An Interview with Carl Spalding, Sales Enablement Director at Graitec, about Listening to the Customer’s Revit Journey

Earlier this year, Ideate Software merged with Graitec, expanding its ability to provide software solutions to the European market and beyond. Carl Spalding spearheads sales enablement at Graitec by mentoring the sales team with his immersive approach to understanding customers’ most significant challenges and helping to solve them.

What is your background?

I have been in the AEC and Autodesk space since 2001 and with Graitec for over 17 years, progressing from field sales to Managing Director to leading product strategy and portfolio management. Now, I focus on the sales and marketing side, where I coach our team to stop selling and start listening.

You say “stop selling and start listening.” Tell us more.

The conversations we have with customers are about understanding their business, their big picture objectives. This helps to uncover where they struggle the most in their workflows, tasks, and delivery obligations. Technology is a part of that picture, so we ask the question, “how do we put things in place that solve day-to-day challenges that prevent major problems long term?”

When we take the time to understand our customer’s journey, they bring us to the solutions. This influences everything from our product strategy to how we help customers eliminate mundane and repetitive tasks and the risks associated with them.

What are you most excited about now that Ideate Software and Graitec have joined forces?

What’s really wonderful about Ideate Software is that their customers are incredibly loyal to the brand. They love being able to speak to anyone in the Ideate organization. Those conversations have real value to every Ideate team member, from the head of technology to the support desk, because it exposes them to the customer’s experience in real-time. This also extends to Ideate Software’s beta testers, who are a highly engaged group of customers in a two-way conversation with the development team. They not only test Ideate products, but engage Ideate to push boundaries, and provide invaluable feedback. The active collaboration process is truly eye-opening evidence of customer-centricity in motion.

Additionally, I’m excited to bring Ideate Software to our long-standing customer relationships in Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and the UK, among others. Ideate Software is built to address the fundament and complex workflow challenges faced by Revit users every day and our customers have a huge potential to benefit from the technology.

What does the future hold for Revit and AEC?

There is a lot of conversation about the role of AI, but the future of Revit add-ins remains in ease of use to foster adoption and solving practical outcomes that free people to do the things that are most important to them and their projects. In the end, as it is today, Revit users will ultimately define what the technology needs to do.

You can find more from Ideate Software’s team by browsing our Resource Library.  There you’ll discover team member profiles, videos and articles packed with tips, support and ideas for Ideate Software users.