A Conversation with Maksim Ovsyannikov, Chief Product Officer at SugarCRM
Maksim Ovsyannikov has spent his career building beautiful products that help solve business productivity issues. Leading product teams at some of the biggest names in enterprise software, Maksim has built solutions that have transformed sales, HR, marketing, customer success and service.
Now, as Chief Product Officer at SugarCRM, he’s bringing that perspective to one of the most complex and misunderstood categories in tech: CRM. We sat down with Maksim to talk about his product vision, what’s broken in sales technology, and how Sugar is setting a new standard for what Maksim calls “precision selling”.
Q: You’ve worked with some of the biggest names in enterprise software. What made you choose SugarCRM?
Maksim Ovsyannikov: When I look at Sugar, I see a huge opportunity to bring clarity and impact to go-to-market teams.
Today’s sellers don’t just bring in new business — they manage existing accounts, drive expansion, and grow revenue. But their tools haven’t kept up. There’s bloat, confusion, and a lack of focus on what actually helps them succeed.
So, the opportunity to really help sellers succeed is what drew me to Sugar. We’re building the first AI-native precision selling platform for go-to-market teams.
We’re not trying to be everything to everyone. We’re focused on helping sales, account management, and customer success teams unlock more value and drive more impact.
“We’re building the first AI-native precision selling platform for go-to-market teams.”
– Maksim Ovsyannikov, Chief Product Officer, SugarCRM
Q: How would you describe the state of sales technology in 2025?
Maksim Ovsyannikov: First, we should acknowledge that the CRM category has gotten confusing. It’s expanded so far that the core value for sellers is often lost.
The term “CRM” means different things to different people. That’s a problem. Sales teams shouldn’t have to decode a vendor’s catalog just to figure out what will help them win business.
Second, most companies are missing a unified layer of revenue intelligence. The data exists — in their ERP, CRM, and daily tools — but there’s no intelligence layer bringing it all together. Sales reps end up piecing together insights themselves and can’t see the full picture.
Third, even with intelligence, you need to deliver it in a way that helps people execute. With most CRMs, sales reps don’t know where to go, what to do, or how to use the data.
You need a seller experience that’s unified, simple, and smart. And most people can’t bring all of this together in their heads and need true purpose-built tools.
At SugarCRM, we’re building something purpose-built for seller productivity, focused on seller experience, intelligent revenue orchestration, and account management, all sitting on an AI-native precision selling platform.
Q: How are you applying AI to improve seller experience and revenue intelligence?
Maksim Ovsyannikov: AI has to be at the core of any platform that wants to move the needle. The kind of support that used to come from sales ops should now come from the platform itself.
When I start my day as a seller, I shouldn’t have to guess what to focus on. AI should prepare me for every conversation — not just summarizing past interactions, but guiding me through optimal next steps: What’s the best playbook? Where should I focus to increase win rate? What is the best coaching that I can get now to make my day, and my week, ultimately my quarter more productive?
For revenue orchestration, the intelligence needs to be proactive. AI should identify opportunities, correlate signals, and generate insights that help me act.
This is the I in AI. It’s intelligent and it helps generate deals. That’s what makes AI essential to precision.
“When I start my day as a seller, I shouldn’t have to guess what to focus on. AI should prepare me for every conversation, not just by summarizing past interactions, but by guiding me through the optimal next steps.”
– Maksim Ovsyannikov, Chief Product Officer, SugarCRM
Q: In your view, why is simplicity critical to product development?
Maksim Ovsyannikov: One of the most fundamental problems with enterprise software is complexity that gets in the way of outcomes. Sales leaders should ask: are my tools helping teams focus, or adding friction? Are they helping my team sell more and with more precision, or are they unusable?
When I led Product at Zendesk, our motto was that enterprise software should be beautifully simple. I learned quite a lot from Zendesk’s founders. Simple doesn’t mean basic. It means achieving complex outcomes in an intuitive, efficient way.
At Sugar, we combine that simplicity with intelligence. Beautifully simple. Beautifully intelligent. The experience should make sales reps want to come back because it’s helping them be better, faster, and smarter.
Q: For someone in sales, why should they be excited about what Sugar is building?
Maksim Ovsyannikov: Sellers want to close business. Period. Most sellers work in overly complex environments without the tools to make the most of their data or day and traditional CRM is no longer helping their goals. That’s why sellers should be excited about what Sugar is building.
With Sugar, they get clarity: what’s happening in accounts, what’s at risk, where opportunity exists. They get consistency: intelligent workflows that make great selling scalable. And they get confidence: the system tells them what matters and what to do next, guiding them toward outcomes.
Because hope is not a strategy. But precision is.
Ready to unlock your sales potential?
SugarCRM helps sales teams reach their highest potential. Companies choose SugarCRM to cut through complexity, prioritize opportunities, and increase upsell using the resources they already have. SugarCRM is ideal for complex, relationship-driven industries—such as manufacturing, wholesale and distribution—looking to accelerate growth and drive smarter decision-making.
Discover how SugarCRM transforms your industry:
- Learn more about SugarCRM for Manufacturing →
- Learn more about SugarCRM for Wholesale →
- Learn more about SugarCRM for Distribution →
- Ready to see how SugarCRM can help your team reach their highest potential? Get a demo today →
