SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mossri and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. I'm Dave Mastery.

SPEAKER_05 0:36

And I'm Kira Whitzi.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

And today we're talking with Abby Kwas, who's the director of Salesforce at uh Camping World. Welcome, Abby. Hi, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_05 0:45

Thank you for watching. Abby, um, we start off really nice and easy for you uh with a simple question. Uh tell us a little bit about your background in the Salesforce ecosystem, your journey.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah, so I'm Abby Claus, like Santa Claus, and I have been Salesforcing for 13 years. I started out as an accidental admin in 2011. Um, and I've kind of held every role under the Salesforce sun except for hands-on coding. I've done BA, end-user trainer, end-user optimizer, um, solo admin, admin on a team. I've done project management, program management, and now most recently director of Salesforce. So I've really grown up in the Salesforce ecosystem. I feel like I've kind of seen it all. I've done consulting, I've done in-house, um, and I've I've been around a long time. I'm a co-lead for the Women in Tech User Group here in Dallas. I've spoken at Dreamforce. Um I speak at several conferences a year, uh, regional conferences, love my dreamins. Um, Texas Dream's was my first. Um, and yeah, so I'm really big in the ecosystem, both from like best practices and teaching people what to do, what not to do, and you know, a thought leader in what should we do going forward with the ever-changing landscape. Um, but uh my handle is Salesforce Abbey. So I've I love me some Salesforce. I drink the Kool-Aid.

SPEAKER_05 2:22

And and I can definitely uh be a testament to to your presence in the ecosystem, especially local. I always know I'm gonna see a familiar face uh at an event because I know you'll always be there. So um, you know, I appreciate you always being involved. And um, you know, if a lot of people don't say it, everyone loves you being there. So uh thank you. Um so so you recently joined Camping World. Um, you've been there about eight weeks. What did Camping World do? Give us a bit of an overview of what they do as a business for us, please.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Yeah, Camping World is uh RV retailer. We sell one out of every four RVs you see on the road. So we're the largest retailer, yeah. And we have other things products like Good Sam membership, um, which is kind of like insurance loyalty program. Um, and we have actually have a boat arm as well, but I'm not too involved in that just yet. But um, it's a really, really exciting and growing company who about 10 weeks ago made the decision to move Salesforce from IT under the business um in a more product-facing, like more product-centric role. And that's when I heard about that, I was so excited because I feel like that's actually where Salesforce should align and we'll we'll do it, you know, shine the best. So it's a very exciting time.

SPEAKER_05 3:45

Was that um something that you were taking into account prior to your decision to join the business? Was that the conversation that you knew was taking place prior to joining? And and how much how important is that to you? Because I know it's something you feel passionate about where sales people should sit in a business. So yeah, was that was that something you were conscious about? How about yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Um, I figured that out during the interview when I interviewed, actually, my first interview with who is now my boss. Um, she is the VP of digital strategy. And um I was like, digital strategy, is that IT? Like, what tell me about that? And she's like, no, it's more of a product, like we're products focused. And I was, I got, I got very excited because I was like, okay, you get it. Because Salesforce for my entire career has been there's been this struggle. Does it sit with IT? Does it sit with the business? And yes, it's technology, but is business technology. The business uses it to run, so it needs to sit and live and breathe and zig and zag with the business because business doesn't slow down, right? Business isn't gonna sit and wait on technology. There are departments with a camping world, and I've seen this in other companies I've worked in, that if the technology is too slow, they're gonna go find their own next thing, right? And then you've got data silos and process silos, and that's just never good for you know your holistic business. You're never gonna get your 360, right? Your customer 360 if you've got myriad of different departments and different platforms. So it was definitely a conscious decision. It was something when I hung up for my first interview, I was telling some friends, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited! Like they understand, they get it. They are a product company, they've moved Salesforce into product, you know, realm, which means it gets product support and it gets, you know, hands and it gets process mapping and like all of the things that come with, you know, the product focus. So definitely important to me. And again, that's something that like it's might be a hill I'm ready to die on, is that Salesforce is a business technology, not an IT technology.

SPEAKER_05 5:50

Good. Um I was I was pausing for a second there because I thought that was a tap question. Maz might have a follow-up on.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Uh yeah, yeah, for sure. I do. Um so in terms of in terms of reporting structure of people, are you saying that like a people should report up to a business owner or let's say an operations, a COO, as opposed to um, you know, a CTO, let's say the this the owner, the assistance owner. So like even though they're developers, maybe they're building integrations, um, you know, maybe you have an e-commerce platform or a website, like, where are you gonna draw the line? Like, I gonna say that our e-commerce platform should be with the business, they're the ones doing the sales, they gotta support it, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So yeah, um, it's a good question, and I think every business has to ultimately answer that for itself. But I think having that conversation is important and not just assuming that it needs to go here or it needs to go there just because of history or you know uh tradition or whatever. I think for camping world, it does work because there's a whole product arm that you know envelops our websites, that envelops, you know, um our processes and things that go along with our websites and our other technology, our business technology. And I have reported up through CTOs and I've reported up through COOs. And honestly, I feel like Salesforce gets the most most support and therefore the best ROI when it reports up through the COO. Um, I've reported to a CTO and sometimes they just don't understand it because they're typically not Salesforce people. And so it's kind of um, what's the right word? It's kind of dismissed a little bit when it's it's a serious enterprise technology, right? It's not to be dismissed. It's not just because it's not easy, just because there's a plethora of training, doesn't mean that it's that anyone necessarily can do it. Anyone can learn it over time, yeah, but just doesn't mean they can just hop in and do and do it. It needs to have, you know, put some respect on its name. Um it uh so I've seen the most tension when it tries to be forced just to stay in IT. That's which where I see the most tension throughout the company.

SPEAKER_05 8:19

So just to backtrack on um on camping world uh for a second. So so again, just for context for listeners, so so large enterprise retail business, Fortune 500 company, I believe. Is that right? Yeah, uh about 13,000, 14,000 employees, huge, right? So um just just high-level um footprint with Salesforce. What does that look like in terms of product, sales cloud, service cloud? How many users are we talking?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, we're about 4,000 users. Um we've got in my purview, I've got sales and service, and then we've got some really fun, you know, future-looking toys to play with that we're implementing that are all the rage right now. Um, and we also have Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Those are not in my purview, um, but we partner very closely. So we've got a very large footprint that is growing, and that's one thing I love about Camping World is that they really are making the investment to leverage and get the full ROI out of the platform instead of just you know cutting back on people and saying make it work.

SPEAKER_05 9:26

Yeah, I think we talk about that a lot in these podcasts is the the notion of be all in or not at all, right? Um don't sit on the fence. If you're gonna invest in something, do it properly. Uh don't don't don't skimp and save do that in other areas. Uh but when it comes to Salesforce, if you truly want ROI, you have to be all in.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Um I um actually was over the weekend speaking with um one of the client services directors at Salesforce, um, the client partner, his name's Justin, and he and I were talking about staffing because that's what he does. And he had a really great analogy that I told him I was going to take over and run with. And he was like, buying Salesforce is like buying a plane. And you don't just have your, you have a whole team that services and flies and maintains this plane, right? You don't have your your flight attendant flying the plane, maintaining the plane, you know, air air traffic controlling the plane. Like it takes a team, right? And and you want a very um trained, highly trained team flying and maintaining you know and fixing your plane. And so I really loved that because I was been trying to like, I love analogies, been trying to figure out an analogy of a way to like why it matters to invest in your people that run your platform. And it's because you're buying a plane and it is a very great plane, and it will take you literally anywhere you want to go, but your your flight crew and your ground crew have to know what they're doing, they have to be there, they have to be there to support you. And and once once you're fully maintained and and supported, there's nowhere you can't go.

SPEAKER_05 11:06

And you probably don't want a uh a pilot checking the engine or vice versa, right? Uh mechanic flying the line. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

So when you don't have the right kind of team, like you've got a developer, you know, asking your business what they need, like you've got your ground crew trying to fly your plane, and it's just not gonna work. You need the right skill sets in the right jobs.

SPEAKER_05 11:26

Agreed, 100%. So let's talk a little bit about that, Abby. So eight weeks in, um, and and it's something that you you've talked about throughout your career, that initial kind of assessing the layer of the land. How do you you know inheriting scenarios where you're already using Salesforce, it's already there, it's staying there for the foreseeable, uh, indefinitely. How do you how do you assess, plan, prepare, and work out how many people you need, what type of skill sets should should be in the org? Talk us through your kind of methodology and thought process for that.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah, um, I can definitely tell you what I did in my first eight weeks at Camping World was um, so again, I joined and I had realized I have a team of eight, and I'm like, well, that sounds like a lot. Um, so I met individually with each one. I sat one-on-one time and met for an hour with each person. And I really asked them what their background was, what their interests are, what are they doing today that they wish, you know, that they like, what they don't like, what they want, where they want to grow. Because my big thing too is investing in people and putting people where they want to be, um, because we're generally better at where we're we're good at what we're you know interested in. So I really got to know, you know, the background of everyone on my team so that when it came time to kind of figure out how to rearrange people, I could align people with what they are interested in, um, and and assess their skills through talking to them. So that was the first thing I did was met with my team, under, you know, kind of finding the four corners of like, you know, trying to put a tent together as you gotta lay it everything out and figure out where all your tools are, right? And so then I really I flew and I visited a lot of uh our headquarters. We have a couple different hubs, and listened. I just shadowed my project manager and just listened, listened to the pain points, listen to, you know, what's going on. Paying, I really delved deep into my business analyst skills of just listening for the unmet need. It's like they're gonna talk a lot, they don't necessarily know what they need, but you it once you do this enough, you can listen and you hear that you hear that unspoken need and you can get in front of it. And so I really understood that okay, things were we we had a one long intake funnel when I joined. Like the entire team was just focused on multiple lines of business competing with each other for priority, which in business that's not really gonna work when you have a multi-faceted business. They're each equally important. They need to compete within themselves for their own priorities, but competing against each other doesn't make sense, which slows down the the delivery cycle, which is why some business units would defect and go find their own solution, right? So I realized I was like, okay, speed to market is the biggest problem here. So even though I've got a bunch of hands, they're all kind of diving into the same funnel, and I need to diversify that. Each major line of business needs its own delivery funnel. So I was like, okay, if I'm gonna do that, and I started out, I started mapping out this, you know, kind of in the lucid chart Figma situation of what okay, where can I put the people that I have now aligned with their skill sets of what they like to do and where their background is. And then, okay, if I was to have these, where else do I need to fortify? And so I camping world is so large that we've got two kind of really large like ways I can divvy this up. There's 12 different business units, you know, kind of six over here and six over here. So I need two program managers. So I have two program managers, and under them, I'm like, I need developers and admins. But one thing I really noticed is okay, my team was great, even though we had a slower delivery cycle, we still we were doing great work. However, the rollouts are where we were really struggling. We had to roll some things back because things weren't fully tested. Or, and I've seen this in other companies too. Camping World is not unique here. I realized the change management was nil, was non-existent. And so that is my bread and butter. Because I come from a business background as an accidental admin, I realized like I could have the most beautifully architected system in the world, but if my users don't know how to use it, what does it matter? It's not going to get used, adoption's going to tank, people are going to defect, and management's not going to be happy, they're not getting their ROI. So I was like, okay, we really have to have change management here. And that is a person, not the business, not you know, Susie from accounting rolling this out to everybody because they she knows what she knows, but somebody who is really like speaks both languages, the business and Salesforce, and they know how to do that translation. Again, those certain skill sets. I needed a very specific pilot to fly to fly this plane, right? So um really double. I was like pushing hard on that. We need change management, we need change management, and knowing that we need to bring change management in, the beginning of a project, not the end. If you're waiting till the end of a project to bring change management in, it's already too late. Um, so that that was really that became my hiring plan. It was like, okay, and this is how I'm gonna be successful. And I have a DevOps person, like, and that's all they do. They're now um then I then another layer of what I did is I took my more senior people on my team and I made them the Salesforce Center of Excellence. I was like, this team sets the rules for how everything's gonna happen policy and procedure-wise, you know, with ever that everybody's going to align to. And that I'm not a big huge policy and procedure person. However, I know that when you don't do A, B, and C, stuff goes off the rails really quick. So, like, let's maybe not have that happen. So let's back into how do we prevent this from going off the rails with a Salesforce COE. Um, and I I even met with Salesforce um to get their kind of perspective on how they recommend, you know, teams and and large enterprise, you know, organizations function. And I kind of took their approach and I kind of made it my own because it was like, okay, this is a great starting point, but what's what does it need to look and look like for camping world? And that's where you know I really made sure every task has an owner. So DevOps has an owner, change management UAT lives with our change management person, gets sign off. Because one thing I was noticing was we were having to roll things back because we thought we had it, right? And the business was like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And then we go live and somebody down the line didn't get the memo, and they're like, wait, this messes my whole thing up. We have to roll the whole thing back. And so while we did amazing work, it was looking like we didn't because nobody actually owned UAT. And so, like, my change managed person is going to own it, going to document it, is going to project manage and really own that end to end. And we're hopefully going to get some some tools that will help out with that. But again, change management is such a huge, very, very under what's the word I'm looking for? Under not yeah, under what there's a word for it, and it's totally like I'm blanking on it right now. But it's very um, yeah, underappreciated for sure. And it's like you're typically just like discovery, it's kind of the first thing that gets cut when you engage with an SI. SI is like, oh, well, let's do change management. And company's like, nah, we got it, we got it, we'll get it to Becky and she'll she'll do it. But he's not gonna do it. She doesn't, she's uh if they have a day job, they're not gonna do it. They don't have the bandwidth. And so really just saying, oh, well, we're gonna save that money and we'll just make our current team do it, that's putting your entire project and therefore your very expensive plane at risk, right? Um, because you want it to go smoothly. And humans are humans, and when they get burned, they're gonna be a little cautious the next time, right? So you only have so much trust with your users that you can kind of play with.

SPEAKER_05 19:35

I know Maz has a question, but I I think change management is often seen as the unsexy part of an implementation, right? It's it's uh we want to build, we want to code, we want to develop, we want to do the fun stuff, but change management is often hard work. Um, and it's it's not only it's not for the faint-hearted. So I I think that is partly the reason why it kind of gets tossed aside. Maz, you got a question on team structure.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Yeah, a couple. Um, so I'll make this a multi-part question, make it easier for you. So, one, which is the which is a big problem for a lot of organizations, um, how do you future proof your team? Meaning, right, you're very agile, you get requirements, it's very project-oriented, right? I'm gonna bang out um this business needs, or maybe you're setting up 30-day, 90-day plans, but then you know, comes the next quarter, you know, business is changing, you're coming up with new ideas that you want to implement, and maybe that impacts your team structure. And obviously, you don't want to let people go because you just invested in them, um, not to mention the impact on morale. Right. So the one is how do you feature crease your team, um, particularly when deciding on this kind of team structure. Um, and um the second one is so I'm a very strong opponent of UAT. I'm like, you have to do UAT. So where you're saying that they don't have time, like that's not an acceptable answer, is generally my response. It's just not an acceptable answer. Um, and what I say is I'll test a spec, I'll have my UAT testers like machines, they will test the spec and it will work to spec, but I cannot test it to intent, right? If you intended it to do X, and that's not what the spec says, it's not going to do what you intended, and I don't have any documentation of intent. Um, and it's only you who really know the intent, because unfortunately humans just aren't perfect communicators. Um, even when you think you agree and you say that you agree, and right, it's just it's just you know the nature of human uh communication. So I guess that's kind of the the the two questions, right? Um UAT testing for intent and future proofing your team.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah, um, great questions. Um, and future proofing, so it's a multifaceted process of what I'm doing because I've I've told my team, you know, it's not it's not just campus. World, it's anywhere, right? Layoffs are a thing, right? And it can happen at any moment. So the best future proofing I can do for me is a number one, stay as close to revenue as possible, meaning, you know, keep the people who make the revenue happy. Um, but also if I can't do that, what I really um have seen done before and and am growing out here is um feature reporting. So building into every feature that we release some way to show how it's being used, that it's being used, adoption built into our features. How many times are they clicking this button? When they click a button, go create a feature enhancement or a feature, you know, log basically, report on feature usage. And so then again, so we can report on feature usage. Um, that if it's low, my change management person can jump in front of it and go get in front and be like, people need to be trained, we need to follow up on this. What isn't working? We need to optimize and really, you know, grow grow the feature or change the feature depending on, you know, we released it, but is it still working, right? Is it still working for the business? Because we talked about the business zigs and zags. Maybe they zigged and we didn't know. We now need to zig with them. Um, and so future proofing helps from from that standpoint, but also understanding when you're hiring. So we talked about like when do you bring on an SI? When do you bring, you know, in-house? And I think there's a place for all of them because the perks of an SI is, you know, they can spin up really quickly, right? You don't need to hire necessarily, you don't have to interview. Interviews take a long time, onboarding takes a long time. So I'm doing a hybrid approach here where I'm bringing on kind of a staff model of professional services to get spun up people who know what they're doing with the intent of I'm going to be hiring while they're working and figuring out also if I'm not sure I want to hire for this role, bringing it in, bringing a bunch of you know, SI partners in to do work, figure out what kind of what I call what roles I need to put a pin in and be like, actually, no, I need to hire for that role. This is working really well. I need to hire for this role. Um, and kind of just watching how everything, you know, kind of coalesces of, you know, this actually is working really well as a contract to hire as a staff. We're gonna leave that alone. This one actually, no, we need to kind of make this a little bit more extensible. It need to work with some other departments. We really need to own this tribal knowledge. So we're gonna bring that one in-house. Um, but be the beauty of an SI or part recruiting partner is they can help fill that role while you're looking to hire. Um, so you know, SIs are great for, you know, I've got this major initiative that I need to stand up, but I don't need this entire huge team to maintain it. I need a subset of that team to maintain it. So looking around the corner, it's like, okay, it's going to be a massive, you know, big thing to implement, but to, but it will need maintenance. What kind of maintenance might it need? And how can I, you know, support that, you know, going forward? Do is it a staph alg? Um, is it, you know, bring one person on and hire? Again, every business has to answer these questions for themselves, but they need to ask themselves these questions. Is yeah, we've got the, you don't want to hire for this big implementation and then have to let people go. It's like, what are these people gonna do post-implementation? Right? If you can't answer that, that's where it's like, okay, maybe we bring in a partner. Um, and I've got some caveats on before you bring a partner in what to do. But um, that's definitely you know the questions that you need to be asking is what are they gonna do after this implementation?

SPEAKER_05 25:42

What are some of those uh caveats um on a partner? You set yourself up for that question. So what are those some of the things you need to do before you decide? You know, you you you think you're ready for a partner, but what are some of those things you you need to do and implement as a leader to make sure that you know it's a positive experience for both the company and the SI?

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Yeah. Um couple of things from the business side is you know, ask yourself, okay, do we have our business processes mapped out? Are they clean? Are they easily handoffable? If the answer is no, do you want to do that in-house or do you want to pay the SI to do that for you? The SI will do that for you. It costs extra, and that's where most companies are like, no, no, we don't need it. But yes, you do. You need it done, whether you do it or you're you're you hire and contract that out. But that is going to make for just a much more clean, simple, straightforward, less 3 a.m. panics in you know, uh at implementation day when you go live. Um, if you already have that done. So pre-work is in is make sure you know your business processes and also identify what who your super users or your roles and responsibilities internally are going to be. Who's gonna run with this? Who's gonna own this? You do need somebody from your side to kind of project manage, whether that's a director of Salesforce to interface between the two, um, an admin, somebody needs to own the relationship between the, because the SI is just gonna, who do they go to when they have questions? If they're going to every single person, like that can get confusing because they're getting different answers. So you really need kind of an air traffic control. Like somebody's gotta own that because again, this isn't just some quick and easy weekend spin-up thing. Like this is a large, typically a large initiative. So you've got, you know, you've got an airport full of planes. Who's gonna direct this, right? Who's gonna make sure the planes don't crash into each other? So definitely doing, you know, ensuring that your discovery work is done somehow or knowingly hire that out, but do not skimp on it on either on either side. It's gotta be done. And then again, how is this gonna roll out? Are you gonna have the SI roll this out? Again, you still need somebody internally to kind of manage, making sure the right people are in the room. The SI doesn't know that, you know, we need three different people from three different departments. We need somebody who knows the internal landscape that can say we need to make sure these people are in the right room at the same time. Because if you talk to one but without the other, you get silos, you get wires crossed, and you get mixed messages and you get bad builds.

SPEAKER_05 28:20

Do you think, therefore, in that case, in an ideal world, requirement gathering should be an internal business activity prior to onboarding an SI in an ideal world?

SPEAKER_01 28:30

I mean, I would think so. Why are you buying Salesforce in the first place, right? If you don't know what your requirements are. I mean, like, I think if you aren't sure how to do it, that's where you can partner with your SI to help. They've got methodologies, they've got tools, they know they've done this before, but trusting in that knowing enough to know that you don't know is huge. And so if you can do it on your own, great. You'll save a lot of SI money doing it that way. But also, some businesses just don't have the bandwidth to do that. And so it's okay, but know that it still does need to be done. And in investing in both that and change management will just skyrocket your ROI of your implementation because you can the sexy things, you can go straight to build and build and build and push it out with an email, and it's gonna fail. And then you're gonna think, oh my gosh, I've just got, you know, wasted all this money and nobody's using it. Because it wasn't done end to end and thoughtfully, you need to really have a strategy of, you know, how are we gonna intake and how are we going to implement?

SPEAKER_05 29:36

You you've um spent time with an SI, a well-known SI in the past. Um being customer-side, what do you look for typically when selecting a SI? Any common themes? Is it their reputation within doing projects within a certain industry, a certain cloud, a certain size of business? What are sort of the qualifying factors that you take into account when you've decided you are having an SI, but how do you then choose out the 2,000, 3,000 SIs that are out there?

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Yeah, um, well, this is where networking comes in very handy. Um, you know, usually if you're in in the networking, you know, ecosphere, you can, hey, you know, you hear the reputations, right? But outside of that, it would be customer stories, exactly what what clouds, what projects have you worked on for other clients. Like, okay, I've got a data cloud implementation. I might not necessarily go with a financial services, you know, SI. I want somebody who's done that before. Um, but if I definitely need, you know, a financial, if I'm a financial services firm, I want to go with a financial services, you know, SI, because Salesforce used to be where, you know, any SI could kind of implement anything. It used to be small, but now it's so big that you kind of have to knee your die, right? It's you can't be the jack of all Salesforce trades anymore unless you're huge and you've subsector. Um, but your like your smaller boutiques, like they've got a niche. Like figure out what their niche is and talk to you know either their clients or network, ask your network of, hey, what do you think? Um, but that that reputation is really, really important. Um, you know, the Ohana is is very tight-knit and very small in a good way. Um, and so you can find you know the good ones, they're out there. Um, but that's what I you know really look for is again, what's my project and who's done that, and what are their customer stories around that?

SPEAKER_02 31:34

So when dealing with an SI, because you've been on both sides, so I guess you kind of understand the SI uh, let's say speak or culture, which I'm sure is very different than the client side. Um any tips for like negotiating a contract with an SI or working with an SI that you think would be helpful to some of our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Um that's a good question. Let me think about that. So I mean, just like Salesforce is gonna sell you whatever you want to buy, like SIs are gonna try to sell lots of services. So that's where that internal work comes in really handy, knowing your own gaps before you get there. Because if you don't know what your gaps are, they're gonna try to sell you stuff. And you to kind of fend off on that, you might turn down everything without realizing that actually, no, you do need some things. So never ever ever skip on discovery and change management, whether you do it in-house or you know, or you have an SI, but um they may um, you know, partner with them, keep like work, tell them what your goals are, tell them what your challenges are, really partner with an SI because they, you know, the good ones really want to be your partner, not just for this project, but for a long term. So if they're really just hammering you on this one project, like it's a little bit of a red flag for me because I want to build a relationship, right? Because I'm gonna have more projects and I want to know where I can go to get those projects fulfilled. So, you know, there are some flyby knights out there that, you know, are just worried about like what's the next thing, what's the next thing before you're even done with the current thing. And it's like, let's get this ironed out, build a relationship with me, right? Build a relationship with your SI because this is a relationship business. I mean, we are the CRM, right? Um, so really, you know, be weary of you know the ones that you know just want to kind of like sell you stuff and not necessarily build a relationship.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Any any concern that sometimes an SI that's let's say hyper-focused on Salesforce tries to hit everything with a Salesforce hammer.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

I mean, yeah, then you can extract that to anything that wants to hit one broad stroke for everything, right? Um there are definitely, I mean, I lean towards more in Salesforce than not, but there are things that, you know, Salesforce might not be the best fit. And that's again, you gotta make those calls for yourself, but you know, the ones that are just like, oh, it can do every single thing and it's super easy, like you've got that triangle, right? Good, fast, and and cheap, and you get two. Like if it's like we get all three, red flag. Like that's a red flag because it's either gonna be really good and fast, but it's not gonna be cheap. You're gonna pay for it, uh, but it's gonna be really good and really fast. Um, or you know, you got to give one up, right? So the ones that are just like, oh, it's gonna be good, fast, and cheap. And it's like, oh, it's never gonna cost you on the back end somehow.

SPEAKER_05 34:38

We we've all interacted heavily with SIs, um, obviously working with them, for them, etc. Um, I think often SIs have a tough job. I think it's easy to blame an SI who are on a project when the project doesn't work out well, and there are those projects that don't go as successfully as everyone had imagined. But I don't see the customer always taking accountability for their part in that process, right? It's like a marriage, right? It usually it's not just one person's fault. There's truth on element of truth on both sides, right? So, what what does a customer need to do to show up and do their part within that partnership? You know, you said it's a relationship and it goes both ways. So we looked at we talked briefly about how uh just looking ready for that journey, doing requirement gathering, having UA testers on on hand or whatever it might be, right? But what are some of the other non-negotiables from your end in terms of we've selected an SI, this is how we're gonna hold ourselves accountable internally. What are some of those items?

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Yeah, um, just a great point. And I'm gonna hit kind of back on what we just said, but it is take making sure people on your team on your side have the bandwidth to devote to this project. Because if you're people are already working four hours a week and you're layering on implementation on top of them, like it's like there's not enough time in the day for people to focus, right? So setting everyone up for success on let's okay, you're gonna be spending 20 hours a week with this implementation team, we need to take 20 hours a week worth of work off and find other places for it to go, or making some other kind of concession because again, everybody is busy with their day job, right? And if this is an afterthought, it's going to feel like an afterthought. So if you just prioritized with the team and they're able to give their time and attention to it, to not be double, you know, uh multitasking in meetings where they're in requirements meetings, but they're taking care of fires over here and they're not really paying attention and they just missed something that actually was really important. Like letting your setting your team up for success and making sure they have the bandwidth dedicated to being present and being, you know, there in the meetings, because if they're doing two different things and the SI does not know any better. So if they're like, yeah, sure, that sounds good, but they weren't really listening. The SI is going to take that as like you said, and they don't know what they don't know. Only the you know your business. And so you've got to make sure that those people are able to dedicate time and show up. That's why on every project kickoff call, you'll see roles and responsibilities from each side. It's they need you to be there, not just in the meeting where your face is like, you know, your bubble's there. You need to be there and bring your thoughts and bring your concerns and bring your questions and really, really partner. Um, so making sure, again, just making sure your team has the bandwidth to dedicate this because this is not just a side gig. This is, you know, yes, it's a concurrent project you have going on, but it takes time and attention. And Salesforce is like a toddler, it'll wander off if you don't pay attention to it. So this, you know, the project could go off the rails if it's not, you know, you need to have focus on it. So really just the bandwidth, making sure your team has bandwidth to take this on.

SPEAKER_05 38:26

We talked a little bit about things you can do to help an SI to maximize that relationship, to save money, to devote more time or resource over to the SI. Hypothetical scenario, you've picked an SI, you've done the project, right? You know, how do you go about knowing when to ramp up or ramp down with SI support in general, right? Because a business like Camping World, you're gonna have so many projects and initiatives, so many partners, probably three, four, five, six partners, bunch of contractors, bunch of you know, in-house talent. When and you can't rely on a partner indefinitely because there are negatives to that, which we don't necessarily need to go into, but there are a few cost, etc., over being over reliant and so on. When do you know when to ramp up and down? Are there any key indicators that typically you're like, okay, we've gone live, now we need to start to reduce, or is it even prior to that? Like it's like phase three, for example, where you start to think, okay, if I haven't got the resources in-house, this is gonna be an issue.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yeah, that's a great question as well. And I think it's thinking about it things in phases, right? We've got the discovery phase. What do we need for that? The but the people we need in discovery phase aren't necessarily the same people we need for the build phase. So we can ramp up the build phase as we're ramping down the discovery phase, keeping some overlap because you don't want to just start and stop over with the you know, tribal knowledge is a thing. And having, you know, figuring out who is going to persist the entire project and then who can come and go based on their skill sets. And then this is really important at project when you're mapping out the project, is okay, at what point, okay, we're development's done. We're just doing rollout and hypercare. So we don't need a team of developers on staff for hypercare. We need maybe one and a change manager and maybe a project manager, right? Um, so really thinking about each phase as a set of activities, who's going to own those activities? Every activity needs to have some owner because an activity without an owner doesn't get done. So that's why change management needs an owner, UAT needs a project manager for, you know, we really need hyper care. Who is good, who are we going to go to if something's on fire? So we need that person to stay on. So really just taking a list of all the activities that are going to need to be done and making sure each one has an owner and those roles and responsibilities. And so that also wires don't get crossed. You have a streamlined um kind of channels of communication. Um, and that way, you know, okay, we've got our partner over here. We didn't foresee we actually need a little bit more support here. We need to bring that you know on and staying in flux and in communication with your SI partner as well throughout the entire thing. It's not a set it and forget it, it's it's art, not science.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Awesome. So kind of changing topics a little bit. Um, so you're running Salesforce org, you've taken over Salesforce org, obviously you need certain skills or tools, um, right, to do this right. Um, and it's kind of a couple of buckets, right? You have your hard technical skills, you have your more softer people skills, um, and then you have your business industry knowledge. Right? Um, I know you've said you've uh you have non-sales for development. So like I don't know how much camping experience or or the experience you've had prior prior to this role. Right. So how how important has those things? Is there any is there any skill that you thought like maybe coming to the throat would have been really great if I had that coming in? Um to just kind of wing it, right? So what what do you think is that like right, Mick? So so to give this a more practical question, someone who's up and coming in their career, maybe they're doing really well as an attribute an individual contributor, where do they they focus um their learning in that way from let's say maybe the softer skills or the harder skills to get to that next level or to really be good at that next level?

SPEAKER_01 42:38

My first answer is to go with what you're really interested in. Because if you're not interested in working with the business and you want to develop those more technical skills, then don't dive into the you know softer people skills yet. Um you know, follow your strengths. But to get to the next level, you are going to have to develop those softer people skills in reading people and translating. That's the biggest thing. And I call myself a human ETL, and it's funny, but it's also true. It's I know how to speak different languages within the English language. I can speak developer, I can speak admin, I can speak C level, I can speak business. And it's really taking what does the this person that I'm talking to need to know about what's going on? So as a developer, and you're talking to the business, they don't need to know what the JSON looks like. They don't need to know what the back end looks like, the custom metadata. They don't care. They don't need to know, they need to know what's in it for me, how is this going to work going forward? What do I need to know about rolling out so that I can either tell my team or like what's changed, right? C Suite needs to know what's the ROI, what's the feature adoption, what's the status on this project. They need to know different things, right? So being able to understand what the audience needs and communicating that is the key to getting to any. Next level is under reading the room and figuring out who needs to know what because I need to talk to my developers and we need to fix this code. We actually, this, you know, this JSON's not the way it should be, or right? You know, you need to calm out your code different. But nobody else cares about that. But I and the developers do. I'm not saying it's not important, it's just it's important to the developers in this scenario, but it's not important to the C-suite. They do need to know that we had to refactor some code and it's going to push us a sprint that they care about. They don't care about why. They need to know the impact, right? So again, just tailoring your message to your audience. Your business doesn't care again about the JSON, but they do need to know, hey, actually, we're not going to roll out for another sprint as well. So we need to get, you know, involve change management and all the downstream implications of that decision.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Right. So getting back to let's say the industry knowledge, right? How much of that do you really have to know? Um, so um, I'll give you an example. If I'm in retail, let's say, or or wholesaling, right? Often I'm thinking in terms of product lines, SKUs, inventory, and let's say time to market, right? Or supply chain stuff. But it's like it's it's like a massive business, and it's it's it's heavily focused usually on ERP and accounting and raw numbers and sales. Um, and when you get to the to the CRM world, it's very different, right? It's it's more who's the decision maker, how do I get to the decision maker, how do I acquire my leads, how do I validate my leads, what does the sales cycle look like, right? So how do you kind of learn that stuff? Um and particularly, you know, when you when often particularly in sales feed, people switch industries, let's say, right? Um, so it it's it's a tough nut to crack because you can see how the accounting stuff is very transferable from industry to industry, where the the whole you know relationship side is not necessarily any any tips and advice or how you've done that, or are they just natural, I guess, to some people?

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Um, I will say for me it is natural, however, when I kind of examine why it's natural, is I kind of start from the outside in. What's our bigger why? Like, why does this company exist? How do they make money, right? Then I kind of okay, how like why do we make money? What do we do? We sell RVs. Okay. Within that, what do we how do we sell RVs? Okay, we sell new RVs, we acquire used RVs, we sell those. So then it's just kind of chunking down, you know, the the bigger why into like a little bit more of how. Okay, this department works to this North Star. This is what they do. I always find what's our North Star, what's our overarching North Star, right? Because then every decision we make maps to that North Star. And when I'm learning a process, I can tell us, I tell a story in my head of, okay, we we take it, we take it in, we need to like inspect the RV if we're gonna buy it, right? Because that makes sense. We need to know what we're buying. Um, so I really tell a story about what we do that ties to how we do it, which also then helps me, hey, I know that we're trying to get here and we do ABC, but have we ever thought doing CBA to help us wrap technology around that? And so maybe changing some things up. And if if there's a reason we do it that way, that's fine, but help me understand what that reason is. Um, and that's that's how I learned the business is just again knowing the full end-to-end first off, like what's the point of why we're here, and then just everything underneath it is nuance of how we achieve that goal.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Okay, so again, going just back to practicality, it sounds like your preferred method, and maybe if I'm wrong, is conversational. I talk to the business users, I talk to the people on the ground. Um, do you feel or have you tried shadowing? Like, oh yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

I love shadowing, conversation and shadowing. That's when I, you know, first joined uh camping world figuring out like what how what are our blocks to you know being able to support the entire business with eight people uh was shadowing. I shadowed my project manager and we went and shadowed other departments. Shadowing is one of my favorite ways to learn, and I make sure that I, for if I have established Salesforce users, I find my like strongest user or my highest salesperson and my lowest or my weakest user or my like lowest salesperson. Because I want to know what the best of the best are doing and what the not great people are doing so that I can bridge the gap of like what from this person do I need to teach this person or what challenges does this person see that you know can help everyone. So I really like to shadow, I talk to people. Um, I like to sit in on meetings and just listen of like what are we trying to achieve, right? Because if I can get that overarching what are we trying to achieve story, I can help map, you know, backtrack a roadmap to get there.

SPEAKER_05 49:12

How much um answer your question, Matt? I think I answer the question.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

I was gonna I was just gonna say a stupid anecdotal story. So I I have a problem shadowing um because I'm very I'm very technical, detail oriented, and I'm like a five whys person. I gotta get to the real why, right? The five whys deep. And I always end up insulting the person because they think that I'm questioning how they're doing it. Okay, I'm a tip. Why are you doing that right? Why aren't you doing it like this? And they they do not like it.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

I so I the five whys, yes, I always caution people because why is a defensive question? It will make anybody defensive about I even my daughter sometimes when she's like, why, mom? And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you to question me? I'm like, oh wait, she's just trying to understand. So I t I coach people instead of asking why, you ask what and how questions or help me understand why. Um, do not just say why, because yes, people do not like it and they will be like, please leave, like don't question me. But you can ask, what about this is important, or what um are you doing that helps achieve this, you know, XYZ, or you know, how do you do da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da? And so, what and how questions will get to your why, but if you ask a why question, you're probably gonna piss somebody off.

SPEAKER_05 50:25

Good advice. Um, and I can't imagine why to learn it. I can't imagine why anyone would think that about you, Maz. Um, so I have a question for you around the topic, and I'm it's just I'm curious, I'm not saying it's a factor or not. Um, I'll let you answer it. But how much would you say your consulting experience, right? I guess before I ask this question, so you did about eight years of your Salesforce career in-house before your Salesforce consulting took place, and then afterwards you've done another three years-ish, right? So, how much do you think your time and experience with a with an SI, with a consulting company, has helped you be effective in those areas we've just talked about, about assessing the layer of the land and working out what's important to a customer, what do they focus on, what is their product, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think were you already naturally good at that prior to consulting? If so, like let's say what would you rate yourself out of 10, and how much did that improve being an SI again, score out of 10 to present day?

SPEAKER_01 51:39

Oh, good question. Um I think before I had done several different places of in-house. So I was starting to get it of like, okay, I can abstract on a theme and like this is how different companies work, but I will say nothing, I would not be where I am today without my consulting experience. I like it, it changed the game. So if I'm a 10 out of 10 because of it, I'm not saying I am, I'm saying if I am, because of the consulting experience, I was probably like a six before, like five, six. Like I was starting to get there, but the consulting experience, because there was so rapid fire, there were so many projects in a short amount of time. And the beauty of working with consulting is I'm generally surrounded by it brilliance. Like so many smart people that I was working with. Not that I'm not in-house, I am, but there were so many more of that specific type of brain that you know, business is smart at business things, but I was surrounded by like Salesforce, you know, geniuses and like implementation and data architects and that go and you know, set up shop and do this for other companies. So I was so exposed to so much talent and information, you know, for a for a long time. And I got to see what worked at scale and what didn't work at scale and you know, learn from other people's mistakes and other people's best practices that in-house took just a little bit longer to put together because it wasn't so rapid fire. So I would recommend everybody have some consulting experience in the Salesforce industry because you just get to see so many different things that you're like, I've seen this before, we've done this before, this is really cool. Like, I we could do this here and just transfer that knowledge um in ways that you just wouldn't otherwise get be exposed to.

SPEAKER_05 53:37

I think it's advice that I always think in-house, you get more in-depth consulting, you get more variety, right? More what width. Yeah. Um, thanks for helping me out. I couldn't I couldn't figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

Yeah, consulting again, but that's why I love in-house now, is because I want to go deep. Um, and but I have that breadth experience, so I get to bring both to this table, and that's really exciting. But yeah, the consulting and the breadth of experience is is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Okay, so we're just about at time, so let's close with this. Um, I know you're just getting started, so this is an odd question, but we always end with this question. So, what's next for you and and camping world, the Salesforce space? Um, what are you most excited about? It's coming up.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

Yeah, I'm super excited. Um, not sure how much I can talk about, but we just closed the deal on getting all the fun new toys and we get to implement them. Um, I get to play with things that are are new and exciting and really gonna be transformative for the face of the business. So just just watch. It's gonna be super fun.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

Any um any agent force on the list for TU? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Yes, we uh actually have an agent force pilot going out, working on right now. We just kicked it off a couple weeks ago, and like I said, it's gonna it's gonna transform the face of the business, and I'm so excited about it.

SPEAKER_05 55:04

What about events-wise for next year? I know you're you're very active in in the space. So any any events you already registered for and signed up to?

SPEAKER_01 55:13

I haven't, but I want to put in to speak. I definitely want to do Tahoe Dreaming because it's the last year of Tahoe Dreaming tier. Super sad. Um, but definitely Texas Dreaming. That's you know, my that's where I got my start. So I have a mad love for that. Probably Northeast Dreaming. Love Northeast Dreaming. Um, and maybe a couple others. I'm just gonna put a couple of talks together and submit and see who see who bites.

SPEAKER_05 55:37

Any any events for the retail space? Obviously, that are like more nuance and a niche for that general industry that you've come across.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Um, well, camping world holds its own events, they do like camping world like tours, which is pretty cool. And I'm hoping I get to go to one of those, but uh not in the not in the Salesforce retail space that I'm aware of.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

You fit nicely with the whole Salesforce camping theme.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

I no, I've got marketing plans and what Benioff call me.

SPEAKER_05 56:07

Good. Uh any other general advice uh for our listeners on any of the the areas we've covered today?

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Oh wow, yes. Um, how much time do we have? Um just again, asking better questions, really diving deep, um, and and establishing that North Star. What it why are you doing what you're doing? Understanding that will take you very, very far.

SPEAKER_05 56:35

Amazing. Uh really appreciate it. Thank you, Abby, uh for for your input. Um, and and that concludes today's session. So um thank you, listeners, uh, for joining us and and listening uh to this episode. If you liked what you hear, please continue to download and subscribe to the CRM Success Show, uh, where we feature more amazing guests like Abby. Once again, Abby, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Thank you guys so much for having me.