Boston – Sept. 9, 2020 – Linda Connly, a go-to-market (GTM) expert, joins Bain & Company as an expert partner in the firm’s Commercial Excellence practice.

Ms. Connly brings more than 25 years of experience, providing expertise on go-to-market transformations, inside go-to-market designs, merger integration and velocity channels.  She also has deep experience in revenue acceleration, sales resource optimization, reoccurring revenue models and low-cost channels.

“We are helping our clients change the way they think about and execute their go-to-market strategies to retool and emerge stronger from these turbulent times,” said Mark Kovac, who leads Bain & Company’s B2B Commercial Excellence practice. “Linda brings tremendous experience and will have a profound and pragmatic impact on how B2B companies address key opportunities, such as implementing virtual selling models and the associated change management challenges. We’ve been collaborating with Linda for the past two years and have brought her into several of our most important clients as an advisor. We are excited to now welcome her as an expert partner and official member of the Bain team.”

Most recently, Ms. Connly founded the Connly Advisory Group to advise clients ranging from $250M companies to multibillion-dollar multinationals in industries such as technology, healthcare, insurance and manufacturing.  During this time, she also served as a strategic advisor to Bain & Company on GTM transformation.

“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to continue partnering with talented teams at Bain,” said Ms. Connly. “Together, we will help clients build world-class, go-to-market sales functions that will power their future growth.”

Ms. Connly has led go-to-market organizations ranging from $500M to $3B in revenue.  She served as interim EVP of Rackspace Americas, where she designed a major go-to-market transformation for 850 employees in pre-sales, sales, channels and customer success that established a platform for growth.

Prior to that, she drove the go-to-market integration for Dell and EMC, the largest technology merger in history. She also led EMC’s Global Inside Sales function, transforming it into an industry-renowned talent factory that produced the next generation of sales and pre-sales talent for the company.

An accomplished board member, Ms. Connly currently sits on the board of directors for Zebra Technologies (ZBRA) and Presidio.  She is also a trustee for St. Anselm College and served as a public director for Carbonite, a cloud-based backup and security SaaS provider, until the sale to Open Text in December 2019. 

She is a frequent keynote speaker at business, industry and academic events.

Ms. Connly is a recipient of the Boston Chamber of Commerce Pinnacle Award for “Achievement in Management” and was named by VAR Business magazine as one of the top “50 Most Powerful Women in Technology.”

She is a graduate of St. Anselm College with a BA in business and finance.

Editor's note: To arrange an interview, contact Dan Pinkney at dan.pinkney@bain.com or +1 646 562 8102

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