SPEAKER_00 0:02

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 Mostri and Kira 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_03 0:28

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. Today we're talking with uh Kevin Mossman, VP of Salesforce Development at Dual North America and insurance firm. Um, so welcome, Kevin. Thank you. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

So, Kevin, uh, we always like to start and warm our guests into the show real nice and easy. Just tell our listeners a little bit about your background, please, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah, so I've been in IT for a little over thread, a little over 30 years now. Um, started way back before the dot-com boom, actually, just at the beginning of the dot-com boom as a technical writer and just acquired new skills and and did jobs. I've done pretty much everything except QA in the IT side, in the IT world from development to release engineering, what they all call DevOps, to uh production operations, um technical support to development, uh yeah, kind of all of it. Like I said, except for QA that done most of the things in IT over the years. And I've spent the last uh right around 15, maybe a little more years in the Salesforce ecosystem.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

All right. So, where did your Salesforce journey start?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Um, so I was working for Equifax when the mortgage market crack cratered. Um, I'd been there for about five years, and um they had massive layoffs um because the credit markets, I mean, that all just you know, everything went to hell in a handbasket there. Um, so I got laid off from Equifax, um, and I had a friend who had a small uh advertising firm, and he had a Salesforce implementation he'd done, and he said, Hey, this is something you can take on. And I did a little, yeah, I can I can figure it out. Um, so I did that implementation and then I got that done. And he and I had a mutual friend that was the head of another small company, 25, 30 people, that was about to do a Salesforce implementation. And he said, Well, Kevin just did mine, maybe he can do yours. So I went and did that one. And by that time, I was like, Well, this is pretty fun, pretty interesting. So I got a couple certifications. Um, and uh you know, at that time that was actually pretty rare. Um, and so uh that kind of took off from there. Uh started doing larger and larger projects, uh as uh starting as an independent um consultant, and then eventually um went got on with a smaller consultancy, small to mid-sized, and then um was hired uh by Cap Gemini in their financial services group um as as uh one of the first uh Salesforce employees in a Salesforce practice. Um and I was an architect on large enterprise Salesforce implementations for them. Um did that for a few years. Um by that point I'd been doing projects just back to back for almost seven years at that point, just one project to another project to another project, and I was kind of burnt out. Um, I was traveling a lot because back then we traveled for everything. Um, and I had I had a year where I had spent like 320 days, 20 nights in a hotel in the in a single year, and I was just like, this is it's amazing what you can get used to, but this is not sustainable. Um, so I actually moved into their practice leadership a little bit, and as part of that, I also spent time on their uh management consulting side. I'd kind of get loaned out to manage the management consulting side uh for uh projects that included CRM strategy and roadmaps and those kinds of things. Uh so I did that for a couple years on the management consulting side, and then um went to work for Salesforce, got hired at Salesforce as a customer success director in their banking practice. Um and I did that for five years. Nice. Um and then decided to make a move from that to the client side, uh, back to working for the client uh directly. And so I I spent a brief time at uh Trans America. Um and then I landed this role at dual. Um and I've been here for right at it, real close to a year now.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

So good, good, good recap and uh having a blast, I believe, was uh what you just mentioned before I cut you off just there. But um, so you it's funny you mentioned uh 15 years ago being a couple years in, getting a couple of certifications was quite rare because you know it was so new. I was curious actually, one of the questions I I've just written down then was how was that journey learning Salesforce for the first time without Trailhead and you know the resources that it is now? Like it, you know, where did you even go about learning? Was it just uh you know, hook around and hope you don't break anything kind of kind of thing and figure it out?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Hey, this was back in the classic days, so it was not as complex as what it is now. It was it was a little more simple, and all the documentation was still online, right? Trailhead, uh I think Trailhead kind of almost existed then. They had some online training type stuff, if I remember correctly. Um, but all the documentation was there, so you know, you go out and search the documentation and and and figure out how to do it. Yeah, um, and so uh yeah, that's what I did.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

I just 2014 Trailhead um came out at Dreamforce 2014, the gamified version, apparently. So um, but but still, you know, early days, uh maybe definitely not as faked out as it is now with the the all the different certification paths and and still on the roles were not as identified as they are today. Um so your career is pretty much focused on uh a lot of financial services, banking, insurance, um, that kind of vertical. Was that was that by choice or just that's what it really wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

It really wasn't. I've and I've spent the bulk of my career in financial services of OneStrike, and it was never planned. It just um it's just I uh once I had Equifax on my resume, you know, they're a well-known financial firm, and so that I got more interviews with financial services, yeah. Um but I've done I've done life sciences companies before. Um the two first small implementations, they were both um non-financial services companies. Um, but yeah, it just and I have I haven't really focused on it, but it once you get into it, then your resume has more and more of those things, which then draw more and more attention from those companies. So it kind of builds on itself.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Makes sense. What's your opinion now? Um, having spent you know 15 years in the Salesforce ecosystem around specializing by industry, do you do you think there's value in that or do you would you because it's uh it's an old debate. Do you specialize in industry, do you go by product um or role? Um, and I think a lot of some of our listeners who might be listening today might be thinking about uh how how much they should focus on going down an industry versus a product, uh you know, and it changes depending on who you ask and the market and so on. What's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, I you know, If to me, the industry question is more is is there something about that industry you already have a connection to? I mean, if if you came out, uh you know, if you have worked in banks before and now you're trying to get into technology, that's gonna be an asset on your resume that you've been in the banking world, you understand their business processes, right? So again, you're gonna get interest from those. Um, I think, especially given the job market right now, you can't be as choosy as that, right? A lot of it is you take what's out there right now. You don't need it, you know, it's not like you can sit around and say, hey, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna turn down this life science opportunity um because I'll have a bank calling me in the next week. That's not you know, right? Right. So I I would focus on where where how do I want to develop my career, right? One of the things that I didn't have back then when I started was they didn't have the career paths, right? You had you had admin, advanced admin certs, developer, advanced developer, and pretty much CTE. Oh no, you had the sales and service cloud, sales cloud consultant, service cloud consultant, and then you had the CTE, I mean CTA exam. That was pretty much it from the exam. Now they have a lot better defined career progressions with different certifications to match them. Um, and you have a lot more kind of ability to really focus on where do you want to go next in your career? I've always because I my my background before I got into IT was not I didn't go to college for IT back then. I went to college for education. Um, and so I made I built my career by learning the next new thing. So I got my first job as a technical writer, and I was on a project, and they said, hey, we want to implement um this version control and and task tracking system. We need somebody to go learn it and become the expert. I'll do it. And so I did that. And then, hey, there's this new programming language we want to start using. We need somebody to go learn it and become the expert in it. Right? Um, and that's how I built my technology career. It was con because again, I didn't have a degree in technology at the time. Yeah, it was learn the next, always be looking at what's the next thing out there to go learn and and and and you know develop expertise in.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

So for those who uh are listening versus watching, uh putting your hand up uh and taking on responsibilities was um Kevin's Kevin's advice. Um and then and then I think a nice segue to to what Mars is going to cover a little bit in a moment. Um, customer success, it means something completely different to whoever you ask, right? Different companies call it one thing, but some companies it sells, but others it's about renewals, but others it's just making sure your clients fit. Um, your role at Salesforce, um, and again, it's meant different things at Salesforce over the years as well. But we did uh five and a half years at Salesforce as director because we're focusing on uh supporting financial services. Give us me kind of 60 seconds on what that role entailed.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So when I was hired, uh and I'll say this was the entire five years I was there, there wasn't this was an internal debate within Salesforce as to what is the role of customer success. Um, and you had people that were all we all were very much in the they are their advisory, right? And that's what what I was hired to do. It was your job is to become the trusted advisor to the client executive, not to focus so much on the how to do Salesforce, but how to think about Salesforce. How do we structure around success? How do we value map? How do we make sure we're focused on the right things that are going to move us where we want to go, right? How do you have that line of sight from these are our corporate objectives to these are the initiatives we have to this is how Salesforce can help achieve those initiatives and and and and fulfill the met the KPIs that you're driving to meet those objectives, right? That's what I was hired into. On the other hand, other end, you had people that were like, they should be commissioned, they should be being compensated on on new on new revenue, right? They should, you know, uh, or or they should be, if they're going to be advisory, then they need to be in the professional services side as uh and be and be about billable hours. Um, and there was this constant conversation inside the company leadership that you could tell because you'd we get from time to time they would change. We need you guys to start tracking this. We need you guys to start tracking this, and you could tell there was this conversation around what is the value out of the CSM, right? Um, are they can are they actually contributing to revenue? So there was a time when any any opportunity we sourced, we had to put our name on it so we could be tracked that we had sourced this opportunity, right? And then they were right, it was and you could just tell every day they'd come down with these, hey, we want you guys to start tracking this, and like, oh, they're having that conversation again, right? And ultimately, um I was in the uh the big round, the the the 10,000-person round of layoffs uh two years ago. Um and a huge chunk of that was CSG. Um, and and they made a very decided shift in that role, kind of away from that advisory level, at least for most of their customers. I think it still existed in some aspects in strat, like strategic accounts, but for pretty much everything else, um the goal was anything the CSM can do, we're gonna self-serve it. Um and um you know, through accelerators or whatever that they call them today.

SPEAKER_04 15:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Um, and they're not gonna have that CSM that can really get in, understand what they're doing, help them drive adoption, help them drive um roadmaps. Um, yeah, that I don't think that's there anymore outside of Strat. I mean, when I was there, I I remember I sat with a a super regional bank, was one of my customers, and we mapped out a three-year roadmap for them to shift to FSC. Um, and I spent weeks sitting with them in in the weeds, how to set this roadmap up, prioritize it, the metrics, the all of it. Um last I knew they're still executing on that roadmap.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Yeah, every time somehow I doubt that. Every every time we talk to Salesforce, people who worked at Salesforce um on this podcast, and they're not really the target, but um they're they're not our typical guest, right? Because we were generally talking to you know to to business owners, meaning owning the business side of things or the technical owner of the Salesforce implementation, the CRM implementation. Um, but often on occasion, we've had a few, right, Kiro, who worked at Salesforce. Yeah, um, and they always had the same thing, like the it seems like it's constantly changing and nobody knows uh what they're doing. I'll talk to on occasion, I'll just give a friend a call who works there, and it's I don't I I don't know what their their strategy is.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Um, with this role. Their strategy is very simple. Think it through. What other company do you know that spends the money that Salesforce spends on marketing and branding? Right? Is there any other software company that uses these? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

No, probably not.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

No, they they their He was holding up uh what's this guy's name?

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Astro? Astro, I have my Astro.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, keep in mind, I think most of our vast majority of audio is a podcast. Um they they spend ma think of how much it costs to put on Dream Force, right? So say it's it the the the the it Salesforce is a revenue engine, period, right? Um, and that and that is how what they exist for, and you it it's it's just a reality, right? They are extremely revenue focused.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

Um, that I get. I mean Benny offered that Benny offered a salesperson. He was he was sales person, yeah, absolutely. He was the top salesperson at Oracle at like 23. Yeah um and working directly with Larry Ellison um before he started Salesforce. I mean he knows he knows how to sell but but but that I mean literally that drives everything.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

It's if they think it will with very few exceptions, if they think it gets them something that they can put on the marketplace and drive revenue, they're in. And that was the big debate on CSMs. Were we a cost or did we actually uh did we actually influence revenue? Right, and ultimately, somewhere up the line, they decided we were a cost, not revenue.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Um not even in terms of stickiness. Uh anyway, my point is that it seems to change so fast and so often that it's difficult, it's difficult to know what their strategy is um day to day and if they're gonna see it through. Um anyhow, so let's let's talk about that a bit more, but more so in terms of comparing Salesforce to your time uh at Cap Gemini, um and even your time at as a as an independent consultant and then now at at dual or Trans America, where it's client side, right? Really, really, really different roles. Um I'm sure that if you if you started your Salesforce work, let's say four years earlier, you'd have like had your own SI, right? Because the market changed that fast, I think. Um that you got locked. I don't say almost you missed a boat, but you you could have hit it, but it wasn't an obvious start an SI. Um a few years before that, it would have been. Um, so I'm sure you had no big problems getting a job in Salesforce market at that time. Um but yeah, though so what is it what does it look like, right? Taking what you just said about uh CSM at Salesforce, comparing that to even the management consulting side at Cap Gemini versus the implementation side versus being an individual contributor where um you really are the trusted advisor.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah, so to me, uh there I I see two sides of the coin in the consulting world, both from the advisory versus and the implementation. Um because it because it wanna there's a piece of the consulting side, especially implementation consulting, that I really loved. And that was I was driven to solve the problem, right? I loved solving the problem. So when I went to CAP, the first project I went I was on, like a project they hired me for, was the first time anybody had done um P and C insurance quote to card on Salesforce ever. Um, we had a Salesforce um um PA on the project, and my first day he said to me, We're not sure it can be done on Salesforce. What you guys are talking about, we were not sure you can actually do it. This was before any CPQ products existed. And yeah, we built to stand up a test environment, took 80,000 rows of reference data, right? Just to have the coverages and all the different rules for all the 50 states. Nobody had ever done something like that in Salesforce before.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

Um they called it a quote to cut to card instead of quote to cash, that changed.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

I never heard the term um in insurance it was quote to card, that's what they called it at the time. Oh, to card because if you quote to cash, you get into the billing side typically. And we didn't we didn't go that far with that project. Um but and and I that's what I loved. I loved, I loved that. And so when I went on for when we finished that project, then I went on to other projects. I One of the things I would look for. I want somebody to say we've never done it before, or we're not sure we can actually make this happen. Those were the projects I wanted to go be the architect on because I loved that challenge of getting there and getting it done, right? And figuring it out. So I led the first integration of Salesforce and Guideware. I led the first integration of Salesforce to a core banking platform. Um because I just I loved doing that kind of uh I loved that kind of challenge. Um so when you when you get into the advisory side, you kind of lose that a little bit, right? Um, and and this was kind of the I I like the advisory side in some ways because you don't necessarily have that same grind that you have on the project side. So there's that, but you're also disconnected from the getting it done, right? You you do a lot of helping companies plan, but you're you're never around to see the actually come to pass, right? And that kind of carried through into my work as a CSG, where it was again a lot of strategic advice and helping them plan a roadmap, but you you were never around to see it actually work, right? And that was kind of always one of those things I was like, man, you know, especially like with Salesforce, every February they shuffle all their accounts, and you might not have the same accounts year to year. Um, and so it's it was this constant, and that was kind of the bummer for me in that. I mean, I I loved being a C in that role. I I loved working with the customers, but it did kind of bug me to not ever get to see the finished thing, right? Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of the consulting, you know. Yeah, it is. Well, the project side, you're there and you see that project generally to the end, right? You're there for the launch. You get to you, you're you get to see the metric shift, right? As as this thing does what you plan, what was no, not really, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:11

If you're doing an implementation, you finish the implementation, you're off to the next project, particularly in the consulting world.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Uh we typically in my experience, we stuck around at least through some period after two months, three months, three months. Enough to know that you would you'd you'd been successful or not, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Um I uh I may argue that that's not enough time to know that you're successful.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

And maybe that's not everybody's experience. That was my experience. Um you at least have some connection to it.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Right. So, like if you compare it to what you're doing now, right, at dual or transamerica, right? You're talking uh how long have you been at dual now? A couple years, right? Uh a year, just a little over year. Yeah, right. Um applications in flight, you're making changes. Like your thinking is very different. You're not thinking in terms of a contract, nope, right? You're thinking in terms of right, a real impact to the business, the long term, you're monitoring the KPIs, I assume.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

Yeah, right? Um absolutely. So based on what you're saying, that's really where you would look this.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Is yeah, yeah. And and on and and the other thing about the consulting side and the Salesforce side that always kind of bugged me. There is a level of consulting and certain clients that will just swallow whatever they're told. That's generally not a good idea. Um, you have that, but by and large, you can go in and give them the customer the best advice that you have. Um, there will always be a question in the back of their mind of their mind, what are you trying to sell me? Are you just trying to get more billable hours? And at Salesforce, it was, are you just trying to point get work walk me down the road to a new product or more of the product? Right? There's always that's that question in their minds about the sincerity of the advice you're giving them, right? Because let's be honest, there are bad consulting firms out there that do some things to increase their billable hours. Um, that I I saw account executives at Salesforce way oversell clients, um, selling things that they really didn't need or wouldn't be able to use for years, right? Um, to get the deal, right? To make their numbers. And so that's a whose fault is that?

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Is that is that the AE's fault, or is that is that a customer for not understanding what they're signing? Like you know, they're still getting a contract to review and sign, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

It's an incentive thing, but it's surprised at some companies. You'd be surprised at some. I I got called in on two accounts that I'm gonna go off the top of my head, where they were sold multi-million dollar multi-year contracts. And when it got to the when the the people the implementation level leaders saw it, they're like, What is this? This is not in our roadmap, this is not in our architectural plans. Some executive way up the chain got sold that this was the grand poo bah thing, and they're sitting there going, right? I walked into one client that the the exist the customer AE had again, they had they had a long-term contract in place. He rolled them into another long-term contract, and the only way to do that and make the financials work was basically to put everything in the kitchen sink in that contract, in their zila, and they literally, and then I mean he closed the deal, he knew he was not getting any new any more revenue out of that company, they were his only client, and so then he went off to another another customer. He took he took his winnings and left, and I'm the CSM on the account. And the customer looks at me and says, We're not spending another dime with Salesforce until we consume every bit of this contract. And I'm sitting there looking at it, going and understanding where they were just in their technology, art infrastructure, and and ability, they're not gonna be in a place to consume some of this stuff for years. I mean, they're talking about about this in the early days of of some of the Einstein stuff. I'm going, they're not gonna have their data in shape for two years for any of that to be meaningful to them. Yeah, so data is a disaster, you know, and you're like, you know, so those are yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

So I mean, so you work a sales force, right? How would you recommend if this if if you're if you're someone in this position, yeah. Um maybe maybe you're the executive who got oversold, maybe you're now on the implementation team. What what what what advice would you give to them? How how do they handle this? I've I've overbought, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Well, you did what that comp customer did. You just you just tell your sales force rep, we're not, you you don't get another dime until we consume all of this contract. And that's gonna work, they're gonna they're gonna uh it it it it's gonna motivate Salesforce to to well at the time again. I don't know what CSG looks like now at the time. We we were able to take that to our leadership and say, here's what the customer has said all hands on deck to move them along their roadmap as quickly as we can and consume this stuff, right? Um, let's bring in architects, let's bring in, right? Let's bring everybody we can get our hands on that can help them move towards consumption, right? Um, because I you're just you're you know, at that point you're you signed a contract, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Your advice is basically make the best of you can with what you can get the most value out of it.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

And my advice to anybody dealing with Salesforce is you make you you sign a contract based on your current priority and roadmap, period. Period. That's it. That's the only thing you use as a basis for a contract is and and and proven value.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Well, you don't have to prove value until you implement, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Well, but but but what the other way to say that is don't believe everything you see at Dream Force.

SPEAKER_04 30:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

So let's take the other side of the coin. Um right you're now you're now that same executive and you're going to Cap Gemini and I'm negotiating an implementation contract, right? What are the what are the gotchas there?

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Um in my experience is um accountability for for outcomes, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Milestone billing? Milestone.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

No, outcomes the metrics, the KPIs.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Oh, they'll never sign that.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Okay, you you've seen cat uh I've seen it done, but it it really quickly tightens things up, I'll tell you. Right? And and no, you can't get into granular KPIs, but you can there are consulting firms that get into um joint accountability contracts. Um, but um, but yeah, and and the other thing is I that I always advise people to make sure they're in their contracts is don't let the consulting firm build resumes on your dime. Right? So so I always told my customers when I was in CSG, you need language in that contract that says X percentage of the people on your program at each at these levels need to have X years of experience on Salesforce. X percentage of them need to have worked for this consulting firm for this amount of time. X percentage of them need to have X certifications. Now, outside of Salesforce certifications are hit and miss. The one thing that I will say, I've always said about Salesforce certifications is there's very little fluff in Salesforce certifications. You pretty much have to know the stuff. You gotta know what you're doing to get a Salesforce certification, by and large, some rare exceptions. Um, but there are other IT certifications that are just paper, right? Um if you can breathe and search Google, you can pass it, right? Um, but and I would say you build that into your contract. What you because where what I have seen customers sold firms do is sign a big contract and say, okay, we're we're gonna put an experienced engagement manager on it, we're gonna put half maybe of the of the PMO Scrum Masters or whatever are gonna have some experience, but we're gonna bring a bunch of junior people in. And same when you get down to the developers and the admins, yeah. We may give you one or two that know what they're doing that we know are a good uh a solid known quantity, but we're gonna hire a bunch of people that we don't know from Adam, and we're gonna we're gonna use you to build their resumes. Um yeah, and that and that's that to me is one of the biggest places where those things go awry is that you can staff up a project with really green resources, and your chances of success go way, way down.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

It's the classic cookie cutter approach, right? Um get sold the eight team, and then and then you get the graduates um fresh, fresh up, uh fresh out of studies, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:25

And then there's a there is a that's a valid thing, right? That's why I wouldn't say no, you're not gonna bring in any freshers. I'm fine with you bringing some freshers in, but it's not gonna be 90% of my team, right? Right, and and I'm fine with you hiring some people from the street for this project. I understand you may not have a huge bench, but it's not gonna be 90% of the team of people you've never worked with before. Right. I want to know a group of people here that know what they're doing and they've been with you long enough that you know the quality of their work. Right now we have a shot at a successful project, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:10

And no rev revenue, uh resume driven design.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that and that's um, we're just now starting to bring in that dual. Um, in fact, two of them started today. Um, um, SI resources, and that was one of the things when when we put out when I put out when I sent them the specs, I was like, it's just it's a small team right now, so it's like one onshore and a and a few offshore. I said that onshore person has to have these credentials and experience, and they can't be new to your organization.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

So going back, going back to what you said earlier, right? Now you're at dual. I'm sure you have internal resources, and maybe this is just different. Um, but what about that guy raising his hand? I want to learn this, I've never done it.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Absolutely, absolutely, I love it. I love it. So, so this is why I I I am I'm not opposed to freshers. I remember when we did that Cap Gemini, the first Cap Gemini project, we were building their Salesforce team, right? I was like the third hire in that Salesforce organization, third or fourth. Um, so we went out to their bench for other technologies and said, Hey, any of you guys want to come learn Salesforce? And we put them through boot camp. And I'll never forget we had this this one guy, fresher out of college. Um, I can't remember the technology he had gone and learned. Um, and he's sitting on the bench, and I and then we were like, Hey, you want to learn Salesforce? He said, Sure. So we brought him in and sent him through boot camp. Two years running, I had that we had to have very serious conversations with senior leadership to double promote him so we could pay him enough to keep somebody else from taking him. He was that good. He's one of these guys. We could say, hey, the customer's interested in this new technology, and 48 hours later, he'd come back and be an expert on it. You know, so absolutely bring them on. I love finding people that want to learn. I'm in in it's funny, I've got a offside leadership offsite for the next three days, and one of the things we we each each of the groups has to present is their strategy for next year, and part of that is our team strategy, right? How are we, how are we um, how are we growing our team, not numerically, but how are we strengthening our team? Um, and in my mind, that consists of yes, I want them to go get new certifications, I want them to get out on trailhead. I'm a huge trailhead believer, I'm an all-star ranger, I'm a massive trailhead nerd, right? Um, absolutely, I want to do that, but I want them to also be communicating that to other people. So we're gonna host a trailhead challenge across the company, business and IT. Anyone wants to come learn Salesforce? We're gonna put a contest together. We'll find some prizes, right? Maybe I'll talk to my Salesforce rep and get some Salesforce swag. In fact, the Salesforce swag store is now public. You can go order Salesforce swag yourself, right? But we're gonna host a trailhead challenge, we're gonna do luncheon learns. I've already I had a manager come to me about two months ago and say, Hey, I've got some people on my team that have heard what we're planning to do with Salesforce and they're interested in Salesforce. Um, would you talk to them? Sure. And so I sat down with them for an hour and just kind of did the Salesforce 101. This is what it is, this is what it does, this is how we're gonna be using it. And and and then I said, Hey, here, get out on trailhead, go learn. We'll we'll pay for certifications if you want to get certified. If if you have if you get into a trailhead and you've got issues, you can't figure out some challenge, ping somebody on my team. We'll help. Right? Um, because absolutely, I mean, what our plan for Salesforce is it's going to be used pretty much wall to wall across the organization. So I want as many people to get familiar with the platform as we can.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

Is there a way you can go above and beyond before we move on? Uh above and beyond. Um, for example, I know sometimes in the consulting space, you know, just paying for the start, yeah, I mean, that's nice, but it's kind of favoring the SI, right? It's in their interest to have more certified resources. Paying a resource a thousand bucks per you know uh start they get, for example, or you know, increasing their salary or giving them an extra week PTO per start or whatever, right? You know, they're they're they're motivators that might make a difference. So I'm curious also you've you've worked at I've worked at Salesforce, we've worked in house. What has been the best motivating factor to encourage ongoing learning and development around Salesforce stuff that you've experienced during a time in the ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 40:17

So Salesforce uh trailhead challenges are fun. Um and I I designed I've designed them before, and you have one track for that's you you have to get you have to create trail maps for them, right? Um, and they're different IT versus business, right? So that's kind of an e but and you do prizes for each, right? Um, those are always fun and they're competitive. Um, and come and if you get a good I've I've seen those be very successful. Certifications, again, I I make it part of my employees' annual goals that they advance their certifications. Um, my team is going to be there in their goals for next year. They're gonna get at least one Salesforce certification, they're gonna get two certifications next year, each of them. At least one of those has to be Salesforce, a Salesforce certification. The other one can be something else we use in the company. So um uh we're a TOGAF shot on architecture. So my architect, I say do you want to get a your your a Salesforce architecture certification and your TOGAF certification? That's great, right? Um, but they're gonna get two certifications next year.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Um and that will presumably go against things like uh merit increases and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Yeah, part of their goal.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

So incentivize them as part of their performance.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

I but I have also seen companies um be very effective saying you get 500 but uh a $500 spot bonus for your first certification, you get a thousand dollar spot bonus for your second certification. Um, when they're really that I've seen that companies that more, I mean when you go into a company that's never used Salesforce before, and you're trying to get a bunch of IT people that don't know Salesforce to buy in and get on board, and you know from a leadership standpoint this is the future, and and there's that reluctance, right? Am I gonna lose my job? Right. Um, I've absolutely seen companies incentivize and say, hey, we want you to understand how this can be a part of your future, right? We're not just because we're doing away with the technologies you've worked on for five years, doesn't mean there's not a future for you in this technology. And we will we again we'll give you a $500 bonus for your first Salesforce certification here, maybe a thousand dollars for the second one and any any thereafter, right? And really kind of that that's the kind of thing when you have that resistance, it's a good thing to get them, get get your team kind of over the hump and bought in, right? Um, because I've seen very few people once they get to understanding how Salesforce works with technology people and how quickly they can be effective in doing things. I think by and large, oh, this is pretty cool, actually, you know.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Yeah, okay. Um, so so quick quick couple of questions to close out the topic. Um, the first one being what was the biggest mindset shift you personally experienced going from consulting SI background to working in-house at Salesforce? That's a journey that we still see a lot of people uh make um in terms of working at a partner to Salesforce in-house. What was your biggest mindset shift that you found yourself having to make?

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Um I guess there are two things. Salesforce is a very unique company, just culturally. Um, unfortunately, they've uh from from the people that I know that are still there, so they've lost some of that. But at the time, Salesforce is a very cool culture to. Work in so that was, but it was unusual, right? It was actually an unusual culture to work in. I remember it's a trivial thing, but I remember um in the consulting world, I was I was getting six weeks of PTO a year, right? Or something like that, but you never got to use it, right? Because PTO was always subject to client demand, and client always demanded, right? You were lucky to sneak in a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas or something, right? Um, and so I went to Salesforce, and I'll never forget I had I'd accepted the position and I was hadn't started yet. And my wife one day goes, Hey, by the way, I don't remember seeing anything about how much PTO you get. And I was like, hmm, I don't remember it either. Well, look, my offer letter is not in there. So I called up the recruiter. I said, Hey, I just noticed there's another offer letter about PTO. And she's like, If you take you want to take vacation, take a vacation. Clear with your manager, go. Yeah, like, okay, that's that's that's different. All right. And so then I started looking online at this concept of unlimited PTO, and you see kind of two extremes on it, right? Yeah, you see companies that say they have unlimited PTO, but they don't approve any of it, right? And you see companies that lit really understand the benefit of PTO to their employees, and that it's good for the company if the employees are taking that time. Um, and so it was uh I kind of went into Salesforce wondering, okay, what's Salesforce actually like? I'll never forget, I'd been there just over a year, and my wife and I wanted to take a 21st 25th anniversary trip to Europe. Um, and um it was like a 17-day trip, and so I emailed my boss said, Hey, here's go you know, we're planning this vacation in the summer. You know, what's the you know, what do I need to do? Do you apply? You know, and he said, Okay, cool. You're going overseas, so don't take your laptop. You know, it was like a break, yeah. Okay, it was just like so, I mean, so there were the cultural things going into Salesforce really cool, but but I think the biggest thing what with Salesforce specifically was the constant drumbeat on revenue. Always always selling, always that's a mantra, always selling, always selling. And if you talk to software salespeople, um I remember a few months ago I had a friend who had who was uh in software sales at IBM, and he was um uh looking for a new position. I said, Hey, I know some guys in Salesforce. Um, I'd be glad to put a word in for you. And he's like, I'd do that for about six months. Because it's it's known in the industry that Salesforce is rough on salespeople, they push them hard. Um, um, and but that is it, that is the it is of the organization. Their shift on return to office, the 180 that Benny Off did from we'll never work in the office again, you know, to everybody's gonna be back in the office now. That was all revenue numbers.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

Yeah, I mean, you're in the Dallas office, right? Um, so it's obviously you'll know about the 25 bucks a day car parking just to go to work. Um, I'm not sure how to pay that to go to work, right? So so pros and cons though, right? Um but but but but moving on, um one question to conclude this topic before we move on to a little bit more about Jewel. Um you if you were to sat in a room uh with three representations, one from Salesforce, one from uh an SI, and one from a customer, what would be your kind of advice and tough love uh you know, open and honest you know, piece of advice that you would give um you know to each of those different representations, having experienced all three yourself, um what would that look like in terms of advice?

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Uh it's the same advice to all three. Because I've three I've seen all three get off the rails on it. It's about value. Value, value, value. If it is not providing value to the customer to meet their objectives, you shouldn't be doing it. If you can't tie it to value, you should have a huge flashing red question mark on it. Um and and and that's for all three of them, right? So if I'm on the consulting side, everything we do for a customer, I should be able to tie to value that we're providing to that customer that's helping them meet their objectives as a company. Period. If I'm selling them software and I really long-term want to be successful, I better be tying what I'm selling them to the what their value objectives are from a value perspective. Because the minute you stare up, you go off that trail, the trust in that relationship breaks down because somebody at some point's gonna ask you, why did you sell me this? Got it. Okay, perfect. Why did you advise me to start the to do this project? It's it didn't my my boss is wondering what he why he paid for that because it didn't it didn't benefit us in any way, right? And and on the customer side, when you're dealing with a vend the software vendor, the SI, focus it on value. It's all about value. Every every program initiative should be tied to value and have metrics associated with it. How is this gonna serve our core objectives?

SPEAKER_02 50:31

Spot on. All right, so um, dual North America, a year in. Um, obviously, you uh brought into that role as VP of Salesforce Development. Um, we know from speaker to you beforehand you're having a great time. Um for our listeners, kind of give the again punch the time, 60-second version of what dual North America do. How, how, who are they, what do they do, how do they sell their product, and how do they make money?

SPEAKER_01 50:56

Yeah, so dual North America is actually a division of a company called Howden, based in the Netherlands. Uh, they have a presence in Europe and the UK as well. Um and they all it's all commercial insurance. We're what's in the US or what's called an MGA. And basically, what that means is we're not we don't sell a policy, we don't actually back a policy financially, although we have a division we've recently started that does that. Uh, we have a division we're currently starting that will actually do some to be a brokerage, but those are new new things spinning up. Um, but by and large, the core the meat of what we do is we stand between the broker and what's called the carrier, the company that actually funds the policy, that backs it. And we have the expertise to underwrite the policy and do claims. So let me give you two examples. If you have a half billion dollar office building, and that needs to be insured, there is a very special skill set to understand how to quantify that risk. What's the flood risk? What's the wind risk? What's the right, what inspections need to be done, what to to understand what the risk is for that building and how to rate it, right? What should Apollo, what size should the policy be? What should the policies be? Because it's gonna be multiple policies, and what the premium for that should be from an actuarial standpoint. Now, say you're the Perot Museum here in Dallas, and you have an opportunity to bring in a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts for a six-month um special um exhibit. Yep, that has to be insured. They're not just gonna stick that on an airplane and send it to you, right? That's a very different skill set than underwriting a commercial building to be able to understand what is the value of these things, what is the risk, right? What security measures does the museum have to have in place? And based on that, this is the risk, this is what the premium needs to be, right? All those things. So your carriers that back those policies, they don't, by and large, have all those people with those different skill sets. Um, the brokers obviously don't. There's they're selling the policies, right? They're they're the feet on the street working with the customer. So that's where we come in. We have the expertise across a wide range of non-personalized insurance to understand the risk and design and and rate the policy. The other factor is for larger things like your half a billion dollar office building, for example, you may not be able to find a single carrier, those companies that back it, that say, Yeah, I'm willing to risk half a billion dollars in that piece of land right there. That's a lot of risk in one spot. That way, if that thing's in San Francisco and the big one hits, right? That's a lot of risk sitting in one piece of land. So, what we do is we what once we design and rate the policy, we then go find a carrier, or if needed, be multiple carriers to back a percentage of that risk. So it's now carrier A, they're gonna cover 10% of the risk, and there'll be nine other carriers that each take a 10% slice of the risk. So no one company is taking that massive half billion dollar risk in one location, right? Um, so that's what we do. So we do that. We we do the underwriting, we have the carrier relationships, right? And so then we can put all that together and go back to the broker and say, okay, here's your policy, here's what it includes, here's how much it is, here's the premium. You go sell that to your customer. Um, they come back, they sell it, it's bound. Great. We got all the documentation, we send it out to everybody. Great, right? Policy's bound. If there's a claim, that then also comes through us because again, we've got the expertise to go of people that know that specific commercial thing to say, yes, this is something that would be covered under the policy. Yes, the dollars make sense, right? You're not we're nobody's this isn't fraudulent, they're not trying to scam us on how much money they're asking for, right? Um, and then we turn around to the carriers and say, okay, you were the carrier or carriers on this, this is how much you owe to to cover this policy. So that's where we start. That's about that's what an MGA in general, it's a very high level, but that's in general what an MGA is and does. Like I said, we are we uh over this last year, we started up our own um carrier as well, kind of for certain kinds of policies uh called homebound. Um, and we are just now launching our own brokerage um in the US. They already have a brokerage in Europe. Uh we're launching our own here in the US as well. That'll be coming up.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

And online.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

So, where does Salesforce fall into all that then? So um obviously it's quite a complex business, but uh I know from 15 beforehand you're around 200 users currently. Um tell us a little bit about what you inherited from a Salesforce standpoint, what products, how many users, and and I know you've got a uh an ambitious but very doable goal of increasing that user count as well. So tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

So um the nature of dual is that we have grown a lot through acquisition, right? So we talk about all these different kinds of commercial insurance. The way we take on a kind of insurance by and large is we'll go buy a niche company that does fine arts insurance. Now that's a product we can offer. But what that means is over time, dual is this stitched together, is this cobbled together organization of all these different systems, right? Um, we we've got multiple policy systems, right? There's and and no and processes that are very different across, right? Because everybody's done doing things the way they've always done it. So um about six months before me, they hired a new CEO who had formerly been at nationwide, to to really start to put together an enterprise IT perspective and strategy and start to really think about enterprise operations and and getting out of these silos and getting some of those efficiency gains and things. Um and so based on his previous experience, he knew he wanted Salesforce to be the unifying operational platform across everything, the primary desktop that everybody in the company uses to do their job, right? Um, so that's that's where I came in. He hired me to to take on that challenge and fulfill that mission. At the time I came in, they had a small Salesforce instance that had come through an acquisition, one of those acquisitions. It had a handful of users in it using it for um task and activity management around um territory sales managers. So that there's a group of people that go out and and seek out new broker relationships. So there was a small group of people using it very narrowly around lead and task management, and that's really it. They didn't have an actual anybody in IT at all that in Salesforce, there was somebody on the business side that kind of got Shanghai into doing stuff, and if there was something really complex they needed, they would borrow a consultant resource from the UK business because they they they've done a lot more with it in Europe. Um that was just kind of the state of it. Um, and so when I walked in, um, my fur they were already underway, um, kind of kind of going at it backwards from the way you normally would, but with a reason, right? So typically when you implement something like Salesforce, it's a workflow-driven tool, it's about bringing on a piece of functionality, right? An operational team, bringing their processes into Salesforce, and you bring the data that that needs, right? One of the things that we needed across the company was a consolidated view of the book of business. So they had already started when I walked in the door of consolidating the data out of all the policy administration systems into Salesforce. So we had a singular view where we could see the whole book of business, right? No processes, just let's get the data in, let's normalize it into Salesforce, um, so that so that leadership could start to understand the broad picture. Um, so that was the they were already underway, uh, and we basically decided right off the bat that the little work that had been done in the Salesforce environment um for that one little group was not going to be something that we would retain long term anyway, once we actually got into the operational work. So we basically just deleted all the data and started over. So really, by and large, it's a four technically the org is four years old, but we started from scratch um late last year.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

Um, an opportunity to rewrite the rules a little bit by doing it that way. Um yeah, love it. Good. Okay. Um so during that, so you've got the data, you've cut the team's already done a bit of the legwork already, so you know that's that's one thing to um what what else has been a challenge thus far in that year? Um what were the other observations and challenges you've recognized early on?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:36

So while we were doing the data, we were starting to then talk to okay, where are we going to start operationally bringing teams on? Um and we decided to start at the beginning, which is our our our broker management, what we call producer management, right? Managing the life cycle of our broker relationships. So we started working through okay, what does that need to look like? How do we bring that into Salesforce? How do we do the process re-engineering, right? And those kinds of things. So um in the last year, we brought all that data in and we've brought on the producer management organization. So they're live in Salesforce. We've also brought on some other kind of one-off groups that needed a workflow tool, and we didn't want to go buy a new one. We just said we'll build something quick for you in Salesforce. Just you know, um, and that so that's been to date. Um right now we're starting to bring underwriting in. That's our next big hurdle. By the end of this year, we'll have our first two product lines of underwriting into Salesforce. Um, okay, so yeah. So and the big challenge, the big challenge, I think, is any transformational implementation anywhere, probably of any any software. And that is the process re-engineering. Lift and shift is not an option. We're just not going there. You're not moving the organization forward if you lift lift and shift. Um, you're just bringing the same problems along to a new platform, right? So it's been getting in the weeds with the business and talking through okay, blank sheet of paper. What's the best way to do this operation? What's the most efficient workflow for this operation? Right? How do we, you know, what are the ugly things that you guys do because the current workflow is so disjointed and right? Let's get all the skeletons out of the closet, yeah, and start with a nice sheet of paper, and we're gonna design the future, right? Um, because by the way, that's where you find the value, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

Right, and that's your only point.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:55

Yeah, I can go to my operations leader and say, I can cut 70% of your of the workload off your team. Because they're using I have a slide here somewhere I'm presenting this week. When we started, they had to to to bring a new broker relationship online. They had to go to they had to touch 17 different systems. And I'm like, right? Um, and and they're gonna do it all that by the time we're done, they won't leave Salesforce. And the vast majority of that will be collected.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:36

So we're running low on time, so uh, I want to ask you one more question and then uh we'll have Kiro wrap up. Um, my understanding is you're you're doing some uh exploration with Agent Force, Data Cloud. Um so uh you know it's obviously a topic of interest to our listeners. A lot of people are playing with it. Um, how's that going? What are your thoughts so far? What's the use case?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

I've done a lot of I've been watching the AI thing, went out and got some education on it. Um I think AI has a ton of potential. I think there's a lot of FOMO right now in executives. Um, and so they're throwing a lot of money and hoping something sticks. Um, I I see a lot of the same patterns that we saw in the dot combo, frankly. Of oh my, we have to have a web presence, right? Not thinking through how do we deliver value, right? Because back to the value question what value do you have? Do we have? Uh out go out and look at people's comments about Salesforce's support since they laid off 4,000 support people and moved a bunch of it to AI. They didn't, that was not a step forward for Salesforce.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

It's a cost center.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:01

It's a cost center. But again, Salesforce has always been about its customer success, customer success, customer success. Your move to AI, if it pisses off your customers, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:15

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

Right? If your customer experience goes in the crapper because you just had to move to AI, right? So to me, it's again, it's value, value, value. And data cloud, powerful tool. I think the agentic AI, there's some power there. But it's about show me the value. How is this improving my relationship with my customer? Not just lowering my costs, right? Because lowering costs is a temporary thing. If the same time I run off a bunch of my customers, lowering my cost didn't help me any because now I've lost a bunch of revenue, right? Right? It's about value. Show me the value. How is this going to deliver value in my organization? How is it going to make my customer experience better for my customers? How is it going to um help us meet those organizational goals? Not just be able to say we have an A, we're we use an AI something, right? Um you know, again, one of the I actually wrote a thing on LinkedIn about this thing, about comparing it to the dot-com, a lot of those same patterns. Um, and and and and here's the thing, there are gonna be companies that get lucky in the AI space, and they're gonna hit a winner and they're gonna make a ton of money out of it. But there's gonna be a lot of companies that waste a whole there'll be we'll be way more companies that waste a bunch of money and end up with nothing usable, right? Which is again, that's what happened in the dot-com boom, until the the bottom fell out of it finally, and all the fluff kind of got blown away. And the companies got around to going, okay, what can we really do with this tool that delivers value? Oh, we can provide customer self-service, makes the customers happier, makes it our easier on our team. That's a win, right? Now we've got a purpose to have on our web presence. Oh, our customers can buy direct online, and we don't have to put a bunch of of inventory out in retail stores. Oh, makes it easier for the customer, they get to control the experience, saves us money. Now we have a purpose for web presence, right? Um, and and then again, you have the visionaries, right? You have the Amazons and came up in the web game and and and came up with an entirely new concept of value that nobody was thinking about, right? And those will happen too. But for companies that already exist, focus on the value, don't get away from that. It's value-driven, it's value-driven. If it's not gonna give you absolute direct value, question the hell out of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:22

Spin it, don't do it. Love it. Okay, so value, value, value.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:26

So the other other thing under the AI piece that the dot com boom didn't have to deal with for large companies, especially. It's great to talk about all the stuff AI can do. Let me ask you one question: is your data in any kind of shape that I AI can do anything with it? You can spend a bunch of money on AI, and if you're still got garbage data, your AI is gonna spout garbage. Chat GPT's proven that over and over and over again. And you've got to fix the underlying data. It's it's AI is not a band-aid for bad data, it's only gonna propagate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

On that note, um Kevin, thank you. Uh appreciate your time. Uh, thanks for joining us. And um look, you know, I know I know uh a lot of the topic, uh a lot of the message was value, but you know, sometimes it's uh remembering that basic fundamental, I think in anything you do, whether you work with an SI working as a customer you're looking at exploring AI and agent force, um, relating that back to the value is probably not not a bad first step. So thank thanks thanks again, Kevin. Um you you've been a great, great guest, and appreciate you joining us. Um for our listeners, uh please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders like Kevin. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:46

Oh, one more thing to throw in. Find a role a local roller derby team and support them. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:54

More more more context to follow on that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:57

That's right, more context to follow on that one.