How Aniai’s Sales Director took his pipeline health from 23% to +90% without opening Salesforce in Q2 2026
Review, research, planning and report
Deal velocity through the stages
Pipeline hygiene, maintained automatically
About
Aniai is a New York based kitchen robotics company building automated grilling equipment for high-volume commercial kitchens. Its flagship product, Alpha Grill is deployed in more than 50 kitchens globally, from Korean chains like Lotteria to local burger joints across the United States, and has cooked over three million items.
Industry
Robotics Equipment Manufacturing
Headquarters
New York, NY
Company Size
50
Mike Conway runs North American sales at Aniai. Since adopting Katalyst, his Salesforce, email and Teams activity syncs continuously into a single view of pipeline health, with real-time recommendations on how to advance each opportunity to Closed-Won. Pipeline hygiene has moved from roughly 25% to over 90%, and deals now progress through the stages three times faster.
The Challenge
Aniai’s sales meetings were always about playing catch up on missing Salesforce fields and data figuring the ‘true’ opportunities in the pipeline, lacking the Revenue Infrastructure to see a real forecast.
A CRM that captured a fraction of the deal, and couldn't
be trusted.
Aniai sells through a combination of dealers, end users and rep groups, and each opportunity spans several parallel conversations. Keeping Salesforce current required Mike to log every call, email and meeting manually, alongside the work of actually advancing deals. In practice, most of that activity never reached the CRM, which left the system of record as a partial archive rather than a working picture of the pipeline.
"The biggest frustration with the pipeline is all the manual entry, all the manual thought that I have to do."
Mike Conway, Director of North American Sales, Aniai
The consequences compounded. With limited reliable data in the system of record, the forecast Mike could confidently defend sat under $200K. Preparing for leadership reviews meant reconstructing the pipeline by hand in Excel and PowerPoint, roughly two hours each week. Follow-ups were delayed, deals stalled between stages, and little capacity remained for the account research that shapes competitive positioning.
The Solution
A system that turns activity into decisions, not just records.
Katalyst continuously syncs Mike's Salesforce, email and Teams activity, builds the context behind every opportunity, and writes it back to the CRM automatically. Rather than maintaining records, he now runs his pipeline from a live, prioritized view of where every deal stands and what it needs next. Three capabilities anchor his day.
01 Pipeline Health & Salesforce Automation
A single at-a-glance view, reviewed in fifteen minutes.
Katalyst presents pipeline health in one place, surfacing the opportunities that need attention alongside the missing fields and recommended next steps to move each deal toward Closed-Won. Mike reviews every opportunity, confirms or adjusts Katalyst's recommendations, and the updates write back to Salesforce automatically. The full review takes roughly fifteen minutes, and the CRM now holds an accurate, inspection-ready picture at all times. Hygiene has risen from around 25% to over 90%.
02 Smart Drafts
Follow-ups written from real context, in his voice.
After each interaction, Katalyst drafts tailored follow-up emails based on prior conversations and the latest account data. Execution that once depended on memory and spare time is now consistent: Mike follows up on 100% of his opportunity pipeline, on time. With momentum maintained across every deal, opportunities that used to stall in the early stages now progress roughly three times faster.
03 Account Intelligence & Signals
An account plan for every opportunity, and a live read on the market.
Katalyst builds a detailed account plan for each opportunity automatically, and monitors every account for relevant industry developments that give Mike a competitive edge exactly when it matters. Research he previously had no time to conduct now arrives proactively, so he enters each conversation informed by the full account picture and the latest external signals.
Signals in Practice
A market signal, delivered ahead of a defining meeting.
Shortly before a meeting with one of the largest airline caterers in the world, Katalyst flagged that the prospect had just announced a partnership with another major airline, information that had not surfaced through any of Mike's own channels.
Mike opened the conversation on the announcement. The insight signaled genuine preparation and strengthened his standing in the room, the kind of edge his CRM alone would never have surfaced. It is a routine example of what Signals does across his accounts every week.
"It's not just a data repository. Katalyst actually translates data into actionable, revenue-driving insights."
Mike Conway, Director of North American Sales, Aniai
The Results
A cleaner pipeline, a defensible forecast, and time returned to selling.
The pipeline now maintains itself, the forecast reflects reality, and preparation that once consumed hours takes minutes. Most significantly, Mike's time has shifted away from administration and back toward customers.
~25% → 90%+ Pipeline hygiene across his opportunities, maintained automatically.
3x faster Deal velocity through the stages, with no follow-ups leaking or landing late.
100% On-time follow-up across every deal in the opportunity pipeline.
15 min To inspect and update the entire pipeline, down from hours of manual entry.
$1M+ In pipeline now managed with a defensible forecast, up from under $200K he could reliably see.
< 1 week To ramp fully onto Katalyst and run his day out of it.
"The best part? Katalyst frees me from being chained to my laptop or phone for hours, allowing me to focus on what actually matters: spending quality time with prospects, customers and building relationships."
Mike Conway, Director of North American Sales, Aniai
For Mike, the shift is fundamental. After decades of working in CRMs, Katalyst is the first system that has changed how he approaches his pipeline, moving him from maintaining a record of the past to acting on a clear read of what will move revenue next. He now runs his entire revenue motion on the platform.