How Ascend removed customer blind spots and accelerated pipeline with Airspeed
Ascend automated its manual data entry and surfaced the buying signals hidden in sales conversations. The result: a 30% shorter sales cycle, no more customer blind spots, and a go-to-market strategy built on what actually drives deals.
- Industry
- FinTech / InsurTech
- Size
- ~25 employees
- HQ
- San Francisco, United States
- Funding
- $285.5M (debt financing)
- Founded
- 2021
Ascend is an insurance payments platform that automates financing, collections, and payables for insurance businesses.
What changed
- 01
30% shorter sales cycles: average deal length dropped from 96 days to 67
- 02
6-12 hours reclaimed per rep, per week by automating MEDDPPICC entry in Salesforce
- 03
Identified the true #1 buying driver: growth and scaling, not efficiency, as leadership had assumed
- 04
Higher-quality pipeline by qualifying compelling events earlier in the cycle
- 05
Best monthly sales performance ever within two months of acting on the new insights
- 06
10/10 implementation with zero workflow change for reps on day one
The challenge
Reps lost to admin, leaders flying blind on why deals closed
Two problems were slowing Ascend at once. Reps burned 20-30 minutes after every call hand-filling MEDDPPICC fields in Salesforce, 6-12 hours of admin per rep per week. Leadership, meanwhile, had no reliable read on why customers were actually buying, so deals stalled and qualification ran on intuition instead of evidence.
"We desperately needed a tool that could automate the process of filling out the MEDDPPICC fields."
"We didn't really have a good sense of what was making customers buy."
The solution
Automated note-taking plus deal intelligence on every call
Ascend rolled out Airspeed to capture call data straight into Salesforce and analyze every conversation for compelling events, buyer motivation, and deal quality. Reps got their time back. Leaders got an objective, evidence-based read on the pipeline instead of one shaped by guesswork.
"We tested Airspeed against some other tools in the market and it was clearly the best option, more accurate and faster."
"The amount of deal intelligence you can surface is best in class."
Impact beyond sales
Reps freed to sell, not type
With MEDDPPICC notes filling themselves in Salesforce, post-call admin all but vanished and call data was ready immediately for next-step planning, so blockers got handled in hours instead of days.
"Thanks to Airspeed, the data is immediately available; we can stop, assess, and accurately address each deal's blockers and next steps."
Replacing assumptions with evidence
Leadership assumed efficiency was the primary buying driver. Airspeed's analysis showed it was growth and scaling.
"Everybody said efficiency; that was actually number two."
Aligning GTM around real buying signals
With that insight, Ascend updated:
- Sales qualification criteria
- BDR scripts and messaging
- Marketing positioning and campaigns
The alignment cut stalled deals and improved early-stage qualification.
Removing bias from deal analysis
Manual deal reviews were slow and subjective; Chris had once spent 16 hours in a single week hunting for patterns by hand. Airspeed scaled that analysis as deal volume grew, without leaning on intuition or partial data.
"As a human doing it, I probably had a bias."
A best month within two months
Acting on the new buying signals, Ascend re-aligned qualification, messaging, and campaigns, and the pipeline picked up almost immediately.
"October is shaping up to be our best month ever."
