With Zinnia, A Charlotte Founder Uses AI To Build Human Connection in Sales
August 26, 2025
Charlotte
Lauren Goodell spent nearly ten years working in enterprise sales, handling accounts for major companies like Microsoft and Salesforce. After stepping away from the sales world, she realized there was a gap—a tool she never had but always needed. In 2022, she launched Zinnia, a startup focused on helping account executives create stronger, more genuine connections with their prospects.
The inspiration for Zinnia came from events Goodell hosted, which brought sales prospects together and shared personal tidbits about each attendee. When attendees expressed a desire to access this type of information about all their clients and prospects, Goodell saw an opportunity to scale this concept. Unlike many AI sales tools that encourage broad, impersonal outreach, Zinnia uses AI to deepen human connections rather than replace them.
Building Human Connection in an AI-Driven Sales World
Zinnia connects with CRM platforms, digital calendars, and email inboxes to give account executives a single view of their accounts, prospects, and meetings. At its core, the platform surfaces both business and personal details about prospects. This helps salespeople make meaningful connections that can lead to more closed deals.
The platform gathers data internally—from CRMs, emails, and past meetings—and externally, using LinkedIn and other social media profiles. From this, Zinnia identifies “fun facts” like where someone is from or what hobbies they enjoy. It also categorizes prospects by personality traits such as “data-driven” or “bubbly.”
Before meetings, Zinnia prepares account executives by presenting detailed profiles of attendees, including what matters most to them and how the product being sold can help. The platform also assists in crafting personalized emails, using prospects’ fun facts and personality types to tailor the tone and structure. For example, a bubbly prospect might get a lively, casual email opener, while a data-driven person would receive a clear list of bullet points.
This personalized approach helps salespeople stand out amid the flood of generic emails generated by mass automated outreach. “People want real human interaction,” Goodell said. “That’s where we help sales professionals rise above the noise.”
Selling a Sales Tool That Works
Zinnia is offered through a monthly subscription. The basic plan costs $99 per month and includes all core features. There’s also an enterprise option with a variable price, aimed at teams needing extra integrations or single sign-on capabilities.
Goodell estimates the market for Zinnia at $85 billion, growing 20% annually as companies invest more in sales tools. Zinnia currently serves a few hundred users, including a Fortune 100 company. Customers report that Zinnia cuts meeting prep time by 80% and boosts first-call-to-close rates by 20%.
Quick Facts
- Startup: Zinnia
- Co-Founders: Lauren Goodell (CEO), Marco Dell’Olio
- Founded: 2022
- Team size: 5
- Location: North Carolina (remote)
- Website: www.getzinnia.com
- Funding: Seed
Later this year, Zinnia plans to add a feature that directs account executives to the right contacts within prospect companies and provides their contact details. The long-term vision is to make Zinnia the go-to platform for sellers—a centralized hub that simplifies both strategy and execution.
“We want to be the single pane of glass, the operating system for sellers,” Goodell said. For sales professionals looking to maintain genuine connections while using AI, Zinnia offers a practical solution that prioritizes people over automation.
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