This episode of the How We Got There podcast features a conversation with Mark Rutledge, Chief Storyteller | Global ISV Partner Solutions at Salesforce. The builder advocacy program that he works on is one that every ISV should learn about and explore if they might be a fit for working with them.

Fun fact - I worked with Mark Rutledge when he as a client of my former business, GTM Guides, while he was building on the Salesforce platform for at Moody’s. Thanks to Codescience (now Bridgenext) for bringing us together.

Mark shares his journey of being in the ecosystem to working at Salesforce to bring the human aspect to partners - contemplate who we are building for vs. just what we are building. PDOs are an essential part of the ecosystem as they have a view of the technology and the market to help an ISV’s vision come to production - especially important for composite apps who don’t have Salesforce dev and architecture talent internally.

One of my favorite parts of the conversation was hearing Mark talk about constructing a hero story around the pain end customers will be feeling all the way to “the universe has been saved” in the narrative. It all starts with spending time listening to customers, approaching it with empathy. If you’re just getting started, try to end a demo of a feature with “…so you can _________” as an easy way to integrate what it actually means to your customers.

We touch on the shift from per-seat pricing to consumption-based pricing and how ISVs should be looking to adapt to the model where Salesforce is goring towards.

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 

#salesforce #isv #gtm #salesforcepartners #appexchange

I got introduced to Jeff Freund, Founder & CEO of Akoonu, a number of years ago and I finally got to hear his full story on How We Got There earlier this year. Jeff has been in the ecosystem in 2003 and founded the business in 2014 as a native Salesforce app to solve b2b sales - inspecting pipeline and then forecasting. 

Jeff lays out the story and the why of Akoonu so clearly - overnight, in Salesforce, a large portion of the opportunities in the pipeline disappeared. Which deals were they? What happened to them? Are they lost or delayed? We all have been there. I used to (try to) solve this with a whiteboard in the office!

I appreciate his approach and point of view on AI/Agentforce for their customers. They already have some features to help users have an “on-ramp” to using AI capabilities like their embedded insights. A passive ability to get real value.

Jeff shares his decision around keeping the business bootstrapped and how it’s helped him shape the business the way he wants to vs. going the VC-backed route. He recently hired a Chief Growth Officer to help grow the business more directly and talks about why he pulled the trigger on that key hire.

I appreciate the renewed importance in the ecosystem around being native with some the recent security concerns in the ecosystem, specifically around composite apps. It’s also unlocking a true “better together” story to layer functionality on top of forecasting tools in Salesforce. 

On the GTM front, the AppExchange continues to be a great source of leads but the number one source of revenue continues to be word of mouth or a customer moves to a new company. Related to the AppExchange, they are exploring a freemium option to increase top of funnel lead flow in 1H of this year. Jeff also calls out the value of events - both from a selling perspective but also from a learning perspective to get immediate feedback. He went to places like Opstars and Dreamforce.

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 

#salesforce 

#isv 

#gtm 

#salesforcepartners 

#appexchange

I met Brittany Hart, founder of Communiscape, from an introduction from Blakely Graham. I was planning to interview her on How We Got There about her experience scaling an SI (Fortimize) as employee 2 before starting/exiting her own Salesforce SI (Platinum Cubed) but then I got to listen to her present via a professional leadership community I am a part of called Arcadia and I knew that I had to expand the conversation to have her share a bit about how ISVs can help your customers digest your app through “change architecture”.

Brittany shares her experience around industry focus and its importance from her time at SIs, who both went deep in order to more effectively co-sell with Salesforce. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes - you’re interacting across the screen with customers with a different communication style going on and then you are using this technical jargon about new screens of an app that the customers have never seen - the least you can do is work to use the customer’s industry terms to help break through the noise. 

And don’t let your depth of knowledge cause you to glaze past key learnings during demos. One that we talk about is Salesforce reports & dashboards. Every ISV I have worked with undersells the importance of this functionality.

You gotta give before you get. The best ISVs she worked with genuinely care about solving customer problems, not just growing pipeline/revenue, but also commit even before asking for anything in return like TaskRay did with them early days. The worst ones operate much more transactionally.

Brittany brings in the 5 terrains of communication through the lens of how ISVs can provide better service to their customers. As an actionable example, listen in to Brittany’s tips around voicescape which is especially important when conveying confidence and authority for women.

There is so much goodness in the 2nd half of this episode for sales and services people.

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 

#salesforce 

#isv 

#gtm 

#salesforcepartners 

#appexchange

Salesforce Solution Engineers are like general contractors, according to David Young, who leads a team of them at Salesforce. They need skills like carpentry and framing and plumbing but also know when to stop and call in an expert. In the Salesforce world this might be knowing when to bring in a service cloud or an Agentforce expert. They need to know enough to see the business challenge and know who to tap for help.

I have always advocated that ISVs spend time thinking about SEs, even moreso than AEs, because the math just maths. AEs have shorter tenure at Salesforce than SEs. AEs have more ISVs reaching out to them than SEs. And AEs might have 1 or 5 accounts in the enterprise, but SEs often support multiple AEs which just multiplies the number of accounts that a single session with you could reach. 

We cover a bunch of topics, but here is a summary:

• What does an SE at Salesforce do?
• What type of person is an SE at Salesforce?
• How does David decide which ISVs to engage with?

• How do SEs learn about new ISVs?
• What are some dos and don’ts when ISVs are engaging with SEs? Shoutout to Myroad.io, who is doing a great job of it.
• What should an ISV know/do before they are “ready” to engage with Salesforce SEs?
• How do SEs work with SDOs and IDOs to demo Salesforce’s tech?

Thanks again to David for sharing with the community!

And thank you to Sam Yarborough for the intro. If any of you have a Salesforce AE or RVP that might give us the real talk, it’d be great to get their pov. 

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications.ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 

Wondering what SIs care about and how they approach implementing ISVs for the first (or hundredth) time? This episode if for you!

In the latest episode of How We Got There, I speak with Steve Simpson, VP of Global Enablement & Learning at Copado, Co-Founder of Catcusforce and Certified Architect Instructor. Steve and I dive deep on the reality of the complex deal cycles that Salesforce ISVs experience and how best to posture in them, especially with new to you SIs. 

It’s a timely episode as Cactusforce and Architect Dreamin’ are coming up in Phoenix in late January and it’s not too late to sponsor to fill the funnel for the new year….and get some warm weather in the winter! Go to the websites to learn more and find the prospectus.

The customer, Salesforce AEs/SEs/RVPs, SIs can all be involved in a deal. Steve explains the personas in a deal and how it can/should change based on how you came to the deal. Did Salesforce or an SI bring you to the deal? Then they are the dominant person in the deal and you need to adjust your posture but one thing is a common through line is to make sure you continue to do right by the customer “with honesty and delivery”. Obviously you can ignore all of this complexity, but it introduces risk in your deals!

Steve has wonderful detailed suggestions on how you position your experience in a specific scenario, even if you don’t have any, that he borrows from a friend who trains physicians. He then relates it to how an SI can communicate their experience on your app. 

We talk about learning strategies that is tailored for customers and partners, the latter covering both sales and delivery. Steve is a wealth of knowledge and I am grateful for his sharing so freely.

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! 

Agentforce is everywhere and everything but in speaking to many ISVs, they are still wondering when is the right time to lean into AI with more than just a story. Where in the hype cycle are we is something I wonder about a lot.
So I set out to find an ISV that is actually succeeding in the Agentforce world and that journey led me to Igor Stosic, CEO of Quadrix Soft who make Goat Email on the AppExchange, as my next guest on How We Got There. They are actually selling the first Agentforce use cases for customers, which has to be making AEs covering those accounts VERY happy. 

Igor is based out of Serbia so we touch on the geographical benefits and challenges around being an ISV out of Europe. They’ve found a lot of success driving leads from the AppExchange from a gtm perspective. We touch on what has been working and mistakes made along the way, sharing transparent feedback about how to build an app that goes wide so you can know what works for customers and lean into those items.

But then we dove into the main topic of Agentforce. We touched on various concepts like how they came up with the Agentforce use case, how they monetize the Agentforce element, and much more. A specific example a use case where they use Agentforce is variability of tone based on the location of the customer that you are interacting with - sending an email to someone in the US looks different from sending an email to someone in Germany.

If you are curious about Agentforce, this episode is for you. 

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! 

#salesforce #isv #gtm #salesforcepartners #appexchange

On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined again by Jason Hoult, the Founder and former CEO of Anvil App Works who was acquired by Tractor Zoom in 12/2023, for part 2! If you missed it, give our first episode together from July 2023 a listen. It was an excellent episode where we talked about a wide range of topics, but my highlight was his approach to company building & nailing a niche. You don’t have to start a business that is a massive multi-trillion TAM. Jason got great advice to stick with what he knows well, Salesforce & John Deere dealerships. You can later expand from there, like they did to expand other types of dealerships.

On this episode, we look back into how he met their acquirer, initially at an event that both companies were sponsoring. Talk about an ROI from sponsoring a trade show!

Jason shares openly about the courting process but also talks about how the partner relationship started with a formal partnership & co-marketing agreement. This enabled both teams to lean in and prove the mutual customer value before taking the next steps. We talked about how he knew it made sense to sell from a timing pov and lessons learned to help you avoid a couple mistakes (like some paperwork with customer agreements). Jason is a true believer of EOS to help align a company on strategy & values.

He is such an asset to the ecosystem with his transparency & authenticity. I hope you enjoy this session even half as much as I did. 

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! 

On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined by Rey Perera who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gridmate. He shares his story as moving from an SDR to an enterprise AE at another Salesforce ISV before jumping into co-founding Gridmate along Hicham El Mansouri. 

Rey talks about how they build a business with diversity as if you look at their team, they are located all across the world and come from a number of cultural backgrounds. It helps deliver outstanding customer support that is clear to see in their AppEx reviews. 

I met Rey years ago but you will see him and his team at many of the Salesforce events around the world. We discuss how they decide on which events to sponsor and the ROI around them from a sales and marketing pov. It’s not all about direct ROI when considering which Dreamin, World Tour/Agentforce, and Dreamforce events to sponsor. 

Their investment in the ecosystem goes deep, working with their team to take at least 3 certifications (that are fully paid and incentivized!) per year to help them in their work and their careers. 

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! 

On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined by Alex MacKay, Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Tequity Advisors. He shares his start in CRM when running Siebel Canada and found his way into sell-side advisory for M&A at Tequity, with deep experience in the Salesforce ecosystem with 28 companies and counting.

*If you are at Dreamforce next week, make sure to reach out to Alex or Mahnoor Naeem if you will be there too*

They take a long-term view of the relationship, oftentimes getting to know a company over a period of 2-3 years to help them get ready to sell. They help demystify the journey, even serving as an informal board member in many cases.

We talk a bit about lessons learned and Alex shares his advice at various stages of an ISV’s journey from first customers, to a couple million in ARR, to scale.  He talks about the importance for entrepreneurs to roll out a management operating system, like EOS, to help set the business up for growth. Alex shares his advice for early-stage ISVs around speaking with customers in their language, not about your product!

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! 

I am joined by Melanie Kruger, one of the best people leaders that I ever had the chance to work with. She has deep understanding of helping to scale Salesforce ISVs of all sizes. She actually found her way into the Salesforce ecosystem via networking between her husband and J Manning, bringing her to the Head of People at Conga.

I got to work with Melanie twice at Conga and TaskRay and was so impressed with how she helped set culture and nurture culture so the companies could grow. Melanie shares that when she joined Conga, lots of people were generalists - Conga had a number of Business Analysts that did everything customer facing - Sales, CS, and Support. This can be a really good model of ISVs early on, but eventually specialization is required. Something similar happened at TaskRay and one of their BAs was Jon Barlow who is now a top tier enterprise AE in the ecosystem.

We talk about culture and how it shifts over time, sharing her experience with Red Canary. We explore hiring pitfalls for early-stage ISVs and the importance of job descriptions. We go deep on this topic because it is so, so important to align expectations and help secure top talent as well as touching on some creative perk ideas for employees, like “two weeks to infinity”.

It was a lovely conversation that blended business lessons and life lessons. 

This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond!