XANT Appoints Veteran Salesforce Sales Leader Jim Steele as its President of Worldwide Sales and Chief Customer Officer

JIM STEELESILICON SLOPES, Utah – Dec. 15, 2014XANT, the leading cloud-based sales acceleration technology company, today announced that Jim Steele, former chief customer officer at Salesforce, is joining the executive team at XANT as its new president of worldwide sales and chief customer officer, effective January 8, 2015. “Jim’s track record of leadership at Salesforce, helping it to grow from $25 million to more than $4 billion in revenue during his tenure, speaks for itself,” said Dave Elkington, XANT CEO and founder. “He is one of the most strategic and widely-admired sales executives in the technology industry today, and his experience will be invaluable, especially as we usher in the next phase of our company’s expansion into global enterprise markets.” “XANT is at the forefront of the next generation of sales and marketing technology that uses the power of data science to accelerate sales and marketing,” said Jim Steele. “Considering the measurable and near-immediate impact they can deliver to customers’ sales teams, this company is poised to become an epicenter of business, and it will be exhilarating to work with the company’s high-caliber leadership team to realize this potential.” Steele’s Appointment is Latest in Series of 2014 Company Milestones This strategic hire comes at the close of a banner year for XANT:

  • Raised $100 million in funding in April from Polaris Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Acadia Woods, EPIC Ventures, Salesforce, Zetta Venture Partners, Hummer Winblad, U.S. Venture Partners, as well as individual investors.
  • Doubled its customer base to 2,000-plus customers, including Microsoft, Groupon and Marketo
  • Approaching 100 percent annual revenue growth in 2014, continuing a four-year streak
  • Headquartered in Provo, Utah, the company opened a second office in Salt Lake City to accommodate rapid hiring, doubling its employee base to more than 500
  • The addition of Steele to XANT’s expanding leadership team continues a string of top executives flocking to the growing company, including:
    • Mick Hollison, chief marketing officer and former global vice president of integrated marketing and strategy for Citrix;
    • Todd Riesterer, senior vice president of talent acceleration, whose past leadership experience includes human resources roles at McAfee and VMware;
    • Kevin Samuelson, chief financial officer, former chief operating officer at Backcountry.com and chief financial officer at Infor
  • 2015 is expected to be another high-growth year as the company opens a second data center in Virginia, opens its first offices overseas, and hires between 300 and 400 additional employees.

“Knowing Jim, and having seen the industry-wide transformation he helped lead at Salesforce, he’ll be part of changing the game again in his new role at XANT,” said Ed Flynn, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales & Marketing for ADP. “I’ve already seen the impact the XANT platform has had on my own team’s success, and with Jim on board, I am confident we will see our success continue. XANT is the catalyst for the next generation of sales technology.” Steele brings more than 30 years of business experience and customer success with some of the industry’s biggest players, including IBM, Ariba and Salesforce. Prior to his chief customer officer post at Salesforce, Steele held a variety of roles, including executive vice president of worldwide sales at Ariba. In his new role, Steele will oversee XANT’s sales organization, as well as lead the company’s customer service, implementation, account management and professional services organizations. Steele will also be tasked with helping the company expand its global footprint while establishing a culture of excellence in customer satisfaction and success. He also joins a growing number of veteran Silicon Valley talent relocating to Utah to take part in the Silicon Slopes’ technology boom. XANT is a Salesforce AppExchange Program Partner, as well as a member of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud Ecosystem. XANT is also a Salesforce1 Fund investment. Salesforce, Salesforce1 and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

About XANT, Inc.

XANT offers cloud-based sales acceleration technology, harnessing the power of more than 12 billion sales interactions usingNeuralytics™ in the industry’s first comprehensive sales acceleration platform. Through its breakthrough technology, the XANT platform creates high-performance sales teams by offering communications for immediate response, gamification for sales motivation, data visualization for an immersive experience with sales data, and predictive analytics for lead prioritization and hiring. XANT has received numerous accolades for its technology and has been named as one of the fastest growing companies by Inc. XANT enterprise customers include Microsoft, Groupon and Marketo.

Media Contact

Gina Giachetti 415-963-4174 x17 InsideSales@highwirepr.com

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