RODcast – Salesforce Career Conversations

Salesforce Career Conversations #10: Helle Justesen

Episode 10: Helle Justensen talks to Lee and Theresa about Salesforce Change Management and Digital Transformation. Plus provides her tips for remaining positive during a pandemic.

[This interview with Helle has been transcribed for your benefit. Please ignore any rogue typos. Thank You.]

Lee Durrant: Hi, and welcome to RODcast with me Lee Durrant, joined today with Theresa as well. We're both going to be interviewing Helle Justesen today, who is in the Salesforce ecosystem, but this one's more about her experience as a transformational change specialist and a business and life coach and how she sees the future after COVID-19 and all of the lockdown issues we've been all going through. Well, this has been recorded in the middle of lockdown, but I think hopefully you'll all see some positive messages there from Helle about how life might change, but also how the Salesforce ecosystem will potentially thrive in the future, so I hope you enjoy it.

Lee: Hi, Helle. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Helle Justesen: I'm fine. Thank you. How are you?

Lee: I'm okay. Theresa is with us as well as you know.

Theresa: Hello.

Helle: Hi. Theresa, how are you?

Theresa: I'm good. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to this day when - I don't want to use the word normal - but looking forward to the day when we can actually be a lot more social with people and not feel like you got to keep your closest people at arm's distance. Looking forward to those times. [chuckles]

Lee: Before we dive into it, are you okay just to give us a little introduction of yourself in terms of… Just introduce yourself if that's okay.

Helle: Yes, [laughs] of course. My name is Helle, Helle Justesen, and I am 43 years old. I want to put that in there because I'm proud of my age. I'm still alive, so that's good.

[laughter]

Helle: I have a feeling that we don't celebrate the fact that we get to get older enough. That's one of the things that…

Theresa: Yes, I love that, and it's the wisdom that comes with it. Why not shout about it? Absolutely.

Helle: Yes, exactly, and the fact that you get another year to do the crazy things that you want to do. I'm a transformation change specialist with a background in a bit of management consultancy, and I've worked in a multitude of different industries and things like that. The thing is there's always these similarities between each industry and everybody thinks that they're unique, but to be fair, we're really not. [laughs] We're all creatures of habits. That's one of the things that you can always take with you when you're on your life journey and things like that.

I'm very much a holistic person as well. I see us as living a life not necessarily having a career. I think sometimes that when people face a crisis and a crisis can be losing a job, which a lot of people are in that situation right now, or going through a divorce, which also a lot of people are facing right now.

[laughter]

Helle: Because of being at home with the family and things are coming out right now as well.

Lee: Theresa's laughing quite heartily at that one. It's a bit worrying.

Theresa: [laughs] You're so worried.

Helle: The thing is, with that, it's instead of seeing it as a tearful goodbye to something, then seeing it as an opportunity to actually go out and do the things that you've always dreamed about doing. Sometimes a crisis needs to happen for us to actually wake up and change what we're doing. It's the same thing with illness as well. It's like if you've gone down a road where you've been living an unhealthy lifestyle, then something needs to wake you up for you to actually alter that lifestyle or else we go through life mindless.

It's not really a conscious road that we're taking. We're not conscious of the present moment. We either dwell on the past and it's never a good thing about the past. It's never the good things about the past that we dwell on, it's always the hard things, and/or we focus on a better future. We never just appreciate where we are. I think one of those things is what we need to start working on a little bit more.

Theresa: You're right. I know we come from similar coaching backgrounds and I think that there are people that you know when you need to make a massive change because there will be some form of an intervention. You can either choose to do that intervention yourself, so you either make a decision to change the things about your life that you're not happy with, or it's forced upon you that you. I prefer to be in the control.

As I said, I know it's being in control of those changes, but they're often very good things. It's only when you look back through hindsight, that you suddenly go actually that if that thing hadn't have happened, I would have still been going down that same path and that wouldn't have been healthy. It wouldn't have been good. Yes, totally agree where you're coming from on that one.

Lee: Actually for people listening, I should point out that both Helle and Theresa are coaches to various different degrees. Is that right Helle? I know Theresa's a coach. You are as well, aren't you? As well as everything else you do.

Helle: Well, for me, it's both life coaching and things like that, but my background in coaching is an Agile coach as well, where it's in the corporate space of things but I'm also a neuro coach which is based on neuroscience and things like that. I look at fear elements and motivation elements and things. That's just a protocol that you can use in any type of coaching. You don't need to be something particular to actually be able to use that.

Lee: Just a tiny scene, a little bit with obviously the history of this podcast, you are in the Salesforce space so that people can find you on LinkedIn and everything like that.

Helle: [laughs] Yes.

Lee: What I like about you as well amongst other things is that you're not all about is the Salesforce. Part of your digital transformation and change management, Salesforce is a part of that. It's not the only--

Helle: Yes, it is.

Lee: Do you mind telling us a bit about that? I know there'll be some people listening as well that perhaps wonder, what is change management? What is transformational change management?

Helle: Well, the scary part is that a lot of people go out and buy new CRM systems as Salesforce is and implement that in an organisation and they think, "We're just changing a tool," but, in fact, you're changing the way that you're working. If you have an old legacy system, then Salesforce is this golden new goose that you're getting in, but you can't approach Salesforce with an old mindset. You have to change your mindset as well in terms of how to utilize that CRM to the best abilities of it. You're not just changing an IT system, you're changing the way you work.

For a Salesforce project to reap the best rewards and utilize the benefits that you're trying to achieve with the business plan you've set up originally, you really need to change more than just a system. That's where the mindset of the likes of me come in. I will come into a project, not as a change manager, but as a program manager. I take on the more strategic elements of it, but because of my background in coaching and change and everything like that, that means I can reach further than just delivering a program. In short, that's what I do.

Lee: Yes, brilliant. I think we had a message back and forth about how that can be different, or how in the Salesforce world there are some companies that perhaps just want to deliver a piece of Salesforce kit and then off they go. How does that differ for you then in terms of what you do around that, that makes sure that the users are happy with it and the business?

Helle: Usually, the thing is that you need to be prepared for getting a new system. That means that you have to look with some critical eyes on how you're doing your business now, and also what it is that you're wanting to achieve in the future. All businesses have a strategy that they're trying to achieve in a yearly business plan, and a Salesforce implementation fit right into that. Part of the reason why people are getting Salesforce is to achieve that business plan.

It may be that they want to have more customers or they want to reduce their cost of sales or whatever it may be. That's the reason why they're thinking, "I need a new CRM system", or it may just be a risk factor that the old system is not compliant with GDPR or something like that. There is a reason that you're making this investment. It needs to fit into that plan.

A lot of people just see it as an IT project and it isn't an IT project, it's a business project. You can look at a CRM system and say, so the technical part of it is an IT domain but the data that goes into the system is a business domain. Also, the business processes that you are mimicking in the system is owned by the business, not by IT. That's why these two needs to, you need to work hand-in-hand on this. You're not operating in a vacuum.

Sometimes, businesses are set up in the old way where it's silo-based and wherein the old days you can just have the database was run by IT and that's it and nobody actually knew what was going on there. You would have this a little bit of animosity between business and IT because IT would go, well, business will ask for something and IT would go like, "Oh my God but I can't-- That's a major configuration we need to do to the system to comply with what you're asking." When they say that to the business, they don't understand that. You have two people, two sides of the business that are speaking different languages.

This is again, where we come in and try to make this conversation go better and making sure that the business gets what they need so they can measure the inputs and outputs of the wonderful things that they'

Salesforce Roundtable: Covid-19

Listen to some of the brightest minds within the Salesforce ecosystem talk about the impact of Covid-19 on them, how they are utilising their time during lockdown and predictions on what the future of Salesforce may look like. Also they give tips on how you can utilise your time for when you are backing looking for Salesforce jobs after the lockdown is lifted.

 

Lee Durrant:

So, hi, guys. Thanks for joining us. We're obviously humbled that you gave us your time, and we're really grateful for that, so thank you very much. I guess we'll pick one and we'll just go for some introductions if that's all right?

Lee:

So, Vera, as you're top on our screen, would you like to introduce yourself first?

Vera Loftis:

Absolutely. Hi. Vera Loftis, I run the Capita Salesforce practise, but I've been in the ecosystem for over a decade now. So many, many different forms, but always Salesforce focused.

Theresa:

Thank you. We've got Simon. Do you want to go ahead?

Simon Thompson:

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Simon Thompson, CEO and co-founder of Improved Apps. I've been working around the Salesforce ecosystem for 13 years, since 2007. I worked at Salesforce for six of those years before founding Improved Apps. And we're helping customers drive adoption of Salesforce.

Theresa:

Lovely. Thank you.

Lee:

Gemma do you want to go next?

Gemma Blezard:

Sure. Gemma Blezard. I founded Ladies Be Architects during my time at Bluewolf, when I was working with Vera. Recently broken away to start my own advisory consultancy business, focusing on architects. And I've been working with Salesforce for 12 years.

Theresa:

Fantastic. And then we've got Toby.

Toby Heath:

Hi there. Hi everyone. My name is Tony Heath. I've recently been working at Heathrow, previous to that it was Gatwick, and previous to that was a company called SITA who were based out in Geneva. I've been working in the Salesforce space for about eight years now, on and off in different guises. Yeah, that's me really.

Theresa:

Thank you.

Lee:

Brilliant. Thank you. And last but not least, Penny and your Muppet. Do you mind introducing yourself?

Penny:

Yeah. Hi guys. Yeah, my colleague. Times are getting desperate for colleagues. So I'm Penny, I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Pracedo, and like the other guys, I've been around doing Salesforce for ages, so about 12 or 13 years, and I've been the customer at other consultancies and the ISVs, so a little bit of most of the space.

Theresa:

Fantastic. Thank you very much guys.

Lee:

Yeah, okay. Well we'll just dive straight in. I know I sent you some questions that we're curious about, and obviously I want to thank you all for doing this and thanks to Gemma as well for being there when the idea hit us both. We thought it'd be a good idea then just go through some questions about how you're all handling the current situation and obviously what you think might happen in the future, so that people can hopefully see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Lee:

So the first point I think we'd like to cover, and I think I might start with...

Lee:

Who shall we start with, Jenny?

Lee:

Okay, well actually, Gemma, because your situation is quite interesting, I mean all your situations are very unique, but how has the current COVID-19 situation affected you in that you've just started a new business, and all that sort of stuff?

Gemma Blezard:

Sure. It's been interesting because the conversations I've been having have varied in that regard. So I started up the consultancy in October and began the year full of optimism around, come March, we'll start building all our relationships and go on a world tour. We can start getting the word out and everybody's going to be kicking off digital transformations and we know we're needed, et cetera. Nobody could have predicted this in any way at all I think. So I'll be honest, it has been tough.

Gemma Blezard:

Starting this business, the number one thing to do was to make sure there was enough work coming in so that I could live in this house, for a start. And for the first time in several years, it has really hit me financially right where it hurts and it has created a sense of humility, for sure. I'm certainly shopping far less extravagantly and less frequently, for a start. It's certainly taken me back to basics. How do I start these relationships again? And also, how do I just start to re-evaluate and realign on my priorities?

Gemma Blezard:

Yeah, it's been tough and there've been lots of views around how we will bounce back. But, just wait and see. But not knowing where the next mortgage payment is coming from is a very big and very real issue here for me.

Theresa:

And how have you embraced that, from being in a point of view where before you were in a role where you've probably got that job security, to suddenly find yourself starting up a business where there is no security? And how have you found that transition in general?

Gemma Blezard:

In my situation, as you know, I've not had the easiest time over the last few years in my personal life and my health and so on. So I'm used to my world being turned upside down, if that makes sense. So the way I react and respond to that is to mobilise, is to think what do I need to do now in order to solve this problem? Being a consultant for 12 years, you get used to solving problems. So the immediate problems have been how do I get the flywheel going? How do I make sure that I use the network of relationships that I have in order to try and create some more security?

Gemma Blezard:

And I know that for other people, it's really knocked people for six. All of this situation for me, I just see it as another fence I've got to jump over at the moment. And it's a higher fence than I've had previously, as weird as that sounds.

Lee:

Yeah.

Gemma Blezard:

Having cancer was a breeze compared to this. I know that sounds dark and strange, but all I had to do was sit down and absorb some nasty chemicals and the problem was solved in that for me. But I can't sit down and take drugs for this one. I've got-

Theresa:

It's that feeling that things are beyond your control, isn't it? Because there are certain things you can control, but this seems to be something that none of us have any idea of how long it's going to go on for, what the outcome is going to be, when things are going to return to normal again. So it's that sense of losing control.

Gemma Blezard:

I guess so. And I suppose, in this situation as well, my mentors are all over the place. They're all over the ecosystem and I've got access to mentors that are very prepared to just jump on a call and share their experience with me. So that's something that I really value in this situation. And I'm not restricted as to where I can get those mentors from. I can get them at all levels, all countries, all business backgrounds.

Theresa:

It's a good position to be in, isn't it, really?

Lee:

That's a good benefit of the Salesforce ecosystem isn't it? That everyone is so giving, I think. Thanks for that Gemma.

Lee:

Same question then to Simon. How has it been for you, with being a CEO of your own business there?

Simon Thompson:

Well I think there's two angles on it from a personal level. First of all, I've got quite a few mouths to feed within our business and look after those individuals first and foremost. I think on a personal level, not getting out and about and meeting people like we normally do on a day by day basis, I definitely miss that. That excuse to get away from the children has gone. They're constantly around us now, and as much as I love them to bits, they're always there when you don't want them to be.

Simon Thompson:

So I think on a personal level, it's been more focusing on giving reassurance to our employees that the business is good, we've got a subscription model, our customers are happy. So making sure that they were reassured as well because we have a variety of people working for us and some of them were very worried about what was going to happen in all this furloughing, things going on, was it going to affect them?

Simon Thompson:

So I think going back to even January, I made a decision that people only needed to travel if they personally wanted to travel. So they were able to make their own judgement quite early on. And then moving through to March, we made a real statement that we're fine as a business, we'll carry on as we are, things are going to change naturally, which we'll discuss more later.

Simon Thompson:

But I think for me it was twofold. A difference of the way my life is, not getting out and about as much as I normally do. And the most important thing was just making sure our employees were comfortable and knew that they were secure and safe, because another part of that was making sure that even if they were going to be sick or off sick, that we were going to support them regardless, full salary and keep the business running. So that was very important for me to support our company in that way.

Theresa:

Great. Fantastic. The staff that have been working for you, how have they been receptive to towards that, that you were communicating that out to them?

Simon Thompson:

Yeah. Overall, very good. We now have daily 15, 20 minute, sometimes ends up being half an hour catch ups in the morning. We don't talk about business there, it's purely just to catch up, talk about things that are going on. It's very difficult to try and keep that positive though with everything in the news. And we have fun and games and quizzes on occasions when people want to step up and do that.

Simon Thompson:

Yeah, it's just working a little bit differently. We are a software company that's used to working from home quite a lot anyways, ...

Salesforce Career Converstions #9: Andrew Hart

Episode 9: Andrew Hart talks to Lee about his 2.5 year journey from zero Salesforce certs to #202 CTA of around 302 (last time he checked).

[This interview with Andrew Hart has been transcribed for your benefit. Please ignore any rogue typos. Thank You.]

Lee: So, Andrew Hart, hello. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us. How are things going?

Andrew Hart: Yeah, thanks, Lee. Things are going well, thank you. Busy as ever with work and family and everything else that we have in our lives, but well, healthy.

Lee: Good. That's good in this current time. So I am... Ordinarily, I would go on about giving an intro for you, but why don't you do it yourself? Tell everybody mainly I suppose what you're doing now, and then we can rewind time and go back to the beginning. Okay?

Andrew Hart:  Yeah. Of course. So I am Andrew Hart. I'm a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect. I'm the lead Technical Architect for the Accenture Salesforce group in the UK. I always describe my role as having three pillars. A bit of pre-sales, so using the CTA cert to get in front of customers quite often, helping shape and sell projects.

Andrew Hart:  Delivery, so helping to deliver the projects, and in my case, that's usually around delivery assurance or high-level support or engagement at the sort of technical executive level. The final bit is team development, so looking after those who I consider in my care, and that's the technical team for the most part—so looking out from hiring, upward to training and enablement support when they're on projects and just general set of ears and a brain if they need it and feel that my brain can help them on their projects.

Lee: There's a lot to what you're doing obviously. It's been a wild ride I think, correct me if I'm wrong, going back to the beginning. When I say the beginning, I kind of mean slightly before Salesforce. Again, please tell me if I'm mistaken here, but is it fair to say that your background didn't necessarily lend to being what people would associate with a CTA, sort of a Technical Architect? Am I right with that?

Andrew Hart:  Well, I mean, I've been a consultant my whole... More or less my entire working life, and I think as a consultant, you play several different roles, project to project, customer to customer.

Andrew Hart:  I've never been... You know, I'm not a classic TA path if you think computer science degree, software engineering, product development type background, but I've always been technically leaning. But I very much feel that technology is an enabler for solving problems, or it should be business-led, and that starts with conversations.

Andrew Hart:  I've always approached my role in that way. I encourage TAs that I work with to work in that way as well. We are never... In the consultancy space anyway, we're never just building an academic, technical solution. It's always solving business problems, and it can't be lead by technology.

Andrew Hart:  In Salesforce, you see this in their go-to-market as well. It's all about business benefits, and it's KPIs in either service or sales or whatever other clouds they're pitching. It's never just about “look at this cool tech”. It's always about looking at the problems it can solve, and I've approached my career that way.

 

Andrew Hart:  I acted on some advice I was given maybe 15 years ago from a manager I had at the time within Oracle, which was, you know, we can offshore development, we can offshore testing, we can offshore a lot of things. We'll never offshore someone looking in the customer's eyes and asking what their problems are. There always needs to be someone to have those conversations.

Andrew Hart:  I wouldn't say that radically changed how I approached my job, but it's always been in the back of my mind, that a lot of skills can be outsourced or sent elsewhere, but somebody in the room to understand a customer is always going to be needed.

Lee: That leads me actually to what I was going to say, because your pathway to Salesforce, for this podcast anyway, this phase of this podcast, is a little different in what I think, because you were at Oracle for quite a long time, maybe ten years, weren't you?

Andrew Hart:  Yeah. And actually, I was a Siebel guy for a few years before that as well. Yeah, when you asked me about this I did say to you well I haven't been working with Salesforce 10 years yet, but-

Lee: Well, we'll let you off on that one because your rise to where you've got to is fascinating. So yeah, sort of 10 years... Nearly ten years at Oracle.

Andrew Hart:  Yeah.

Lee: So-

Andrew Hart:  So I-

Lee: Go on.

Andrew Hart:  Well, no, I mean, I went to Siebel as it was. I was Siebel trained, and I had been working for small consultancies, and I went to Siebel, which was the CRN mothership programme at the time. Shortly before, about a year earlier, Siebel got acquired Oracle, which, to be honest, was a relatively smooth transition for us at Siebel. I think it was more difficult for the Oracle CRN people when Siebel arrived.

Andrew Hart:  That was where I cut my teeth in terms of working for a big consultancy, with their big projects, for technology as well to a certain extent. But it was undoubtedly where I, in those nine years, building on maybe the few years I had had before working with Siebel, that I moved up levels, and by the time I left there I was at the advisory architect level. Oracle had quite a similar model to what Salesforce has in that while they do some project themselves, they are more comfortable putting architects into critical customers.

Andrew Hart:  Then, I made a move to Salesforce. To be honest, I probably stayed at Oracle a little bit too long for my career, but I was enjoying the work, and if I'm frank with myself I was very comfortable there in every regard. I thought about leaving a few times and never entirely, quite pulled the trigger.

Andrew Hart:  By the time I did, I got into Salesforce, as I say, nearly seven years ago, so not early. I mean you've had people on this series who have been around in the Salesforce space for much longer than I have, but I feel that I got in at a good time. I got to go straight to Salesforce, so I got to learn the product very closely with the best at that time.

Lee: And obviously... Just to go back a little bit, after... You mentioned being very comfortable and thinking about leaving but never quite making the leap. What was it then that... What happened? Were you headhunted? Because there's a connection between Oracle and Salesforce if I'm not mistaken?

Andrew Hart:  Yeah.

Lee: So was that an obvious move to make? What made you then to go switching, considering all of your career had been on that other... You know, Siebel and Oracle. It was a big decision to make, isn't it, I guess?

Andrew Hart:  It was. But Salesforce was... As you say, I had grown out of Siebel in some ways, and there was a lot of similarities in terms of how the Salesforce clouds were structured and how the Siebel products were being made. Siebel had never really made a move to the cloud. It had been an ambition for a while, and Salesforce was there already. I think even seven years ago it was still very much an evolving product and certainly nowhere compared to where it is today, but it was nevertheless this cloud-based, zero-footprint product.

Andrew Hart:  That was going to be the next phase, and I think we all recognised that Siebel was on the downslope, and there were quite a few people who made a move from working with Siebel to working with Salesforce.

Andrew Hart:  For me, it was the right time for several factors. The projects I was getting, the interest that I had in the platform at that point, I felt I probably hit a bit of a career dead end, where I didn't see the right prospects at Oracle, and that's not an indictment of Oracle. That's more an indictment of myself. But, yeah, several things just came together, and I was headhunted directly from Salesforce. We have in-house recruiters.

Lee: Very flattering, I imagine? Just brilliant.

Andrew Hart:  Oh, everyone loves being headhunted. It is flattering. We try and make out it's an inconvenience, and sometimes it can be, but it's incredibly flattering to be approached for any roles.

Lee: Yeah. Of course. I imagine you get a lot now as well, but that's a conversation for in a minute. So Salesforce... In a relatively short period of time then at Salesforce, because you're only there three and a half years, what was the first project you did, or what was the first bit of work you did then on Salesforce?

Andrew Hart:  My first project was a service cloud implementation at a global pharmaceutical company, actually one I had worked at before in the Siebel years and one that I've worked at since in the Salesforce years. They're a big customer, lots of Salesforce instances, lots of projects going on.

Andrew Hart:  I joined a team that was mostly in flight. It was coming towards the end if I'm honest, but I got to get hands-on with some Visualforce, and there was still a lot of clicking as well, and ultimately helped the project through the test phase and get it live.

Andrew Hart:  Yeah, it was good, and it was at that point... I had done a lot of transition from Siebel to Salesforce, so learning the terminology differences, learning how Salesforce did things that I might have recognised from doing the Siebel platform.

Andrew Hart:  But then I started finding the new things. I remember once, it was quite early on, I was just trying to think there must be a way that I can limit some behaviour in Visualforce based on the user that's being on the page, and it just led me down a documentation wormhole. But I discovered there were... This had been thought about before me by the Salesforce engineers. This had been built in, and I could use a specific pie...

Salesforce Career Converstions #8: Adam Weekes

Episode 8: Adam Weekes talks about his Salesforce journey from CRM Manager, to owning his own Consultancy and now being the Chief Visionary Officer at Aotrom.

Lee Durrant: Hello, it's RODcast time with me, Lee Durrant. Today's special guest is Adam Weekes, who's been in the Salesforce ecosystem for 12 years I think. So, we’ll have a good old chat with Adam about his career and how we got into it, and the difference for him in working as a contractor, then permanent. Loads of tips for you guys - looking into the Salesforce ecosystem for those of you that are in it and want to listen to someone who's risen to the ranks of Director as a Salesforce customer.

Lee Durrant: You'll be pleased to know I have a little bit of a cold, so I won't be talking quite so much in this one. And apologies if I'm slightly more nasal than usual, but hopefully it won't spoil your enjoyment of having listening to this podcast. Thanks. So, Hi, Adam. Adam Weekes, welcome to the podcast mate, how are you doing?

Adam Weekes: Thank you. I'm well, thank you.

Lee Durrant: Good, good, good. Thanks for joining us today, I know you're really busy as you have been for many, many years. So, I think you've heard of these before, I asked you to have a little listen, but just to let you know, this is really about us talking about your career in Salesforce. How you got into it and what's happened to you since, and perhaps any little tips or thoughts along the way that people listening could use, really. So, usually, the first question is actually, ‘what are you doing right now?’ And then we'll go back to the beginning.

Adam Weekes: Yeah, I suppose, right now I'm still in my home office where I spend an awful lot of time, chatting with you about Salesforce. That's probably the highlight of my day, because I'm quite an evangelist about the Salesforce ecosystem. And if anybody's ever met me at some of the events, they'll know I can talk the hind legs off a donkey when talking about Salesforce and the associated exciting pieces about that. But that wasn't really answering your question, I'm sure.

Adam Weekes: So, what am I doing right now? I'm helping organisations to implement Salesforce, which is quite a broad topic, of course. So more specifically, when you see particularly smaller, you look at the SMB side of the market there; you see this propensity to think, you've got a choice between Salesforce, which sounds expensive and it looks maybe complex, and then you've got... I won't mention any, but there are plenty of other CRM solutions that you can look at that all have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are really good in certain areas, and you know, some in particular around the implementation are really simple - you pull out your credit card and 10 minutes later you're working. But there are limitations to that.

Adam Weekes: So, when you look at the difference between Salesforce as a CRM solution or as a platform really, and some of those others are more entry-level solutions, as I would view them. The big difference is that platform piece, you're buying into a whole ecosystem there. But what that does mean is, you can't just switch it on and say, ’Great, now we've got a CRM’. When you look at the Salesforce website, they'll tell you some fantastic metrics about... you'll see a 41% uplift in sales and your efficiency will go up, your costs will go down and everything, all of those things are potentially true, but they aren't necessarily true to be fair of any CRM mouth box.

Adam Weekes: So, you can instal any CRM and then think, "Fantastic, we're now going to be super-efficient: we've got CRM," the reality is you're not. What you're probably going to see is actually a drop in efficiency because you've got new processes to learn, new systems, new ways of working, et cetera. So what I try and do is work with my customers to think about their processes, what are they trying to achieve, which is obviously usually selling services or goods in an efficient way. And getting visibility, and then operating their business with as much insight as they can, and that's where Salesforce really comes into its own.

Adam Weekes: But it's all about reworking your business to be efficient and then using Salesforce as a tool to support that piece, as opposed to just thinking it's not a shrink-wrap product. It's not like Microsoft Word, you can't just install it and start typing in something, and then there you go; there's your novel. You have to really think about, what is it we're trying to achieve, how do we go about doing it? And that's really where Salesforce is, what I would view as a couple of steps above some of the simpler, lower-priced options, which absolutely have a place in many businesses.

Adam Weekes: But when you're thinking more forward maybe, and you're thinking about how can we progress our business, how can we take our business to the next stage? We want to get super-efficient, we want to get better visibility of our pipeline and our operations. We want to increase the volumes of inbound leads, we want to increase coverage and conversion, et cetera, that's where Salesforce can help, but only if you have an understanding of why you want to do these things and then how to go about doing them at a business level first, and then at that technical level, and that's what I'm doing now.

Lee Durrant: And obviously that's not how you started out, so if we go back to, and I can't remember, I'm trying to thumb through your LinkedIn as we talk. When did it all start for you, then initially, what were you doing prior to getting into Salesforce? Because a lot of people saying this and this podcast that people that have been doing it for a long time didn't necessarily get into Salesforce deliberately; was it something you fell into by accident?

Adam Weekes: It was more of something that helped me out at the time. So my first intro to Salesforce was around 2007, I think…

Lee Durrant: [crosstalk 00:05:56].

Adam Weekes: ... that sort of time. Prior to that, straight out of college and everything else, I'd started off as a developer and then gone into business analysis from there. I ended up working for a company; I worked for the UK division of a multinational who produced fuel pumps and engaging equipment. And I was looking at some of the operations, so they had a whole bunch of field staff that we would be on about, and we used a whole bunch of different systems to try and make the field service engineers, et cetera, as efficient as possible.

Adam Weekes: As things do, situations change, and I was asked to move into a sales and marketing operations role. Which was something that at the time was relatively new to me. I mean, I was very fortunate that I had people around me that were incredibly helpful in helping me to understand the essence of what sales and marketing are, and how they work together and all this sort of good stuff. So whilst that aspect was new to me, they wanted somebody that had a transactional view of the world and could help them get some of their systems working a bit better and some of their processes, so that's what I started to do.

Adam Weekes: It became quite clear quite quickly; we needed some sort of mechanism, which meant we needed a CRM. So you don't go straight into it from email and excel sheets, certainly in 2007 to 2008, you didn't suddenly jump into using Salesforce. So what we did is we invested in an air system called Act. I'm not actually 100% sure if this is still a thing or not, it became Sage in part. But it was a very much a client-based application. I think at the time there was a bit of a competition going on between Act and GoldMine, and I think for whatever reason we chose Act.

Adam Weekes: We installed it on the sales guy’s individual laptops, there was no mobile other than laptops, so they all had mobile data cards in their laptops. At the end of every evening, they would sit there at the hotel or whatever, and update the CRM and then hit the sync. That would come back to the little server we had underneath the desk somewhere and then provide us with the information.

Adam Weekes: It was my role really to make that process work efficiently, and that's where it became more and more evident. The technical side of things was important, but that was more like a hygiene factor, it just needed to be there and to work, and needed to be easy for the sales guys to use. I've got a lot of input, not mostly constructive, from the sales teams about ease of use and about other considerations I had with the systems. It's a fairly small team, so we all knew each other well. So there was no holding back on the feedback.

Adam Weekes: I had to learn quite quickly about how the sales teams and sales like to work. And we got that working quite well actually. So as the business progressed, and I got more proficient at doing these things, they asked me to move into the European division and basically do the same there. The challenge there is that Act simply wouldn't scale that big, because it was quite a large operation now. So we're talking about, I think it was seven or eight European countries, something along those lines and just as many languages and currencies and everything else that you have to deal with.

Adam Weekes: So thinking about how we can do this, I decided to fall back on my old techie hat as it were, and designed a system that used Excel files that were mapped back into a SharePoint site. So they were all interlinked with each other, and anybody who's ever done that will know that's great in theory: in practice, it breaks constantly because people modify the files and since they're not in the exact right place for things to work properly anymore. I mean, I ended up spending two or three days every single week just trying to get the forecast pulled together.

Adam Weekes: T...

Episode 7: Ian Moyse Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Is Ian the busiest man in cloud? Not only is he the EMEA Sales Director for Natterbox, he is also a Non-Exec Director for numerous cloud companies and bodies. Listen to his story on our latest RODcast.

Lee: Hiya, it's RODcast again with me, Lee Durant. Today's very special guest is Ian Moyse. This is going to be a long introduction because Ian, as you'll find out by listening to this episode, is many things and does many things. A very busy man. He's currently Non-Exec Director for Digital Leadership Associates, who are experts in social media; a company called ZAR, who are a managed cloud and IT services provider; FAST, which is the Federation Against Software Theft, and Assure Data, who are a GDPR training firm.

He's also an advisory board member to SAAS Max Data, an SAS applications platform. He's a governance board member of CIF, which is the Cloud Industry Forum. And he still has time for his main role, which is the EMEA Sales Director at Natterbox - Natterbox being the most integrated Salesforce telephony experience.

This is an interesting episode because Ian talks about his career but also talks about the wider world of Cloud Salesforce and how it's gone since 2001. So, quite a long, in-depth one, but hopefully you'll learn a lot about Ian's experiences of the wider world of Cloud as well as Salesforce, and of course Natterbox.

Hope you guys enjoy it.

Lee: So, Ian, thanks very much for joining us today. How are you doing?

Ian: Good, Lee, thank you for the invite as well.

Lee: No, I appreciate it. You've got to be probably the busiest person we've had on so far because I was thinking initially, "Oh EMEA Sales Director for Natterbox, you’ll be busy enough doing that."

Ian: Yeah.

Lee: But then I noticed you're an advisor and Non-Exec Director, a speaker and presenter. There's so much else you do as well. Could you just do a little introduction on yourself for everyone listening and explain what it is that you currently do. That would be great.

Ian: Sure, the day job, as you quite rightly say, is EMEA Sales Director at Salesforce Cloud Telephony provider Natterbox. So that's the core piece. But around that, over the past number of years, more by accident than setting out to do so, I've ended up involved as a Non-Executive and things like that in industry bodies: Cloud Industry Forum, Federation Against Software Theft, as a Non-Exec at different times and some other firms in and around the Cloud sector. And I speak, I'm a CLAT School Speaker; I speak at a lot of events, and I get asked to blog and social influence for a lot of major corporations in the technology, and specifically the Cloud, sector.

Ian: So, what I've found is, the more you do it, the more you get invited to do it. If you do a good job of providing value and insight to the audience, whether it be at a speaking event or through a blog you've written, other people tend to spot it.

So, I tend to get inbounds every week through social media direct messages, "Oh, do you do this?" or, "Could you help with this." or, "We noticed this, could you do something for us?" Which is all nice, but as you say, time's limited, so it's a bit of a game of shuffling stuff in, and often, I find a podcast like this or a blog comes out and it's four months later because people schedule stuff ahead in their content library. And I've forgotten I've even done it!

Ian: But it's a bit of a game of doing stuff in front of the TV in the evenings or weekends, if you're in between meetings.

Ian: And the great thing about the social side, the input of some of it is, you can do it on the move in a taxi, right? So there's an element of that.

Ian: The hardest thing for me is writing blogs because you have to really give it some thought. I get the ideas quicker than I get the writing it. So I've probably 20 or 30 blog draughts of the headline and a couple of bullets all written out, ready to go. But it's finding the time as you've already said, of sitting down and writing them.

Lee: I understand that! For the people listening, it will be really interesting to hear your journey because you've risen through the ranks to become EMEA Sales Director of Natterbox, and all these other Non-Exec Director roles you've got. It would be interesting to see, going back to the beginning, how you go into this, what your career was prior to Natterbox, and what you were doing before you got into the Cloud.

Ian: Yeah. I'll do it very quickly because it's more interesting to me than everyone else! I got into computing because right at the beginning someone moved in as a neighbour who had one of the old, I won't say which one it was because it would date me, but one of the very basic old computers that hardly did anything and didn't have whizzy graphics. And I was just hooked from the start. So at that point, I did everything around mathematics and got to be a programmer at IBM.

Lee: Oh, my word!

Ian: So that was my goal. It was techie, getting my hands on this stuff. A couple of years into that I came across the world of sales, saw an opportunity and realised that salespeople at the time, and probably still now, got a lot of the perks. So, mobile phones as they were then - a brick that you need a suitcase to carry - but also a company car and all this stuff. And I was, "How am I going to get that?" I was aspirational and took the leap from technical to sales - as many say, no-one does that successfully, but hopefully, I am a case in point of proving it wrong.

Ian: I absolutely made the spin, went into inside sales, got promoted to field sales in under a year and that was all in-channel. I did channel-based and distribution in the resale market before I ended up in vendor land where I've sat now for quite a while.

Ian: I sold software products for many, many years; different types, system management or security. Moving into the Cloud space was more by accident than selection. I came across a job opportunity in the security space. The locality, the package, everything about the role looked good, but it wasn't because it was Cloud. It wasn't, "Oh, I must get into Cloud." That was just a by-product; it happened to be a Cloud solution. But since I got into it, I've never looked back.

I've been in Cloud for the last 13 years and watched the evolution of vendors such as Salesforce. We were in a very different world very quickly. Technology has moved at an accelerated pace continually and continues to do so, which makes it more interesting, but you've got to reinvent yourself and stay relevant for that reason.

Lee: Absolutely. And when it comes to being a sales leader as you are now, when did that start in the Salesforce space? When did the Cloud thing become more specific to Salesforce?

Ian: I first used Salesforce around 2001 when I set a UK office up for a US firm - one of the many smaller, start-ups that I've instigated. I had six people in an office in Reading and needed some tools, and at that time, Salesforce had a five-user free edition. So, I can say it now, we used the five-user edition and some of us shared one of the IDs... because the minute you bought the sixth licence, it became expensive for everyone.

Lee: Yeah.

Ian: And we were a start-up, so we used the five-user edition. So right back there, I guess that was three years into Salesforce.

Lee: Because they started in 1999, didn’t they?

Ian: '98, '99 I think. The product wasn't out on day one when they founded the business, but it was the earliest edition from when Salesforce came into existence and people didn't really know the name - just that it was the new kid on the block. Siebel was the market leader in CRM, but I needed something flexible, and to be blunt, cheap at the time. And there was this great five-user, ‘get you started’ edition. It was a no-brainer. And that's why they did it. And look what they've built from it over that journey.

Lee: Yeah. And going to where you are now then, from that point, where does Natterbox sit within Salesforce - just for listeners that perhaps haven't heard of it or don't know much about it.

Ian: So firstly, a good standpoint is we run a whole business on Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Financial Force and Salesforce app exchange tools such as Conga. We are fully on board as a customer of Salesforce.

Ian: Our business; what we have and our own technology that we sell, is a fully end-to-end Cloud-based telephony platform. We have embedded within Salesforce. We are the most integrated phone system you can get in Salesforce. And that's from end-to-end, so we only have PBX technology, the engine, the core server routing piece of the telephone system, through to the Computer Telephony Integration. That’s what pops up on your PC as a webphone.  We've built that technology and we've built it around Salesforce. So, for a Salesforce customer, we're fully the app exchange; we install the whole phone system and we support Salesforce users in all of the platforms: Force.com, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Communities, Omni-channel, et cetera.

So, we live that world, ’Eat our own dog food.’ We run a whole business on what we sell to customers and Salesforce. And we live solely in that eco-system: supporting customers who have Salesforce in their business. But we also support all the other phone users in the business, but through Salesforce. Salesforce becomes your core engine at the centre of your phone system.

Ian: And the beauty of that, the bit that's different, is we allow you to leverage Salesforce and the phone system together. So, we leverage Salesforce data to personalise the phone journey. For example, when you call us, it says, "Morning, Lee, good to see you, we'll put you through to Ian, your account manager." Simple example. Because we do a data dip in Salesforce, to see who your phone number's related to, so we can address you by name, and then...

Episode 6: Salesforce Career Conversation with Jackie Heath and ROD. Jackie started her career as a trainer in Siebel and switched to Salesforce when she thought her career was over. Thirteen years later she is the Director of the Trailhead Academy at Salesforce.

Lee: Hi, everybody, and welcome to the latest edition of RODcast. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Jackie Heath, who has worked in the Salesforce ecosystem in the UK for 13 years now, as of recording in October, 2019. She's risen through the ranks to her latest role, which she's got a very long title, at the mothership itself, and has got a fantastic career where she can help guide you with what she's done from training to being a contractor, to working with an end-user, to working at partner, to now working for Salesforce. Hopefully, you'll really enjoy this episode. Thanks a lot guys, and hope you enjoy it.

Lee: Joining me today is the ... Let me get this right, the delivery director for the Trailhead Academy at Salesforce, Jackie Heath. Hello.

Jackie: Hello. Hi, Lee.

Lee: Thanks for joining us, I really appreciate you doing this. Did I get the title right, because it is a mouthful, isn't it?

Jackie: You did. It is a mouthful. It's a bit longer, so you've used the abbreviated version.

Lee: Wow. Yeah, because it was the EMEA bit that I didn't add onto that. So as you know, and you may have heard in some of the other ones, this is a chat about your career to date, really, as you've been in Salesforce for, I'm blushingly groping for ... It's over 10 years, isn't it?

Jackie: It is over 10 years. It's coming up for my 13th year, in fact, in the ecosystem, not necessarily working directly for Salesforce. But yeah, 13 years.

Lee: That is fantastic. As you well know, my prior question will be, or my first question will be, what were you doing leading up to getting into Salesforce?

Jackie: So I'm going to show my age here a little bit, which is embarrassing. But when I graduated, the world was really moving from DOS to Windows. So that does really date me. Before I got into the world of Salesforce, really, I was kind of in IT training and IT support roles, primarily for law firms, before I started my journey with Salesforce.

Lee: So even ... Because you went to university, I believe.

Jackie: I did. I went to ... Well, I'd say I went to Oxford Poly. It is a now a university, but when I was there it was a Polytechnic. My degree is completely and utterly unrelated to what I do now, really. My degree was in hotel and catering management. I'm often asked how did I make that transition? One of the things I would say about my degree, whilst it was based on the hotel and catering industry, it was very much a kind of business studies degree, applying it to hotel and catering industry business type things. So I had a friend who did do a business studies degree as well, and we did almost identical topics. Except when she had some coursework to hand in, or a project to do, she could pick any industry she liked, our industry always had to be something related to hotel and catering management in some way.

Lee: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but did you sort of all into the training side of things then?

Jackie: I did. I did, completely and utterly. So whilst the world was moving from DOS to Windows, it was also, when I graduated, a recession. For graduates, it was really quite challenging to get jobs as graduates back then. I know many graduates might say that sometimes it's quite challenging today, as well. But I applied for a job to be a graduate trainee trainer, and I got the job, because what this particular company had set themselves up was to basically help people, again, law firms, typically, moving their legal secretaries across from typewriters and Word Perfect for DOS over to the Windows world, and using a mouse, and using a GUI user interface.

Jackie: So I got that job that way. I have to say, I put my degree down to that, because one of the things we did often, we were often videoed giving presentations to our tutors, who were, at the time, pretend bank managers, and things like that, because we had to put a business case together around why they were going to fund our next catering venture. So kind of standing up, and talking to people didn't phase me, because I'd had plenty of practice during my degree. Apparently that won me my graduate place in this company, and really started my career in teaching and enabling people. It's always kind of stood me in good stead, even though I kind of moved away from that. I've kind of always come back to that, which I think you might see as we go through.

Lee: Absolutely. Well, I was wondering, then, how you go from that to becoming, to getting involved in some way with Salesforce, then? I'm looking at your LinkedIn, so forgive me if it's not completely correct. But, it looks like around about 2002, maybe, is that right?

Jackie: Yep, pretty much. 2006 was Salesforce. So I was kind of one of those people, I fell into CRM. So I didn't fall into Salesforce, but I did sort of fall into Salesforce by falling into CRM, to be honest. I started working for a software company, and they, actually, were using Siebel at the time. So Siebel CRM at the time. Literally, within one month of taking on a job for this software company, to manage a kind of quality assurance team, actually, at the time, I took ownership of Siebel, knowing nothing about Siebel, knowing nothing about CRM. But what I did know was we needed to track what we were doing within this CRM to give visibility to our engineers and our sales teams around how we were tracking and fixing problems with our software.

Jackie: So I took ownership of Siebel, and shortly thereafter, I had two Siebel developers kind of work with me and we kind of improved their Siebel implementation in house. One of the big projects we did was actually a migration of Siebel six to Siebel seven. It's actually Siebel 7.5, but I won't get into those number details. Literally, we had just done that transition, and probably about one month after doing that migration project, we had a new leadership team in the company that I was working at. They said, "Right, we're going to rip out Siebel, and we're going to replace it with something called Salesforce." I'm going to be really honest with you, at the time, I thought it was the end of my career. I really did, because I googled Salesforce, and I googled jobs that you could get if you knew Salesforce. I think in Europe, this isn't in the US, but in Europe, I think one job role came up.

Lee: Wow.

Jackie: How have things moved on since then?

Lee: Absolutely. You say 2006, that doesn't seem like that long ago, does it?

Jackie: No.

Lee: Crikey. How wrong, obviously ... Well, at the time you were right. But to look where it's taken you. It's unbelievable, isn't it?

Jackie: Yeah. Absolutely.

Lee: So your first project, then, was to be the person that ripped it out, and put in Salesforce?

Jackie: Yeah, absolutely. So it was a part of kind of ripping out Siebel and replacing with Salesforce, I sadly lost my two Siebel developers, so it was just me. I did work with a professional services team, and they happened to be a Salesforce team. Yeah, we took our Siebel implementation and migrated over to Salesforce. Once we did that, I was the kind of lead administrator programme manager for our Salesforce implementation within that company.

Jackie: Did a couple of projects after that as well, migrating our finance team from an old finance system to Sage, that then integrated with Salesforce. So yeah, that was really my baby. That was my first project, and my real baby. I absolutely loved our Siebel implementation. I was the Salesforce go-to person from configuration, setting it up, to doing projects, to training salespeople, sales team, you know. It was just a ... If you got a question about Salesforce, go ask Jackie.

Lee: Yeah. No. I'm assuming, then, that you ... Did you get the job ... Because you made a move, then, to a partner, didn't you? Or maybe a lesser-known partner to a lot of people now.

Jackie: Yes.

Lee: But yeah, is that how that worked out then?

Jackie: Yeah, pretty much, absolutely. That's how it worked out. I mean, I stayed working for that company for a long time. But felt that I needed to progress my Salesforce career. At the time, I thought the way to achieve that was to become a Salesforce consultant, which I did, and joined that partner, which lesser-known now. Don't actually exist now, but were definitely purchased by a rather bigger partner of today.

Lee: Well, it's like the Russian doll, though, isn't it? Even that one has been bought as well-

Jackie: Well, absolutely, subsequently, over the time, absolutely, yeah.

Lee: So it's interesting looking at that as a timeline. So from 2006, when you googled Salesforce jobs, and there was only one in Europe, to joining that company we're referring to, because I was around then, in the Salesforce space, and even then, there were more jobs than people. So how quickly it went from nothing to, I'm guessing, hundreds, thousands of jobs on Google. Not that you were probably googling it then. But the growth has been crazy.

Jackie: Absolutely.

Lee: So if we go back a little bit then, that moment, if you can remember a moment when you realised, Salesforce, this is my career now, I'm here for the rest of my career, perhaps, did you remember that moment?

Jackie: Yeah, no, I do, honestly. It was probably six months of working with Salesforce as a product. I've always worked in some way with technology companies. But I've never truly considered myself a techie. What I realised back then was how Salesforce had really kind of democratised how businesses could work with technology.

Jackie: For me, that was a really niche world, for me, because I sat really well between understanding how Salesfor

Episode 5: Salesforce Career Conversation with Penny Townsend and ROD. Penny reflects on her journey from Salesforce Programme Manager to Chief Operating Officer of a growing Salesforce Consulting Partner.

Lee: So joining me today, is Penny Townsend. Hi Penny, how are you doing mate?

Penny: Hi Lee, I'm great thanks. Thanks very much for having me in for the chat.

Lee: You're kidding aren't you? I'm very grateful that you said yes. I know how busy you are, and it's great to have you on the podcast. As you know, we're doing this because it's our ten year anniversary and we had this... Actually it wasn't me, our marketing department had this idea that it would be great for us to speak to people that have been around the Salesforce ecosystem for as long as we have, or even longer in some cases. Which I think might be you. So yeah, it's kind of like take ten years of being in this space, and great to speak to what we're calling Salesforce legends, but I what I like about your profile is you refer to yourself as a Salesforce veteran, which is nice.

Penny: Yeah, and it frequently feels like that.

Lee: Yeah I know. So yeah... So thanks for doing it, and I appreciate you're doing this kind of off the cuff as well, which is really exciting I think, because all we really want to chat about is your career, and how you got into it. We'll break it down, but how you got into it, what your first experience was in Salesforce, and then sort of the journey that's taken you from getting into it, to where you are today. And obviously, if you want to give us a little overview of you, and who you are, and what you're doing now, then we'll just sort of get going from the beginning if that's all right?

Penny: Yeah, sure. Thanks Lee. Well I saw on LinkedIn, because you did a conversation like this with Gemma, and she shared it. And I saw that Frances wrote on there, "Oh, yeah I think Lee was the first ever recruiter I spoke to as well." And I was going to put a message on there saying, "Yeah, Lee was all our first." And I thought, "Lee won’t thank me for that."

Lee: No you're right. As we say, you were the veteran, yeah you sort of feel like it don't you?

When did you get into it though? When was your first experience of Salesforce? I've obviously gone through your LinkedIn profile trying to remember, but perhaps you can let us know?

Penny: Like a lot of people, my first experience of Salesforce was by accident. So that must be about 12 or 13 years ago now when I was working at the Carbon Trust, who were an early not-for-profit customer of Salesforce.

Lee: Yes.

Penny: So back then, Salesforce really only had more than a handful, but certainly not hundreds of customers over in EMEA. And Carbon Trust were quite a good brand for them to win, and their not for profit space. And I was working for the Carbon Trust Standard, which was a subsidiary, and we were using an old database called ACT. So I'm showing my age here, it was a-

Lee: Oh, yeah I've heard of that as well. So yeah, I'm with you on that one.

Penny: Yeah and it was really... It's perfect for keeping track of people's names, and addresses, and birthdays, and stuff. But it didn't really provide much functionality. And the standard company was growing really fast, and given that core Carbon Trust had Salesforce, the decision was made to roll out an org for the standard company. So, my initial experience was, as kind of the product owner I suppose, the end user. So we got our consultant in, and I worked with him on defining the requirements, and I was initially incredibly sceptical about what Salesforce could deliver, and then was really blown away by seeing it in practice.

You know, back then, having the stages, having the process flow, having the workflows, all of that was really radical, and fantastic to be able to see that. So, that was my first experience there, and we actually had a couple of really innovative things. So we did a website using Salesforce, so that small companies could put details of their energy footprint into that website, and it would automatically come through to Salesforce, and that kind of thing. So that's what first got me a bit excited about Salesforce.

Lee: That was going to answer - my next question usually is then at what point did you know that, that was going to be your career? And I'm going back a little bit now, but you had a reasonable career before Salesforce didn't you?

Penny: Okay. That's a very sweet way of saying, "You're really old aren't you?"

Lee: Hey, you're younger than me, so let's just remember that.

Penny: I'm the oldest person here at Crusader, I'm their oldest employee, which really makes me laugh every day. So yeah, I'd worked for a long time in financial services, predominantly before going to the Carbon Trust, I'd actually just before I started there, I'd had about 18 months off to be at home with my daughter. So I'd sold a business that I was... There was two of us running that company, and we sold it, and I used the money from that to spend a bit of time at home with Lottie, because she was about 20 months when we sold that business, and I'd gone straight back to work after she was born. So I was really worn out by then. And also, by the time your child gets to that kind of age, they know you, they can grab you, and they can say, "I want to be with you mummy!" So it was a lot harder to go off to work every day, so I took kind of belated maternity leave I suppose, for about 18 months. But then, I think like a lot of women, it was quite difficult for me to get back into work, more so than I'd expected.

So, the job I went into at the Carbon Trust, actually was on less than a third of the salary that I'd been on before.

Lee: Whoa, wow okay!

Penny: Yeah it was a completely different industry and all that. It was a big, big switch.

Lee: I didn't know that. I didn't know that you'd had a successful business that you sold before even getting into this space. That's quite interesting. And so, whilst the time then taking a third... Well, be on a third of the money you're used to, that I'm guessing you're looking back thinking, it's one of the best things you ever did, in terms of where you are now?

Penny: Yeah, exactly. And honestly, it didn't feel like that at the time. It was quite a tough time. I broke up with my daughter's father during that time, and then with going back to work, I actually... You know, there's a lot of talk these days around diversity, and getting women back into the workforce, and for me, if it hadn't been for the working families tax credit supporting me with my childcare costs, I don't think I'd be in this job now. So I was very fortunate that I had that, and it could help me stay in work. And I think that speaks to some of the values, and the ways of working that we have here at Crusader now, which I can maybe talk about a bit later. But yeah, it's fortunate I was able to be in work.

And so, after I left the Carbon Trust, I did a bit of contracting for a few months, and then I went to work at British Standards Institution, which was another one of Salesforce's early EMEA customers. And I initially went in there to be the Head of Sales for their services, which was a tough job with a big team. And they already had Salesforce, but I could see compared to the innovative brand new solution I'd had at Carbon Trust, I could see lots of scope for improvement. And basically, somebody asked me to put my money where my mouth was, and run a big project to transform their Salesforce org, which then took over my life.

Lee: So basically, at BSI, you were initially Sales, as in like doing the sales, and just using Salesforce in it's basic form that they had? So that even that was still a sales role initially?

Penny: Yeah exactly. So I was Sales Leader, so BSI has many different aspects to it, and the team I was responsible for was selling auditing of standards. So we had 12 territories with a field sales guy, and a tele-sales guy on each, and a really tough target... A monthly target to hit. And so Salesforce was absolutely crucial to our ability to both have transparency of what was going on, and to hit our number, and all the associated processes around that. And there were some things, like around using Conga, and Echo Sign, that I'd done at Carbon Trust that I wanted to bring to BSI. So I ended up running a really massive project there, because they've got... You know, there's thousands of users in multiple different countries, and over five apps that we brought in, including a really sophisticated early CPQ.

So again, it was quite an innovative project to work on.

Lee: Yeah blimey! Early CPQ. So it's so current at the moment, but to be doing it... When was that then? Sort of seven years ago. Crikey.

Penny: Yeah, at least yeah, yeah, a good long while ago.

Lee: Yeah, and so that then. So, even though you did Salesforce at the Carbon Trust, you didn't go into BSI thinking, "I'm a Salesforce person." You went in there still being Sales. So when was it then that you had that a-ha moment, and just thought, "Do you know what, this is for me, this technology. I'm going to just specialise in that from now on."

Penny: So I guess I'd been... That had gone from being an idea of doing that project, to very quickly being a kind of change of role to be responsible for that programme of work.

Lee: Yeah.

Penny: And I could see the need that there is in Salesforce to combine business understanding, and process understanding with getting the best out of the technology. And I think for me, that job at BSI was kind of the perfect combination of all of those things. Because I came with a long history of working in business, and pretty good understanding of what makes business tick. Both at Carbon Trust, and BSI, they're very orientated towards good quality business process as you'd expect from an ISO 9001 auditing, a...

Episode 4: Salesforce Career Conversation Richard Ferriman with ROD. After twelve years in the Salesforce ecosystem, Richard talks about his journey, which includes running his own Salesforce consulting company and now heading up sales for a growing consultancy.

[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]

Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of RODcast. In this episode, I am having a chat with Richard Ferriman, an industry legend whose been around Salesforce for about 12 years, as of today's recording. It's quite an interesting one for you guys if any of you are thinking of starting a business in the Salesforce ecosystem. Richard started his own Salesforce consultancy company many years ago. He talks quite openly about what it's like to build a Salesforce consultancy from scratch, the ups and downs and quite honest about the mistakes that he made, and if he could do it again, what he would do. You know, the 18 hour days... what's it's like to interview people in the Salesforce ecosystem, which there's always opportunities out there for those guys.

This is what it's like really to start and grow a Salesforce practice. And also he talks about his passion for what he's doing at the moment. So it's a really good chat. Hope you enjoy it.

Hello, and welcome to RODcast with me Lee Durrant. This is the podcast where we learn how Salesforce experts started their careers many years ago, and get under the skin of what it's like to work in the Salesforce ecosystem. Ever wondered how someone rose to the ranks of a head of practise at a consultancy or perhaps became a CTO? Then this is the podcast to listen to. We'll also get some real-life tips from them, and advice on what you can do in your Salesforce career. So yeah, hope you enjoy.

So, hello Richard and thanks for joining us mate today on the podcast. How you getting on?

Richard F.: Yeah, very well thank you, and you?

Lee Durrant: I am all right, yeah, looking forward to this one, because you and I go back a long way. I don't know how long, but it's got to be more than 10 years, isn't it?

Richard F.: Lee, I think we're about 12 years or so man.

Lee Durrant: Oh my God, blimey. And I think people would listen to this and quite like your journey because you've done quite a lot of, correct me if I'm wrong obviously, different things in the world of Salesforce.

Richard F.: Yeah.

Lee Durrant: So that's what this is about really. It's just a bit of a chat about your journey, from how you got into it, and what you've done to be where you are now. So, yeah, I'll fire some questions at you then. The first one would really be, what, actually what were you doing before, well what was your career plan up until the point where you got into Salesforce, if you know what I mean... did you get into Salesforce by accident, and the sort of journey before Salesforce, if you don't mind?

Richard F.: Yeah, absolutely, so, I started out in Visio, before it was a Microsoft product, so worked for Visio. From Visio, with them, took that through to it being bought out by Microsoft. I was part of that transition team. Went over to Seattle, working with the Microsoft team there, and then came back and promptly went and worked for IBM Software Group.

Lee Durrant: Yes.

Richard F.: So Microsoft wasn't at that point where I wanted to go, but I like the ethos of IBM, I liked the branding of IBM and even now, I still can't go to a meeting without a blue suit and a white shirt, which was very much an IBM way of doing things. They taught me a lot, taught me a lot about process, a lot about sales, a lot about how someone like me can get the most out of a meeting, and a really enjoyable part of my career.

I then fell out, was offered something even better, and the grass is greener and took that, but actually, I jumped a few times through different emerging technologies, which was okay, and it was good, and the emergence of cloud back then, the emergence of very early AI. The emergence of big data was all coming in. How were people starting to use that? I worked for a company which had an overlay to the old green screens.

Lee Durrant: Mm.

Richard F.: And that was very much actually putting a web front-end on things, so this really is going back some time.

Lee Durrant: Yeah, wow. And you're... it was always from... the actual roles you were doing were very much sales, business development and that sort of stuff, were they?

Richard F.: Sales, business development, absolutely. But I knew that I enjoyed the presales, the BA work, as much as I did the sales work. And so I was starting to look at what was next. I started to work for a process company, back in my hometown funnily enough, and that was going incredibly well, and then the backside dropped out of the financial markets and we hit the crash.

Lee Durrant: All right, so we're up to 2008 now, clearly, are we?

Richard F.: 2008 and I think a lot of people at that point saw their pipelines disintegrate.

Lee Durrant: Mm.

Richard F.: Nobody really knew what was going on and what to do, and unfortunately that ended with having to leave the role that I was being incredibly successful at, had turned a lot of money for them in that year. Unfortunately, with the crash, in the type of markets, aerospace, aviation, etc, it really did hurt that business. Thankfully they're still going, and now going really strong.

Lee Durrant: So that was, sorry to jump in, is that when you got first into Salesforce then, around about 2008?

Richard F.: Yeah, so I then went and worked for a small managed IT company in Old Street in London, completely different to anything I'd done before. I started to help to run that business, and the owner went out and moved to Australia, so really left the UK business to function well, it was doing okay, the crash was there. It was centred around charities.

Lee Durrant: Yeah.

Richard F.: So very, very different as to what we were doing. We started to look out there as far as what was on the market, and the owner of that business made an introduction for me to the Salesforce foundation…

Lee Durrant: Mm.

Richard F.: ... which was the charity piece, and I believe that's probably where we had our first conversations, for the first time.

Lee Durrant: Yeah, you're probably right, I'm trying to think back that far, but, yeah that... so basically you were introduced to them, because Salesforce was an up-and-coming thing, is that why?

Richard F.: There was a lot of on-prem, there was a lot of databases, a lot of people trying to do fundraising, or trying to do people management, mailing-lists, etc. and we saw Salesforce as a tool that they could use. I started to have meetings around the Salesforce ecosystem, started to look for potential opportunities. So it was very much feeling the market. There were only a couple of people in the Salesforce foundation at that time, Salesforce, you know, 12 years ago, was still relatively new to the UK market.

Lee Durrant: Yeah.

Richard F.: So started to get out there, it was very much about, finding opportunities, working directly with the Salesforce guys. It was a lot of fun actually. And they were a couple of people in particular that really did, I worked well with, and started to build that business, I think by the end of the first year, we looked at somewhere around 800k of revenue.

Lee Durrant: Mm.

Richard F.: And with that I decided that I would try and do it myself, and my business was created.

Lee Durrant: Yeah, so that's... so just to pause on that a minute, so you, looking at your LinkedIn at the moment, and I'm sure people will look at that, but you've had a whole, so you had a whole career really before Salesforce really, didn't you?

Richard F.: Oh, absolutely.

Lee Durrant: Yeah, because that's, so it's obviously lead you to that point, which is great, and then what you did there was that was the first partner in the UK to focus on charity sector, which sounds mental now, I mean, when you look at how many companies are out there doing it, but that then lead you, as you say, to then deciding to do it on your own, which I know a lot of people listening to this will probably have that thought, or either they have it now, or they might have it in the future.

Richard F.: Don't do it. Yeah.

Lee Durrant: Well, huh. Well, you know…

Richard F.: It's way back then, it was when I... and it was the foresight of the guy that I was working for before to see Salesforce, see that it had, there was an opportunity, there was existing systems out there, Razor's Edge and things like this from Blackpool, but were, I suppose, struggling a little bit within that marketplace. It was very much on-premise. But then, we were also up against the UK CIO, government CIO's saying that, "Cloud was never going to take off."

Lee Durrant: Oh yeah.

Richard F.: There was everybody saying that cloud was a waste of time, and what the hell were you doing looking at cloud, just on-premise, on-premise, on-premise.

Lee Durrant: I remember that, yeah, yeah.

Richard F.: Just the most expensive way of doing IT there is.

Lee Durrant: Yeah.

Richard F.: Even now we still come across, some people that will only work using on-premise, they still don't trust cloud, which is madness, because your entire world is based on the cloud.

Lee Durrant: Mm, mm.

Richard F.: You walk down the street and your data's being collected by the cloud. So, it was very much a big decision for me, for my family to actually go all-in, and decide that we would do that. I think the first deal I did was with Battersea.

Lee Durrant: Oh wow, a good one to go straight in with isn't it?

Richard F.: A good one, yes, they were lovely. Got on with them.

Lee Durrant: Can I ask really quickly, did you start your company on your own, did you do it with anybody else, did you get funding, all...

Episode 3: Mitesh Mistry Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. One of only 300 Salesforce Certified Technical Architects on the planet discusses his career and how he got there.

[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]

Lee: Hi there guys.Welcome to RODcast. In today's episode I'm chatting with a Mitesh Mistry. Mitesh currently one of only a few hundred certified technical architects in the world and he's going to discuss with us in this episode his journey to becoming a CTA. His favourite project to date in Salesforce and what it's like to also work at the mothership of Salesforce and, and what he's excited about for the future. So hope you enjoy.

Hello, it's Lee Durrant here. Welcome to RODcast, the podcast where we get to meet and chat with some truly fantastic people from within the Salesforce ecosystem. My goal for this podcast is to help and inform people who either already perhaps work in the Salesforce ecosystem or maybe you're thinking of breaking into it to understand what's good about it, what could be better, and where there are opportunities. And what some of the most amazing people in this space, how they got into it and where their career took them and what their plans are for the future. Hope you enjoy it. And please help me to reach as many people as possible within Salesforce by leaving some comments and sharing, all feedback welcome. So yeah, hope you enjoy.

Speaker 2: So hello Mitesh. And welcome to our podcast, which we're calling RODcast. Thanks for doing this, mate. How are you?

Mitesh: I am good, thank you. How are you doing Lee?

Lee: Yeah, yeah, getting there. Getting there, mate. Wish the weather was better but, not bad at all. But again, really appreciate you doing this. Quite exciting for everybody listening, because correct me if I'm wrong, you are a certified technical architect now aren't you?

Mitesh: Yes, that's correct. So I'm a Salesforce CTA as of May, 2018.

Lee: Last year. So that's fantastic. Obviously as you know, as I explained to people listening before that that this podcast is all about the journey of Salesforce experts. You know from different sides of what you guys do. But someone like yourself, it'd be quite interesting for people to hear about how your journey began if you like with Salesforce and all of that. And then what led you to where you are today? Cause I'd be quite interested to find out if this was all planned at the beginning or whether it's just happened organically as you've gone on.

Really. So if that's all right, I'll fire away with a couple of questions to get started. And then the obvious first thing to ask you is actually in the lead up to getting into Salesforce what, what were you doing? You were at university before.

Mitesh: Okay. So I mean, let me run through my background. So I studied software engineering at the university of Edinburgh. And as part of my experience there, I got a chance to spend a year overseas. So I worked for a company called Sun Microsystems who are now taken over by Oracle and I was looking after the global labs team there. So had a really good experience for one year out in the US that was my first technology role, looking into IT. Sort of hardware networking systems and understanding how they work.

And I also do a small role with the Royal Bank of Scotland where I was building some internal applications for them. As part of my work experience as well. So I had a bit of experience before graduating. And when I graduated I got a role working for Deloittes in their graduate consulting programme.

And my very first project was more doing Java development, a bit of Selenium testing as well. And we're building a digital rights management solution for a really large media company in London. And after doing that build for three months, they wanted to use the salesforce.com platform to be able to capture different members, different musicians, and be able to correctly attribute money to them based on who is actually playing that particular media and the recordings.

So that was my very presentation introduction to Salesforce. I started working very heavy on Apex and Visualforce to really get into the nitty gritty of the Salesforce platform, understanding exactly kind of how the code based aspects of that work. And moving on from there as my career progressed, I started becoming more of a sort of solution consultant and growing more as the time progressed into a programme architect, and then as an enterprise architect after that.

So it's kind of grown from being more of a developer to sort of all round consultant and then leading to become an enterprise architect, which I really believe is like the jack of all trades. We have to do bits of everything. So that's kinda how I feel about myself.

Lee: So it's fair to say, cause it was like 10 years ago that you got into Salesforce when you were at-

Mitesh: Yes.

Lee: So it was essentially by accident at the time, cause had you heard of Salesforce in terms of the opportunities-

Mitesh: No, not at all. So I was introduced to it three months in, there was a project kicking off as part of the work we're doing on this client. And that was really my first introduction to Salesforce. I didn't know how scalable the platform, how flexible it is that I'll actually be doing that for the last 11 years.

But I think very quickly understood that you can deliver solutions really, really quickly on the Salesforce stack. Projects which would typically be like 9, 10 months in Java or other platforms. You can wrap them up in two, three months in Salesforce and deliver a really robust solution for the customer.

So I think I'm the kind of person that I like to see gains and rewards and solutions really quickly. So when I saw Salesforce and just saw how capable it was, I thought, you know what, this is the exactly the stack I want to be aligned to. So that's what I've been doing for the last 10, 11 years since then.

Lee: That's answering my next question, which was at what point in those 10 years did you know that you wanted that to be your career, that one technology?

Mitesh: Yeah, so I think once I started working for another cloud consulting provider called Acumen Solutions from there on in, it's pretty much been out and out Salesforce. So I got to understand not just the coding elements, but the all round platform, what is able to do the main features that are there and just how quickly and easily you can take a company's entire like IT systems and infrastructure and have that fully hosted in the cloud in Salesforce. And literally manage the company's entire business on the Salesforce stack. So the more I started to see that, I think it was like a natural alignment for me to kind of grow in Salesforce as the platform grows as well.

Lee: And obviously your early days with Salesforce, and I'm sort of thumbing through quite a lot of your background. Strange question, but have you ever worked directly for a what we would consider to be an end user?

Mitesh: No, not really. So it's interesting you mentioned this. So whenever I've done projects, I've always done long term ones where I've been on the client site for over a year. And to be honest when you're at a customer site for more than six months, you kind of feel like you're at one with the customer. You're kind of part of their team in essence. So although I haven't done an end user role per se, I still have felt that when I'm on a customer side, I kind of feel part of the team that's there in terms of length of the projects I've done whilst I've been there.

Lee: I guess that would only help if you're working at a big consultancy that have big customers. Otherwise as you referred to earlier, you're going to be bouncing in and out of projects quite quickly if it's [crosstalk 00:07:26]. Okay. And is that good advice do you think to someone that perhaps is thinking of that journey, similar journey to yourself? It's better to be with a partner so that you get the opportunity to learn loads of different things. Or is there-

Mitesh: I think as a junior, what I say is if you're new to the Salesforce ecosystem, you want to make a break into the Salesforce space. And I think starting off at a partner is probably the best way to begin because you get a chance to experience different industries, different customers, and they all have different challenges and problems that they're trying to address. And you get to learn different aspects of the Salesforce platform as you do different projects. And I think that grows your overall platform experience but also grows your overall customer experience as well at the same time. So I think my recommendation for anyone starting up a BS, start with the partner and then pick an industry that you'd like or pick an aspect of the Salesforce stack that you really like and then try and align yourselves with that.

Lee: which I suppose if you go back 10 years, whilst there was still vast opportunities at Salesforce, the way, it's just gone from where it was 10 years ago to where it is now. The opportunities are just vast aren't they? So I guess is it fair to say that you picked your moves just because of the opportunities that were in front of you at the time or was it all quite strategic to get to where you are now?

Mitesh: I think it's based on opportunities that present themselves at the time. And you know, have different consultancies that focus on different clients as well. Like one of the previous consultancies I worked for, they were focused very heavily on financial services. They were doing a large implementation for the Financial Conduct Authority. Probably one of the largest Salesforce enterprise implementations we have in the UK.

So that gave me a really different flavour of Salesforce as well. So I've kind of chosen my moves, not just based on personal growth,...

Episode 2: Amanda Beard-Neilson Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. From accidental Salesforce Admin to CTO in ten years. Follow her journey here.

[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]

Lee Durrant: Hello, it's Lee Durrant here. Welcome to RODcast, the podcast where we get to meet and chat with some truly fantastic people from within the Salesforce ecosystem. My goal for this podcast is to help and inform people who either already perhaps work in the Salesforce ecosystem, or maybe you're thinking of breaking into it, to understand what's good about it, what could be better, where there are opportunities, and what some of the most amazing people in this space, how they got into it, where their career took them, and what their plans are for the future. Hope you enjoy it, and please help me to reach as many people as possible within Salesforce by leaving some comments and sharing. All feedback welcome. So yeah, hope you enjoy.

Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to RODcast, with me Lee Durrant. In this particular episode we are talking with Amanda Beard-Neilson, who's been in the Salesforce industry for 12 years. Her journey has gone from Accidental Salesforce Admin, to CTO, which is unbelievable. Obviously I wanted to understand how she got into Salesforce, and what her journey's been like, and if there're any tips for you guys out there. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy the episode.

Lee Durrant: So hello Amanda. Welcome to our podcast, and thanks for agreeing to do this. How are you mate?

Amanda: Hello Lee, thanks very much for inviting me to do this. I'm really well actually. It's a nice summer's day, so what's not to like really?

Lee Durrant: Yes exactly. And, as I say, just been talking to you off the podcast, but just to let you know, and people listening as well, this is a bit of a podcast to find out the journey of people like you and your sort of legendary status in Salesforce, and kind of how it began, and what's happened to you over the last, I want to say 10 years, I'm not sure exactly how many years-

Amanda: It's 12 years actually I've been playing with Salesforce, so quite a long time.

Lee Durrant: Yeah. So that's what the questions are aimed at really, just so people listening can understand how you got into it, and what's happened since, and all that sort of stuff. So really I'll just get straight into asking you some nice questions, and obviously, your Salesforce journey starts at the beginning, so what were you doing in the lead-up to Salesforce? So what was your career, and what was your perception of what your career was going to be before Salesforce fell in your lap?

Amanda: Yeah, very very different actually. I had a sort of sales, marketing and PR background before Salesforce came into my life. I didn't have at all any aspirations of IT. My background from my studying was business studies. So I had a very business-orientated starting of career, and I worked in sales, I was classically trained in sales. Really understood the whole methodology of two ears and one mouth, and use it accordingly, which has really helped actually for a lot of those life skills, when it comes to talking with clients afterwards as part of this world, and really helping to understand what their pains are, what their requirements are. Listening's a massive skill for that, so even though you might come from a different direction, it doesn't mean that you can't change direction. And they also now say that, when you have a career now, you might have very different careers, maybe up to five different careers as part of your whole career journey. So even though you've started from a different background, it doesn't mean that you can't change direction. And I think it's also very healthy for a person to change direction because it can keep you sparking, and keep you interested in doing something. And keep you learning as well.

Amanda: Yeah. No, so that was my, my background was actually in business, and that's how I actually ended up discovering my interest being in business development.

Lee Durrant: I was looking at the degree you did. Because so many times you look at people, and perhaps their degree is kind of not relevant to what ended up happening to them. But I would've thought a degree in business administration has been quite relevant for you?

Amanda: It was. And in fact, as I suppose, I'll tell the story of actually me growing up really, because as a kid, you get school reports as a kid, and many of the school reports would come through like, "Amanda's a lovely girl, she likes to chat." Hence what we're doing here. And so my dad would read them and he would think, "Well, that's really nice, she must be stupid." It's true. And sort of, "Well, maybe she could be a secretary when she grows up." And, "Oh, she seems to have a flair for languages, maybe she could be a bi-lingual secretary." So this was my background. And so I did well in GCSEs, so okay, I'll do A Levels. And it was so I just sort of fell into education, and kept falling into education again. So I did A Levels, and then I got the A Levels I needed, so okay, I'll do a degree. And I was the first in my family to do a degree.

Lee Durrant: Really?

Amanda: Yeah-

Lee Durrant: Oh brilliant-

Amanda: Yeah, they had been apprentices, or my mom actually went to secretarial college. It was not a thing for any of the family, no expectation. Especially no expectation for me to go and do that. Again, they thought I was going to be a secretary, and I was going to marry someone in insurance, because I would then get cheap premiums.

Lee Durrant: Yeah, well no, surpassed all their expectations, which is fantastic.

Amanda: Yeah.

Lee Durrant: Okay then, so obviously you got your early career then doing the sales stuff, which as you rightly say, has given you that ability to communicate, which is fantastic. So what was the first taste of Salesforce? I'm going to guess it was using it then in a sales role, is that right?

Amanda: Well, yes and no. It was, I guess I was working in a business development team. At that point I'd actually had enough of doing the pure sales part; I was over with the targets, because targets always move. And I was kind of over that. So I'd said, in this particular role, "I will help you build the team, I will build processes. I will help build a whole library for responding to RFPs and the whole procurement side of things." And then I was helping with all of that, and my director turned around one day and said, "We don't know who our customers are. We need a CRM." And I looked and went, "A CR what?" And so, good old Google. Get onto that, and started looking up things. Saw things like dynamics in Sage, or something back there. And saw Salesforce. And this was 12 years ago. And I looked at Salesforce, and I had a little play with it, because there were demos and you could have a little look around. And it was quite simple back then. And I thought, "You know what? I can get this, and I don't get lost; I can go back to the home. Look, little dancing man: that's a lead. Okay, good. And here's a coin, that's an opportunity. Great, I get it. So if I can get it, another sales user is going to get it; a colleague will understand this."

Amanda: And so we chose Salesforce, because of what I saw and I liked. So-

Lee Durrant: Amazing.

Amanda: Yeah, I know. That was quite impressive really. So we bought it in, and we got involved with Salesforce who helped to actually build it, and I became sort of the analyst/PM who ran around and collected the data we needed, would capture the information, would test things, who would suddenly start seeing in front of me this system being built. And the beauty of Salesforce is like the magic that happens in front of you as a customer who sees it for the first time. And where they go in the setup, and they go, "Oh, you want to move this stuff around?" When they start playing with the page layouts, it's such a simple thing, but it brings a customer onboard. Because one minute you're going, "I don't really like it, it's not really working for me because it doesn't do this, this and this." And they go, "Okay, click click click click click. Refresh. Now, how does that look for you?" And, "Oh, it's amazing."

Lee Durrant: Yeah, because I suppose people 12 years ago, and whilst that doesn't sound like a long time, and I remember, well I'm sure other people that are old enough will remember when IT, if you wanted something to be changed, it just took forever. So the fact that you could do something like that so quickly is quite exciting isn't it? Well it was then, it probably still is now, to be fair.

Amanda: Do you know what? It still gets customers every time now, because they see it, and they see the changes straight away, and they're like, "Oh, okay. That's really cool. Cool." And the adoption part just starts falling into place, because they're now having that sort of responsive element to it, and one minute they're, "I don't really like this. Okay, I can change it. Oh, you really can. Wow, that's really cool." It also can be dangerous, because at that same point, they start thinking moon on a stick time. They go, "Can we do this?" And, "Can we do that?" And you're like, "Oh, hold on."

Lee Durrant: Oh I'm, yeah. We're guilty of that here. I mean I, because we use Salesforce as well and have done for 10 years, and we definitely did that: "Oh, can I put that button there and this button there? And what if this and that?" And you have all these ideas that actually end up as being a waste of time. But, I guess that's where your experience of listening and maybe pushing back comes in handy.

Amanda: Yeah, it does. And you start learning. I mean since that moment of watching this system come alive, I then went on an admin course. I then became the admin for the company, and helped people do all the training....