6 Questions With… Claire Rychlewski

From Sheffield to Scotland to France — with stops in Holland for basketball and unexpected life lessons — Claire Rychlewski has never been afraid to open a new door. That instinct for courage, curiosity, and connection now shapes her leadership as Syncron’s Chief Revenue Officer.

In this edition of our leadership series, Claire reflects on what revenue leadership really looks like and why customers today need partnership as much as technology.

1. Revenue leadership is typically framed around targets. How do you define it?

Targets and KPIs are important — of course they are — but they’re only a small part of what revenue leadership really means.

Revenue is something everyone in a SaaS company contributes to — not just the people with sales in their title. You can’t hit a number or keep your customers happy unless the people talking to those customers every day are deeply connected to the people building or implementing the products. My responsibility is to steer us in the right direction and remove the barriers to success — both internal and external — for my team. That can often mean linking arms with my peers to drive the transformation needed for us to get to where we want to be.

For me, revenue leadership is fundamentally about people, trust, and confidence. You have to build credibility fast with customers who are trying to solve real problems. And internally, you have to create confident teams who know how to show up well and guide clients together — because numbers follow a high-performance culture, not the other way around.

2. What are customers asking for most right now, and how has that changed?

Customers today are far better informed. Thanks to the sheer accessibility of research, AI tools, and industry benchmarks, they come to us with a clearer understanding of what technology can do.

What they’re asking for now more than anything is guidance. Not “How do I implement the software?” but “How do I get the most value from the technology, make better decisions, and drive change? How do I bring my people with me? How do I get real value from this and avoid slipping back to old habits?” There’s a lot of hype out there about the power of technology, particularly AI. While the potential is exciting, driving value from it still depends on the core principles of being outcomes-focused and ensuring that processes, people, and technology are working in harmony.

In our industry, aftermarket transformation has moved up the agenda for many organizations due to the revenue growth and operational efficiencies it can drive. But connecting up historical silos of data and people requires more than just technological change.

3. What makes the aftermarket fundamentally different, and why does that matter when choosing a partner?

The aftermarket is uniquely complex and far more nuanced than many people realize.

You’re managing years, and sometimes decades, of equipment and component history, while juggling supply chain optimization, pricing, forecasting, warranties, revenue generation, and sometimes indirect relationships through dealer networks. Revenue is triggered when something breaks, which means predicting and servicing demand efficiently and setting the right price depends on countless internal and external factors. That complexity is why choosing the right partner is so important.

If a partner comes from the finished goods world, their solutions are often focused on cost optimization, not revenue. And if they only understand one piece of the aftermarket puzzle, they’ll miss the interdependencies that really drive value.

What I love about Syncron is that we understand the full breadth of the aftermarket and that we’ve built solutions designed to work together across the entire value chain. That domain depth is rare, and it’s one of our biggest strengths.

4. What separates highperforming commercial teams from the rest?

The best commercial teams understand that selling isn’t really about selling anymore — not in the stereotypical way it’s perceived. It’s about guiding customers through a buying journey. Most people don’t buy enterprise software often. Some do it only once every 10 years. We sell it every day. So it’s our responsibility to lead with clarity, experience, and partnership.

High-performing teams act as true business partners. They’re transparent about how to evaluate options, including options beyond us. They turn up as a cross-functional team, not as isolated individuals. They stay anchored in the customer’s outcomes and help connect those outcomes to the technology and to the broader corporate goals.

And importantly, they have a growth mindset. As much as we’d like to, you can’t win everything. The difference is how honestly a team learns from the wins and the losses. The teams I’ve been most proud to lead are introspective, openminded, and always striving to be better.

5. How do you balance short-term performance pressure with building durable growth?

Short-term performance is critical, especially in SaaS. But if you focus only on the immediate quarter, you undermine the long-term health of the business. Some of the most meaningful work a revenue organization does — building discipline, strengthening relationships, maturing capabilities — doesn’t show up instantly in the numbers.

My responsibility is to hold both horizons at once: drive short-term results, yes, but also defend and protect the work that creates sustainable growth. That sometimes means standing behind teams who are doing the right things, even when the numbers haven’t caught up yet.

6. What advice would you give your younger self at the start of your career?

My younger self actually trusted the path she was on far more than I sometimes do now. So the advice I’d give her — and maybe myself today — is to trust the path, trust yourself, and don’t expect your journey to look like anyone else’s.

I didn’t travel outside the UK a lot as a child, but I was taught to be curious about people and places, and not be afraid of trying new things and taking risks. This core foundation led me to meet many different people with a multitude of backgrounds — playing basketball in Europe, living in Holland as an Erasmus student, and eventually moving to France for love without speaking a word of French — all decisions that seemed slightly mad at the time, but every one changed my life for the better.

I think that’s why a bit of carpe diem has always stayed with me, along with the Stoic idea of memento mori — that life is finite, so spend your energy on what you can control and be brave enough to take the chances that matter.

And if nothing else, all that moving around left me with a slightly confused accent — a bit of Yorkshire, with a Scottish twist that gets stronger whenever I’m back in Glasgow. It’s a good metaphor for my career, really — unexpected, colorful, and shaped by the places and people I’ve met along the way.