[SalesTech Star] Interview with Kylie Fuentes, Chief Product Officer at Zilliant
By SalesTech Star
Jul 18, 2023
Zilliant Chief Product Officer Kylie Fuentes discusses the latest trends in product management in this Q&A with SalesTechStar.
Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Kylie, tell us about yourself and your journey in the B2B tech market, we’d love to hear about your new role as CPO at Zilliant?
I’ve worked in a wide variety of industries throughout my career, working across B2C, B2B and even B2B2C domains. I began my career in telecommunications, where I worked on early iterations of subscription TV streaming products. At the time, the retail channel was a really important part of the distribution strategy, which led me down the path of retail tech. Merchants at the time were moving from physical to digital-hybrid selling models, and to me, it was a really interesting problem space to get into.
Westfield was one of the largest shopping mall companies globally, and they were looking to innovate how retailers and customers could better connect using digital technologies. My role there was to oversee their consumer and retail digital product portfolio, including eCommerce and merchant integration platforms as well as mobile and in-mall technologies.
I had a similar role at Rodan + Fields, helping independent sellers to conduct business through a centralized platform and connect them to end consumers. There was a big component of revenue management in that role, which is what ultimately led to my job at Salesforce where I was most recently senior vice president of product for Revenue Cloud, and of course, now at Zilliant.
Companies everywhere are moving on from a “growth at any cost” mindset to really looking at ways that they can sustain profitable growth, which makes it a really exciting time to be joining a company like Zilliant. The market opportunity is huge at a time like this because pricing is absolutely essential to profitable growth.
Zilliant has been one of the early players when it comes to leveraging AI in pricing. There have been so many advancements to AI in the last year it creates a perfect storm of market opportunity for Zilliant, and I’m excited to help them grab it by the horns.
How has the role of the typical B2B Chief Product Officer evolved over the years and what are some of the key ways in which the role will change down the line?