The Salesforce Career Show
The podcast dedicated to helping you HIRE, GET HIRED and SOAR HIGHER in the SALESFORCE ecosystem.
Enjoy these live recordings of The Salesforce Career Show from X Spaces and YouTube's JoshForce. A guest + AMA format hosted by Josh Matthews, founder of Salesforce Staffing, LLC, Joshforce and The Expand Exchange and Vanessa Grant, Dreamforce speaker, 9X certified BA, consultant and social media darling. Recordings are 3x per month.
The Salesforce Career Show
2025 Salesforce Predictions + 2024 Year in Review with All Star Panel
Join Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant for the Salesforce Career Show's year-end wrap-up, featuring an all-star panel including Theron Stanley, Peter Ganza, Janeen Marquardt, John Sisson and Josh LaQuire. Reflecting on a transformative year in the Salesforce ecosystem, this episode delves into the challenges and opportunities of 2024 while forecasting the trends shaping 2025.
This show was recorded live on LinkedIn. For video, visit https://joshforce.com/24WrapUp
From the rise of AI and AgentForce to evolving job markets and the critical role of business analysis, the conversation highlights actionable strategies for Salesforce professionals, hiring managers, and organizations alike. Packed with expert insights, practical advice, and career predictions, this episode is essential listening for navigating the Salesforce ecosystem with confidence.
They talk about:
- Reflecting on the challenges and triumphs of 2024 in Salesforce careers.
- Predictions for AI, AgentForce, and Data Cloud adoption in 2025.
- Practical advice for improving Salesforce implementations and avoiding common pitfalls.
- Strategies for job seekers to stand out in a competitive market.
- The growing importance of business analysis and process optimization.
- How hiring managers can identify top talent in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Whether you're a Salesforce professional, a hiring manager, or exploring the ecosystem, this episode offers valuable takeaways to prepare you for success in 2025.
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 to the Salesforce Career Show. This is our year-end wrap-up. I'm Josh Matthews. I'm joined by my co-host, vanessa Grant. Welcome, vanessa.
Josh Matthews:Hi, josh, we have some wonderful folks that are going to be joining us today. They're going to be adding a lot of insight and color. We've got Theron Stanley from Salesforce. Josh LaQuire, si owner friend, amazing guy. We've got the AppExchange whisperer, peter Ganza, and we may even get to see a little bit of Fred Cadena and maybe even Brandon Stein in a little while here, and possibly some others, because this is a brand new format for us.
Josh Matthews:It's kind of exciting and it's going to be a little bit of a learning process too, and that's okay. So what's going to be a little bit different about LinkedIn Live this is for our regular audience, versus our X Spaces Live podcast show that we typically run is we won't be limited in how many people we can bring up on the stage and interact with, but everybody gets to interact through comments. So whether you're listening to us right now or viewing us right now on YouTube or you're watching on LinkedIn Live, both of those will offer you an opportunity to throw in some comments. It could be like you're wrong, you're an idiot. It could be oh my God, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard. Or it could just be a little bit of color and if it makes sense, we can go ahead and add that comment or address your question. So don't hold back on questions.
Josh Matthews:So now with that, we're going to go ahead and just jump into a little bit of I don't even know if I want to, vanessa. Okay, there we go. There we go. Smartest thing she's ever heard, nicely done. So we're going to dive into a couple of quick little things. Again, if this is your first time, welcome. It's nice to have you here. We've had a pretty incredible year, vanessa. What do you think?
Vanessa Grant:Certainly it has been a year. It's been a year.
Josh Matthews:Whether we like it or not. That's right, but I'm talking just in general about the podcast. We've been able to do a couple of things that we've never done before, and we've been running this show for four years, recording it for two. Vanessa and I have been working on it for over three years together. This year we were able to run a contest and give away a couple thousand dollars worth of certification vouchers, which was fantastic. We and give away a couple thousand dollars worth of certification vouchers, which was fantastic. We've got a new it's not really a contest, but we've got a new giveaway that's going to be coming up in January that we're very excited to talk about in a little bit more detail next month. And I got some cool stats from our podcast platform. This little show of ours is currently ranking in the top 25% of all podcasts on any platform, so we're pretty stoked about that and we've been listened to by I think it was 65 countries. Tune into this show. Thank you so much, and I think that the wildest thing that I saw because it talked about like your most popular city and it was shocking, I think, for both of us was actually Melbourne, australia. So we've got a couple of super fans out there in Australia, and so thanks for listening. I love you, love you. Aussies Missed my time there. It was really wonderful living over there back in the day.
Josh Matthews:So with that, let's go ahead and just kind of jump into something that I'd like to share, which is open jobs. I've got some open jobs. I took in a brand new one today. We're looking for someone who's more of a junior SA or very senior consultant with Salesforce, who's excellent with clients but has a deep experience, or at least some experience, with implementations for insurance companies, or at least some experience with implementations for insurance companies. So if that sounds like you be sure to reach out to me. You can do it on LinkedIn, you can do it on email. It's josh at thesalesforceretruitercom. It's going to pay right about $165,000, $170,000 all in, and 35-hour work weeks guys. 35-hour work weeks that's kind of unheard of in the SI ecosystem. So you're certainly invited to that.
Josh Matthews:There is no job posting yet because I just got it, so I'm going to post it in a little while, probably tomorrow or the next day, so you can keep track of that too. By the time this comes out, is released as a podcast on Spotify and Apple, you'll be able to apply. I also have a couple positions that require nonprofit experience. One would be a team lead, so you'd be a senior consultant and you would be a team lead of three or four other folks and working directly with the clients. It's not a dissimilar position to the insurance one, and I have a more technical role that's coming up too. So definitely sometime Christmas week, pay attention to our work, our channel on LinkedIn, or you can visit the salesforcerecruitercom and click on jobs and go ahead and apply.
Josh Matthews:All right, well, with that, it is almost the very end of 2024. We're fast approaching the shortest day of the year. Thank God for that. I love it when the sun starts to come out more and more, and I'm really excited to hear from our guests. But let's just go ahead and start with Vanessa. Vanessa, this has been an interesting year for the Salesforce ecosystem, and I don't know about you, but for me it feels like 23 and 24 were practically just one long year. You know, what do you think? I mean, did you notice any real differences?
Vanessa Grant:yes there yeah, for me, I felt it a little more palpably as far as the like.
Vanessa Grant:I know, when we did the wrap-up show last year, we were talking about ai, but we were talking about AI, but we were really kind of talking about more of the applications of chat, gpt and I think this year, especially being Salesforce folks like we're seeing the a couple of things like one, the real push for agent force.
Vanessa Grant:So seeing Mark Benioff is very clear talking about digitizing the workforce, which is a little terrifying, but so that's been interesting is seeing the move to agent force. Also the push to educate the Salesforce ecosystem as far as AI goes. So this year they announced that they were doing classes for all of the Salesforce features like Prompt Builder, build your First Agent, things like that, like free classes and free certifications for the AI specialist and the AI associate certs, which is a pretty big deal, and those are going to be free until the end of next year, which is fantastic. But that's really the big difference. Last year we were all talking about AI and wondering what the real impact was going to be and I feel like now we can more tangibly put use cases to some of the some of that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it almost feels like last year there was one product it was called chat gpt I know I'm wrong about that, but it sure felt like that and now it's like it's everywhere and it's integrated in so many platforms and products, not just salesforce. Let's actually go ahead and get. Why don't we just make this a whole panel thing? Let's do it. We're going to get Theron Stanley up here, we've got Josh LaQuire and we've got Peter Ganza. Welcome everybody. Really appreciate you guys. Really appreciate you guys joining us today. Thank you so much. What do you think, theron, when you look back on the year? What's something large that has stood out for you?
Theron Stanley:Go ahead and tell everyone what you do and where you are. Theron Stanley. I manage some of our strategic accounts here in Texas. I've been at Salesforce for about eight years, almost nine years, and in the ecosystem for over 20. I think this past year marks a huge amount of change. No big shocker right. Everything is about AI. I think the difference is we at Salesforce have been in on the game for 12 plus years probably a little bit longer, but this was truly transformative this year from think about the co-pilots we started with at the beginning of the year to a big shift more agentic AI solutions.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it's definitely a big deal, Josh, you want to share everyone who you are, what you do, where you're from and your thoughts on this.
Josh LeQuire:Sure, josh, vanessa, thanks for having me. I'm Josh LaQuire. I run Seacurrents. We're a systems implementation partner for Salesforce. This is the second firm I've started up and run as an implementation partner with Salesforce and based in Charleston, south Carolina, and I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem since about 2011,. Building apps for about 20, 25 years. So I've been doing this a long time and I think, aaron, I'm going to echo one of your comments because I think it's probably the most salient one.
Josh LeQuire:The pace of change is accelerating rapidly with agents, with data cloud, we have seen, I think, in my opinion, like a shift in the landscape this year, analogous to the internet coming out or the invention of the car or any of these major transformations that happened to technology.
Josh LeQuire:With Data Cloud, for example, we can now connect to applications, share data with Salesforce. What used to take my consultants and me six, eight weeks or longer for projects can now be done in clicks. It's really powerful and amazing. So I think what's really great about that is that opens up a world of possibilities for clients and agility. We no longer have to worry about looking at a single implementation. We can be very agile with implementation, so I think that's really going to change a lot for us as consultants, us as developers, in terms of how we deliver solutions. It's going to be more about smaller pilots, it's going to be more about rapid agility. It's going to be more about testing, getting input from users and changing. So I see that as one of many potential changes and a whole lot of things happening in our landscape because of that.
Josh Matthews:And Josh, thanks for sharing that. Was there a highlight to your year in the ecosystem?
Josh LeQuire:Yeah, I think the highlight for us and if you go to my website you'll see we're rebranding, as we're kind of shifting our business to align with us. I'll say candidly, salesforce has made a lot of product announcements that kind of, you know, fizzle and fade or maybe just don't turn out to be all that's promised, and I'm not one to really typically follow fads, but this one's been a big change. So I think it's been tough in our space in general. We've seen a reduction in workforce. We've seen a lot of people on LinkedIn looking for jobs.
Josh LeQuire:I think it's been a little bit tougher this year in terms of being able to deploy people to jobs, the availability of jobs. But I will say, towards the end of the year, the conversations with Salesforce, the conversations with clients looking at business out there, has grown tremendously. So I do think we're ending the year on a good note. But it did start off kind of slow and things were dragging a little bit. But generally speaking, it seems like people are getting back to work, things are picking up and the year has improved towards then. But we did have a little bit of a dip this year, at least in my business and with many folks I spoke to out there in the world of Salesforce in general.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I mean that's an incredibly, very real thing. We've talked a little bit about it throughout the year, throughout the last couple of years, and it really started with Salesforce's reduction forces December two years ago. I mean it feels like yesterday, almost right, but it's been two years. I can't believe it's been that long since that news hit the street and everybody kind of wigged out, freaked out, and a lot of people were really really hurt. They were really in a bind. There are still people right now that are affected by that, by those layoffs. There's still people that are affected by the experience that they had in COVID. They might not have been part of that bounce back and we all felt like this incredible lift.
Josh Matthews:Remember that the salad days, right, 22, it was just like 21, 22, it was just like boom and everything went crazy. And the last two years have been a struggle. I forget what the specific stats were, but around hiring, I think, was reduced by about 37% last year or this year, 42, 43% the year before. You do the math on it and you don't even have to do it, you can just go. Okay, there were 45,000 Salesforce jobs posted in any given 30-day slot throughout. What is it given? 30-day slot throughout. What is it? 22.? And now there's about 4,500. So that's a 90% reduction of open jobs being posted. That doesn't mean that there's a 90% reduction in hiring, but certainly people are trying to be a lot more cost effective in how they do it.
Josh Matthews:We're going to talk a lot about this today because it is, after all, a career show and people generally tune in because they want to know what can I do better or differently to hire better and make smarter choices? What can I do to make myself a more viable candidate? How can I get a promotion? How can I ask for a raise? How do I perform better in general for myself or have more life balance? And these are all parts of the career. But before we do that, I'd like to get Mr AppExchangeWhisperer's thoughts on that. Welcome, peter.
Peter Ganza:Hello, Josh and Vanessa. Thanks for having me and apologies, I'm losing my voice. I've been talking so much.
Josh Matthews:That's okay. So what do you think? You look back on the year. What's the big thing that stands out for you?
Peter Ganza:So real quickly. I'm the AppExchange Whisperer. My name is actually Peter Ganza and I help Salesforce partners get more deals. So a couple of things. Josh and Theron covered the topic. No one mentions AI and agent force and all that kind of good stuff. I wanted to mention what you started on, which was I mean I don't want to call it the year of the struggle. This was my best month personally, but I mean I don't want to call it the year of the struggle. This was my best month personally. But I mean, from a job perspective, right, this is a career show and I just I've never seen so much anxiety and questions and concerns and confusion, if you will, around getting jobs in the ecosystem. It's just come up to a boiling point, right. A couple of years it started and I think now we're seeing those downstream impacts, right, hey, I'm an admin with 52 certifications. Why can't I get an interview? Right, it's just coming to the forefront. So from my perspective, that would be the biggest thing.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, thanks for sharing that, buddy. Let's talk about that then, okay, and I want everyone to stay tuned because we will be talking about our predictions for 2025. I think that's probably the most fun part of these year-end wrap-up shows, but let's talk about it. One of the things that's been covered on our show it's been covered throughout the years the impact of AI on the workforce, and I'd like to understand who here has actually started to experience that.
Josh LeQuire:Go ahead, josh. Sure I can offer some perspective there. So, as a consultant, we see AI applied to our jobs in different capacities. Right, you've got Copilot and GitHub that can make suggestions for how you might want to build a lightning web component, how you might want to write an Apex class or make other changes and applications for clients, taking the place of how we would traditionally deploy a chatbot or how we might traditionally look to automate a process or actions or flows inside the org. So AI is not I don't think it's replacing jobs yet. It's just transforming jobs, as technology often does. Right, it's giving people more capability to do more with less.
Josh LeQuire:That being said, I do think over time, we'll see a fundamental shift in how job roles are specifically defined for people using agents, using AI to do their jobs. I think expectations will become higher. Productivity expectations will probably rise because we have these tools that increase our capability in terms of the volume, the quality and the velocity that we deploy to work. But I don't think that's going to happen overnight. I think a lot of people are still trying to figure out, at least in clients we're working with.
Josh LeQuire:Where does AI fit? Where does it make sense? It does make sense to deflate cases from support agents. It does make sense to transcribe and summarize calls. It does make sense to automate activities to get information, but it doesn't really replace jobs. It just gives people more capabilities. So I think we're seeing a shift. We're not going to know really for a couple of years, as the job is going to be eliminated because of AI, but I do think expectations for performance will increase and our capability to do work will increase, and that's kind of the trend I'm starting to see now.
Vanessa Grant:I'll throw another thing on there. What I'm also seeing is, besides people being able to apply AI as consultants or as Salesforce professionals, that is going to continue to be important. What I'm also seeing and this is just my two cents here, but I'm also seeing where, if companies aren't actually staying on top of it as far as being able to leverage AI in their processes, it's going to be frustrating for those really innovative Salesforce professionals and they will start leaving your organizations and moving to more innovative organizations. I mean, at this point, you know, just from a business analysis side of things, like if you're not using an AI transcription tool, like what are you doing at this point? So and I'm kind of done taking notes on certain things you know, like that's where I'm at in my career, and so if your company isn't thinking about what their AI strategy is, how to make those things productive and not listening to folks as far as how we do that, then I think we're going to start seeing the divide.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and I'm kind of curious if anyone has any sort of dissenting opinions. I mean, josh, one of the things that you shared that I thought was interesting was around the idea that you won't necessarily know how much it's affecting jobs. It's just going to become more important that people become more efficient use tools. Hopefully I heard all of that accurately, but I happen to think it's definitely going to cost jobs. I don't see how it doesn't now.
Josh Matthews:I made this analogy, I think, a couple of weeks ago. What happened to farmers when they started building tractors? Right, I mean, well, now you have tractor jobs. Now some of those farm workers who were displaced are going to go work at John Deere and start building, and other people are going to fuel in, and other people are going to work on maintenance and people are going to go to the green paint factory to paint them and on.
Josh Matthews:So there's always this sort of anytime we're advancing in the industrialization of our world, there's all these new jobs and you just think about it. I mean, there are twice as many people right now walking planet earth as there were when I was in eighth grade back in. I don't even know when that was that 1985 or something like that right? So there's twice as many people on planet earth and as long as there's more people, there's always going to be more jobs.
Josh Matthews:So in a way, I agree yeah, the jobs aren't necessarily going to go anywhere, but the jobs are changing and some of those jobs are just going to be gone, just completely gone, particularly when it comes to the organizations that can afford it, that can do a big data cloud project and do a big agent force project and work out all the kinks because we all know data cloud has kinks right, work out all the kinks on some of that stuff. I mean, there's going to be a lot of people, probably in the Philippines and India, who aren't answering service calls anymore. How much is that going to affect the US? I don't know some, but I think it's going to affect a lot of the low-cost offshore labor. I'm kind of curious what you guys think.
Theron Stanley:I'll chime in. I'll echo a little bit of what Josh said, and I think it is. We're not yet seeing replacement of jobs. The words I hear from customers and partners is it's optimizing work. So digital workforce is going to be becoming more common. It's optimizing how those workers today spend their time. Become more efficient. That should result in business growth and with business growth, jobs open up. So I take a more optimistic viewpoint of it. Without a doubt, things like call centers, offshore, those things may be reduced, but those people may have new roles.
Josh Matthews:Okay. So I'm kind of curious, josh do you see any specific roles becoming less relevant in 2025 than in 2024?
Josh LeQuire:Echoing some of Theron's remarks where we can deploy agents, generative AI and AI capability to take on the mundane tasks. Let's say you have a research assistant who may go out and try and find information for you to inform competitive research, inform a sales deal and inform any kind of strategy. You might be able to rely on generative AI to do a little bit of that research for you. If you have sales operations type roles that are very manual in terms of logging tasks logging activities that AI can now do I think to Darren's point you're going to see those responsibilities eliminated if not entirely for the most part and new responsibilities come on board. I have this conversation with my clients a lot because, ironically, in some cases when you sell a client on these types of capabilities, there are people sitting in the room from IT, data services or other teams who say, well, I don't know if I want to implement that, that means I'm going to lose my job. And the conversation is never about losing the job. It's about do you really want people doing the day-to-day VLOOKUPs in Excel and managing databases, or do you want people trying experiments for targeted marketing messages and looking at response rates and analytics, like you transform the nature of the role into higher value activities, in a way, from lower value just wrote let's get all the silos to talk to each other and do manual integration work. Now we can do more sophisticated strategic type work for the business.
Josh LeQuire:So this is where I kind of struggle. I think you're right, josh. The tractor analogy makes a lot of sense, I do think when you see the innovations in the field, you go from 10 people plowing a field to one using a tractor and then the other nine might work for John Deere. But I think we're kind of seeing the same thing with AI. It's just going to change the nature of our jobs and I think to Theron's point, with that capacity we're freed up to do more strategic things and, in the optimistic view, echoing Theron, it allows us to focus on higher value activity for the business. So it's a complicated question, josh. I'm not sure if I really answered it head on, but yeah, I think all these dynamics are certainly apply.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I mean I think you answered it very head on. I mean it just makes me think about, nevermind the industrial revolution, you can go back to the agriculture revolution and consider what happened way back in the day. I mean, we're going way back in the day, effectively. The invention of the plow right and the invention of the plow allowed agrarian societies to thrive versus the hunter gatherers, and what that afforded people, particularly those in power, more than anything was leisure. I mean, you think about what it just from an AI standpoint overall and now we're not talking Salesforce career, so I'll get off this topic real fast but just think about, well, what does it take to book a vacation? The R1 rabbit would have you think that you just say, book me a vacation to London and it's done. It's not quite there, right, but you can jump on Expedia and you can search prices and you can book an entire vacation in about five minutes if you wanted to, right, without a lot of research. So that gives you what More time to watch Netflix or play piano or whatever it is that you know, go to soccer games with your kids, like whatever it happens to be, but you get to do that. And so I think that we're also going to experience a little bit more leisure.
Josh Matthews:You know, some of us not all of us but I think that we're going to experience a little bit more leisure and we're going to reduce a lot of the mundane tasks in our own lives, and that may or may not impact how much time you actually are able to spend at work, because we're not so busy. Like remember, do you guys remember the days when you had to leave work early so you could get to the bank in time? It wasn't that long ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago. It wasn't that long ago. So you don't have to do that anymore.
Josh Matthews:So I'd like to ask you guys what you see as far as products that are becoming more or less relevant. Let's start with Peter on this one. You're involved with a lot of different clients with a variety of different products. I know that you're heavy working with the ISVs, but are you privy to any kind of insight or information, peter, about what products you think, aside from AgentForce and Data Cloud I think everybody knows that already, right that are going to become more or less relevant in the coming year?
Peter Ganza:That's an interesting question, so obviously can't share anything confidential, but just in general, I feel like and I hate saying it this way but Slack is coming back and the reason I say that is when Salesforce bought slack right, mark my F was up there saying everything slack first, slack right and from marketing and from a messaging perspective, I feel like it kind of fell to the wayside for a little bit. It hasn't gone away. I don't. I don't work at Salesforce, even though it looks like I do. I did work at Salesforce, but even though it looks like I do, I did work at Salesforce. But I just feel like and from what I see, that is going to begin to come to the forefront how that fits in with data cloud and agent force. We're going to find out, but I feel like the conversations around Slack are going to come back, if you will.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I agree. I think Ben McCarthy from Salesforce Ben agrees to be penned an article recently that talks a little bit about some of the predictions or some of the things that are really strong. Vanessa, what do you think? Products that are starting to really rise, and then we'll go to Theron.
Vanessa Grant:I've always been a fan, but I think the genre that I foresee will be even more important is going to be companies like Elements Cloud that are looking at your metadata and helping you with documentation, with AI, I mean, I think while this year has been like, oh, that's how you apply it, I think maybe next year is going to be the horror stories of people applying it poorly because they had really poorly documented business processes and their data was a mess. So when you've got products like Sonar Elements that can help you put together a data dictionary that can fast track your tech debt cleanup projects, I think that's where I kind of see things. Just my two cents what I think we'll see.
Josh Matthews:Sure, what about clouds? I mean, does anyone want to pipe up about what clouds they're seeing? I mean, personally, I started to hear about RCA. I hadn't even heard of it, right, like there are certain things that are kind of popping up now with RevCloud and some of these others that are CPQs. I mean, I was working with it six years ago and it's not the mystery that it once was right. It's like yeah, I need some CPQ and you can find someone who can do it. Back in the day it was like who knows this, who knows how to do this stuff? And people were like, well, they know Skillbrick, good enough, come on. So it's a little bit different. I'm kind of curious what you guys think.
Josh LeQuire:Josh, I'll just echo some of that. I've heard some account execs in there and you might have some insight on this as well. Talk a little bit about revenue cloud being pushed. You know it still sounds. I haven't touched it, seen it myself personally, so I can't speak to it authoritatively but what I hear from a lot of folks is still a little early in development but it's come along fast. It's the native platform solution and answer to Steelbrick CPQ and Velocity CPQ and it sounds like Salesforce is really getting behind that. I can tell you. Salesforce is also getting behind modules like order management.
Josh LeQuire:I've seen that come up in a lot of conversations. Marketing cloud is still kicking and screaming. It's got the same technology it did back in the 90s but it still runs and people still need to execute marketing automation, although I will say marketing cloud growth seems to be really at the forefront of a lot of conversations, more so than marketing cloud corporate edition. So I work a lot in the customer engagement space, so these are tools I see a lot of, but RevCloud is a big one. I'm hearing a lot about order management on both the e-com side and also the order logistics supply chain side, and marketing cloud is still running, for better for worse. I tell people all the time I have a love-hate relationship with MarketCloud. It's a great tool, it works, but the learning curve is high.
Josh Matthews:It's not an easy one to get into. It requires specialization. I can help with that, by the way. Theron, what do you think?
Theron Stanley:I think we're seeing a shift from looking at Salesforce products as point solutions solving unique niche problems, to adopting Salesforce as a holistic platform and that's being driven by innovation across the business right. Some of these products, like CPQ, order management, maturing, getting better Salesforce, offering industry cloud type solutions for finance, healthcare, energy where I sit so that's what's driving a lot of that. I love that you mentioned marketing.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, we got a little Theron Stanley freeze thing. That's cool, I don't know a lot of people who can hold a pose as long as Theron can, so this could go on a while. Oh, he's back. You were good. We just missed probably the important things that you were saying.
Theron Stanley:I don't know where I left off.
Vanessa Grant:You were talking about Marketing Cloud, so you were glad that he mentioned Marketing Cloud.
Theron Stanley:Yeah, that's where I started my career here and a lot of the success in selling lots of marketing cloud, especially in the energy and industrial space, was thinking about marketing cloud use cases beyond marketing. So the early iterations of data cloud, when it was just CDP a marketing born solution applying that to a business trying to connect all of its data. So the latest model of innovation in those areas, data cloud, as we all know, is really helping proliferate that.
Josh LeQuire:Yeah, you can see that with data cloud, marketing cloud, activation targets right, yeah, that was one of the first activation targets built into data cloud and I think, expanding on your point there and I agree, I see multi-cloud solutions. Yeah, we used to just go in with a client and talk about sales cloud, service cloud. Now it's a combination of products and it's looking at a two to five-year roadmap and thinking about phasing products experience cloud for portals and marketing cloud for, to your point, transactional communications in addition to the commercial marketing communications, and I think that with data cloud, josh, you'd asked something earlier about the transformation of work in 2025. I think what we're going to see is now Salesforce consultants, salesforce admins, developers.
Josh LeQuire:You can't really, you have to be a mile wide in an industry to an extent, but you still have to have specialties, right, like you have to understand the business applications, landscapes, how these things can connect through data cloud, how they can activate segments in marketing cloud for targets, how they can activate calculated insights. You're going to see all these pieces come together. So I think consultants, like our job is going to be extra hard. There's going to be higher expectations for us to know a lot more and be a lot more consultative across a wider breadth of products, now that we're looking at a more connected landscape of business applications.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, and I'll just throw in a little bit here. One I'm excited to see with the Salesforce acquisition of Own Backup, a backup being a more important part of the entire Salesforce package that you get, and for me that's part of the DevOps process, so I'm excited about that as a new product. But what I'm not excited about is and I'm concerned about as far as the future goes is there are rumblings that maybe Salesforce is not putting as much into their architecture program and with all these multi-cloud solutions, I think the well-architected system is one of the best things that Salesforce has ever done, and so it's a little troubling to me that some of their resources are going more into kind of the shiny new revenue generating things and less into how do we actually make all of these multi-cloud solutions and these really complex systems work well?
Josh Matthews:I mean you don't think that they're working on that in the background?
Vanessa Grant:I mean you don't think that they're working on that in the background, trying to figure that out right now. I don't know. Historically, salesforce has really, as a company, had their finger on the pulse of what Salesforce professionals are doing on a day-to-day basis. And that's just from what I'm seeing from, like the. Where are they putting resources versus taking resources away? And that's where I'm like, at the end of the day like, yes, these are great that you can spend some money on and get an industry solution. Like these are wonderful solutions, but they cost a lot of money to maintain.
Vanessa Grant:And I don't know that people talk enough about. And this is the AI portion too. Like, yes, you can buy agent, agent force, but if you don't do the right level of business analysis, you don't do the right level of testing is, if your devops process is garbage, if your delivery process is terrible, like that is the stuff that will make your implementation fall apart, that will make you have to re-implement the whole thing in five years and for a while, salesforce was really focusing on that stuff, or three or two, or having to call that second consultant to come in to fix the mess because MVP really wasn't MVP.
Vanessa Grant:That's where you know and those aren't sexy revenue generating things. But I think those are really important and will continue to be more important, as I imagine horror stories will come out of agents going rogue or whatever it is, because people had dirty data, didn't do the right business analysis, were trying to get to market too fast. Whatever it might be, You're bringing up.
Josh Matthews:Oh, I'm sorry, josh. Okay, let me just jump in here real quick. Look, salesforce is a company. They have shareholders. They have a fiduciary responsibility to these shareholders. They need to focus on revenue generation. They have spread so fast over the last 10 years I don't even know what it is now 90% of Fortune 500 companies or something like that. It's a lot, and you have to keep coming up with ways and reasons to generate revenue right. And making the lives of partners easier is probably not 100% and it's probably not their top one or two or three things that they have to do right. It's the partners to do that. It's the customers to make good choices about which partners they work with.
Josh Matthews:I'm playing a little bit of a devil's advocate here, because I don't disagree with you at all, vanessa, but it's a multi-billion dollar business. If they slump, it's like you make a small mistake with a large public company like that. It's a massive impact. And then there goes all innovation, because all they're trying to do is scramble and keep the business together. So I don't blame them for focusing on revenue generating products. I mean, yeah, they're a company, what else are they going to do, right? But I think everybody who's ever touched the product, knows that, particularly in the world of consulting, knows that half of the implementations are the worst. Half of implementations, I mean they're terrible.
Josh Matthews:I get calls almost every week where companies are like we bought this, we implemented it, we don't think we're using it correctly, we're not sure what we're supposed to do, we don't have anybody here that really knows how to look at it. And then you break in and you take a look at it and it's like sometimes it's an easy fix and a lot of times it's not. A lot of times it's scrap the thing. I mean I have a client they were looking at. Not A lot of times it's scrap the thing. I mean I have a client they were looking at. It was a client of mine, senior VP of all business systems, billion dollar company, and he's looking at. He joined a new company, he was looking at the product and he's like Josh, I might have to scrap this whole thing and just start from scratch, because they've just been making what's ticky tacky for the last seven years. I don't know what to do with this thing. So fortunately we found someone that came in. They're helping them clear it out. They didn't have to start from scratch, and so that's a good thing.
Josh Matthews:But boy, it's impacting tiny little companies, $100 million companies, billion dollar companies on up. It's definitely a challenge and, I think, one of the challenges that these small companies are going to be facing and are currently facing. And anyway, like, correct me if you think differently. I'm completely, a hundred percent open to dissent here. But a lot of these contractors that are not contractors, these employees lost their job. So it's almost half a million tech jobs gone in the last two years.
Josh Matthews:Right, and no matter what the White House administration or any of them is going to tell you about jobs, it's bullshit. There's not clarity in those numbers. They'll say, oh yeah, we added 200,000 jobs or 160,000 jobs this month. It's like, wait a second, but you lost 250,000 full-time jobs and you added 160,000 part-time jobs.
Josh Matthews:And if you don't read the fine print on this, you don't actually read the articles.
Josh Matthews:If you just read the headlines, you're going to be so misinformed you won't know your ass from your elbow. And you've got to stay informed, you've got to stay up to date, you've got to pay attention. So a lot of these people that lost their jobs went out and hung their shingle yeah, I'm going to be a consultant, and Vanessa's doing it right now and I think that's awesome because she's good. But there are a lot of people that aren't good that started and not only are they necessarily not good at the technical stuff, they might not be good at the analysis, the business analysis stuff, and I promise you more than half of them are not going to be good at sales and marketing. At least half, probably closer to 70% or 80% of them aren't going to be crushing it. So there's some challenges there. We've got Janine Markhart. Welcome, janine. We're going to get to you in just one second, but I wanted to welcome you to the stage, josh, you had some input, and then we'll go to Janine and see what she has to say.
Josh LeQuire:All right, I think you, vanessa, just really introduced some fantastic talking points. This is stuff I geek out on. So, yeah, I can't remember the last time I went into a client's implementation following another, second, third or fourth consultant, that wasn't just a dumpster fire. It is so prevalent, so widespread. There are a lot of bad consultants out there, period. I'm sorry, not sorry, it's just a fact. I've done so many rescue jobs. It feels like every job I do is a rescue job these days.
Josh LeQuire:But I will say I was part of the Salesforce partner enablement team with a lot of the HealthCloud rollout activities back in 2019. I did a New York World Tour Dreamforce. I spoke, I worked with Zach Bacon, some of these great people there, and I remember then it was a common complaint the rollout of Health Cloud and enablement for partners was just garbage, and that's true. It was garbage, like it needed a lot of work. They were pulling in consultants like me in to help. However, I will say I did participate in the Data Cloud cohorts and went to Dreamforce and AgentForce sessions. Salesforce is offering better enablement now for partners than they've ever offered, offering better enablement now for partners than they've ever offered Now.
Josh LeQuire:That being said, salesforce offering enablement because they know they have a problem with partners doing terrible implementations. That's destroying Salesforce's reputation. I'll never forget a trip I took to Houston, speaking to the CEO of a big giant finance company who said Salesforce is nothing but a bullshit pipe dream After he had seen just terrible. And he wasn't wrong. Right, because Salesforce can do great things when it's implemented right. It can also do terrible things when it's implemented wrong. It can go both ways. So I think the problem is today it's not necessarily Salesforce offering the training for partners. It's partners consuming that training and acting on it and being good consultants. Like there's a huge difference between somebody who's gone in and studied for certification, a huge difference between somebody who's gone in and studied for certification, somebody who's gone in and delivered 20 implementations right. That is a real thing. So it's difficult because being certified and delivering implementations are not the same thing.
Josh Matthews:When I met Josh, it was at Dreamforce 2019. And I hope I have this number correct in my head. That week, mr LaQuire sat for no less than six certs and passed them all. And I know because he walked in exhausted into the bar and we all had a beer. So you can, if you're smart like Josh, you can go in and knock out certs. Now, josh already knew that Look, he already knew his stuff. He already knew his stuff right. So it was.
Josh Matthews:I'm not saying it was easy. I know for a fact it couldn't have been. But if you study and you're good at studying, getting in and testing it's not the same as getting in and working and problem solving right, and that's the thing that hands-on experience is absolutely necessary for. Let's try and solve this for some of our audience right now, and then we're going to go to Janine. No, actually let's go to Janine, but someone remind me. I would like to hear what are a couple questions that customers can ask their who are offering proposals. You know, in tandem with Salesforce, what's one or two good questions that they could ask them to help prevent some of these nightmare stories that we hear regularly. But before that, janine, welcome to the show. It's so nice to see you. Nice to see you.
Josh Matthews:Did you have a highlight of the year of 2024? Something that stood out? Good or bad? It's almost over. Okay, hey, fair enough, I'll take that. What about looking into the future? And we're going to get deep into the future here in about five minutes, five, 10 minutes. But what about the future? Is there something about 25 that you're excited about?
Janeen Marquardt:I would answer your question that you just posed, which is how do we prevent these bad implementations? But, like I'm with Josh, lots of work for those of us who've been at it for a while.
Josh Matthews:I would ask your SI how many implementations have your implementation consultants actually performed? That's a good question. What would be a sufficient answer Like? What would be a number that you'd be looking for before?
Janeen Marquardt:saying yes, More than five, on whatever product cloud they're doing. Okay, and I mean honestly, because one or two isn't bad, but five is a reasonable. It's not a lot. But you've seen a few different things at five. Five is still not a lot, but I've done like 500.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, some people do five within three months.
Janeen Marquardt:Right, I mean, it happens yeah, well, I would say five to like beginning to end sure right, because there's different things that happen.
Janeen Marquardt:but and that's everybody, like each person has done at least five beginning to end, at different points of time in their career, because there's different things that happen on them. Because I think that there's a lot of things and I would also ask the methodology. I mean, do you just say, as a customer, build me a custom object that does X, y and Z, and you go, okay, I'm just going to go do that thing, or do you try to understand the nature of the business problem you're trying to solve?
Janeen Marquardt:and act consultatively to help achieve the business goals, because that's, I think, how most of us act here and we've also worked with consultants who don't and that's the primary distinction between customers who are having a good experience and customers who are not having a good experience and where we have to come back in and fix the problems where. How many times have you all come to an org where the customer is definitely not happy with what they got, because they got exactly what they asked for?
Josh LeQuire:all right. I remember the last time I did right, like that's kind of it happens so often but all I've done in the last five years is remediations.
Josh Matthews:Oh god tired yes, hey, john sisson. Welcome to the show, john, former vice president for Sales Optimizer, a good friend of mine as well. Welcome to the show, john. I'm kind of curious what do you think when you look back on 2024, was there a highlight this past year?
John Sisson:I first agree with everybody it was the toughest 20 year in the 20 years I've done Salesforce not even close, but I think the highlights. We did a lot of free assessments for people and everybody does assessments in different elements but the difference is we did them from a business perspective rather than a tech perspective. Tech was part of it. We did about 40 of them and what we identified over and over again and this goes back to your part is a lot of the customers A were being sold tech, not business solutions. B they didn't know there's been a ton of mergers and acquisitions, everybody's running on empty and they didn't know their business and business problems well enough and so they continue to do tech, which then led to the issues everybody's talking about. And my favorite part of this was digging in and coming back and it was fun. I'm going to shock everybody, but it was people process tech adoption right, and very few of it was because the tech was just garbage. It was a lot because I'll give you an example I had a huge GovCon that we worked with that won a $2.76 billion contract with a B and the craziest part is they were not allowed to market and they had three salespeople. It was a division of a large group, and so it sounds like a great problem, but they were a $100 million division and, worse is, the government said if you can knock this out, in five years, we'll give you another $2.76 billion. And they weren't even close to getting it done, and so, if we hadn't dug in, there's nothing I could have done on Salesforce that would have solved that. We ended up focusing on marketing cloud and partner community and using their partner piece as part of an overarching solution to help them solve. Those were fun, right. Those were things where we felt like we had a real impact on that, and I think that's going to be really critical going into 2025.
John Sisson:Here's the thing, though, guys I think as much as we talk about tech and, believe me, I was on this show last year and I greatly appreciate it, because I was like AI is not ready, and everybody else, and we had somebody on the show and they were like let me give you six reasons why you're an idiot. And they were like let me give you six reasons why you're an idiot, and they were right. And since then, I've used AI religiously. I learned a ton from that show, right and so but I still think a lot of customers are struggling and it's a lot more than just the tech.
John Sisson:And this goes back into your point of finding a good partner. To me, a good partner is somebody that sits down with you and builds out requirement documents. I know that's old school, but it showcases that you understand their business, you understand their issues and you're educating them. Going through that, you're then tying it back to business impact all the way through right and then to your point on the methodology. It's our customers don't know a lot of times what they're asking for. They understand the pain, but they don't understand the tech, and as Salesforce unleashes more and more tech, it just gets harder for them to stay up to speed. It's hard for us. Hopefully that helps.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I think that definitely helps. Thank you for contributing. It's great to see you, john. I appreciate you jumping on the show here today. Thank you for contributing. It's great to see you, john. I appreciate you jumping on the show here today. Oh, it's great to be here. I want to pivot just a little bit.
Josh Matthews:Okay, we're almost a full hour in, but I feel like we've got a lot more to cover. Typically, these shows are about 90 minutes, so if you can't stay, if you're listening live and you can't stay, that's okay. You can find the Salesforce Career Show available on your favorite platform, including Spotify and Apple and iHeartRadio and all of those. I think it's like 20 different platforms or something like that. So, if you've got a platform that you love and you're watching this live and you'd like to catch up on some past episodes, we'd love it if you did that.
Josh Matthews:Speaking of which, our number one podcast last year, I think, was the very first podcast of the year. We talked AI, mbas, the future of careers in the ecosystem, so I'd like to kind of get back into that a little bit. So let's talk about what we're excited about for 2025. And I'd like to make some predictions as well about what I'm going to, what I believe is going to happen in 2025 as far as ecosystem, as far as careers and this sort of thing. But I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts too. So let's go back to Theron. Theron, when you think about 2025, and we're going to keep this short so everybody can get a little bit of a soundbite here but what's the most exciting thing about 2025 for you?
Theron Stanley:Yeah, no shocker here and this is not a plug but agent force is proliferating very quickly across our customer base. That's evidenced by public numbers that we've talked about of customers adopting. That means lots of work for this ecosystem, for people to get ramped up in agent force and all the relative products around that. And then one shameless plug is Salesforce is hiring a thousand plus AI sellers. That will help teams like mine go out and sell more of the products. So very excited about that. All of my customers are very excited about it. So there you have it.
Josh Matthews:Very good Josh.
Josh LeQuire:Yeah, I think 25 is going to be the year even with all these great changes with data cloud agents of getting back to the fundamentals, john, I couldn't agree more Getting back to a proper methodology and I'm speaking from a consultant's perspective and what I'm going to see in the SI landscape and how our jobs and expectations will change. But automation means we understand a process and how to automate it right and we understand where AI can play a role in that. So I think it's going to become more imperative and important than ever to really as a consultant and, by the way, if you work inside a big company and build Salesforce or you work as a consultant, you're also a consultant right, you're consulting the business on how to adopt the technology, enable an outcome and drive a metric. So I think this year is going to get us really. It's going to separate the cream from the crop, in a sense of the really good performers are going to succeed in their jobs, are going to be able to identify very specific outcomes that this technology can enable and are going to do a really good job of understanding a business process and how it delivers that outcome and how to take this technology forward.
Josh LeQuire:So I see Data Cloud Agent Force as a huge opportunity. Yes, they're in. We're going to have to stay ahead of the curve, we're going to have to understand that, but I think it's going to make us as consultants, as developers, as admins, look really good because we're going to actually be able to put our hands on understanding the business a lot closer and understanding these outcomes. We're trying to drive in the business with this technology better and seeing real outcomes, and there's nothing better than this job and that feeling of success when you deliver something and see it influence the business. I think that is the best gratification of the world as a developer, as a consultant working on Salesforce.
Josh Matthews:Yeah like oh, this works. Wow, I didn't know it could do that. I love that stuff, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Oh, you know what?
Vanessa Grant:I'm really excited that We've been talking for almost an hour and I think I've heard the word flow once and not that I have anything against flows, but I think there's been so much focus over the years of like here's a tool that'll solve your problems.
Vanessa Grant:It's not about the tool. People are talking about business processes now, and I'm so excited about that. I feel like everything that I've been talking about for years is finally going to start bubbling up and people are going to start realizing the value. I mean, people are starting to realize the value, let me put it that way. So I'm excited what that means for me personally, since I am kind of starting my own thing next year, with a focus on business analysis, of course, because that's my jam, and I love that the technology implementing it is going to focus on how do we add value to businesses, how do we make people's lives easier? Not here's a tool that'll just solve your problems and companies don't have to focus on what their problems are and really unpack them like they should. That's what I'm looking forward to Business analysis always Business analysis.
Josh Matthews:Well, it ties in with what John said. It ties in with how Josh supported what John said. I mean it's figuring out what the needs are. What's the problem that's getting solved, versus just introducing more tech. Vanessa, one of the things that I remember you would quote quite a bit in our early days of running the show was that technology will just exacerbate. It just amplifies.
Vanessa Grant:Oh, yes, if you take a bad process and you throw technology on it, all you have is a faster bad process. Yes, I love that we're actually focusing on the process. Take the tech out. Let's look at your process. Does your process actually make sense? Is it optimized?
Vanessa Grant:Once we understand what this should look like in an optimized way, we have brought the stakeholders together, we have consensus, we have documentation, throw the technology on and make it better, make that optimized process faster. And that's what I'm looking forward to is good documentation and great processes and people focusing on business analysis and also the continuation of, since I launched my sorry, I should have said it earlier the thing I'm excited about from this year was launching my Salesforce BA community, the first and only Salesforce BA Trailblazer community group, which we're over a thousand members now, which is wild to me considering we just started this year. So continuing on with that Salesforce BA community, considering that these skills are going to continue to be really important in the next year, with all the AI stuff going on, I'll get off my soapbox now.
Josh Matthews:No, it's good. I mean, this is our soapbox and you're doing great, so hashtag BABA, badass BA. And if people wanted to join the BA group, how would they do that?
Vanessa Grant:They can look in the Trailblazer community groups. There's a little kind of search area. If they look in the Trailblazer community groups, there's a little kind of search area. If they look at the virtual groups.
Josh Matthews:They'll see the Salesforce VA virtual community. Okay, right on, Janine. What are you most excited about for 2025, other than 2024?
Janeen Marquardt:being gone, because I know you were probably going to say that no, no, really, it's okay. I'm actually really excited about Agent Force. I had the pleasure of being in the room yesterday for the 2.0 announcement, so that was terrific and I think we are just scratching the surface of where this is going to go. But, like the reality of human beings, we need to make sure that we're doing the right things with our agents. We need to make sure that we're not just asking our agents to build me a custom object, that we're having our agents solve our business problems, that we're talking to them about the right things and that we're not just doing the wrong things because we can, that we're teaching our people to do the right things. And I had some really great conversations with some folks from Salesforce yesterday and I look forward to continuing those conversations. So I'm excited about where this can go. I'm a little concerned, a little wary, that we're making sure that we're not putting the technology in the hands of people who are not knowing necessarily what to do with it, that the right people help support it. Help support it.
Janeen Marquardt:Like Vanessa, as a strategist, as an architect, I like to think of it as taking that to the next level. I mean, she's been screaming it for five years. I've been screaming it for 30 years. It's really hard when you feel like nobody's listening. It's like that's what I've been saying all along. Right, you can't just take a bad process and automate it. You can't just take a bad process and throw technology at it. You've got to start with the process. You don't have a technology problem, you've got a process problem. Let's look at that process. Let's look at what you need. Let's fix that first and then let's support it with the right technology. I'm trying to help my customers figure out what the use case is and how we can help support them with agents. Where can we improve what they are doing and move the things that are just bogging them down with people and move that on to agents and let their people do the things that we need people for? I like that.
Josh Matthews:So what are the?
Janeen Marquardt:right use cases yeah.
Josh Matthews:I mean, there's definitely a theme going on here this evening right Around better processes, better systems and then enhancing those processes and systems with Salesforce and technology in general. I'd like to go ahead and jump in, just give our audience a little bit of my take on what I believe they can expect in 2025. And, by the way, take it all with a grain of salt. I've said this before, but I predicted Lady Gaga, britney Spears, christina Aguilera and NSYNC would all fail when I first saw them. I'm like that's never going to take off. So I'm not the best at predicting things, but I feel like I've got a pretty good grip on this after about 25 years in this industry Sorry, excuse me, industry. So we might have talked about this previously, but I think it stands to reason to mention it during this episode.
Josh Matthews:The bounce back When's the economic bounce back going to actually happen? And there might be listeners that have been hanging on for the last hour going, yeah, but what about me and what can I expect? Walking into January, february, march of this year and I've had a lot of conversations, some of UFOs, some of our panelists right here and clients and candidates and a lot of different folks Ben McCarthy a lot of different folks. And here's my take I think that we're going to have a bounce back. I don't think it's going to be a big bounce. I think it's going to be a slow bounce. And when you think about I can tell you this as a business person I called the wrong play two years ago. I thought, okay, we're going to hit a bump. It's going to be. The average dip in the economy is 56 days 59 days, something like that and it's only every number of years that we experience something that goes on this long. I also feel that we've had a lot of not great information. I mean, people are like, yeah, but stocks are soaring, and not the last 10 days, but stocks are soaring. These are all key indicators of a healthy economy and it's just like everybody. Just stop for a second, wake up, look around, look at your bank account, talk to your friends and neighbors.
Josh Matthews:What's going on has been absolutely nothing short of devastation in the Salesforce ecosystem. I'm just going to say it. It's been fucked and it's hurt a lot of people. It's hurt a lot of people in the wallet. It's hurt a lot of people in the wallet. It's hurt a lot of people in their self-esteem, how they feel about themselves, how they are as a parent, as a provider. It just, it affects people. And it's not Salesforce's fault, right, it's not. It's just that's what happened, and we have all everyone here has had to find a way how to move forward, and some people have found a way to move forward by leaving the ecosystem, and other people have found a way to move forward by hanging on with your fingernails right Until the good times roll back in.
Josh Matthews:So my prediction is that the good times are going to roll back in, but they probably won't be nearly as similar as what good times might mean for you. So I don't think that it's necessarily going to be the kind of bounce back that we saw back in 21, 21, 22. So much pent up demand post COVID that you couldn't I mean you can get an architect without getting into a bidding war not a good one without getting into some sort of bidding war for them. And those same architects right now are more than happy to take a 15% pay cut just to start working again Right. So part of that had to happen. There's a little bit of a mirage, a little bit of an illusion of how things should be when we experience a bounce back from COVID, but it looks like this you take a tennis ball and you slam it into the ground and it comes down here and it pops back up here. It's going to pop up really high, really fast, and that's what happened post-COVID. It dipped really hard because things are going darn good. I mean, I don't remember an economy as a working adult that was nearly as good as what we'd experienced right before COVID. Okay, and now you got to think about well, what's the bounce back going to be? Well, you think of like someone bowling a cricket pitch right or throwing a baseball, throwing a grounder. That thing's going to come in at a low angle and it's going to bounce back up at a low angle. That just means it's going to take more time or more distance till it gets higher, back up to the height of the original pitch, and so we're going to I think we're going to experience that. So my prediction for 2025 is more jobs, a nice lift.
Josh Matthews:I think that the new White House administration and love them or hate them, it doesn't matter, they're in and I believe that the number one issue that everybody voted on was the economy. So clearly it's been impacting people and that's what they ran on, that plus border stuff, but they mostly ran on the economy and I think that the motivation that the administration has to put into place certain things whether it's reducing regulation and just making business easier or tax breaks or things like that I don't think we're going to really feel too much of those effects. For a little while, john and I we were talking I think it was earlier today, I can't remember, but we were talking earlier and we're in agreement on this a little bit Like, yeah, it's probably going to be May, june, right, when these things actually are enacted and the inks on the on uh, dry on the paper. And then people are like, cool, let's go. Like, let's fricking rock, let's go, because we've all been waiting to rock it for like two years, right, and we haven't been able to.
Josh Matthews:I'll tell you what I did. I completely dumped whatever I had available into growing the business when things went bad. So I thought I knew this lesson from back in the day when things die, you either cut all your expenses and hang on by your fingernails or you dump everything that you can invest and grow and grow and then, when the bounce back comes, you've got greater market share. That's how it works. I think everybody knows that right. I made the wrong call. I couldn't have in my wildest imagination believed that this downturn was going to last this long in this ecosystem, but it has, and so you know what.
Josh Matthews:We make adjustments, but look to expect slower hiring. More hiring, but slower. People are going to be a little bit more careful. There's more competition for your jobs. If you're working at all, you're in a better position than if you're not working. So take that job, get that paycheck, stay active and stay involved in the ecosystem, right? All of these things are very important and you have competition. Most candidates out there right now have a lot more competition than they ever experienced back in 2021, 22. And so you're going to have to prepare for that, and to do that, I want everybody to think about their resume, their LinkedIn profile and, more importantly, their communication skills, their ability to articulate their value.
Josh Matthews:What are their accomplishments? What did you actually achieve? I see resumes every single day and I say the same thing over and over again, because the message isn't out there. Stop putting your job description into your resume. That's not at all anything to do with what you did. I mean, if I had a job description for me. I mean, it's like that wouldn't say anything about my successes. So focus on yourself. What value did you bring to customers? Did you bring to the business that you worked in? And really stand out. And if you're not capturing what your accomplishments are, start doing it. You can do it weekly, you can do it monthly. Everything that went great this month, everything that sucked this month, everything I learned from what sucked. Everything I learned from what's great reminders like how I can do more and more or do better or do things more efficiently. So start tracking your successes and be ready to articulate that.
Josh Matthews:We have talked at great length on this program over the last year and really since AI started to come up, but more specifically the last year and even more so the last six months, about how do you stay relevant in an AI age, and the number one way to do that is to just be more human, right. I mean, the more human you are, the more you're open, transparent, willing to listen, diplomatic, asking good questions, paying attention, showing interest, validating other people right, demonstrating confidence, being open to ideas, like all of these things. It's absolutely critical to do that and get good at that. So if you are in a position moving forward, either in your current role or you want a job in the ecosystem moving forward, and for a fact that those skills of yours could use some brush up, then go get that brush and start working on it. There's a million good advisors on YouTube that can teach you communication, but you've got to practice it. You've got to practice it before you get into work. You've got to practice it before you go into your interview. So start learning from some of these experts that are out there and I'll tell you I feel like I'm not a bad communicator. I have spent years on it. I've done it with coaches, I've done it with training, I've done it with workshops, I've done it with therapists. I've done it like crazy, and I'm still having to work on it Right.
Josh Matthews:So, no matter where you're at, level up demands more humanity in an age of AI, whether it's the blog you write, the message you write, the email that you write, you really want to stand out. Well, use AI, get your grammar tidied up, get your thoughts organized better, but, man, that tone, that message and what it sounds like should sound very human. So, be human in 2025. And I think that is what's going to give you the very best advantage, and I mean that for hiring managers as well as candidates as well as current employees. So that's my thought. Let's talk about others. Who else is excited about something for 2025? Or what should people be focusing on paying attention as far as products for 2025, new certs that are up that will help them to stand out or gain some knowledge? I'm going to just open the floor. Dive in, guys.
John Sisson:Josh, that's impossible to follow. That's like you just gave Gettysburg a dress and we got to now follow that Brutal Dude. You're like come on, I can't follow. Fuck that's hard. You're like, come on, I can't follow. Fuck that's hard. You're too sweet, john, and I'm going to go a different direction on this as we go through this, because you guys will know this search better than I do, the different elements. Learn business, understand business, make sure that you go through.
John Sisson:I say this to all the reps I work with and I've been incredibly blessed for 20 years that Salesforce has let me in the foxhole with them and they let me be part of the team when they didn't have to right and always did it in a partner way right Partnership way, I think. Know business. Help your customers by helping them actually solve their problems. I can find a thousand people that have a thousand certs that know nothing about business. If you want to be more marketable, continue to learn about models.
John Sisson:What makes a construction company different than a manufacturing company? What makes a manufacturer different than a services company? Until you know that it's just tech. And, by the way, I've had a 20-year career with Salesforce and I've been incredibly blessed every day that the product is that good. The difference of it, though, has been I think we've lost that. Going back just to humanity, I would argue this there's more competition than there's ever been, there is more people looking for help and frustrated than there's ever been, and they want somebody that is going to step up and step in and help in, and help yeah.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, thank you, john. Thanks for sharing that. Deep thoughts by John Sisson. They're always good Every Thursday in my back, that's right, john and I talk every Thursday morning. We have a good, we have a great relationship and that's one of the highlights of my week every week. So thanks for doing that with me, john. What?
Theron Stanley:else. I'll add something that John touched on earlier in several aspects, and that is partnership. Me working inside of Salesforce, one of the most important things is my partnerships, whether it's the Accentures, deloitte's, ibm's of the world, or it's small partners that are engaged at my clients. Please work with your account teams right. Partnership is not a two-way street, it's a three-way street, it's a multifaceted street, and if all three aren't connected from your Salesforce team to your partner you're working with, your consultant you're working with and the customer, that's where projects go awry.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it makes sense. What can hiring managers do in 2025 to make sure that they're picking the good ones? I mean, everybody knows I've got about a million thoughts and I should probably talk about it for 35 hours, so I'm not going to say this today, but I really want to hear what you guys think. What can hiring managers do? They're looking at a bunch of candidates and look, I mean, we already know certs aren't necessarily everything that they're made out to be, but they do help partner relationships. So having them is helpful and it's going to be something that's attractive for them. But what's something that? What's an adjustment, a little tweak that hiring managers probably should make in the coming year when they're growing their teams?
Josh LeQuire:Sasha, I think when you and I sat down and talked last, you told me something you've conducted like 20,000 interviews. Is that right?
Josh Matthews:If I recall. Yeah, it's somewhere in there.
Josh LeQuire:Yeah, I don't have that nearly that many under my belt maybe a couple hundred, I think, if I think over all time. But I think in this age of AI, in this age, I love the points that John and Darren brought up about trust and partnership. I'm going to kind of tack on to that and say trust and transparency, right. When you as a hiring manager are talking to somebody, I try and hire people smarter than me. There's no reason for me to bring somebody in.
Josh Matthews:Good luck with that dude. You're one of the smartest guys I know.
Josh LeQuire:I'm going to really pull the wool over your eyes. Thank you, josh. No, but typically I like to sit down and just, hey, here's the problem I'm trying to solve. Tell me how you go through solving it and have a conversation about solving a problem. I think that exposes a lot of somebody's true capabilities. It exposes their thought process, it exposes the methodology. It exposes quite a bit. And when people are honest and say, hey, I don't know Experience Cloud or I don't know Revenue Cloud, but I really know Sales Cloud, and people are real, candid and open about what they know and what they don't know, not trying to tell you they know everything or trying to say things that make you feel like, oh, this person is the best hire in the world, that sincerity, that honesty is something I look for. So help me solve a problem and tell me the truth. Those are the two most important things I typically look for I love it.
Josh Matthews:Transparency is key. Anyone else? What do you think, vanessa, like if you were going to grow your business that you've now launched? When you step outside of the BA shoes for a minute, right, and just think, how would you try to bring some sort of certainty?
Vanessa Grant:All right, I've got it, I got it, I've got, it, I've got. I've got a an idea.
Vanessa Grant:So to so to kind of build on I think what John was talking about earlier. It is really important to be conversational in business. I think understanding that vocabulary is really important. But I also think to your point, josh maybe back in 2010, when I first got into the Salesforce ecosystem, somebody could like conceivably say that they knew everything about Salesforce. You cannot do that in a 2024.
Vanessa Grant:And so I think maybe if you're a hiring manager, talking about the resources that people would tap into if they didn't know something in Salesforce and that's where you can see how connected people are to the community, to experts within the community, to resources within the community Like, are they on Ohana Slack? Are they on Wizard of Ops? Do they know Salesforce Ben? What blogs do they follow? What YouTube channels do they follow? If they were on a cloud that they've never been on before, because you're trying to implement a multi-cloud solution, then okay, how would they find the resource for Experience Cloud if they don't have a certification in it? And have them talk you through that process, because I think one of the skill sets that is going to be well, not going to be. It has been important. I just don't know that people have emphasized it quite as much is not how much knowledge you have sometimes, but how quickly you can get to that knowledge within the Salesforce ecosystem, so that you're not spending all your clients money doing research. How can you find that information and good information? I'll do a quick story if you don't mind.
Vanessa Grant:Just really quick, because I was on AgentForce last week. I was like I'm going to try out the Salesforce AgentForce thing and I had a run into something that I've never done before. Okay, I've got a business case and I know I can help Salesforce can support me here. So I asked agent force, can you give me preferably a demo on how this is, how this is implemented? Well, but I have this particular business process in this particular industry and I'm looking for the Salesforce features on how to implement this well, and preferably with a demo.
Vanessa Grant:Agentforce came back with five results because it has all the Salesforce documentation right. Came back with five results and I looked through all the results. All the results were literally the same link. Literally the same link. It gave me the same thing five times and it was a less than two minute demo on agent force for that particular industry that I'm working in right now and I'm, like you know what, googling and being connected to people that know Salesforce in the areas that I don't is still valuable. Agent force isn't going to solve that problem yet. Salesforce help isn't going to solve that problem. Yet. Having access to resources, knowing where to go and who to speak to, that will help solve my problems.
Josh Matthews:There you go. I love it. I mean we're talking about relationships, connections, network, real networks, right? I mean I could push a button right now, some magic button, and we would have head of practice, head of sales, head of discovery, head of architecture right here right now, and then HR Like, just like that, boom. Now it's my job to be connected, but it's also part of my fun job and hobby to help other people understand how to get connected, how to be connected, how to stay connected, and if you'd like information on that, well, just follow the show.
Josh Matthews:We've got tons of episodes. I think we had 60, over 60 hours of content that we produced this year, and some of those episodes focus very much on networking. But if we take some of these points, like transparency from Josh, solving the business problems from John, like all of these things, and put it together, I mean you're going to get the kind of community around you that you want, right? You do these sorts of things. You're going to build that community and it's not going to happen overnight. For those of you who are watching or listening, it takes time, so you just put your foot forward right now.
Josh Matthews:Vanessa, what's a message that you would have for people who are maybe they've got their admin cert, they've never had a job. I mean, we get this question a lot, so there's always new viewers coming in all the time. I think we had 125% year over year growth in our audience, but we have some churn in our audience because people's careers get better and then they fly the coop and off they go and they don't stay in tune with us. So, for those people who are newer that maybe haven't listened to one of those episodes, what would you tell someone to do who is excited about 2025? They're excited about their certification. They've heard great things, but they're walking into what is a very new reality that we're all experiencing right now. What would you tell them?
Vanessa Grant:I would say the certification is not enough. Like you'd mentioned earlier, josh, that 2021, you know, anybody who has a pulse and can string a sentence together, let's throw them on a Salesforce project. We are out of that era at this point. So, okay, you've got your admin certification or you're working towards your admin certification Back to, you need to be connected, so you need to be able to find those resources, because as an admin, you're going to run into things every day that you don't know the answers to. So how do you find that information quickly? So that you're not a burden to your organization, I would direct them to the admin skills kit so they have a better understanding, and that's something that Salesforce released, with like 14 skills that they think admins should have, and that also helps them how to articulate that on their resume as well. Look to your transferable skills. So, if you have industry experience, maybe try to be an admin in a particular industry that you're already familiar with, so that you can speak the same language as those end users and have that type of advantage. And then, lastly, you can't get away with getting a job these days unless you're like, very connected or also and or have a strong LinkedIn presence, and so make sure your LinkedIn is up to date. Make sure that you are active on LinkedIn.
Vanessa Grant:I'm a big fan of learning publicly. I'm a big fan of sharing your experience. You are an expert, wherever you're at in your career, and so be showing what as you learn it and the things that you're learning along the way. Don't just be like hey, I'm sharing every trailhead badge I've ever gotten. What did you learn about that badge? Is it a good badge for other people to take? What are your takeaways? That's the kind of stuff that that will bring people towards you and that will bring people towards your journey and hopefully the folks will help give you a leg up.
Josh Matthews:But that's yeah look, I mean, I don't know a better example of anyone in my little world who has exemplified that better than you, vanessa. I mean, you've really done an incredible. You've done an incredible job, I think, with your Twitter followers and your LinkedIn followers, and the number one thing that you've been is something that Josh LaQuire was talking about. It's like being transparent. It's another way of saying being vulnerable. Right, when we're transparent, it just means that we're putting ourselves at risk for disappointment. Jordan Peterson said it once in an interview this woman was just bashing him. She was coming down on him with a sledgehammer, and some people don't like him for certain reasons, and you're welcome to that opinion. My opinion is he's literally one of my favorite people walking planet Earth right now. I find him absolutely fascinating and insightful and his ability to synthesize a variety of disciplines and convey it in a way that can be digested and acted upon. I don't know a whole lot of other people in the world that can do it quite like him, but anyway, she's bashing on him and she was talking about being offended and they were talking about free speech and this kind of stuff, and he's like well, look what you're doing right now, the way you're talking to me and I'm going to misquote it, but it's like not being offensive. You're being offensive to me, but that's okay, because if you don't do that, we can't have a conversation. You have to put yourself at risk. You have to put yourself at risk, and so what I would say to folks in general, real quick, is when you don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers, twitter followers, tiktok followers, whatever, and you're like okay, I'm ready, I'm going to put myself out there, don't worry about it, no one's watching your shit anyway, like who cares? Right? I mean, no one's watching. No one of influence is probably going to be following your every word, right? It's going to be your friends at first, and then one or two people, and then maybe four or five people, and then maybe 10, and if you get to 50, I mean man, I'm not talking 50 connections, I'm talking 50 people who pay attention to you. Consider your network solved. I don't think you need to have a thousand insecure relationships or fake relationships to have a network. You have to have somewhere between five and 25 people that are on your phone that you can call when you need an answer or you need some help or advice. So just do that, cultivate really good relationships and surround yourself with great people A lot of people have talked about.
Josh Matthews:I know Tony Robbins is a huge fan of this. It's the idea and I know he's changed some of his thoughts. I don't remember what his new thoughts are on it, but one of the things he talks about is like look, you're the average of the company that you keep. You are. So if you are hanging around a bunch of people who wake up and smoke weed and go work at the detail shop and then do kickball the third Thursday, like you're probably not going to get exactly where you want to be, there's nothing wrong with that. If you're 22, right. But if you're getting serious about your career, if you're a provider for others or just for yourself or you have ambition, start thinking about the company that you keep in 2025. Who could you drop? Who should you add? Right? I think that's really important and I mean I'll bang on about that till the day I die.
Josh Matthews:When I look at my friends, when I look at my friends and some of my good friends are right here on the stage with me here right now I mean you're all friends. I feel so lucky. I'm surrounded by really smart, hardworking, caring, thoughtful people with a heart, and that doesn't come easily. It takes time to find those people. I mean, josh, we met five years ago and we've probably broken bread twice, right, but we talk and when we do talk, it's meaningful, it's deep. You know what I mean.
Josh Matthews:So think about that. It doesn't have to be the person that you call every single day. Just be that person who's there when you need them, and as long as you're there for them, it's reciprocity. You'll get to move forward. Guys, we're coming. I mean, we're 90 minutes in, so we're going to wrap it up. So I would like to do one quick little last round robin and have everybody say the thing that they're most grateful for 2024. I'm a huge Thanksgiving fan and I'm actually a big fan of giving thanks any day of the week because I think it feels good. So, janine, what is something that you're grateful for? 2024?
Janeen Marquardt:Well, certainly my great network of friends and family for you guys and for Vanessa, who's turned into one of my best friends so who would have known that when we met? And just for having all of you guys. And for Vanessa, who's turned into one of my best friends so who would have known that when we met? And just for having all of you guys. So thank you and thanks for including me.
Josh Matthews:Thank you, janine, you're awesome Josh.
Josh LeQuire:I have to say, my children first. That's always paramount, but I'll say, putting that aside and defaulting to that, I am extremely grateful that the work we do does not necessitate us going into a coal mine, having to pick up garbage off the street and so forth. The fact that I can sit here at my house, plug it in my computer, do what we do day in and day out and actually have an impact on the people I work with and honestly, the people I work with have more of an impact on me than I think I ever do on them that gives me just a great feeling of satisfaction, fulfillment. I love the people I work with. It is a blessing. The people I work with on projects, the clients I work for and with the people who work with me. I feel very grateful for that. I've come into contact with you, josh, and you folks here, of course, and the people you meet through this job. I think that's it. I'm grateful for the people I've connected with.
Josh Matthews:Extending on that thing those connections are very fulfilling.
John Sisson:Josh. Our connection's been very beneficial for me. So thank you, Thank you all. Thank you, Josh, Mr Sisson, I am thankful for my family. I'm thankful for my friends. Mr Matthews, I have a 22-year-old son that graduated college. He did great in college and he's trying to get into the intel space within government and has really hit a brick wall. And I called Josh out of the air and said, hey, I need your help. And Josh got on the phone with my son for an hour and everything that my wife and I said to him for the last three months, Josh got through and my son, two days later, got through and he was like you know what? These four things are really important and I was like son of a bitch. I told him that for three months, but that's what I said. So the friends and family is that's what life's all about. So thank you, Josh.
Josh Matthews:Thank you, John. I loved getting the chance to work with Peyton. What about you, Vanessa?
Vanessa Grant:So just quickly, I think, theron's backstage, if you want to ask him as well. Thank you, so something that I am grateful for. I had a layoff in August and that was fairly devastating for me. I've always been pretty risk averse, actually, when it comes to work, and I was very much lifted by my network and my community to the point that I feel confident enough to go out on my own, which is probably happening maybe years before I ever intended it to, and I don't know that I ever intended to at all. So that is what I'm most grateful for. This year is a possibility opening up because of the work that I've given into the community. It is given back to me and I'm super grateful. It's that I've given into the community. It has given back to me, and I'm super grateful. It's the friends we make along the way.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. It's actually incredible, vanessa. I mean your journey is one of my favorite journeys of all and getting to watch you walk it over these years has been a real treasure, a real treat, mr Theron.
Theron Stanley:Yeah, I'll go family first, Thankful for my family and my friends. But from a business perspective, I've got great customers. I'm in a really good spot at Salesforce. I love my company. I'm glad I'm in the ecosystem directly in my network. It's growing. It's not as big as yours, josh and Vanessa, but I've got a tremendous amount of customers, friends, partners I've worked with over the years so it makes my life easy. I love that.
Josh Matthews:Well, I'm just going to echo what everyone else here has said. It's almost 100% people. And I look at my family Charlie and Oliver and Naya and Brenna and Connor, me and Casey's kids. It's just, they've had a phenomenal year. I'm so grateful and proud of all of them. I'm so proud of Casey. She's had a tough year. Oh God, I'm getting emotional.
Janeen Marquardt:Give our love to Casey.
Josh Matthews:I will. She's watching right now.
Josh Matthews:So, Casey you heard it, so I couldn't have gotten through it without you guys. So thank you and sorry to oh, I promised myself I wouldn't do this. It's like I'm on Barbara Walters, but it's when we think about our family, when we think about our careers and these things. How can it not, how can it not touch your heart? So just a lot of gratitude and love for everyone that I'm close to, all all of those people who impact me and all the people that I am in a very fortunate position to hopefully positively impact. You guys make it all worthwhile. So that's our year-end wrap-up. Sorry to end emotionally, but it's been an emotional year and I think everyone else has done a great job keeping their emotions under wraps. I don't have such an easy time doing that sometimes, and I think today was a good example of that. I'm really grateful for everybody.
Josh Matthews:This has been the Salesforce Career Show's wrap up. Thank you everybody to our incredible audience. Your comments mean the world to us. Your LinkedIn messages, I mean I saw some stuff this week from some of our listeners about how we've impacted their lives that have absolutely just I mean, warmed my heart, made my week. It's absolutely incredible to get that kind of a feedback off of something that is, let's face it, it's a hobby. I mean, we don't make money doing this. It's just a hobby and we love it. We love giving back.
Josh Matthews:Thank you to every single guest that we've had, every single contributor that we've had on the show. You have helped grow our audience. You've helped to grow the content that drives real, impactful change. I mean, you think about it. If one person hears one thing and they take action on it and it changes their career, well ain't it worth it? But I think we can count in the dozens or the hundreds of people that we actually positively impact, and we know this because we look at the stats. We know that they come back. We know how many people like this is their number one podcast or this we're in their top five podcast, and it's not a small number. So thank you everybody around the world and here on LinkedIn, the YouTubers who are watching.
Josh Matthews:We can't wait to see you in January. We hope that you're going to tune in early. I think it's the third. I'll have to double check, but it's going to be two weeks from today and we're going to be launching a whole new giveaway for about a dozen people to get the kind of training that we talked about tonight. It's the kind of training to develop those VA skills and develop those interpersonal skills. On a six month program. It's going to be a hundred percent free, so we're so super excited about that. Can't wait to see each of you next year on this program. And that's it for 2024, by 2024. We will see you next year.
