One on One Interviews

We had a chance to sit and talk with Paul Pedrazzi, SVP of Product for Salesforce’s SMB focused product, Essentials. We wanted to hear how Salesforce’s approach to the small business market is evolving, the commitment Essentials has from the executive team to provide SMBs with the products and services they need to succeed, and also hear how Essentials, which operates as its own business within Salesforce, is changing the look and feel of the company’s enterprise offerings – and even how the company engages customers overall.

My first guest in this convo series over nine years ago was Jon Ferrara, CEO and founder of Nimble. And before Nimble Jon cofounded Goldmine back in 1989. So Jon was literally at the start of the contact management/CRM game and has been involved with it for 30 years.

With it being on the eve of a new decade (and a new decade for CRM) I had the pleasure of speaking with Jon to get his take on the state of CRM, how it has evolved over the years, and is he surprised by how things have changed (and how they haven’t) over the three decades since he cofounded Goldmine.

I was able to chat for a few minutes with Michael Machado, Salesforce’s Senior Director of Product for Einstein Voice and Deep Learning. Michael got me up to speed with what’s new with Einstein Voice, what the feedback from customers has been so far, how voice technology will help people understand AI more, and what impact he sees voice technology will have on CRM adoption once people get their hands on it – or should I say get their voices on it.

Vala Afshar of Salesforce: My Job is all about Listening, Learning, Sharing and Storytelling by Brent Leary and Small Business Trends

Steve Reese, CIO of the Phoenix Suns, had an intriguing subject on how a conversation with the team trainer led to a sleep study that not only impacted the players, but all the employees in the organization – including him. So I huddled up with Steve for a deeper discussion on how more sleep changed his life personally, as well as changed the organization overall.

I was able to have a fireside chat (and I mean literally a fireside chat) with Dina Apostolou, Global Product Marketing Director of Worldwide Business Applications for Microsoft, this week at Constellation Research’s annual Connected Enterprise conference.

Dina expanded on her thoughts on why AI can help SMBs get more out of CRM and Microsoft’s approach to bringing AI and CRM together. She also explains what mixed reality is and how the company is bringing it to their customer base to help improve the selling experience, while also improving workforce productivity. And she explains why she’s more of a talker than a texter.

Losing billions of dollars in market cap and personal wealth wasn’t the only tough news Amazon had to deal with this week. Two other nuggets that caught John Lawson and my attention as guys who Watch Amazon was third party sellers selling expired food items and “coaches” teaching people bad selling practices, causing Amazon to have to start suing people. So we devoted a couple segments to the impact bad sellers and rogue coaches are having on Amazon.

I had the opportunity to speak with Clate Mask about the two-year transformation his company InfusionSoft went through to become Keap. This was a conversation I was really looking forward to having known Clate and InfusionSoft for about twelve years, admiring what they have accomplished in that time, but having questions about what happened to the company while they were transitioning from InfusionSoft to Keap. And I really appreciated Clate taking time to answer questions that I had about the transition and how it was done.

Last week I attended Zoho’s Developer Conference in their Pleasanton CA office and had a chance to sit down with cofounder and CEO Sridhar Vembu for a wide ranging conversation. We tackled a variety of subjects, including what he feels is the most misunderstood thing about the company, why he continues to watch and model some of Zoho’s practices after companies like Amazon and Facebook, and the role their AI technology (Zia) has played in the accelerated adoption of their Zoho One platform – which in just over two years has gone from zero to 29,000 business customers; even how using Zoho Creator allowed a non-techie farmer to become a developer. But maybe the most intriguing thought he shares with us is why he’s interested in the capital generated by the company’s culture, more than financial valuations put on corporations.

We had the opportunity to sit down with SugarCRM co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Clint Oram, Chief Technology/Chief Product Officer Rich Green, and new CEO Craig Charlton to learn more about how the company is looking to transform itself from a CRM system into a customer experience platform.