Discover the art of maximizing relationships with Salesforce Partners, as we invite a distinguished veteran of the Salesforce landscape, John Sisson, who has a staggering 21 years of Salesforce experience under his belt along with over $70 million of combined sales. Together with our regular panelists plus partner pros including, Fred Cadena and Peter Ganza, we embark on an enriching journey exploring ways Salesforce customers can get the most out of their Salesforce partnerships.
We delve into the issues encountered by Salesforce partners while dealing with clients and how partners can help clients regain their faith in Salesforce. We also cover the crucial topic of how to maintain effective communication in partner-client relationships.
Our episode offers tips for successful Salesforce partner relationships and the secret to identifying and averting bad clients. We get into the nitty-gritty of negotiating deals, managing relationships and understanding the project management triangle. We also discuss the importance of asking the right interview questions and the art of making yourself an attractive candidate. Towards the end, we touch on the role of vulnerability in a Salesforce career and how it can lead to success. This episode is laden with actionable advice, perfect for anyone looking to enhance their Salesforce journey!
Discover the art of maximizing relationships with Salesforce Partners, as we invite a distinguished veteran of the Salesforce landscape, John Sisson, who has a staggering 21 years of Salesforce experience under his belt along with over $70 million of combined sales. Together with our regular panelists plus partner pros including, Fred Cadena and Peter Ganza, we embark on an enriching journey exploring ways Salesforce customers can get the most out of their Salesforce partnerships.
We delve into the issues encountered by Salesforce partners while dealing with clients and how partners can help clients regain their faith in Salesforce. We also cover the crucial topic of how to maintain effective communication in partner-client relationships.
Our episode offers tips for successful Salesforce partner relationships and the secret to identifying and averting bad clients. We get into the nitty-gritty of negotiating deals, managing relationships and understanding the project management triangle. We also discuss the importance of asking the right interview questions and the art of making yourself an attractive candidate. Towards the end, we touch on the role of vulnerability in a Salesforce career and how it can lead to success. This episode is laden with actionable advice, perfect for anyone looking to enhance their Salesforce journey!
And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce career show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.
Josh Matthews:Welcome everybody. This is your host, josh Matthews. I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, vanessa Grant. Hi Vanessa, hey Josh, hey, what's going on? No, vanessa, are you at like a Midwest Dreaming or anything like that right now?
Vanessa Grant:No, that would be terrible because I have COVID currently, so that's a little frowned upon at conferences these days.
Josh Matthews:It tends to be. Well. We appreciate you showing up nonetheless, and hopefully this doesn't cause you to break a sweat any more than the fever. So hang in there. You're amazing and we appreciate your dedication to being on here. So this is going to be a really fun show, and I know this for a fact because our very special guest is my friend, my client, john Sisson, and I'm going to do a quick little intro on John. John has over 21 years of my note says bullshitting, but that's not what it is 21 years of Salesforce experience. He's done more than 3000 implementations. He's done over $70 million of combined sales within Salesforce and within the partner ecosystem. He's a wonderful person, very smart. Welcome to the show, john. Pleased to have you.
John Sisson:John, I appreciate it, and there may be a little bullshitting in there, but hopefully not a lot.
Josh Matthews:It's just a little bit. So we know that this is this show is not for kids, but whatever, that's okay. So also on our esteemed panel, we have our regulars, including Peter Ganza. Say hi, peter. Oh, peter's team of thing just got messed up from speaking. Peter X spaces, twitter spaces whatever you want to call it. It's not perfect, but we've got Fred Cadena, a regular. He's the host of an awesome podcast called banking on disruption, so check that out. We've got Jason Zikewitz, a regular on our program who offers wonderful insights, and, jason, hopefully I think you might have just started your new job here recently, which is pretty cool. I see other folks that I really like that are regulars, such as Tyler Huff and Casey Ballissa, so we're going to go ahead and just get launched.
Josh Matthews:Today's program is dedicated especially to talking about how Salesforce customers can get the most out of their relationships with their Salesforce partners. Okay, now please mute your phone if you're not speaking right now, so make sure that mute buttons on. Thank you very much, but that's a really important topic because almost everyone who's got Salesforce has worked with a Salesforce partner, and some partners are one person or two people and three people, and some of them can be massive, massive big four consulting companies and there's a lot of differences in how people experience those implementations and those relationships. So we're going to get some wonderful insights from John, my co-host, vanessa, and from anybody else who wants to speak, whether you're on the panel currently or not. So that's what we're going to do Now. Quick introductions from me. My name is Josh Matthews. I run Salesforce staffing you can check us out at thesalesforrestrecruitercom and I love hosting the show. So let's go ahead and just dive in, john. Quick background on you. Let's hear it.
John Sisson:So, as you said earlier, this is I've done CRM for about 25 years and in that 25 years I've started a company. About 21 years ago that was one of the first hundred partners on the planet for Salesforce and was fortunate enough to watch the rise and literally built a career off of Salesforce and so, from that perspective, have done about 14 different verticals you know 3000, been involved around 3000 projects and, most importantly, had a chance to build some great relationships with Salesforce reps and teams over the last 20 years.
Josh Matthews:That's fantastic and it's extremely impressive, and I'm kind of curious what made you desire to get involved in the ecosystem to begin with?
John Sisson:I wish I had this amazing answer that could give you this forefront. We actually it's funny is we identified a. We got paid my company there was two of us at that time to help them select Salesforce or CRMs and we did 10, what we called really kind of fit checks and Salesforce one, all 10. And it took us to 10 to figure out that there actually may be something there. So I guess we're not that smart, but the difference was on the 10th one we were like this there's, there's something here and it's amazing. And so we actually then got paid by one of our customers to come in and implement and that's before Salesforce will even had an ecosystem of implementation partners and then kind of went from there.
Josh Matthews:So Rainmaker, which was your business, that got started right around again. That was 19 years ago, 2002. Okay, all right, and so?
John Sisson:and you still currently identify as a? I do. I work with a company called Sales Optimizer. That's a joke, dude. That's a joke. That's fair, john.
Josh Matthews:Okay, trying to have a little bit of fun. Okay, let's hear from the other folks on our panel too, because we're going to. We want you to understand what perspective they're coming from. So, vanessa, give us your quick background, if you can.
Vanessa Grant:Sure, I've also been doing CRM since, I guess, about 2000,. But I discovered Salesforce in 2010. And since then I've worked as a product donor, currently a consultant at a sales at a larger sales force partner, and also co-host the show and do some click coaching on the side.
Josh Matthews:Well, yeah, and you're going to be rocking two sessions at Dreamforce coming up. Three sessions, gosh, three sessions. When did the three added?
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, three different sessions, and so I got a campfire added, and then I also. One of my sessions is going to be done twice, so I'll be on stage four times, which I'm not freaking out about at all.
Josh Matthews:Five if you count the Foo Fighters, because I'm finding it hard to believe that you're not going to somehow find a way up on that state. It's pretty. Yeah, that was a fun fact to learn. Today we also have Fred Kedena here. Fred, give us the quick one, two on your background.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, first, quickly, vanessa, I had forgotten being posted on LinkedIn that you were at that Foo Fighters like Brutton Center two years ago. You know, exciting. My background is sorted out kind of accidentally in the Salesforce I was working in financial services. My boss told me one day hey, we signed the sales force. We're going to get a sales force contract. You start six months and get it up and running, against and valuing, but it was off to the races. No state and financial services for a few years. After that moves consulting 10 years ago by then at a number of partners, both large and small. Thanks, as always, josh, for letting me come and consent.
Josh Matthews:Of course, ben, and just for you, just so you know, because I have a cigar during every podcast and today I'm enjoying a nub Cameroon, so I don't know if you've had it before, but it's awfully lovely.
Fred Cadena:I am in doors telling many of us though, no cigar. So me today.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I guess not. And then, peter Gonza, go ahead and give us a quick update on what you do, cause you and I were just talking right before we launched this show. We're going to see each other in about 10 days, something like that, less than 10 days down in Fort Lauderdale for the life sciences dream in which I'm looking forward to. But go ahead and tell everyone else what you do.
Peter Ganza:Hi everybody. I'm the app exchange whisperer here, formerly known as Peter Gansler. I'm a Salesforce alumni and Ben hooked on and in the part of the ecosystem ever since.
Josh Matthews:Fantastic. So, john, we're going to get back to you right now, man. Again, this discussion is about Salesforce customers and how they can maximize or get the most out of their relationship with Salesforce partners. There will be time towards the end. We're going to do this for about the next 30 minutes or so and then the second half, which will be released a couple about a week after this one gets released on the podcast. That's going to be really our open Q and A, which we love to do.
Josh Matthews:We want to answer your questions. So, for those of you here, if you can be here still in 30 or 45 minutes, go ahead and hang on to your questions. If you won't be, please go ahead and send them to Vanessa and then, as soon as this podcast is released, you'll have the answer to your question. Pretty simple. So when you have worked on these 3,000 implementations and you've worked with people at all levels giant projects, little teeny projects what are some of the major pitfalls that you believe customers fall into? What do they experience when working with partners that's maybe within their control? Sometimes you get a bad Salesforce partner. Sorry, some of you guys aren't that great. It's just how it is, but if someone's working with a good record, bold, decent partner. What's happening to the customer where things aren't going that great?
John Sisson:I think it's a couple of different things. One is expectations. Art is the partner you're working with showcasing that they understand your business and goals, and you and I talked about this a little bit a week ago. But the funny part of 54 years old is I go to Orange Theory three times a week and kill myself in class and then glee Orange Theory and go to Dunkin' Donuts and get a six-pack of donuts and a Diet Coke because I feel good about the least. Have a Diet Coke and use that as Orange Theory, as a silver bullet. And what's interesting is a lot of people dude. You always crack dude. It's a given, it's just a given. You're going to find me in a fast food restaurant after Orange Theory.
John Sisson:The funny part is people buy Salesforce implementation like I do with Orange Theory. They buy it as a silver bullet. They buy it with the understanding that they're going to get a forecast, that they're going to automatically understand what KPIs are, that they're going to have this amazing expectation, that people are just going to show up and want to use it. And they don't understand that. There's a lot more involved and so part of understanding with your partner is understanding what are you solving for and what is success to you, so that you can clearly communicate that to the partner to make sure that you two are aligned. If not, there probably is going to be issues.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that makes sense. Who wants to jump in on that too? Because I am imagining that this happens an awful lot, right, vanessa? Look, you're doing solutioning. You really did a lot of work, not just in the ecosystem, with BA work, but with your clients, so I'm imagining that this is something that you've run into quite a bit. Would that be accurate?
Vanessa Grant:Oh yeah, but with the implementations, I feel like one of the biggest challenges tends to be you know how do you talk to those clients and have them understand what it actually means to get involved with a partner, and also the education just like John's talking about that comes with it. As far as you know, you can't solve everything with Salesforce. You have to be able to optimize those business processes and help them. What's the expression that? I'm sure I've used it a few times on the shows you take a bad business process and throw Salesforce on it. You just have a faster bad business process. But it's always a challenge when you're first starting out a relationship to be like.
Josh Matthews:well, I'm figuring out when is the right time to bring in a partner, even yeah, it's like if you're getting a phone when people go out and start dating, they don't tell everyone all the problems that that person who is now dating them is going to face because of who they are. It's not like you advertise that. So how do you overcome that? How do you set this relationship up, john, when you're being and I know you to be as transparent as they come? But I imagine that for some people who are whether they're AEs or doing business development or even Salesforce AEs, when they're trying to sell this silver bullet, but they're packaging it like a silver bullet versus packaging it like what it is software, and that requires a lot of some brainpower and some decision making and some time to figure out. So what have you done from the sales perspective or in your role in John's SVP over sales at Sales Optimizer? So what do you do to communicate that this isn't going to be like holding hands and running under the rainbow for the rest of their lives?
John Sisson:I think part of that is what Vanessa said is you clearly have to understand that it's four parts right.
John Sisson:Its goals and KPIs process, its tool and its training and coaching, and we clearly try to outline that as much as we can, because without elements of that you're going to fail.
John Sisson:The other part we do this literally on every project we work on is we document the hell out of requirements, right, and we help them tie it back to business cases, because they most of the customers that we're talking to have an idea of what they want, but they don't really understand how it's solving and they can't judge success and therefore you are walking into their paradigm and really don't know and it could be not good. And so by doing that, putting it on paper, it shows three things One is that you actually listen to them. Shockingly Of this is that you understand their business well and that you understand them well enough that they feel like you're on the same page and you're educating them. Third, of what is success and what's not. And I think those three things are critical because in the world that we all live in, speed is part of what we do and we have to be really efficient, especially working with Salesforce to turn things around. But it has to be right and we have to be ethical.
Josh Matthews:Here. Well, that makes sense to me, but that's go ahead and pipe up.
Vanessa Grant:I love everything you just said, john, what I end up running into or at least what I've seen on as Bay of Consultant for a few years and I'm wondering if how you deal with this is because when you have an AE from Salesforce that oftentimes gets to that client first and ends up selling them a bunch of different clouds and a bunch of different premium features and without even necessarily understanding what the business problems are. I've had clients that have their business problem was that they bought licenses to something that they didn't necessarily need but then all of a sudden expected us to implement it. How do you approach that, where they already have like a pile of licenses but still don't quite understand what their problem is?
John Sisson:It's interesting. When I had my own shop, I really thought I understood Salesforce well, and I do, and I did I didn't understand business as well as I thought I did. And so one of the things and it's a great point, vanessa, because the biggest issue I see in the Salesforce ecosystem right now is that customers feel like they're not getting value from Salesforce and they're looking at the tool and Salesforce reps are struggling because they have customers that don't want to buy anything more. And the biggest part of that it's funny is it's really not it's a Salesforce issue, but it's not Because of exactly what you said their processes aren't aligned.
John Sisson:The system is way overbuilt, they've got shelf wear and their people never received the proper training, and so one of the things we've tried to do is we are actually doing three and I called assessments because tons of partners do assessments but these are aligned with a Salesforce spark where we're going pretty deep into process goals and tying that back into business and showcasing that this we're doing it for free for reps, and what we're seeing is, from a manufacturing perspective, it's allowing customers to regain their trust with Salesforce. It's giving them the vision and it's giving Salesforce the ability to kind of extend what they do without having to be part of that. There's only so many people that can do sparks, so that's one of the things that we're trying to do to make us different but, more importantly, solve that issue because, you're right, that's a major issue.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's keeping a real body. I like that, Fred. What are your thoughts on this?
Fred Cadena:Yeah, I think it's 100% spot on. I mean, I think, like, go open and get the thing for a while. There's just not a lot of infield left. There's a lot of companies out there that have bought self-wear. They're not 100% sure what they have. They're not, you know, married out to their use case and I think anything that we can do in the ecosystem as partners, as ecosystem or beta company, tell people all this old you know what they've bought, how to connect to their businesses and how to like third, turning that on.
Fred Cadena:And then you're going to solve the. Is it going to help install the? But it ran into a lot. Well, here being John and Vanessa, Josh, who work with WoW, probably this will be frustrated and then we'll go on and buy some other point solutions. They change the problem that they already have sales force licenses for and now they're paying for two sets of licenses. Oh and, by the way, now their data is taught to get. So they've got the data assistant appoints and you should have the data on sales force, and it takes them further away from what they're trying to get to, which is that we do the also. So I love, I love all of that, John. That's fantastic.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, this stuff is real nightmare scenario stuff. I mean, I can't imagine being a business owner and being okay with wasting that much money on a system that doesn't work or not taking the step back. And you know, as, as professionals in the ecosystem, we're all responsible. I, you know, I'm not a sales force partner People know that because we're recruiters here but but the, you know, partners make up about 70% of our client base. And so over the last five years I've I've heard an awful lot of stories and I heard one very recently where a client of this is a friend of mine.
Josh Matthews:He runs some sales and solutions for a smallish partner and they were trying to overcome an issue with their their time card something to do with time cards and the way that they wanted it built out would have been a 60,000, you know, $60,000 add on to the implementation and and work that they were already committing to. But my friend was able to come up with a $6,000 solution. Maybe it's not quite as fancy or slick, but it solves the problem. It solves it like really reasonably well for $6,000, but getting the CEO to see that this is a better way to go instead of just burning a third of his budget on the implementation, on this one little thing. It's like it's difficult. So that kind of leads me to this. What happens when you're on the part, you know in the partner space and you're dealing with a stakeholder who is just flat out unreasonable and burning through dollars and they're going to hurt what's?
John Sisson:what do you do? That's a fantastic question. I mean the answer to this and this just goes back to you have to do things on the forefront and and part of all of our experience has to be. These are four reasons why what you just said is not a good idea. I'll give you an example. We got called in by a Salesforce rep young and impressionable and wanted help for a company that wanted to buy CPQ or Salesforce's quoting system. And we talked to them and you know, a minimum quoting a decent CPQ thing at a minimum is about a $50,000 implementation. Yeah, they had no products set up, they had no price books, they didn't need anything to do with CPQ in regard to God and selling or other elements. And I kept asking her I'm like we could solve this with native Salesforce. And we went back to Salesforce to make sure that they were also aware and aligned with that too. And they were. And the customer was like, yeah, I don't care, I just want to buy it.
Josh Matthews:What like? I don't even understand that. It's just stupid. It's just a whole big bag of dums.
John Sisson:You can't fight stupid, right? No, you can't. We're not going to do the project on that because it's going to fail right. And that's the challenge as you go through this is. It is making sure that with Salesforce and the customer and it's never perfect but that you're being truthful and ethical. You have to be, because all three of us Salesforce and the customer have to win to be successful.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, man. So, john, have you had to say no to a client, in other words say hey look, we're not the right partner for you. There's a little bit of your money back. Have you ever had to do that?
John Sisson:Not really, but it's. I've wanted to a lot, you know. I think the challenge is because we work with two customers right, and then Vanessa said it. You're working with a Salesforce rep who's counting on you for you know their success. It's not as easy as just to say take them to take my ball and go home. It's not, and so you have to figure out. But you have to be truthful as you go through it. You know, this year and this year with the economy I actually had in the first time it was combative I had somebody tell me to shut up and go back to work and crazy conversations because they were under so much strain and nothing to do with us, and so we just had to work our way through it and get to a place that made sense. And the good news is we're going to deliver something of success for them and for Salesforce. But it took a hell of a lot of work.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so you had to go through that man. That's like no fun, fred, go ahead Dan.
Fred Cadena:I was just saying I agree 100%, and I'm saying this I'm not trying to suggest that it's even, but I had a fair amount of success when, when situations like that come up and there's just fundamental lack of alignment between either what Salesforce is positioning to a customer or what a client says we want to buy, they're doing this at a good fault. To just, you know, be be equal, to try to start with Salesforce as you are with the client. They're like you know, I've enjoyed working with you and working together. In the future, I'd like you. I know that I'm not going to move this successful. You know I don't think I'm the right partner for that, and hey, you know it is. I can provide a referral to a partner, whether it's because we just don't have the skill to do it or because we just don't think it's the right solution, and I have found in the wallet where that thought was paid more dividend, while, you know, continuing down the road and through a bad situation.
John Sisson:And that's actually Josh, if you don't mind me jumping in. That's a great point because I took it as we were already doing the implementation right. I do that all the time and it's a great point, Fred. We got brought into a Fortune 250 to do. They basically gave us the right to do Salesforce's e-commerce solution. It was ours to win. We don't do it, we don't have the skills for it, I don't know the, I don't even know how to do it, and our first point was we're the wrong partner right. And we went back to Salesforce. We aligned on that. We made sure that they got the information they needed and was successful, because, to your point, all you have is your name and once you do that and if you're not pushing back on the sales side, it's guaranteed failure.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it's transparency, communication. You know the hallmarks of successful business. You just got to stick with that. Let's get Peter's perspective on this Great topic.
Peter Ganza:I just love everyone's angle on this. An interesting item from my perspective is, in a lot of ways it comes down to the initial selection of a partner. Right? I do assessments all the time for partners, isvs, and that's why it drives me nuts in a great way, because you know, if I hear one more partner talking about the white glove treatment, I'm going to go buy some white gloves. Right, they try to take anybody with a heartbeat. Right and just from a peer messaging perspective, do what you're good at right, look at what sells. I don't care what you think you do right, I care about what your customers do and that's your main. Go to market. It doesn't have to be complicated and then focus on that, because then when people find you right, you're going to be the subject matter expert. You're going to understand that and you know you're not going to go down a path like we're talking about here. Right, and it just it boggles my mind every day, but that's my input.
Josh Matthews:Well, yeah, and look at the Vanessa in just one second. I just want to jump in real quick. Everybody's got to remember, like we all remember elementary school. You remember high school. You remember those people that you went to school with that you didn't like they're all in business now, okay, and they might not have changed. So that's what we're dealing with. It's not like everybody grows up and becomes a nice adult. Those jerks in high school might still be jerks, some of them might not be. But you just just keep that in mind. Go ahead, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Well, I just wanted to throw a question out based on this conversation, because I think it would be. I mean, I would like to know what your perspective would be, john, as far as when should a partner walk away from a client and when should a client walk away from a partner?
John Sisson:Pre-implementation, post-implementation.
Vanessa Grant:Post-implementation so say you've already got the deal signed, and because I think it is hard sometimes where you start getting into a project and then maybe new stakeholders come in or folks get a little bit antsy about sticking to the processes that you're trying to implement. We're doing things the right way, because maybe they have kind of more old-fashioned IT people that have a stake in it or some executives that are like well, why isn't this done yet? Things like that. And I know that there are times in projects that you either find that you're going in and it's not a right fit with the partner that you've selected and maybe need to pivot, or the other way around, that maybe you and the client just aren't aligned philosophically. When is the time for maybe having those conversations and walking away, and is that even possible?
John Sisson:It's not easy and it's not because it kills your. It's a we all serve two customers, right? You're serving the ecosystem, you're serving the customer, and then you're serving Salesforce and you have to make sure that you're successful with both. I haven't had that. I've been fortunate that I haven't had it a lot but one of the reasons is and it's all aspects around the amount of upfront work that we do to learn their business, to understand the goals. It's making sure that we're documenting everything through the process, that we're getting sign-offs as we go through this in regard to design and configuration, uat and aspects, so that we have something to support us as part of those arguments still happens, right, but the idea of it is is that we're trying to be much smarter about what we're doing, and Josh is right, it's all about communication and communicating early, and as soon as we start seeing those kinds of things, then we're calling everybody to the table to make sure we're working through them.
Josh Matthews:This is weird stuff, right, like. This is tricky stuff, because I honestly don't think people talk about this. I listen to a bunch of podcasts. I've never heard anybody talk about this, right, so I'm glad that we're actually, I hope that other people have. But I'm glad that we're getting to tackle this subject because the reality is is I, you know, I talk to partners every single week from all over the country and, on occasion, all over the world, and sometimes they're complaining about their partner. Sometimes they absolutely love them and, john, you brought up, you know, like, when faced with a challenging issue like this $6,000 solution for a $6,000 solution for a $60,000 problem that we talked about just a few minutes ago and you talked about saying like, hey, okay, here are the four, here are the four reasons why that doesn't make sense.
Josh Matthews:But I'm kind of curious, for those of you who are in the partner space, how many people are actually, after the ink is dry on the contract with the customer, are saying, okay, guys, like, if things go wrong, it's not going to be because of us, right? If things go wrong? These are the three most common things that will create failure, disappointment, increase costs, lengthen the length in the project, whatever it is, and they're almost always going to be around communication or the stakeholders and their team not putting enough time into the things that need to happen for the steps. So then you can actually hold them accountable. You know, it's almost like this little written agreement like hey, look, when things go wrong it's going to look like A, b or C. And then when things do go wrong and let's face it, there are a few implementations where, where folks aren't running into some kind of a challenge or an issue usually around communication Then you can say hey, do you remember?
Josh Matthews:You know, July 15th I sent you that thing. Then we talked about it and you read it and you said you read it right. So I'm bringing up issue B, because that's what we're experiencing right now and it almost absolves the partner from from failure. Right, because you've already addressed it. I call it taking bullets out of the gut, right? So what do you think about that? Who here knows a company that's doing something like that?
John Sisson:I would bet you that all of us are trying it's just, do we do it perfectly every time? No, but I think we are. I think that's the goal and that's what we work on internally is it is the Ted Lasso coaching moments right? It is when these things go sideways. It's and you're right, it's always communication what could we have done better and how do we do it? And there are times we have to go back to customers and say we didn't do a good job. We have to fix it. That's part of our gig.
Josh Matthews:Thanks for sharing that, john. Go ahead Fred.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, same and I. I never sat on all on all of that. That is where things go sideways. And for me and I wouldn't say that I've never worked at a company where this is universal but in in my building the relationship up to the sale, that's a big part of the talk track. Like I don't try to sell, you know rainbows and bubble and everything's going to get under.
Fred Cadena:Well, my buyers are typically fairly sophisticated people with diverse leaders, fairly sophisticated IT buyers. They think with that they're not getting out through a sales force project before maybe they have, but they know everything's not going to go great. So, even during no-transcript, you know the early to mid stages of the sales side. Well, I'm talking about how we need to partner closely together and what that looks like and what I'm going to want out of the relationship. And I asked them like what do you think I want out of this promotion? So up to you, because it really like once the aim's trying, so most too late, right, like everybody wants to get you know some of the ground. Go in and let go and look at like those expectations have to be set early and awful and, quite frankly, if I say something that they don't want, or if they say something that I'm not willing to do or that I don't think is the right. I mean, it's better to know before we sign the contract, and so I'm easy to know.
Josh Matthews:Great input, Fred. Look, we're at the top of the top of the hour. It's been half an hour that we've been on the show so far. So just a quick, a quick little recap. We are visited by my friend and my client, John Sisson, who's the SVP of sales over at Sales Optimizer. Also, we've been hearing from Fred Cadena, Peter Gonza and my cohost, Vanessa. Check out the Salesforcerecruitercom.
Josh Matthews:Subscribe to this podcast. If you're on the live show right now that we host here on X Spaces I'm trying to trying to get that into my lexicon here X Spaces, Twitter Spaces, If you like, listening to the live show, but you don't catch every program, you can find us on Spotify, you can find us on Google and you can find us on Apple Podcasts. All of these things Do us a favor. You know we want more people to have exposure to this program, so share this podcast with your friends and give us a little thumbs up and maybe even a little review if you're getting value from this program.
Josh Matthews:We're going to go ahead and continue our discussion, which is talking about Salesforce partners and their relationship with their customers and what customers can do to have a better experience working with those Salesforce partners. So let's start. Let's just kind of go back to that original thing, John. Think of, if you can think of an experience that you had on a, you know, working on an implementation or working with a customer, Think of the best one, like the one that just went so smooth as smooth as my voice and tell me, like, like, what were the qualities of the partner? What kinds of stuff were they doing that helped facilitate a really easy relationship and experience for them, not just with you but with Salesforce as well? It's a great question.
John Sisson:So we have a. There's a company called BAE that we work with that there's a sales on the Salesforce website. There's an overview of the projects that we help them do. And the thing that was interesting was is we had somebody we and not a small company but the great part was we had executive sponsorship. We had we had real defined goals in the person that was leading it on. The BAE side was all in, she was, she was fun, she was fair, she was critical when she had to be, but it was always based on the performance of the team and delivering on what we said it was. And because we understood what the mission was and because we had we were fortunate to have good teammates. We also worked with Salesforce services on this that we all focused on it, but she brought an energy to it. That was really fun and, more importantly was it kept it focused and she was good about bringing in the right people at the right times to to really foster the project.
Josh Matthews:And so if someone wanted to emulate this, this client that you had. What types of like? How do you make it fun? You know how? How do you bring someone in at the right time? Well, it's, it's a great question.
John Sisson:It starts with literally having understanding what are you solving for it? Secondly, then, having executive sponsorship. It's third, having somebody lead the charge, right. One of the things that we've all understood and seen is, when they don't have a primary person in charge of their project on their side, we're going to have issues, there's going to be delays and there's going to be miscommunications, right? And then we worked through significant documentation and we worked through and had multiple sets of conversations during the week to do this, but it is all of those pieces that drive success.
Josh Matthews:And so, john, is there a higher likelihood of success if there's a dedicated let's just say there's a dedicated director of business systems or a dedicated internal project manager, you know, on the project, versus working with, say, a smaller firm, a smaller client, where the CEO is in control. Like, is there a massive deal? Like, do you sense that there are more issues when the CEO is the one controlling the project or quarterbacking the project internally? It?
John Sisson:can be. Yeah, I mean it is, and I mean that's the reality. We like it's sales optimizer, we do the you know the fortune hundred, and we do some small and medium sized business, and those organizations that have SMB is what Salesforce calls it. They have all the needs of the BAE's but they don't have the, the internal resources to support it, they don't have the IT bandwidth, they don't have a lot of the things that the bigger companies do, but they still have the same needs, and so that does cause an issue. And in those situations we have to be very straightforward. That says you know, as a, as a partner, we cannot continue to do delays and a not charge you for them and B you know, not have major ramifications on your project. And that goes back to your point of constant communication.
Josh Matthews:I never know how to transition after someone's answered a question. Well, so I always say like fantastic, terrific. But it is true, it's like really good stuff. What if we do a real quick round here? I think this would be kind of fun and we can start with Vanessa, your number one advice to customers, salesforce customers when working with their partner, and I don't care if everyone's number one advice is exactly the same, that's fine. But go ahead, let's, let's do this.
Vanessa Grant:We'll go quick to Vanessa and, when you're done, fred, and then we'll go back to John, oh geez, it's hard to settle it to just one, but I would say having clear requirements and I'll throw one more in, just cause I have to is having a really clear understanding of agile methodology, if that's how we're going to deliver the project.
Fred Cadena:I'll say, I'll say just partner, you know and work with clients to treat me like a vendor and I've worked with clients to treat me like a partner, and there's a big difference on this partner. Well, he transparent, he can be a little.
Josh Matthews:And so can you expand on that, Fred, Like what cause the audience might not know the difference? Sure Right. So yeah, I mean let's hear that.
Fred Cadena:I just think that like to work with client that in the it says to be usually at the bigger, the bigger fly up with that necessarily that you treat their sales force partner in a very adversarial fashion. They're not fully transparent. They, you know, they kind of feel like they're going into a used car new issue for maybe, like the car mechanic and you know, oh, if I say too much he's going to try to upsell me on SOPS. I'm going to try to.
Fred Cadena:You know, do do this or that and and and that I work with clients and in much more involved with category the vast majority that really are are transferred and open and and talk about what their challenges are and and I really, you know I've been very lucky that in my career I get to pick a lot of who I work with and who I don't, so I've not really had to work with a lot of the one that they're more on the bigger side, but when I have stepped into rescue projects that have gone south or to take care of things that that you know got a little bit of off the rails and she usually can cause me some warby and visceral relationship where the client is looking for the partner, like they're going to try to take it down into, and I and I'm saying it's a two way stream, you know, and you know not all partners are great either and there's problems in partners, not always, you know, good actors.
Fred Cadena:But really just just treating it like a part of like, like like anybody else that you would want to to, to get advice from, versus somebody who's your trial, you know, just buy, you know ours, and buy capacity with son.
Josh Matthews:That's helpful. It reminds me of something I learned years ago from a psychiatrist, a guy I really respected. I mean, this is one of the most next to my dad, he's probably read the most books of anyone I know and he he shared. He said listen, josh, it's real easy. Whoever's most vulnerable wins Right. That's where transparency really starts.
Josh Matthews:He said that we know and 100%. Oh, I didn't say it, I'm just quoting someone else. I thought you said a great Fred, but it is, it's, it's. You have to risk something to get something. It's all risk reward when it comes to communication. Do I say this and risk being ostracized? Or do I say this and find that, oh my God, we're, you know like totally meant to be in business together, like whatever it is? Yeah, Okay, Thank you, Fred. Peter, what's your what's?
Peter Ganza:I was going to suggest talking to you, I mean taking a step before obviously signing the paperwork. But talk to before you buy. You know a partner's customers right and have that conversation with them. I just feel like that's a good way to at least gauge what the working style will be like and kind of the relationship. I mean I'm more on the preamble, if you will here, right on the marketing side, but a lot of that sets the tone right for when you sign the papers and when you get into the actual implementation. And you know, from my perspective I don't really care what the partner or the anybody says. Talk to an actual customer, someone who's been through it. Don't just rely on, you know, epic Change Reviews or this AE's recommendation. Talk to them. I client.
Josh Matthews:But Peter, everyone on the app exchange has 4.9 stars, so aren't they all good? Sorry, we'll have a no. No, no, I know, go off on this. Yeah, that's a whole different podcast, I know, right, yeah, okay, all right, john Sisson, you're number one. You might have said it already, but go for it again anyway.
John Sisson:I'm going to echo what you know. The three other folks said it's spot on. I think it's, but it is one know what you're solving for. Like, what do you want to get out of it? And it's can't be. I want a system and a CRM system. It's what business impact are you looking for? And I love what both you and Fred said is Be it's okay to say I don't know. Right, all of us that are professional and really want to do well for customers will go the extra even further. When people look they're like hey, we're really counting on you to do this and we don't understand it. Help us understand it. That's way better than pretending you do, because we know you don't.
Josh Matthews:It is. It's so critical, it you know, like he just does. It's so critical. And you just said something and I kind of got fuzzy in my head here for just a second. But it's like that. Who was it? Was it Vanessa, or was it you or Peter, I can't even remember at this point.
Josh Matthews:But this, this idea that you know what you're trying to do, and you like, I think you just said like, and it can't just be that you want to CRM system. It's like you want to make money. Why, like, if you don't know why you want to make a bunch of money? Like, then you've got, then you've got problems, and people know. It's like, well, I want security, or I want to be able to pay for my kids college, or I have a special needs child that is going to need lifelong care, or like whatever it is. Or it might just be like I really want a big fat, giant boat because I love boats, right, like that's my reason. So, like you could just be as simple as that. But the money is just a thing. Crm is just a thing, right? So what's that thing going to do for you and how is it going to alleviate pain, solve a problem, generate revenue, like whatever it is.
Josh Matthews:Have that answer and be real specific about it, because, at the end of the day, no one's just chasing money. If you're chasing money for money, you got problems. If you're chasing CRM for CRM, you got problems. Right, you've really got to get a little bit more granular, not a lot. It's only one level away, it's one question away. It's not the five Y's, it's the one Y, right? So you know, do that, okay.
Josh Matthews:So if someone does have a question, there's a couple of things you can do. You can DM me and I probably won't see it. You can DM Steven Gregor, because Vanessa might need to leave a little bit early today. So, steven, thank you for being on the show. Steven's part of my team at thesalesforcerrecruitercom so is Jesse. Jesse's listening right now. Thanks for listening, jesse, and I also want to just give a little verbal wave to my friend, larry Lee. It's nice to see you, larry. Let's keep going a little bit further, right?
Josh Matthews:So what are some of the signs that a partner can recognize in a customer or in a potential customer that says run, you know, run away from this client. You know what do. What are good steps or questions to ask or things to dig into a partner when they're engaging with a client. I can tell you here we don't just interview our candidates, we interview our clients. We don't want to take someone from a good job and stick them in a good job. We don't want to take them from a good job and stick them in a great job, or a bad job and stick them in a great job. But we're looking for great at the end of it all, and not every potential client that we might have is going to be great. So we want to vet them and screen them out before we start announcing to the world that they're awesome, which would be a lie, because that's not how we deal with it right. It's not what we do and I'm kind of curious what can partners do to protect themselves from bad?
John Sisson:clients, I think. First, I mean it's funny. I was on a call at four o'clock today, right before this, where we went through and it's a company that has four different business units just smaller company, probably $100 million, and they're like you know what? We don't really usually use implementation services. We just our goal is we're going to use it right out of the box, even though it's four completely different businesses, and my hope is that people will just use it and when they adopt, it will come. And my feedback was it's 100% failure, it's going to. It's going to fail. Right, it's not. This is not Kevin Costner, this is not field of dreams. If you build it, they'll come. It has to fit your business objectives and the funniest part for them is their number one challenges. We can't accurately forecast and we're losing 90% of the things that we put out, and that's their. Their solution is they're going to put something in place that literally their hope that they're. They're playing as hope.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's a crappy plan and hope's a terrible plan. And if you're listening to this and you've never heard that before, one I'd be shocked. And two, if you, you probably heard it before and then probably forgotten, because I know more people who hope than the people I know who plan. Right, I mean wishing and hoping. It just doesn't work. So how so you had this conversation? Now, how do you protect yourself as a partner from from implementing some of future failure?
John Sisson:At that point. What's interesting is, we got brought into Salesforce. We will help Salesforce win that deal. They're going to self-implement and we we're going to give them our recommendation. Right, they're open to that, and we're going to tell them the right way to do it so that when it, when it goes sideways, hopefully that we're getting a phone call. But the answer of this is it's not trying to say I told you so, but it kind of is to say I told you so, that's all we can do. Right, and so at least Salesforce gets their deal Ethically. We've told the customer what they need. And third, I'm not putting my staff in a situation where I'm setting them up for failure.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's good stuff. Any other thoughts on this guys? Vanessa, Fred, Pierre.
Fred Cadena:I just you know I'm not a different job, I just like the way that I think about it. You like, almost like the scientists right, Scientists don't want to disprove things, that they all look at them Stratically. I want to win every meeting that I could win, but I go in trying to prove to myself that this is not the right client and me and look for warning signs. I said a lot of time at the stuff where you're having conversations about what they want and then I am not operating from scarcity, but if I run away from this deal, if I realize you know the strategy of set they don't be a WB, right, you have to be okay with that. But I think the criteria is a lot of success brought on.
Josh Matthews:Hey, you know we talked about this, fred. I want to say I can't remember if it was last, our last show or the show before that, but we were talking about negotiating, right, and that whoever is willing to walk away has the control. They have the power, right. And so, you know, partners really should recognize and I would say almost not all, but almost every provider of services should keep that in mind that they don't have, there's no obligation to necessarily work with every customer, especially if it's going to take your rep. Take your numbers cause stress.
Josh Matthews:I know so many partners that, especially the young ones, right, the ones that are and I'll just say, two to seven years old, or one zero to seven years old right, and you could have seven years of experience as a partner, but really you're so small that it's really one year of experience seven times in a row, right. And I see these deals that they take where they're doing, you know, five hours of work a month for 30, 40 clients and trying to make a business out of it, and wondering why people, why the consultants, keep quitting right, because you've got these tiny little companies that are grandfathered in given like making mouse hours every month and then they're the biggest headaches versus, you know, doing meaty deals and I'm not saying it has to be 250K plus every time, just saying a little bit more meaty than $1,000 a month. You know which, in my experience and I've never worked for a partner other than as an advisor in human resources or as a headhunter but I can tell you that the majority of headaches that I have heard about come from two places One giant major client that is just a nightmare and it just it's how it is. Or lots of tiny little noise makers that are super challenging to deal with, and those are the ones you've got to watch out for, because there's always an end. Vanessa, you'll know about this. You've got a difficult quiet.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, your next six months isn't going to be the most fun, but then it's going to be done. You're still in your company. I'm going to say it's a comfy job, but you're still in your job, right? Versus? Oh no, this is how we operate. We're going to deal with this Mickey Mouse stuff all day long, for eternity, until the CEO wakes up. So you know that's anyway. That's my thoughts. What do you think, vanessa?
Vanessa Grant:Well, I was actually just going to bring up have you ever seen the project management triangle?
Josh Matthews:Are you asking me personally or are you asking me yeah, Okay. So yes, I've seen it, but no, I don't remember it.
Vanessa Grant:So with the project management triangle, it's the idea of you have scope, cost and time and if you, if you reduce, you know, if you increase one of those or need more one of those, then you reduce the quality. And so I think, especially at the beginning of the conversations when you're, when you're speaking to potential clients, it's really important that they have an understanding that if they're not going to give you enough time, the quality is going to be crap. If they're not going to have their scope clear and a boundary around it, they're going to run into problems. If they are going to have, if they're going to be super stingy on costs but their timeline is not reasonable, it's we're going to run into problems. And I think catching that stuff early with the client is really important because, yes, you might get stuck in a bad project for six months and and, yeah, there's a light at the end of that tunnel, but you don't want to lose your, your quality consultants along the way.
Vanessa Grant:Because it's as a consultant, it's demoralizing when you're working on a tough project or a project where you're like I don't, I don't know that I feel like we're going to be delivering something that's high quality or something that the users are really going to benefit from. I mean a lot of consultants that I know. You know we go into this because we like to help people. We like the idea that maybe there's going to be a team, that their eight hours a day at work is going to be easier on a day to day basis. And it's hard when we're working with difficult clients that maybe don't understand what's needed in order to deliver a project successfully and it doesn't feel good for those six months and you just don't want to lose your best people due to bad deals.
Josh Matthews:No, if finding great people is really difficult, just ask me, ask Steven, ask Jesse on the panel up here. Like it's hard. You know, if it was easy, I'd be doing something completely different with my life. And what you're talking about, really, that triangle kind of reminds me of something old from back when Steven and I were working for a Fortune 500 company and we used to always say the same thing to clients you can get who you want when you want for the price you want. But actually no, you can't like pick two right, it's who you want when you want, or it's when you want for the price you want, but it might not be who you want and you've got to kind of like this is where you have to figure out what's most important, because I can get you someone tomorrow to do that job, but the price isn't going to change, but the quality is right. So now you've got someone, three weeks earlier than if she gave us a little bit of breathing room to really deep dive and identify the best of the best of the best within the United States or Canada for the role.
Josh Matthews:You've got to figure that out and generally when people are picking, selecting whether it's as a partner or a Salesforce customer or a Salesforce headhunter like we are, you know, hunters like we are, then you've really got to have sort of your non-negotiables.
Josh Matthews:Again, we can do who you want right now, but it might not be the quality, but we're all about quality and our price is the same, whether it's crappy or not, but the reality is it's not crappy. So you've got to like kind of hold true to those tenants and generally, the thing that's you know, time is the thing that's the most flexible and the most inflexible, right, people can find money when they need to find more money. They can't find more time. And if you need to do, for instance, if you're a business owner, you need to do X amount of business in a month to keep that business running, you can still get the same amount of business, but if it's spread over six months instead of three months, you're going to have a serious cash flow, right, and we run into these same things, I imagine, with an implementation. Do you agree?
Vanessa Grant:Absolutely.
Josh Matthews:All right. So, vanessa, why don't you post a good question to the panel or to John, and then we'll probably wrap this up in the next 15 minutes, I think.
Vanessa Grant:So the one question I have is this person says that they are about to go for a second round interview with the hiring manager. What are some good questions that you can ask the person that is going to eventually be managing it?
John Sisson:I'm assuming this is from the implementation perspective. I think it goes back into some of the things that you just touched on how do you run engagements, what's important to you, but how do you when scenarios go poorly, what do you do and how do we combat those? Those are questions that I don't most people don't ever bring up in interviews. But if I'm gonna work for somebody and I know it sounds cheesy but that's why I do what I do I like to help people right, and if you wanna know why they do what they do and how that impacts them and how they handle really tough situations, because it's gonna have a direct impact on you. So I think those are critical elements when you're going into it is understanding that culture, understanding what is success to them. I've asked that question a thousand times and most times I don't get good answers.
Josh Matthews:But what's a bad answer? So someone can record, because here's the thing knowing the right question to ask is half of the challenge with someone's career, whether you're the interviewee or the interviewer, or whether you're in sales asking the questions or someone's vetting you out as a vendor or as a partner and then there's the interpretation of the answer. That's the other half, because you can use Google really good questions but if you don't know how to interpret those answers or understand that some are white flags, some are red flags, some are pink flags, yellow, green, red, like whatever you wanna describe it, okay. So what would be some bad answers to that question that someone should be cautious of? That should make their spidey senses tingle a little bit.
John Sisson:I mean, what is important to you as a business? What makes success money? If that's the only thing that goes on, that the only driver and we're all in this to make a good living. The part of this is understanding the questions that they're going and understanding if there's something context behind it, because the next question I would ask is well, of course I do too. What's your plan to get there and see if they have one? You know, my first question is what is success for your project? What is utopia? And if the answer is I wanna CRM system, then I gotta do a lot more work to see if this is worth doing or not. Right, and so it really is understanding and asking additional questions to understand what their perspective is.
John Sisson:If it was a tough scenario or a tough project, how did you handle it? You're always gonna get a glossy answer. Go a little deeper. When things got tough, what did you do as a manager to support your people? How did that work? What were the answers to fix that problem? That's a really different question than you know. Tell me about your project methodology.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's a really good response, john. I love that and I think people should be asking that. Vanessa, I'm happy to contribute too. I mean, I'll share one of my favorite questions, which is really design not for a first initial conversation for a job, it's really a second interview or a third interview question. And you can find this question, by the way, at the salesforcerecretercom forward slash resources. It should be right in there, and there's a little blog on it. I wrote this years ago, but I'll just tell you what it is. And, by the way, this is not a bad question for interviewers to ask interviewees as well. But it goes like this and I'll just, let's just say Vanessa's interviewing me.
Josh Matthews:I might say hey, vanessa, you know I want to be careful about, you know, my coming on board. I understand I haven't been extended an offer, but I just want to imagine for a moment. Let's say an offer is extended and I say yes and I start Monday. Okay, what am I going to wish?
Josh Matthews:I knew today that I'll probably find out, no matter what, within the first three months of working for you. That's a really good question, and the reason why is because they'll float you some sort of like little pithy BS answer. Right. It might be like well, I'm you know. It might be like, well, I'm, like what you see is what you get, like there's nothing to hide, or something like that. But that's not a real answer, right. And if they're kind of giving you a blow off response, it might mean that you might not get the offer. Okay, so like, I'm not saying that, that's what it means. But if they don't give you a real, authentic answer and if you're reasonably smart, you'll know the difference.
Josh Matthews:But it might be something like well, we're getting bought, or I'm moving to Hawaii and we're looking at you having different boss in six months, right. Or we're looking at acquiring XYZ company, or we're going to put more focus on our ISV business than our SI business. That's where we're really investing. They're going to tell you something, and it should be moderately valuable. But that's how you hold the person that you're asking the question of accountable, because now, if they hire you, you know you're going to find out or not, right? So that's my favorite sort of second interview question. I'm kind of curious, steven, since we've got Steven Greger here. Steven is a extremely bright recruiter. He's the director of recruiting at Salesforce Staffing. Steven, do you have a and you may just be listening and not have your mic hooked up. But I'm kind of curious do you have a really good second interview question for this person?
Jason Ziekowitz:I recently read the book too.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I've read it. It's by Street and Smart and it's an absolutely fantastic book. Anyone who wants to build a better team should definitely read it.
Jason Ziekowitz:It's not just about all the phases of not only the interviewing but also the recruiting side of it and the retaining. So yeah, of course, of course we recommend that and it really provided a paradigm shipped in focusing during the interview, because you can be coming up with different questions, having conversations that are focused on these targets. When you're looking for a candidate and when you're trying to make yourself an attractive match as a candidate, you know, it's always the traits, are always what's focused on oh, the person should be nice and they should be polite, and you know. Just a list that just can go on and on. It's very abstract, but I love the targets that it first puts. So I put in a literation of targets, tasks and traits. So, instead of focusing on the traits first, focus on the traits last.
Jason Ziekowitz:First, very critically asked okay, well, tell me what are the targets you're hoping for this role to achieve? What by when you have justified this position to be hired? So what do you hope this role to achieve? This way, just like with an implementation, we can be held to that success. So what are the targets you hope to achieve? What are the tasks this role will be doing to achieve that, so we can align with there and then great. Okay, what traits do you think are needed for those tasks to achieve that target?
Josh Matthews:I love that man. I was actually having a conversation with a really smart person earlier today and we were talking about their resume, and you know, the one thing that was missing was a great resume, but the one thing that was missing was like well, what are you known for? How do you actually go ahead and accomplish those, all of these great achievements, right, and that's sort of the how, or like, who am I? That's where your traits come into play. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but, as I think with when Jordan was on about the difference between culture versus behaviors, right, and so a trait might be more of a behavior. It's a predictive quality, right, under these scenarios, this individual is likely to do blank right, and that's an overarching framework about behavior that we can now be able to sort of, set these general expectations for individuals that are on our team. So good deal, jason.
Josh Matthews:Well, we've got you on the phone here. Yes, it is literally on the phone and smartphone. We've got you on the smartphone. So did you start your new job? I did. I did Congratulations. So quick recap Jason recently took on an awesome new gig. Tell us about it and tell us how it's going so far. We've been tracking this on our podcast for the last couple of sessions.
Jason Ziekowitz:Very nice. Well, thank you for the interest in my journey. So it's as a CPQ implementation specialist, a consultant, and so so far I've not been put on a project. I've just been put into training for CPQ and so Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second.
Josh Matthews:You mean you were air dropped into something with like a two foot shovel and told to just make it happen. Just throw it into the deep end. Yeah, yeah, whoa. So that's interesting, cause that doesn't happen. That's cool. Wait, it almost sounds like you're being onboarded. Is that true? Are you being onboarded, jason?
Vanessa Grant:Wait, what's that word mean Right? Hold on, let me Google it.
Josh Matthews:Oh God, this stuff's so funny, man. It's like really like, yeah, you're getting onboarded. So congratulations, man, and it's going well so far.
Jason Ziekowitz:Yes, exactly, exactly, for all the things we're talking about, exactly.
Josh Matthews:I love it, man. Well, always great to have you on the show and we appreciate your insights. John, we appreciate you being on the show. I'd love to hear some final thoughts, recommendations or advice, either to partners or to customers, on how they can have a better experience working with one another.
John Sisson:I liked some of the feedback of being just. I like what Fred said you have to be open to having the conversation and my favorite customers are the ones that treat me as a partner, not a bidder, right, and, and I think the more that you can share with a customer that partner, of what you're trying to accomplish, why it's important and sticking with that vision right, it's the best ones. We create friendships and long-term relationships. But the ones that worse yeah, are really good ones are the ones that are least share, open and they want to be successful, and so I think, the more that they can share with you and the more that they're open to being Vulnerable to say, I don't know, help me, but the more that they're gonna get out of it and then then Really making sure that the partner is delivering on what they're supposed.
Josh Matthews:I feel like Jordan Peterson could write a really good book on Salesforce partners and customers. Really right like this stuff is just everything that you're saying, john, and we've talked about this stuff in private as well. Everything that you're sharing and I think most of what we've heard from from everyone on the panel today has been Pretty darn good life advice in general, and so, whether you're applying this to interviewing, applying it to your Romantic relationships, your relationship with your children or your family or your good friends or your customers or the people who work for you, you know it's it's critical. It's it's absolutely critical and it's okay to fail sometimes, as long as you come back to sorry, you know you got to do things like that, but it's absolutely critical, all this stuff. So, basically, what you're saying, john, is, if you're a good person and you're, you know you've got enough Confidence in yourself to be a little bit vulnerable You'll probably be fairly successful with the implementation if you've selected the right partner that be close to the truth.
John Sisson:Yeah, and you know what you're solving for and you stick to that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I know what you're solving for Well a great show. I've really enjoyed this one. It was a really fun, fresh conversation to have something that wasn't specifically just about careers, and if you think that this hasn't been a conversation about Salesforce careers, then you may have been missing the point, because when an implementation goes wrong, it affects your career right. When you engage with a wrong partner or you hire, you know you work with the wrong customer or you don't set expectations with stakeholders or your boss or your partner, like whoever it is, then you're going to face more likely more challenges than successes. So this is still a career show, but it's been a really nice twist on what I think is a meaty topic that we can certainly come back to again and again on this show. John, thank you for being on here. You're a good friend, you're a wonderful client and a really terrific podcast contributor, so you can go ahead and slap that on your LinkedIn now.
John Sisson:No, I really appreciate it, josh. I've really enjoyed it and it's great to hear that we're kind of all in the same boat. So, thank you, we are, you know.
Josh Matthews:I, I don't, I almost hesitate to share this, but I, I created years ago I created a Salesforce excuse me a LinkedIn group called Salesforce leadership network, sln, salesforce leadership network. It's an invite only group. There's only about a hundred hundred and ten people in that group, and it was I put it together because I thought what a hey, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create an awesome space where people who are, you know, leaders in the Salesforce space or the partner space can interact with other director level and above Executives and they can solve problems. And it never really took off, and I know why because they're all in competition, there's only so many Implementations to be done in a given year and no one wants to give away their secrets. I think that's a shame, because I actually think that there's plenty of Successes, failures and advice and recommendations and support that people at different partners can get from one another, and God knows they need it Right. So if you're working for a five-person firm, you might have the same Need for support because it's too small and you don't have people that are supporting you enough. And then, if you're in a really big company, let's say you're doing, you know, big implementations through whatever Accenture you might feel like, you can't really talk inside that group without you know, risking too much vulnerability, right? So I created this space so that leaders could talk. If you want to join, I will add you. If you are a director level or above and the ecosystem, I will add you.
Josh Matthews:It's not an HR friendly place. I'm trying to keep it from being a Place for you know, trying to find your next client or anything like that, or posting a bunch of job ads. It's really for conversation, but it never took off and I don't know if it ever will. But if we got enough people to join and they were vulnerable enough and interested in enough in actual success and Tapping into these other very smart resources again, there's a hundred smart people on that group right now. Go ahead and check it out. It's Salesforce leadership network group on LinkedIn.
Josh Matthews:We will be pushing this podcast out no later than next Wednesday and I can tell you that we just released today part two of our session with Jordan Nelson. If you're listening to this session live or you're listening to this podcast but you've never listened to any other podcast, definitely check out this most recent one, but you might want to go back to the water right before that, because it's a long conversation and we also answer a lot of questions. We had terrific input by Vanessa and by friend, by Jason, on that show as well, so go ahead and check that out and give us a big thumbs up, if she can, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Final words since it is a career show, I will say that I, as a Consultant that has also worked with other consultants, sometimes on challenging projects, the one thing that I have learned along the way is that one bad project is not going to kill a career. So just want to reassure folks out there that, yes, while it's challenging, take it as a learning experience and just know that Nine times out of ten at the, at the end of the day, even if a project was challenging throughout, by the time you deliver it Everybody's going to talk about what a raging success it was. That that's just kind of how it goes. You end up with the. You know leadership, that you know that they want to see everything as a way in and they're not going to start off. A Project that's recently delivered to their users is saying, oh man, what a, what a mess this was. So at the end of the day, everybody's going to say yay, we did it and it'll all be okay, guys.
Josh Matthews:Oh, those are encouraging words, vanessa, and really important ones too. Thanks for things, for saying that it's a long life, guys, but you really is, and we learn best, usually when there's some sort of pain involved and I hate to say it, but I've yet to be disproven on this. So you know, you endure enough, and it gets easier and easier and easier. How about you, fred?
Fred Cadena:final words awesome, so I appreciate being invited to participating in. You're happened to be like me in Europe, in West Freeman, when you're getting out on the live demos right now, come say hi, I'd love to meet you and I've got a session Friday, so well, good luck on that session, fred.
Josh Matthews:I'm sure it's gonna go fantastic. I want to hear all about it. And if you're going to be at the life sciences dreamin in Fort Lauderdale on the 24th and 25th, I will be there. I'm happy to say hi to you. Peter Gonza, who's a regular on our show, he'll be there as well.
Josh Matthews:And if you Kind of jumped in a little bit late, vanessa's doing not one, not two, but three sessions at Dreamforce. He really is sales forces darling, isn't she? She's crushing it and we're gonna try and do if she's got time. I don't know if she is between food fighters and all those sessions, I don't know if she will, but either I or she and I will both be doing a little. Hey, meet the hosts of the career show at At Dreamforce, and so if you would like to say hi to Vanessa or me, just give us a little heads up and we'll make sure that you're sticking. You know we keep you informed about where we're gonna be During that week. All right, have a wonderful week everybody. Really appreciate everybody for joining us today, and a special thanks to use me, I got a cough. Special thanks to John Sissin. Okay, guys, have a great one. Bye, bye.
Vanessa Grant:Thanks by Johnny. You were great. Thank you so much.