Conversica Names Former IBM Exec, Terrie Banuelos, to Vice President of Global Sales

Banuelos brings decades of sales experience in marketing cloud, enterprise marketing management, commerce, and digital experience solutions across SMB, mid-market and enterprise businesses and directly supports Conversica’s transparent commitment to Diversity and Inclusion


FOSTER CITY, Calif., Aug. 05, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Conversica, Inc., the leading provider of Conversational AI solutions that help enterprise marketing, sales, and customer success teams attract, acquire, and grow customers at scale across the customer revenue lifecycle, has appointed Terrie Banuelos to Vice President of Global Sales. Conversica AI Assistants serve as digital team members and autonomously engage prospects, customers, or partners in human-like, two-way interactions at scale to drive towards the next best action, whether that's scheduling a sales meeting, gauging interest to buy additional products or services, or politely but persistently collecting overdue payments.

Banuelos brings to Conversica deep expertise selling digital solutions to target buyers across SMB, mid-market, and enterprise businesses. Prior to joining Conversica, Banuelos had revenue responsibility for the Americas at Acoustic, a spin-off of IBM, and was in the Gartner Quadrant as a Leader in Marketing Cloud offerings. She spent over 17 years at IBM, most recently as Vice President, Worldwide Watson Marketing, where she was responsible for the global sales organization of Personalized Marketing, AI & Insights and Digital Experience Solutions. She was a veteran of the IBM era where enterprises needed help in building, deploying, and managing their business applications and transitioning into digital solutions with SaaS vs. on-premises software. Banuelos obtained her degree in Computer Science with an emphasis on Artificial Intelligence.

“Terrie’s journey is so wonderfully aligned with the Conversica team and our growth path,” said Jim Kaskade, CEO at Conversica. “Her in-depth experience in SMB, mid-market, and enterprise-wide organizations, along with a strong MarTech background, is perfectly aligned to Conversica’s current and future customer base. Terrie is such an amazing cultural fit, with a plethora of new playbooks and perspectives based on such a rich experience in our domain areas.”

Banuelos joins a fast-growing organization blazing a trail to create large digital teams in the intelligent virtual assistant marketplace. COVID-19 served as a forcing function for digital transformation in the past year as businesses quickly pivoted from traditional go-to-market strategies to now conducting business 100% online. As a result, revenue-generating teams had to adjust to new ways of serving customers and selling products to reach buyers whose only option is to engage digitally. 

Conversica recently announced its quarterly new subscription sales increased 23% since the first quarter of 2020; after a 210% year-over-year increase in 2020. Mid-year growth looks strong, with new bookings accounting for two-thirds of growth and booking expansions accounted for one-third of growth, attributed to a healthy pipeline of new customer orders as well as continued steady increases in the customer install base.

“We are providing our customers with AI-based conversational applications they need to succeed in an increasingly challenging digitally native market. The strategy we put in place last year—to focus on mid-market and enterprise businesses—is paying off in dividends,” notes Kaskade. “For the remainder of 2021, we are investing significantly in mid-market and enterprise go-to-market functions and targeting mature companies that value Conversational AI for Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and now Commerce at digital scale.”

Conversica’s recent success is also attributed to its transparent commitment and actions towards creating a more diverse and inclusive company. Twice a year, Conversica reports on its diversity progress, including its commitment to reaching employee diversity mix targets both in gender and race by 2022 by requiring a diverse selection of candidates for every role. In addition to the inclusion of Banuelos to the leadership team, Conversica recently added Elissa Fink, former Tableau Chief Marketing Officer and marketing icon in Silicon Valley, to its Board of Directors.

“We have been on an aggressive search to support our Diversity and Inclusion commitment as a company,” said Kaskade. “My shared vision with Terrie for a diverse, inclusive, and equal workforce—from the Board, to our leadership team, and throughout our entire organization—is aligned with our key organizational values and goals.”

ON Partners’ consultants Aaron Clark and Matt Despoth are proud to have partnered with Terrie Banuelos and the entire team at Conversica on this successful placement.

About Conversica
Conversica is the leading provider of Conversational AI solutions that help enterprise marketing, sales, and customer success teams attract, acquire and grow customers at scale across the customer revenue lifecycle. Conversica AI Assistants serve as digital team members and autonomously engage prospects, customers, or partners in human-like, two-way interactions at scale to drive towards the next best action, whether that’s scheduling a sales meeting, gauging interest to buy additional products or services, or politely but persistently collecting overdue payments.

Processing a billion interactions, the Conversica Conversational AI platform integrates natural language processing (NLU & NLG), decision & policy management, business process automation and deep learning capabilities to drive customer engagement across multiple digital communication channels and languages. The Conversica platform supports over 50 integrations into the most popular MAP and CRM platforms and offers an open API for custom integration.

To learn more, visit conversica.com and follow the company on TwitterLinkedIn and Facebook.

Conversica Media Contact:
Edward Lin
Merritt Group
conversica@merrittgrp.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b7d8442d-69c4-45b7-86b5-3511227a8674.

 


Terrie Banuelos, Vice President of Global Sales, Conversica