like, automation platforms is, like, how much time can you save me? And are you gonna make me smarter without much left? Right? And what I love about, you know, centralized is you made the right partnerships with the right people. Right? So, like, you know, I can you can look at Gong, you can look at Clari, you're connected to Slack, you're connected to your your system of records, your CRM like Salesforce.
And you're watching and understanding kind of all the data that's getting pumped into it and all the data that's coming out, and you're just saying, okay. Like, these are the people that we're having the right engagements with.
How do we how do we talk to the right people? And what I what I love about that is it's value to the IC. Right? So me as a rep trying to understand who I need to break into.
Value to their direct manager, value to their director, and value to the leadership around the process. You're, like, checking all the marks around there.
I know this is a puff piece at this point. But, you know,.
Rachit Kataria
15:57 - 15:58
at at the end.
Nabeel Ahmed
15:58 - 16:13
of the day, how is that you know, and and it's a it's a really good segue into the conversation of how you think about the product, but I'm really interested if that's what the product is today Mhmm. What else are you trying to build for the future?
Rachit Kataria
16:13 - 18:23
Yeah. Yeah.
There's there's a lot here. So to your point, today, what is centralized? It is the simplest way to answer those four very basic questions.
Where are we? What do they care about? Who's missing? How do we fix it? And that's pretty much just sales in general. It's like, if you really dumbed it down to what we're trying to accomplish, there's obviously so much complexity around that, and that's where it gets really crazy.
And having a way to just do that simple answer for any deal at any level of the IC front line manager leader, like we said. That's the core of centralized and that that really deal execution stage one to close, you know, the multithreading story of how we help you there.
Now what's exciting to come from all of that is think about the data that we do have. Effectively, it's a it's a customer data lake that we've built up of every conversational touch point, all of the relationships that someone externally has, the degrees away, and then actually the personas that you care about and where we've got into in a deal.
This gets interesting is centralized actually learns over time, and this will start showing up in the product pretty soon where not only do you know who you talked to in the past and the closed one or lost, but when did you talk to them? Were they in the persona that you needed to be and when you were? Based on that, what do you actually have to say to these specific individuals to turn into a closed won or a closed loss? And then directly applying that to, well, I have a new deal coming up. Here's where I am.
I'm two and a half months in the cycle. Here's who I should have been talking to at this point.
Here's what I should have been saying. Here's who's currently missing that I normally engage with that I have a chance of winning this account, and here's recommendations on how to do all of that in a way that's gonna move my deal cycle down from eight months down to six, get my ACVs higher because I'm talking to the right people.
You know, it frankly, just improve your win rates because it's very binary. Either you win or lose because you do these things correctly.
It actually started being that really sticky engine that's just learning about how you win or lose deals and apply that forward. Where this gets really interesting in the long term is the virality effect.
I think this is we're talking about some spiciness in the future, which is There.
Nabeel Ahmed
18:23 - 18:25
we go. Spicy.
Rachit Kataria
18:25 - 20:10
We'll do the spice. The spice is you know, there's some anonymization things here to figure out multi tenancy.
We'll figure that out. But in reality, again, what we do have and have learned is not just okay.
Here's how you win deals or how you should approach deals. So phase one out of three today.
Here's how you should be approaching any existing deal in flight to execute it the best of your abilities. Centralized today.
Centralized tomorrow. Phase two is how can we take that context of how you win or lose? And as you keep doing it better to see what worked well and then apply that facing forward for any new deals that you're working on.
Phase three is, well, that was all focused on you as the individual company buyer, a seller and and how you approach your deal cycles. But if you take this at the scale of hundred companies that have all sold to, hypothetically, a, you know, DocuSign, how does DocuSign, on the flip side, buy? Not how you sell, but how do they buy? Because if we have all that anonymized, a new person comes in that doesn't even have to put anything in there yet, puts in DocuSign and sees, oh, here's how marketing typically buys.
Here's the time cycles. Here's generally what resonates.
Here is, you know, what it might take based on your deal cycle to think about getting them excited. Again, has to be a lot of monetization.
There's a lot of company data to poke that around, but just the high level metrics. So here's the last time they bought.
Here's typically how long it takes. Here's personas that might be interesting for you to consider.
You can have a very, very compelling way to actually speak the customer's language before you even have engaged with them because you can tell what at scale gets that company excited. Yeah.
Yeah. So there's some pretty exciting ways that this ladders up in the long term.
Nabeel Ahmed
20:10 - 21:35
No. That is really inspiring.
Yeah. And and I and I like it because it's kind of an understanding of where we see a lot of businesses going.
Right? We always talk about and you think about this being a founder, and a leader at your company is like, you know, the wedge that you break into has to be so well done. People are like, we wanna talk about your product, we wanna use your product, and we wanna you wanna tell other people about your product.
Right? And then that's how you grow, and then you're gonna capitalize, and you're innovating, and you're innovating, and innovating. And what you see with a lot of the people in the market, and it could be the fact that, you know, funding moments have dried up or it's a lot more expensive to get the the the funding that you need is that you see a lot of consolidation efforts on people who are buying and, horizontal expansion on the people who are building their products.
Right? So, like, Gong is a good example. Right? They build this in house.
They've got sequencers. They got forecast.
They got their CI. Even one of our competitors, Apollo, same same concept.
We a great company, and they've gone live. They're supporting a lot of customers.
And then when I think of centralized and and the focus that you guys are are are moving on is your wedge is strong. Right? It kinda hits you say wall the wall at Sendoso, that makes anybody excited that it's a tool that can be used by multiple people and for a lot of the times, and it goes through any layers of management.
Where do you think and this is again a very spicy question.
Rachit Kataria
21:35 - 21:37
Mhmm. If you wedge and.
Nabeel Ahmed
21:37 - 21:56
you tell people how to buy, when to buy, who to talk to using the data from, you know, hopefully, a LeadiQ for the future and the foremost, we'll support you through that process. Where else do you go? Because that could just be the platform.
You know? One one ring to rule them all, one centralized to rule them all at this point.
Rachit Kataria
21:56 - 24:47
Yeah. Yeah.
It's interesting. I mean, I don't know.
You you kinda squint, and what we're describing is basically a CRM. Yeah.
If you if it had Doctor. Right? Right? We say it's kinda jokingly the other way around.
We have all these integrations to move into all these places, but I like to think this is almost as like, we you know, high level category, we say deal collaboration platform, internal collaboration platform across the entire sales cycle. Maybe it's relationship intelligence.
Maybe there's another way to frame this, but I think the the, like, simplest, purest version of it is you have every system of record that does not talk to each other. You know, email, calendar, CRM, LinkedIn relationships, call recordings, all these are different places where this data lives.
But until something pulls all that together and gives you a story of how to action on it and all the different places of action and that action could be, you know, right now, the wedge being stage one to close and close onwards. So we're talking about deal execution both from net new biz, but also for expansion plays and then success.
But how how much further can you go both ways? Can can this instead now also be for as you learn about a company going into net new? I've never talked to them, but I know how they buy, and that changes into how I think about using how I went similar companies and then apply that. That's one approach.
It could be the expansion game of, hey. Here's where we are so far.
Here's what anyone has ever said. Here's historically how we win when we do these types of things and what we should say instead.
Like, I I think that the future of any kind of sales platform that's gonna win this space, it's at a baseline, as the name suggests, centralizing all of the context to make sense of. But then dipping that context against where you are so far in any cycle and using that information to actually move your company forward.
Because what you couldn't do until a year ago was make use of any of that information. It was just, like, sitting in fields in Salesforce at best or sitting inside of a, you know, transcript download that maybe someone looks at it if they just wanna re jog their memory.
But what we're working towards is, could you take this learn on it, have an engine that actually understands your business? And then any facet of the sales cycle, tofu, loofu, boofu, wherever you wanna apply it, that is your context window into applying, here's how I win in this stage of the cycle. Here's how I'm going to win and protect this stage of the cycle.
Here's how if I haven't even talked to the company, I still know how I'm gonna approach it because here's what's historically worked well and and hasn't worked well. I think that's the differentiator here.
And, like, whatever company, whether it's us or otherwise, that wins this, that is going to be, I think, the theme of what, like, new age sales tooling is gonna look like.
Nabeel Ahmed
24:47 - 26:44
Yeah. And you you also bring up another good point.
So we have this concepts of where we think the future of go to market teams is going internally. And we're we're building and we're driving towards that a bit more, leveraging data as a foundational component to it.
But when you talk about, like, tofu, mofu, bofu, like, you know, who cares? It's the funnel. That's what we care about.
We don't care about these, like, segmentations, is we think the future of go to market teams is we're gonna reduce the barriers or even completely collapse the barriers of marketing, marketing ops, you know, the sales, customer success, implementation. You know, rev ops is that overarching kind of roof on top of all of it.
But at the end of the day, I think where we're going is I think teams get leaner with the use of these tools. Right? Yep.
Because they get augmented on the way that they work. And everybody is going to try to create transparency across that funnel that you just massively just talked about specifically.
And with that, it's not about, hey, this is what marketing owns. This is what sales owns.
This is what, you know, blah blah blah owns. And the tension that happens between them, I think we're moving in a state to where it's like, we just know what's happening because it's watched, it's automated, it's recorded, and there's context associated with the customer journey, the prospect journey.
And if we could break down those barriers, the one alignment on anything that we have and why we exist or even these departments exist is revenue and continue expansion and growth. Right? Like and maybe that's just the the start up world, but I think this is what's really interesting on where we think the market is going is, like, reduce the noise, reduce the internal conflicts around the loan, what, and then push it forward.
I think you're hitting it across the board almost, but, you know, even just through the amplification of your product, I think you're you're onto something here.
Rachit Kataria
26:44 - 28:26
Yeah. We're I I I like the things.
I mean, the more I reflect on this, even just in this conversation, I think about why we have built what we have. I think sales and sales, success, marketing, revenue is just people at the end of the day.
Like, yes, you need an amazing product. Yes, you need the other side to see the value.
But the operationally, how you get there, it's it's just people. Yeah.
And so we have hyper indexed, maybe over indexed on the individual that is going to mean something to you in this cycle. The champion, the EB, the influencer, the coach, whatever titles, med pick, whatever framework you're using, at the end of the day, the crux of centralized is helping you understand people where they fit into how you're how you're helping them out at the end of the day, how they can help you in terms of the cycle, and then managing those relationships at scale.
Like, the reason why we are cross go to market is because relationships are not point solutions. Yeah.
Relationships are applicable at the beginning of the sales cycle, the middle, and the end because it is just the customer. It is it's people at the customer you're trying to help.
And however they play a role in it, what they care about is what you do be able to speak to if you're gonna win. So that's I think that's why, like, if there's anything we're gonna build long term, no matter what we build in the long term, it is the emphasis on the individual being how you win and not at the company level.
So that's that is that that is central. That and so that's why it's it's it's it's a pack applicable across the board.
We could move into marketing. We could move into sales and success.
I'm like, really honing on each of those. Because it's just the person that we're helping you understand.
Nabeel Ahmed
28:26 - 29:09
Yeah. And and I don't wanna take up too much of your time because it's kind of the last question and and I don't know if it's spicy or not just because they're investor.
But as we see the market, right, and, you know, Salesforce has invested in in in centralized, which is amazing. But you see kind of like the foundational layer.
You've got your systems of record. You've got data lakes.
You have data warehouses. Do you see those ever going away? Or are we just gonna build on top of them saying, hey.
There are more peaks of what we wanna do. Let's not try to disrupt that, but let's try to make them a lot more effective.
And if it's yes. They're always gonna be there.
Is there a fear that they'll build what you have?
Rachit Kataria
29:09 - 32:36
I mean, you can always have a fear for anyone in sales tech. I mean, you squint and a lot of tools sound very similar.
They're trying to solve similar things. There's only so many angles in sales tooling, I would say, that you're trying to solve.
I mean, every every CRO has three basically simple goals that they want. It's it's it's higher ACVs, it's higher win rates, and it's it's faster deal cycles.
Those are your wonders. You do all those well, and you're after the race.
You're doing a good job for yourself. But how you get there, I think, is where all of the alpha comes in.
It's where the differentiators come through. And then most importantly, how you get there is also what ties to the existing workflows or ways the team should think about a deal.
And whatever makes that the simplest, the easiest, the most collaborative should be the way you should do it. That's the that's the whole goal at the end of the day.
And people have been burned by having 50 solutions that do all these things separately. One point solution for job change, one point solution for Workbench, one point solution for mapping, one point solution for your pipe shed.
Like, it's endless. And so I would say that these data these platforms, these customer data lakes, end of the day, I I think the winner, kinda getting back to what I was saying, will not be able to remove the customer data lakes.
Like, those have to exist. You you will I I actually think, you know, as much as people say, oh, Salesforce is, you know, dying or it's going away, I don't think Salesforce is gonna go anywhere, but I think what the role they will play will increasingly look like just your system of record.
And they're moving into pretty exciting spaces with, like, agent force and other things that they're they're, you know, working on here. But, practically, at least right now, Salesforce is that critical database of my accounts and my ops and just what am I working on as a team? Like, what is there? And you need that.
You need a back end. You always need a back end for this information has to live.
It's gotta be somewhere. And what Salesforce has done really, really, really well is be the connective tissue that everyone can integrate into and out of.
Like, that is a very good database because as connectors into reading the data and writing the data and getting that where you need to. And other sources equally read or write to that data.
But you again, do not put data into a database and get out deals. Yeah.
You need insights about that information to make something of it and translate to its value. So I still firmly believe that those those sources of information will not go anywhere, and every player is going to have, you know, some form of this information.
Like, Gmail is not going anywhere. You cannot get rid of your G Suite through your email accounts.
Call recordings, unless you have a true consolidation play and there's only one place to go, you'll always have your Gons, Chorus, Claris, Kayas, like, the 50 other places you could have your recordings. Sometimes your call you can have your link LinkedIn relationships.
That monopoly is not going away. That's where your relationships live, and that's where it's gonna stay.
And then you have your CRM for, like, your sales effectively, like, data about what you're working, your deal sizes, what's in flight or not. I think that is the only stack you need plus centralized, and you're set.
Because that is all the input you need into a system of action that can then mean something for what's happening in the cycle. So I think that is, like, truly the future state of the world.
It is your communication bucket, your recording bucket, your relationships bucket, your database of sales, you know, activity bucket, and then centralized actually giving you insight on top of all of it. That's the stack.
Nabeel Ahmed
32:36 - 33:07
I love it. Well, Rachit, thank you for the time.
I don't wanna take up too much of it. But the last bit, I always love giving guests the ability to, you know, take thirty seconds to a minute and say, hey.
How do I get in contact with you? Because, you know, we wanna keep it exposed. If anybody has questions around centralized, questions around even just having a conversation with you, liked what you heard, hated what you said, you know, let us let them get in contact with you.
So I'll I'll give you the floor for the next bit.
Rachit Kataria
33:07 - 34:36
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, not not too hard to find.
I like to be pretty active on LinkedIn if everyone has stumble upon my content, whatever I'm happening about when it comes to multithreading and people and relationships and, you know, just how to put your best foot forward in a deal and and know who you're engaged with, what's missing, how you fix it. But, otherwise, you know, ucentralized.
com, Rachit at ucentralized. com, pretty easily to to access.
Anytime anyone wants to either just have a quick chat about what it means to multithread the best. And and I've, you know, I think I've learned quite a bit from all the CEOs and VPs of sales and success that I've talked to over the years.
I was just what is the best practices for making sure your team is not dropping the ball? I think anyone who's listening to this call will have probably felt the sentiment that it's your end of quarter, you got a week left, and you had all the people that could say yes in the room, but the person that could say no showed up. And now you're in trouble.
Everyone's scrambling. And in the moment, you're freaking out, and it's because you can't fix things from the back end.
You have to fix it from the front end so you didn't even get there in the first place. And how you do that is the shared way of understanding the people and who you need to be at and what do they care about and who's missing.
And I think a way to collaborate against that across the entirety of go to market. So and that's even remotely interesting.
You guys on the app, how do you just learn how we think about the world? And, Rachit, you centralize. Have a chat anytime.
Yeah. Well, you know, I love Yapping, but,.
Nabeel Ahmed
34:36 - 34:53
we're gonna all good Yap sessions need to come to an end. But, Rachit, thank you so much for jumping on.
Thank you for giving us the insights into how you even think about building your business, where you think the future of the market is going. If anybody needs to get his cell phone number, just message me.
I'll give it to you. Yeah.
If you.
Rachit Kataria
34:53 - 34:58
only if you guys are LeadIQ customers or you should be, it's on there. So you can just text me too.
Nabeel Ahmed
34:58 - 35:02
Awesome. Cool.
Well, thank you so much, Rachit. We'll we'll stay in contact and excited to.
Rachit Kataria
35:02 - 35:07
see what you're building and keep going. Yeah.
Cheers. Yeah.
Meet the Guests

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.

Rachit Kataria is the Co-Founder and CEO of Centralize, a platform built to help sales teams manage multithreading, deal risk, and enterprise complexity with clarity. With deep experience across go-to-market strategy and sales operations, Rachit is passionate about giving revenue teams the visibility they need to build stronger relationships and close smarter.