January 17, 2024 • 55 mins
Join us on an expedition through the Salesforce ecosystem with Jon Siegel, the financial analyst turned Vice President at Auxano Technology Consultants. His journey is an inspiration for admins with a passion and drive for growing in the ecosystem. We have the pleasure of learning how new admins can find their early success with freelance work and talk about what the future of the admin role looks like.
We unravel the art of productizing services and the proactive approach needed to thrive as a freelancer and discuss how to harness your technical prowess to meet client needs by fostering deeper engagement and uncovering new opportunities. Plus, we tackle the hot topic of the "clicks not code" movement, contemplating its influence on the job market and the perpetual growth required in the vibrant Salesforce ecosystem.
As we close this chapter, the conversation shifts to the potent mix of data quality, AI, and the pivotal role of Salesforce admins. With the industry's landscape ever-changing, we emphasize the significance of data management skills and its impact on career trajectories. Moreover, the value of soft skills and business acumen in leveraging Salesforce solutions is highlighted. So, come with an inquisitive mind, leave with a wellspring of knowledge, and consider this your invitation to enrich your Salesforce journey.
Jon Siegel has a diverse work experience spanning various industries and roles. Jon currently holds the position of Vice President at Auxano Technology Consultants, a Salesforce Gold consulting partner. Their role involves creating custom solutions for businesses and focusing on operational excellence and scalability.
Jon Siegel holds a Bachelor's Degree in Finance from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo. In addition to their degree, they have obtained various certifications including a Salesforce Certified Administrator (SCA) from Salesforce in May 2023, a Lean Six Sigma-Green Belt from MoreSteam.com LLC in 2017, and a Real Estate License-Arizona from the Arizona Department of Real Estate in July 2016.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Good morning and good afternoon.
My name is Jacob Catalano, andwelcome to another episode of
Admins of Tomorrow.
While the goal of this show isto shine a light on the next
generation of admin, I reallyalso want to help share new and
innovative ways for admins toultimately thrive in this
ecosystem.
There are more admins out therethan ever before, and finding
(00:37):
ways to stand out when you'retrying to find your first
opportunity is so important, andin this week's episode, that's
exactly what we're going to talkabout.
Today we sit down with JohnSiegel to talk through their
journey in the ecosystem, fromworking as a financial analyst,
moving to working for Salesforceto now being the vice president
of a Salesforce Gold ConsultingPartner.
(00:59):
This was the first time I hadthe pleasure of sitting down
with John and, honestly, it wasone of the most fun
conversations I've had in awhile.
Getting to hear their passionabout Salesforce and their path
of getting started as afreelance admin was so inspiring
.
It's always a blast to hearadmin stories and how they got
(01:19):
started, but I love it when wecan think about the future of
Salesforce and think about howadmins in the ecosystem are
leveling up and finding newcareers and ultimately finding
ways to be their own bosses.
So, without further ado, let'smeet John.
John Siegel has a diverse workexperience spanning various
industries and roles.
John currently holds theposition of vice president at
(01:43):
Oxxano Technology Consultants, aSalesforce Gold Consulting
Partner.
Their role involves creatingcustom solutions for businesses
and focusing on operationalexcellence and scalability.
John holds a bachelor's degreein finance from California
Polytechnic State University.
In addition to their degree,they have obtained various
(02:03):
certifications, including aSalesforce Certified
Administrator from Salesforce, aLean Six Sigma Green Belt from
MoorSteamcom LLC and a realestate license from the Arizona
Department of Real Estate.
So let's not waste any more timeand dive in Exactly.
(02:25):
Well, like I said before, thankyou so much for taking the time
out of your day to join me forthis podcast, for joining me for
this interview.
Kiro spoke very highly of you,and so I'm very, very interested
in again kind of what we weretalking about via email.
(02:47):
This whole premise is aboutfinding the admins of tomorrow,
finding people who have been inthe ecosystem, who are trying to
kind of, without soundingcliche, blaze their own trails.
Finding people who are.
We can shine a spotlight on newpeople in the ecosystem.
So, to get started, before wekind of dive into the topic
(03:09):
which is all around the futureof CRM and how Salesforce is
going to be shaping the futureof relationships between
Salesforce and its customers.
I'd love for you to introduceyourself for our audience and
kind of share your backgroundand kind of how you got into
working with Salesforce.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, I think that in terms of quote unquote, blazing
your own trail, mine is probablynot your everyday story and so
it's good Love it.
So I'll kind of tell you whereI am today and then backtrack.
I mean today I am vicepresident at Oxano Technology
Consultants, so we are a fullyregistered, licensed summit
(03:50):
Salesforce partner, which I'msure the audience probably knows
that world and I know you knowthat world of partner
recognition and all of thatstuff and partnering with
Salesforce.
So once they close business orhave current clients that expand
, then we come in, brought infor managed services or project
implementations and all of thatjazz.
(04:11):
Our firm is a little bitdifferent than the everyday
Salesforce consulting firm inthat we also offer full stack
development as well, and so wehave a team of about 350 people
as a company, nationwide andabroad.
I would say about half of themare full stack and half of them
(04:33):
are Salesforce, and that's kindof in line with our revenue.
Actually, too, I know we marketourselves as a Salesforce
consulting firm, but Ipso facto,typically someone needs
something else, like a mobileapp developed or an ERP or some
sort of AWS infrastructurewarehouse, something along those
lines.
So we support that too, whichhas been kind of fun to get into
(04:56):
.
But my journey with started withSalesforce and that's kind of
where my focus is at the companyand I, like I said, I took the
non traditional route, in that Iwas a sales guy, so I actually
started at Salesforce being auser for a company called Zillow
.
So Zillow is a huge Salesforceshop.
(05:17):
That's cool, yeah, and I.
So before Zillow, I wasactually at Gartner, and Gartner
does not have their own CRM, ordid not at the time.
I don't know what they have now.
It was a homegrown solutionthat no one really ever used,
and so it was to me.
Crm was I don't, I'm not goingto use this.
(05:38):
I've there's no point in meusing it.
It doesn't do anything, itdoesn't give my leadership
anything, my leadership.
I track all my leads on anExcel spreadsheet and talk to my
manager sitting next to me.
This was pre COVID, and whatkind of deals do you have in the
pipeline?
And so when I moved to Zillow,it was just like my world
changed completely, whereeverything kind of my role went
(05:59):
digital, with just introducingSalesforce and that you know my
manager can assign me leads andsend me a link to the Salesforce
record and I can see everythingin every single bit of
information, if they've been aclient before, if they haven't,
and we use Salesforce andoutreach at the time and so that
kind of those two programsreally allowed me to excel and I
(06:23):
loved Salesforce.
And then Zillow.
You know I was sellingmultifamily advertising
basically and it was in COVIDand in COVID multifamily
apartments and you know the highrises in New York City, boston,
those areas are have weight hadwaiting lists.
Everyone wanted to move intothem.
And so Zillow, you know, wasnot doing good and I was just,
(06:48):
you know, I was like I don'treally want to be here anymore.
And then I was like, well, whatdo I want to do?
I really love technology, Ilove Salesforce and how it
propelled my business at Zillow.
And so I actually had friendsthat worked at Salesforce and I
said, hey, are you hiring?
And they said, yeah, absolutely, we're always hiring, of course
.
And so I went through theinterview process and got on
(07:12):
boarded there and was a accountexecutive in the growth business
space for Salesforce out of theDallas office.
And so I was actually at thesource for about two years.
I was at Salesforce and a salesrep and loved every second of it
, loved the Ohana culture, lovedjust, you can bring your own
(07:34):
unique ideas to solve thechallenges of your clients and
then use Salesforce as theengine to do so Was just so fun
for me, coming from more of atraditional sales role where you
had all these procedures andguidelines and you can kind of
be your own person still andmanage your own business within
a massive multi-billion dollarconglomerate.
But then I kind of you know,it's like I'm kind of ADD hyper,
(07:58):
and so I always look for thenext thing.
And so I was like, okay, I'mkind of bored of this now.
And so I was like, well, what'sthe next best thing is sales?
No, I don't really want to dosales.
Well, I love doing my Harborcruise demos of sales cloud for
my sales, for my clients atSalesforce.
Maybe I should be a solutionsengineer at Salesforce.
And so I went down the path oftrying to become kind of switch
(08:22):
roles from sales to solutionengineering.
And then I was like, well, Ialso love small business and I
want to be my own business, Iwant to be an entrepreneur, I
want to own my own company.
And so I completely just felloff the ledge, basically, so to
say, and quit Salesforcecompletely and was living off of
(08:43):
my stock share that Salesforcehad offered and got my admin
certification online andtrailhead.
And basically I felt like I wasin college again all over for a
month doing focus on forcetests and YouTube and living
inside of trailhead.
And just you know, thegamification is unreal in
(09:05):
Salesforce, which is what I love.
And so it's just like you knowyou just you finish one and you
just keep having to go back formore.
You just have a bag of chips.
It's like you can't just haveone chip, you have to have the
whole bag if you open it.
And so I just I just fell inlove with just doing more and
more and more and finding moretopics and more badges that were
interested of me and I postedmy services of just doing little
(09:27):
quick starts of sales cloud andservice cloud and par dot on
Upwork and was just gettingcontracts and was just a
contract worker.
And then I had the opportunityto partner with a company that
was already established in themarketplace but was trying to
build out Salesforce for more ofthe small and medium business
space, and been with that wasoxana, and been with them for
(09:50):
about six months now and youknow loving every second of
being able to still build outmore of a strategic business
practice, having employees torely on as well, and still
pursuing my what I really loveto do, which is the actual
configuration and development ofSalesforce for customers.
So kind of a lot of differentpaths taken and probably not
(10:11):
your average path.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
No, not, not, not that I've heard of in the
interviews I've had so far, butI really like that story in that
you went from being asalesperson, which means you
have to feel comfortable beingin uncomfortable situations.
You have to feel okay, kind ofputting yourself out there,
accepting rejection if it comesyour way and just kind of always
(10:35):
looking forward to the nextopportunity.
But you are different in theregard to you, like the
technical.
So many of the salespeople I'veworked with and have engaged
with just have zero desire tolearn about the technical and
learn about kind of what makesthe system tick, how to
(10:55):
implement sales, cloud, servicecloud, marketing cloud from the
ground up.
I'm curious for you and yourkind of learning the background
to then get on up work.
What do you think were some ofyour bigger benefits or
accomplishments when you werekind of getting started out,
when you were going through thatcontractor phase?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think that there's two things that stick out in my
mind of what I did was one Iproductized consulting in a
sense of hey, I'm not going tochart like on up work, right,
$150, $100 an hour, $75 an hourand it's just, that's the rate,
right, but I would packagethings to do.
(11:40):
So, if you want me to do youremail integration or if you want
me to do an experience cloudsite that has X, Y and Z, like I
would productize my servicesand not just say here's this
ambiguous number and you can useme whenever you want to.
No, I'm being brought on to dothis specific task.
(12:00):
And then also during that task,my sales brain kicks in right
Towards the end of I'm going touncover, based on the technical
experience, what else do theyneed to do If they need to fix
their flows, if they're onclassic, they need to upgrade to
lightning, I need to prepare apitch.
So now my sales brain turned onright and so, having
productized my services and thenhaving the ability to sell them
(12:23):
further, to continue thatengagement, because I think
contractors the biggest problemand a lot of I think a lot of
admins start out in thatcontract phase of just picking
up little things here and there,instead of kind of getting a
full-time admin position, whichis potentially the end goal, or
consulting services withwhatever you want to be kind of
the two buckets is you just youdon't know when your next
(12:46):
paycheck is going to come.
And that's very risky,especially in today's economy,
especially if you have a familyand kids and you don't have a
big backing and savings and allof that.
And so trying to get as many ofthese products as possible and
then trying to figure out thenext move in the back of your
brain of when, what am I goingto do after this?
Or how am I going to set thisup so that other people can come
(13:08):
in and not make it so technicalthat only I can fix it.
Which is what I don't likeabout consulting and development
is people can make it sotechnical and so specific to
them that only they know how tofix it.
But how can I, how can I layerin something else?
And then, also, going on thatsame note, the other side is
(13:30):
being proactive with my admin.
I think an admin, I think a lotof people and me, to start out,
was like okay, I got mycertification to be an admin?
Where's all the work?
Why am I not getting paid?
Like, shouldn't everyone justcome to me?
Like what is going on?
I just assumed that if I spentall this time getting an admin,
(13:51):
like that was like getting adegree and then also having a
place for a job lined up, whichis just completely not the case
and it's a harsh reality.
And so how can I be moreproactive in my reach and kind
of again put that sales hat onbut also understand someone's
environment?
On Upwork, it's a lot of smallmedium business.
They don't want to pay for aconsulting service to come in
(14:13):
and have that really heavy liftand heavy cost.
And so what can you bring tothe table of?
I need some user provisioning,some reporting, some dashboards.
Oh well, how are your securityand permissions?
Or let's do a health check.
Or let's use Salesforceoptimizer to come in and just
kind of give you a report of thestatus.
And let's, let's do an ERD,which will take more time, which
(14:35):
takes more, which you get paidmore, but then that also gives
you a good foundation to reallybuild that relationship with the
client instead of hey, I'm justin here doing some work and I'm
leaving.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I love that and that makes that's exactly the right
mentality to kind of have, butit takes that experience, that
sales hat to kind of know.
These are the steps I need totake.
My follow up to that, though,and is kind of around how are
you defining your value?
So you're on Upwork or a lot ofthe even not even just Upwork,
(15:08):
but really on any of these kindof I'm a freelance consultant,
hire me out sites and servicesthat are out there.
A lot of times you kind of haveyour profile there.
You give them your backgroundof here's what I know, here's
what I can do, here's my rate.
Maybe to your point, youpackage how you do certain work
together.
How are you recommending folkslike that define that value, to
(15:32):
figure out what should thatnumber be?
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, I don't know if this is best practice I don't
think that I'm a best practicekind of guy at this point but I
can tell you what I did, whichwas, you know, the market
dictates the price.
And so I went on Upwork and Iwas like well, what's the
average rate?
Or Salesforce been right, likeeveryone uses Salesforce, been
understanding hourly rates,taking Upworks, charge out of it
(15:57):
and then dictating my actualhourly rate that way.
But then on the back end, whenI was studying for my admin exam
, what helped me the most was torelate it to my personal life.
So I would create dev workswhich are free to create, and I
would just create differentprojects, like I had.
I wanted to digitize my recipes, for I love to cook and so I
(16:23):
just create custom objects forall my recipes and have my own
ingredients and I can trackevery time I made this and then
the caloric intake, and I wantedto do it for weight loss and so
, like I see, that's really coolyeah.
And so like, and then, like, Ihad my dogs as users.
So, like my dogs names areTortuga and Lola.
So it'd be like, oh, lola madehamburgers or Lola's food intake
(16:44):
.
Like I just humanizedtechnology into my life and that
helped me very, very easilyunderstand what I was doing and
then could do it on the back end.
But then also from that I wasunderstanding how many hours it
took me.
Right, when you're starting out, things take more time than
someone who's five, 10 years inthe role.
So I just learned how long itwould take me, how long would it
(17:07):
take me, to provision an org,to set up the users, to create
those custom fields, and thenalso, how many custom fields do
you think are really needed in,you know, in a company, right,
because you could could varycompletely based off of that and
so.
But then what I did was how doI figure out?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
that number.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And so I just typed in Salesforce Quick Starts on
Google, which everywhere hasthem, and so, and they have the
description of them.
And so I basically took thedescription of the Salesforce
Quick Starts from all theseconsultants and took a range of
prices starting from 3000 to15,000.
There's such a wide range,average average.
Those out took the descriptionsof each of them, what I was
(17:50):
comfortable doing, and thenproductize that, and so I didn't
reinvent the wheel.
I basically just took otherpeople's work, what the market
was dictating, the way that Isaw if people had a lot of
success was based on theirreviews, so if they had more
reviews.
You know our reviews are alwaysambiguous, the actual content
(18:13):
of the reviews or mean nothing.
But on Salesforce every reviewhas to be tied to a project.
I believe, or most of them do,and so you can get in the
partner community.
So you can see, okay, thiscompany is offering this Quick
Start, but let me go back andlook at their reviews Seems like
they're getting a lot ofbusiness, so whatever they're
(18:33):
doing is working from amarketing perspective.
So let me build that into myprice and let me use theirs as a
model for building mine.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I love that and, to your point, we're not trying to
reinvent the wheel.
By no means are we necessarilygiving the best practice advice
in this situation to yourearlier point but at the same
time we're not doing anything.
That's super difficult, that'snot just kind of I said it on
the last episode the best thingsthat we are like figuring out
(19:07):
when we are evolving as adminsare the really easy.
Oh crap.
I wish I thought of that kindof things Like we're not trying
to do anything different.
So I really appreciate thatinsight around.
Take three, four hours of work,do a little bit of research on
what other people are doing inthe ecosystem and try to make it
your own.
(19:27):
Don't plagiarize but at thesame time find that balance that
makes sense for you and usewhat works.
We're all trying to help eachother out.
So you've had, as you'vehighlighted, an amazing journey
to kind of touch on a lot ofdifferent points inside of this
Salesforce ecosystem.
I'm curious your take on howyou think Salesforce has evolved
(19:54):
from when you first started tonow in being a tool to shape the
customer experience and whereyou're kind of seeing that going
over the next few years.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, I mean that's the hot topic.
I think that's a loadedquestion.
What I think is interesting ismy CEO, adox Zano.
He was actually one of thefirst clients of Salesforce.
It was actually really cool to.
Maybe you can interview him too.
I'm sure he would happily be apart of it.
But I would think it was like2002 when in one of his
(20:27):
companies he bought Salesforceand it was fun.
It's just not night and daywhat it is today.
It's back then.
It was an online Rolodex usingthe cloud to be able to capture
sales data and I remember ifthey had a problem he said that
they would call in the supportline I know like a 1-800 number
(20:49):
and someone from San Franciscowould pick up and they would
troubleshoot on the phone in SanFrancisco.
Wow, you don't get that anymoreno which is good for us as
admins and consultants.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah 100%.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, but I mean from that which was I was not even a
part of, to my journey, startedas a user, a seller, and now a
user again for more of aleadership capacity and then
also a developer andconfigurator.
I've just kind of doneeverything within the ecosystem
(21:23):
and I see it shaping as not aCRM.
I think that CRM is inSalesforce.
I always told my clientsSalesforce yes, salesforce is in
the name, but we're not thatanymore.
We don't compete with the hubspots and the pipe drives of the
world anymore.
It's a full, robust platform tomanage every single aspect of
(21:47):
your business in one place.
And so where I think thedifference of Salesforce is to
the other ones is maybe the hubspot to the pipe drives focus
more on aesthetics User maybe itlooks nicer, there's some
pictures there or something likethat.
But where Salesforce investstheir dollars is in the backend.
From an admin perspective,clicks, not code.
(22:08):
So much more talent that cancome into the marketplace from
all these different backgrounds.
Like myself, from a businessbackground, I didn't have to
have a computer science degreeto learn how to configure
Salesforce, which was awesome tobe able to give them that
opportunity, but then also froma user perspective, having the
(22:31):
ability to connect all of thesedifferent softwares that you use
and have it in one place towhere, if you see a customer,
you can see, yes, theirinformation, which is a CRM, but
you can also interact with thatinformation, and interact with
that information from anaccounting standpoint, from a
service standpoint, from amarketing standpoint, from an
(22:52):
operation standpoint.
It just gives you so muchflexibility to have everything
in one place, which that, to me,increases adoption, more so
than some colors or somepictures on another page that
other people might wanna go to.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
That makes a lot of sense and I like how you
highlighted that we are seeingthings go from the older days of
to do some more advanced things.
You needed code, you needed Apex, you needed SQL SOQL, you
needed to have some knowledge ofthat.
Now we are shiftingdramatically into the click not
(23:31):
code kind of focus of being anadmin.
So, to that point, how do youthink the introduction of
Clixnot Code, some of the APIintegration, some of the new
advanced analytics, with moreadmins being able to come into
the ecosystem to learn the toolsbecause it is night and day
(23:53):
easier than it used to be how doyou feel that kind of on the
two part or one for thecustomer's purchasing sales
force, it's going to you'regoing to see more of an adoption
of this Clixnot Code and you'regoing to see fewer devs hired
but at the same time more adminscoming in and kind of
(24:14):
saturating the job pool.
So I'm curious your take on thepros and cons of what that
looks like with fewer devs andmore admins who don't know dev,
what that kind of is lookinglike or what you think that
might look like.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, and where I don't know and where I struggle
just kind of in this wholesentiment is is AI going to
replace admins?
That's kind of the questionprobably on the back of every
admins mind, every consultant'smind of am I going to be out of
a job in 10 years?
And I don't think we're thereyet but where the developers I
(24:55):
mean I just with AI being soopen to the public, I don't.
Maybe in five years it'll bethat way where you don't need
dev, but I do think you stillneed it.
You still need to have thatdeveloper that does that apex,
those classes, those triggers,apis like that.
It's not going to go away rightnow until we can somehow figure
(25:18):
out a way to secure that datafrom being widespread.
You know, I talked to someonelast week who fired one of their
developers because he wasplugging in their proprietary
code into chat GBT to fix the,to fix a bug.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's an unfortunatefumble, but that is a fumble
right there Shifting a littlebit, though.
Actually, no, go ahead.
I want you to finish with that,no.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I was going to talk about the other part of that,
which was kind of the saturationof admins entering the
marketplace, maybe through AI,through clicks, not code,
through Salesforce's motto orjust in general.
Just, you know, people cominginto the marketplace.
You know, I think that it is,over the years, become a very
heavily commoditized space.
(26:07):
Just transparently, we'reseeing it in the consulting
space, right, like why would yougo with us when you can choose
20,000 other people?
There's the value, and thatgoes back to what you can bring
beyond the actual code, right, Ithink anyone.
You can probably find 10 peoplein a room that could probably
do flows and can do what you'reasking of them, but what it?
(26:30):
How is it going to apply toyour business?
That's the real value thatadmins, developers, consultants
can bring is translatingbusiness goals into Salesforce
production and then not onlySalesforce production but then
also track, like having usersadopt that and use it and being
able to leverage that within thebusiness.
And so admins, more than evertoday, need to be more proactive
(26:52):
, and I think that a large partof admins is not just the behind
the scenes work, it's actuallytraining, having weekly sessions
with your team, whether you'rea full-time in-house admin or
you're a consultant on a managedservice, because, hey, I just
had this new feature come out.
I want to test it, let me get apilot program and let me train
(27:13):
them and let me get super usersand all of this like that is
something that is not talkedabout enough, which is something
that I really strive toprioritize within our business
today.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
No, that makes I really like how you called that
out, because there are a lot ofadmins, as you mentioned, and
it's a matter of which ones aretaking that next step in the
journey.
So for me I was very sourgrapes about growing as an admin
(27:47):
.
I knew enough to get my jobdone.
I knew what my business neededfor right there in that moment.
But I wasn't necessarilythinking one, two, three years
down into the future justbecause I was going a thousand
miles an hour and I was justtrying to solve the next problem
in front of me.
There was not a whole lot ofstrategy of how can we evolve
(28:09):
our org, how can we enhance andmake things more efficient.
It was just solving all the newproblems as they come up.
So to your point of we have tobe better about thinking about
the business so that we aren'tsaturating the kind of talent
pool out there.
(28:29):
How do you recommend adminsfind that kind of have that
click without jobs job jumping?
Because I know for me I had togo through a lot of different
journeys to get where I am nowand now it clicks.
Five years ago I would love tostay at the company I was
(28:50):
originally with and use myknowledge now to help them grow
a lot faster.
However, you don't know whatyou don't know, so I'm curious
your take on how do people getthat click moment?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, I think for me, I think we can take Salesforce,
we can take admin, we can takeit all out of the picture and
talk about the bigger problem,which is a psychological group
think atmosphere and a businessatmosphere and culture
perspective as really what theissue is.
And so it's tough if you're inkind of the culture of your
(29:26):
business is very reactive.
If I say reactive thensomething breaks.
I need to fix it or a new useris onboarded, I need to add them
, or I need to do my weeklyreport updates and dashboard
updates and all that jazz whatan admin typically is.
But then you have that otherpiece, which is the proactive
piece.
I found that two things.
(29:49):
One is if I'm doing the samething over and over again to me
that's the definition ofinsanity right, doing the same
thing over and over again,expecting the same results.
If the head of sales keepsasking me for this one thing
over and over, and, over andover again, I should probably
stop and take a look at like Iwonder if I can create a flow to
automate this right, justhaving that one extra step of
(30:10):
okay, there's going to be a timewhere I'm not going to keep
doing this forever.
I need to get more time back inmy day, and so can I just let me
automate this in a sandbox andtest it and see if it works.
And if it's a culture that'snot responsive, then just put it
into prod right, Like that'swhat I have done before.
And the other side is findingadmins.
(30:34):
I feel like they all havethings that they love.
They hate.
They're going to find admins.
I love flows, Admins I hateflows.
I hate doing this, this, that,whatever it may be.
And so finding that hobby foryou that you really love and
treating it as a hobby, andtaking initiative to grow
yourself as an admin, bepromoted to senior admin,
(30:56):
whatever your career path is.
It takes that extra level ofinitiative, and in order to find
that initiative and drive, youneed to have passion for it.
And so if you can findsomething that you really love
whether it's a flow, whetherit's something that you want to
learn and then take that back toyour business, that would be my
recommendation.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
That is the ideal recommendation.
I adore that.
Sometimes I'm thinking aboutmaking this podcast like a
YouTube series, because I wish Icould highlight these reactions
of big clapping at theseanswers.
Because you're 100% right, youcan take all the time in the
(31:36):
world to learn how to enhanceyour system, but if you're
company or just you aren'twanting to be proactive or think
proactively or promote thatmentality, it's not going to
happen.
So often are we talking abouton the podcast or even just in
(31:58):
the user groups I go to, we talkmore about the personal, the
soft skills.
I don't want to say anyone canlearn Salesforce, but as I've
talked to a lot of peopleactually most anyone can learn
Salesforce it comes down to thekind of soft skills and those
how you manage your time, yourcareer and just work with other
(32:22):
people that really determine howthe solution is going to be
successful.
So I really like that kind ofbreakdown game.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, I think too from me as you can tell by my
journey of being in sales to nowbeing on the technical side is
you got to have passion for whatyou do.
You can't be an admin to getinto this and say I want to make
money.
Like those, there's going to bea pool of people that are
saying you know, I think I canmake, I'm making 60 a year and I
want to make 75.
I'm going to get thecertification, I'm going to make
(32:50):
my 75, my nine to five be done.
Those are the people that aregoing to be the commodity, right
.
They're going to struggle tofind a job.
They're going to struggle intheir job.
They're never going to grow,they're never going to do
anything.
It's just the classic Americanjob of nine to five.
Go home, get my pension andleave, right.
And then you have the otherside of the people that are
(33:11):
genuinely interested in becomingan admin and they have other
goals.
They want to become anarchitect, they want to become a
developer.
Those are the people that youwant in your organizations and
those are the people that arereally going to make a
difference for you and foreveryone.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, completely, completely agree with that,
shifting a little bit on to thetopics of the every word, this
question, shifting the subject alittle bit to talk through the
balance of how we are using AIand how admins are using
(33:45):
automations to make their liveseasier.
We just went through and talkedabout how you have to have
passion, you have to haveinterest and intrigue in growing
, and maybe it's a matter of, ifyou're definition, of insanity
you're doing the same thing overand over again.
Maybe automate some of this.
At what point, though, are we,as admins, working with sales
(34:08):
marketing operations and gettingto automated again?
Thinking of how Salesforce andhow we are no longer just a
self-employed person Automatedagain.
Thinking of how Salesforce andhow we are no longer just a CRM
this is, again avoiding thecliches, but this is customer
360.
We are having touch pointswithin this technology that can
do all facets of the facets ofthe business, instead of just
sales cloud.
(34:28):
How are we making thingsautomated but still personal,
having a level of authenticitywithin our relationships with
our end users, to make sure thatit's not just a?
I can automate 80% of my joband I'm twiddling my thumb at my
desk.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yeah, and I think that we talk about this a lot in
my business and practice andthe best analogy that I give
people is if you think about acar, right, you have the
gasoline, is your data, right,takes to run the car, and then
the car itself is the engine,whatever it's producing, but
(35:08):
then you still need to havesomeone to steer the car and
drive the car and stop the carand all of that.
So it still takes three thingsin order for it to be leveraged
successfully.
It takes data, which is thebiggest crux to this whole AI
thing and why I think everyoneshould not be talking about AI.
Everyone should be talkingabout data, because the amount
of organizations and clientsthat I see, that I see their
(35:30):
data.
It is unstructured, it isduplicative.
It is just not where it needsto be to actually extrapolate
the data you need to actuallymake better informed decisions,
for AI is the biggest problemthat I see with this whole thing
.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
But you need all three.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
You need the human element, you need the AI, you
need the natural language, youneed the machine learning, but
then you also need the data.
You need those three things towork in tandem for something to
actually be productive andsuccessful, especially you're
talking about from a sales andmarketing perspective.
I think human interaction isgoing to be so important, at
least coming up into the nextcouple of years, because even
(36:10):
now, like when out, if it's assimple as customer service on
AT&T or my car insurance orwhatever I am trying to like
point out maybe this is me beingin the industry, but I'm trying
to figure out if they're AI ornot.
So I'll ask some extraquestions or make it a little
bit more like generic in myslogan, or just try to see if
(36:33):
they understand, and a lot ofthe times I do so.
To me it screams that it's anactual person, but it's just.
I think you're just never goingto get rid of the human element
.
I just don't.
I don't think that's possible.
I think you're going toautomate business processes.
With it, you're going to makebetter informed decisions.
So, instead of a salespersoncalling whatever if they're
(36:55):
calling 20 people a day, right,kind of aimlessly or maybe
they're sorting it by revenuewhat if you call 20 people that
you know are interested inSalesforce and that you know why
, and that you can understandwho their business is, why their
business is, so your conversionrates are higher?
That, to me, is what AI isgoing to bring to sales and
marketing group, not automateyour business.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And you made a comment that I really liked of.
We can talk for hours aboutdata.
It shouldn't be about well,what about the AI?
What about the automations?
Is your data clean?
And you need that person inthere to make sure the data is
usable.
Shifting a little bit to kind offocus and highlight, because we
(37:41):
could have a whole hour longconversation talking about data
cleanliness, I bet, but kind ofputting it into the last, kind
of like 15, 20 minutes of thisepisode, though, how do you
believe the job of an admin isgoing to evolve from the person
to create the automations andorganize the backend and all
that to be the data manager?
(38:04):
Because I say this specificallybecause I had an example where
someone came up to me when I wasat one of the world tours a
little while back and they weresaying hey, how many, what's
your team of admins look like?
And I was telling them, for ateam of 100 to 150, I have about
three to four admins, and thenit just kind of gets
(38:24):
incrementally larger for a teamof 500 to probably recommend
like a team of five to 10 admins, depending on how much data
you're doing, but that'sseparate from, like, the data
management team, because thedata management team has their
own hodgepodge of dealing withwhether they use data cloud or
they're organizing fromSalesforce through like a
different snowflake, like datadata warehouse tool and so on,
(38:48):
so forth.
And this person just came to melike, oh, I'm just the admin,
but I'm also being told I'm thedata manager and I'm supposed to
clean up all this stuff.
And now my day to day, whichwas just fixing tickets, is 100%
cleaning up junk data.
So I'm curious your take onadmins versus data managers.
(39:08):
Are they one the same?
How should they be separatedfor for the newer admins coming
on?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, see, that's a yeah.
That's a tough question, Ithink, to answer, and I think
we're still figuring it out withthis new AI and data, and you
have your, your admin that's incharge of all this, but then
they're just getting added morestuff to their plate, and so do
they have the actual time tospend?
(39:34):
Do they have the knowledge also?
And so in the Salesforceadministration exam and advanced
administration exam, do theyreally talk about data structure
and data cleanliness?
No, so if you were to go basedoff of Salesforce's you know
procedures and policies, youwould say it's out of scope.
I would just say out of scope.
(39:54):
But from a practical standpointof you know small media,
businesses or any business,you're just going to wear more
hats than one, and so you'regoing to have to figure out how
to do it, and so I definitelyrecommend data analysis and data
management as a really strongway to even differentiate
yourself.
Going back to you know admins orcommodity, how do you
(40:15):
differentiate yourself?
Well, if you have an extralevel of skill set where hack
and structure and clean yourdata for you understand what
kind of the end goal is rightand then from back there, then
we can use, start to structuredata in a way that's going to
make sense in the future.
I think about, like marketingcloud and Einstein prediction
(40:37):
and all of that stuff.
There's all these programs thateven then themselves require
time to analyze the data.
And so you AI is.
It's not instantaneous, whichmost people might think, because
they get jet chat, gpt and justpulls data from the web.
That's public information, butit actually takes a lot of time
(40:59):
to process, learn, iterate, andyou actually have to.
You have to train it.
You have to train it tounderstand what the output you
want is.
What are you trying to determine?
Am I trying to determineconversion rates?
Well, I have to figure out whatvariables are related to
conversion rates.
Is it what the correlation is?
And it's almost a statisticalanalysis problem and takes me
(41:19):
back to when I was a financialanalyst of running regressions
all day long, like it's, that's,that's, but that's out of scope
of the everyday admin.
And then now you're now you'rekind of leaning towards well, is
Salesforce administration forfor every?
Can anyone do it?
Or anyone do data analyst is?
Is Salesforce going to come outwith more certifications or
(41:43):
increase the scope of an admin?
I don't, I don't know, but I doknow that the everyday client
needs, needs that, and so youneed to have that, that
knowledge.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
But to the point you made, though I'm with you 100%.
I am very curious to see howthis pivots, how we look at the
admin exam, and are we going tokeep generalizing that term of
admin or are we going to start?
I mean, I know for me from mypodcast we're called the admins
(42:14):
of tomorrow.
I'm absolutely generalizing itbecause I'm thinking of the
marketing admin, the sales admin, the service admin, the
experience cloud.
I'm thinking of the admin forall of the clouds within the
product suite, whereas when Iget hired for a small mom and
pop shop, they're going to saycool, you're an admin, you, you
(42:35):
are in charge of Salesforce, not, and they not realizing
Salesforce covers.
So many different things, letalone to your other point from
the beginning data, datamanagement and how that is such
an untouched thing as an admin.
That is not something aSalesforce admin has ever had to
(42:55):
think about in the history ofthis career path and now we're
getting data analysts andbusiness analysts and to start
having that mentality, but it'sunfortunately falling under that
admin bucket Right.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And like the way when we were just talking and
thinking about it, and I thinkthat a very easy way to get
started with data management isI think every admin should focus
on efficiency, right?
You'll get requests of hey, canI get a custom field for this,
for this, for this?
And then, lo and behold, you'reon a record and you're got 5500
fields.
Maybe sometimes some of theseSalesforce orgs you can.
(43:31):
I mean, it's just, it's insanehow much data is in there.
And so if you can start to tryto consolidate that and just be
actively thinking about thefields and the relationships and
look up versus master detailand how that, how that affects
once it's closed, because thenhow, like what if you close
(43:51):
something that it deletes therecord on a custom object,
that's a master detail, but youneed that data for to predict
your AI, right, like how?
You just need to be thinkingabout those things While you're
creating it, not necessarilyhave the data management
experience.
Just be thinking about that atthe top of your head.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
I really think that it's it's going to have to be
evolved within trailhead and somany other things.
I don't.
I wish that the everyday adminwas seeing about this, and
that's also part of the reasonwhy I like to have this podcast
out there, because it's a mediumto kind of share these things.
I have had admins come up to meat the user group meetings are
(44:33):
I go to in Dallas, even at thedifferent conferences I speak at
and whatnot, where people aresaying like what are you, what
was your journey?
Like what did you do to learn?
And it's like full transparency.
I have learned more in the lastfour years of me really diving
into the ecosystem, going toconferences and just getting
that hands on experience with arange of companies, way more so
(44:57):
than I did with my quote firstjob.
You just have to be willing andopen to keep learning those new
things and just know that youhave to think efficiently.
You can't just let your movingat 1000 miles an hour
mentalities cause you to stoplearning.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yep, oh, that's the biggest.
So easy once you kind of get ona roll to kind of put the
education on the back burner andget around to it and it's on
your calendar, and then you'repushing it off.
I'll do it on Friday afternoonup, I'll do it on the next
Friday, and everyone's guilty ofthat to some degree.
But I think, now more than ever, education, especially in this
(45:40):
time of uncertainty, isknowledge, is going to be the
most powerful and will alwaysbeen out.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
So I have two more questions before we wrap up,
because we are nearing the endof our time.
The first one is aroundsomething you said the beginning
around.
It's really important tounderstand the business.
You and I are a little bit morelucky in that regard.
Having one been sales side, butalso just being a consultant
and having worked with a widerange of businesses, we have a
(46:10):
little bit more of a leg up tounderstand what each business
really should be going for andlike their direction of growth
from a small to a medium to anenterprise size company.
For the new admin, the thing weharp on on this podcast is you
can learn the technical all daylong.
Go to Google, go a trailhead,go to YouTube.
(46:32):
Learning the technical is nothard.
It's the soft skills, it'sunderstanding what a business
needs.
How would you recommend thatadmin of tomorrow?
Go and try to get thatunderstanding of what should a
small business be looking at?
What should a medium sizebusiness be looking at?
What should an enterprisebusiness be looking at?
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Yeah, I think the easiest way to get the
information but the hardestthing to do would be want to
talk to them, talk to thecustomer, right, but that's not
as easily accessible.
The next best thing wouldprobably be to go to conferences
right, the world tours are allfree Salesforce conferences and
(47:11):
you learn a lot.
And they have industryspecifics right.
They segment small, mediumbusiness, large business, some
company highlights.
They always have some sort ofcompany that's highlighting
something that has some demosomewhere, right, and so from
there you can start tounderstand.
It's pretty interesting to go toa world tour, like we were in
Chicago one a few weeks ago andseeing more yell, big Lori L use
(47:36):
case and how they have everysingle thing of the customer 360
.
But then we went to a small,medium business happy hour and
they said it almost turned themoff and I think that that that
something very much to note isSalesforce is so big and can do
so much, but you have to bite itoff one piece at a time and you
(47:58):
don't have to have everythingright.
You can start out with thesales cloud and so going to
those industry specific sessionsor not industry, but you know
revenue specific sessions allowsyou to see what they care about
the most.
I think, maybe from a I don'tknow, what I would do is also
(48:18):
look at demos, for maybe, likethe hub spots in the pipe drives
of the world that are moresmall to medium business focused
, and see, you know, they aredoing a lot of research because
they're trying to capture thatmarket.
And so what, what does theirproduct have?
And then how can I relate thatto Salesforce?
And what does it?
What does it have, what does itnot have?
(48:39):
So that way I can start toarticulate the solution that a
small media business wouldthrive on.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
That makes complete sense.
That is I like that youmentioned the competitors
because, again, this podcast isab in tomorrow.
Salesforce paid my paycheck,but at the end of the day, we
shouldn't be afraid to look atall of the solutions are out
there and see what othercompanies are doing.
(49:06):
I used to say before Salesforcereally enhanced all their
products is that, oh, they allgenerally do the same thing.
It's how you use them.
That is still true to an extent, but there are definitely some
things that you can do now andSalesforce, that you can't do
with the other guys.
So you said perfectly, don'tbite off more than you can chew
(49:26):
when it comes to figuring outwhat's going to be the most
efficient Usage of theseplatforms.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I think also I mean, I'm a firm
believer of you.
You are the biggest expert andyou probably don't know it you
are a user of all of thesetechnologies, and so if you take
a look at your Grocery store oranything that you use on a
daily basis, like right, youknow the Amazon of the world,
that they have all of the bellsand whistles.
(49:55):
But if you look at more of themedium-sized businesses that you
work with that you're aCustomer of every day what
technology do they have?
How do they operate theirbusiness?
How, what, what works for them,what doesn't work for them?
So you have all the information.
You just are not thinking aboutit in a personal way.
But how can you relate yourpersonal experiences to your
(50:15):
business Experiences and bridgethat gap in order to make better
informed decisions by youreveryday job is Something that's
very valuable, completely agree.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Well, we are nearing the end of our time.
I have one last question, and Iask this for everyone On the
show.
It's something I like to justkind of call out a nice little
piece of advice for new admins.
So you've had a wonderfuljourney from being on the sales
side to working for themothership herself To then going
(50:47):
into being a VP at aconsultancy.
In that journey, what would bethe one regret you have?
That you wish you could go backto your early admin self and
say this needs to be donedifferently, so that admin of
tomorrow can take that adviceand run with it, not make
similar decisions.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yes, I would say my Biggest regret I guess you could
say is is getting theadministrator certification and
Having all of the knowledge inthe back of my head and then
going and marketing myself for ajob, thinking that my education
(51:30):
is on the back burner now Goingto apply for a job, doing that
for two months, getting thelittle job, but then, oh, you
need actually two moreCertifications to be qualified
for this job.
So if you're already gettingone certification.
You might as well go for more,I I.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Like that and you don't think about that being.
And my story is different inthat I Got an internship.
They said do you need?
We need a part-on and salesforce admin.
I said, sure, why not?
That sounds like fun.
And I Accidental admin my wayinto knowing so much, but it
wasn't until Just within thelast three, four years did I
(52:10):
finally get my cert.
So, on the other end of it, Iwas always learning and always
trying to grow, and I always hadcerts and like the rearview
mirror.
I like that mentality, though,of don't get the certs and then
think that's all you need to getthe job.
You should always want to keeplearning more and, just
regardless wherever job you have, keep getting the certs, keep
(52:33):
going in the trailhead, keepdoing more.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
They're not.
They're not agnostic right, alot of them are.
They build on each other right,and so, if you've already
learned it, you've already spentthe time, which is a lot of
time, I know you might as wellspend the extra week or two to
get the sales cloud consultant,to get the service cloud Consult
, to get the platform, to getthe advanced admin right, you
might as well do it.
There's no Spend a couple hoursa day and do it.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
Yeah, that is fantastic.
Well, thank you so much fortaking the time out of your day
to kind of have a conversationwith me about this.
We've talked about a lot ofthings around how sales force is
shaping relationships, shapingthe future of businesses,
customer relationship.
So, again, thank you forsharing your insights, sharing
(53:20):
your journey with everyone, andI'm really hoping we can bring
you on again at some point inthe future a talk yeah, even
deeper about data management,because that's a topic that I'm
very interested in Gettingpeople's opinions on.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I would love nothing more.
This has been great.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Well, thank you, sir.
You have a great rest of yourday.
We'll talk soon.
Thank you, and that concludesanother episode of admins of
(53:58):
tomorrow.
A Special thanks to our guests,john, for sharing their story
through the ecosystem andletting us pick their brain
about how they got Started andhow future admins can follow in
his footsteps.
If anyone has any interest inlearning more about John or
Oksano Technologies, you canmessage John on LinkedIn or
email us at info at admins oftomorrow comm, to get more
(54:19):
information.
Thank you again for taking thetime to listen.
I know we say this every week,but your support really does
mean the world to us.
If you have any feedback,questions or topic suggestions,
we'd also again love to hearfrom you, so don't hesitate to
connect with us on LinkedIn,twitter or email us at info at
admins of tomorrow comm.
Also, if you or someone youknow would like to be on the
(54:40):
podcast or would like to givesomeone a shout out, please go
to our website, admins oftomorrow comm.
Forward slash, share yourthoughts and fill out our form
to be on the show or give ashout out.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to subscribe, leave
a review and share it with yourfellow trailblazers.
We'd love to get in front of awider Salesforce audience, so
(55:00):
any review and any way you canshare with your fellow
trailblazers would mean theworld to us.
Once again, I'm Jacob Catalano,your host, signing off.
We appreciate you for listeningto admins of tomorrow
trailblazing the next generation.
Good morning and good afternoon.
My name is Jacob Catalano, andwelcome to another episode of
Admins of Tomorrow.
While the goal of this show isto shine a light on the next
generation of admin, I reallyalso want to help share new and
innovative ways for admins toultimately thrive in this
ecosystem.
There are more admins out therethan ever before, and finding
(00:37):
ways to stand out when you'retrying to find your first
opportunity is so important, andin this week's episode, that's
exactly what we're going to talkabout.
Today we sit down with JohnSiegel to talk through their
journey in the ecosystem, fromworking as a financial analyst,
moving to working for Salesforceto now being the vice president
of a Salesforce Gold ConsultingPartner.
(00:59):
This was the first time I hadthe pleasure of sitting down
with John and, honestly, it wasone of the most fun
conversations I've had in awhile.
Getting to hear their passionabout Salesforce and their path
of getting started as afreelance admin was so inspiring
.
It's always a blast to hearadmin stories and how they got
(01:19):
started, but I love it when wecan think about the future of
Salesforce and think about howadmins in the ecosystem are
leveling up and finding newcareers and ultimately finding
ways to be their own bosses.
So, without further ado, let'smeet John.
John Siegel has a diverse workexperience spanning various
industries and roles.
John currently holds theposition of vice president at
(01:43):
Oxxano Technology Consultants, aSalesforce Gold Consulting
Partner.
Their role involves creatingcustom solutions for businesses
and focusing on operationalexcellence and scalability.
John holds a bachelor's degreein finance from California
Polytechnic State University.
In addition to their degree,they have obtained various
(02:03):
certifications, including aSalesforce Certified
Administrator from Salesforce, aLean Six Sigma Green Belt from
MoorSteamcom LLC and a realestate license from the Arizona
Department of Real Estate.
So let's not waste any more timeand dive in Exactly.
(02:25):
Well, like I said before, thankyou so much for taking the time
out of your day to join me forthis podcast, for joining me for
this interview.
Kiro spoke very highly of you,and so I'm very, very interested
in again kind of what we weretalking about via email.
(02:47):
This whole premise is aboutfinding the admins of tomorrow,
finding people who have been inthe ecosystem, who are trying to
kind of, without soundingcliche, blaze their own trails.
Finding people who are.
We can shine a spotlight on newpeople in the ecosystem.
So, to get started, before wekind of dive into the topic
(03:09):
which is all around the futureof CRM and how Salesforce is
going to be shaping the futureof relationships between
Salesforce and its customers.
I'd love for you to introduceyourself for our audience and
kind of share your backgroundand kind of how you got into
working with Salesforce.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, I think that in terms of quote unquote, blazing
your own trail, mine is probablynot your everyday story and so
it's good Love it.
So I'll kind of tell you whereI am today and then backtrack.
I mean today I am vicepresident at Oxano Technology
Consultants, so we are a fullyregistered, licensed summit
(03:50):
Salesforce partner, which I'msure the audience probably knows
that world and I know you knowthat world of partner
recognition and all of thatstuff and partnering with
Salesforce.
So once they close business orhave current clients that expand
, then we come in, brought infor managed services or project
implementations and all of thatjazz.
(04:11):
Our firm is a little bitdifferent than the everyday
Salesforce consulting firm inthat we also offer full stack
development as well, and so wehave a team of about 350 people
as a company, nationwide andabroad.
I would say about half of themare full stack and half of them
(04:33):
are Salesforce, and that's kindof in line with our revenue.
Actually, too, I know we marketourselves as a Salesforce
consulting firm, but Ipso facto,typically someone needs
something else, like a mobileapp developed or an ERP or some
sort of AWS infrastructurewarehouse, something along those
lines.
So we support that too, whichhas been kind of fun to get into
(04:56):
.
But my journey with started withSalesforce and that's kind of
where my focus is at the companyand I, like I said, I took the
non traditional route, in that Iwas a sales guy, so I actually
started at Salesforce being auser for a company called Zillow
.
So Zillow is a huge Salesforceshop.
(05:17):
That's cool, yeah, and I.
So before Zillow, I wasactually at Gartner, and Gartner
does not have their own CRM, ordid not at the time.
I don't know what they have now.
It was a homegrown solutionthat no one really ever used,
and so it was to me.
Crm was I don't, I'm not goingto use this.
(05:38):
I've there's no point in meusing it.
It doesn't do anything, itdoesn't give my leadership
anything, my leadership.
I track all my leads on anExcel spreadsheet and talk to my
manager sitting next to me.
This was pre COVID, and whatkind of deals do you have in the
pipeline?
And so when I moved to Zillow,it was just like my world
changed completely, whereeverything kind of my role went
(05:59):
digital, with just introducingSalesforce and that you know my
manager can assign me leads andsend me a link to the Salesforce
record and I can see everythingin every single bit of
information, if they've been aclient before, if they haven't,
and we use Salesforce andoutreach at the time and so that
kind of those two programsreally allowed me to excel and I
(06:23):
loved Salesforce.
And then Zillow.
You know I was sellingmultifamily advertising
basically and it was in COVIDand in COVID multifamily
apartments and you know the highrises in New York City, boston,
those areas are have weight hadwaiting lists.
Everyone wanted to move intothem.
And so Zillow, you know, wasnot doing good and I was just,
(06:48):
you know, I was like I don'treally want to be here anymore.
And then I was like, well, whatdo I want to do?
I really love technology, Ilove Salesforce and how it
propelled my business at Zillow.
And so I actually had friendsthat worked at Salesforce and I
said, hey, are you hiring?
And they said, yeah, absolutely, we're always hiring, of course
.
And so I went through theinterview process and got on
(07:12):
boarded there and was a accountexecutive in the growth business
space for Salesforce out of theDallas office.
And so I was actually at thesource for about two years.
I was at Salesforce and a salesrep and loved every second of it
, loved the Ohana culture, lovedjust, you can bring your own
(07:34):
unique ideas to solve thechallenges of your clients and
then use Salesforce as theengine to do so Was just so fun
for me, coming from more of atraditional sales role where you
had all these procedures andguidelines and you can kind of
be your own person still andmanage your own business within
a massive multi-billion dollarconglomerate.
But then I kind of you know,it's like I'm kind of ADD hyper,
(07:58):
and so I always look for thenext thing.
And so I was like, okay, I'mkind of bored of this now.
And so I was like, well, what'sthe next best thing is sales?
No, I don't really want to dosales.
Well, I love doing my Harborcruise demos of sales cloud for
my sales, for my clients atSalesforce.
Maybe I should be a solutionsengineer at Salesforce.
And so I went down the path oftrying to become kind of switch
(08:22):
roles from sales to solutionengineering.
And then I was like, well, Ialso love small business and I
want to be my own business, Iwant to be an entrepreneur, I
want to own my own company.
And so I completely just felloff the ledge, basically, so to
say, and quit Salesforcecompletely and was living off of
(08:43):
my stock share that Salesforcehad offered and got my admin
certification online andtrailhead.
And basically I felt like I wasin college again all over for a
month doing focus on forcetests and YouTube and living
inside of trailhead.
And just you know, thegamification is unreal in
(09:05):
Salesforce, which is what I love.
And so it's just like you knowyou just you finish one and you
just keep having to go back formore.
You just have a bag of chips.
It's like you can't just haveone chip, you have to have the
whole bag if you open it.
And so I just I just fell inlove with just doing more and
more and more and finding moretopics and more badges that were
interested of me and I postedmy services of just doing little
(09:27):
quick starts of sales cloud andservice cloud and par dot on
Upwork and was just gettingcontracts and was just a
contract worker.
And then I had the opportunityto partner with a company that
was already established in themarketplace but was trying to
build out Salesforce for more ofthe small and medium business
space, and been with that wasoxana, and been with them for
(09:50):
about six months now and youknow loving every second of
being able to still build outmore of a strategic business
practice, having employees torely on as well, and still
pursuing my what I really loveto do, which is the actual
configuration and development ofSalesforce for customers.
So kind of a lot of differentpaths taken and probably not
(10:11):
your average path.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
No, not, not, not that I've heard of in the
interviews I've had so far, butI really like that story in that
you went from being asalesperson, which means you
have to feel comfortable beingin uncomfortable situations.
You have to feel okay, kind ofputting yourself out there,
accepting rejection if it comesyour way and just kind of always
(10:35):
looking forward to the nextopportunity.
But you are different in theregard to you, like the
technical.
So many of the salespeople I'veworked with and have engaged
with just have zero desire tolearn about the technical and
learn about kind of what makesthe system tick, how to
(10:55):
implement sales, cloud, servicecloud, marketing cloud from the
ground up.
I'm curious for you and yourkind of learning the background
to then get on up work.
What do you think were some ofyour bigger benefits or
accomplishments when you werekind of getting started out,
when you were going through thatcontractor phase?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think that there's two things that stick out in my
mind of what I did was one Iproductized consulting in a
sense of hey, I'm not going tochart like on up work, right,
$150, $100 an hour, $75 an hourand it's just, that's the rate,
right, but I would packagethings to do.
(11:40):
So, if you want me to do youremail integration or if you want
me to do an experience cloudsite that has X, Y and Z, like I
would productize my servicesand not just say here's this
ambiguous number and you can useme whenever you want to.
No, I'm being brought on to dothis specific task.
(12:00):
And then also during that task,my sales brain kicks in right
Towards the end of I'm going touncover, based on the technical
experience, what else do theyneed to do If they need to fix
their flows, if they're onclassic, they need to upgrade to
lightning, I need to prepare apitch.
So now my sales brain turned onright and so, having
productized my services and thenhaving the ability to sell them
(12:23):
further, to continue thatengagement, because I think
contractors the biggest problemand a lot of I think a lot of
admins start out in thatcontract phase of just picking
up little things here and there,instead of kind of getting a
full-time admin position, whichis potentially the end goal, or
consulting services withwhatever you want to be kind of
the two buckets is you just youdon't know when your next
(12:46):
paycheck is going to come.
And that's very risky,especially in today's economy,
especially if you have a familyand kids and you don't have a
big backing and savings and allof that.
And so trying to get as many ofthese products as possible and
then trying to figure out thenext move in the back of your
brain of when, what am I goingto do after this?
Or how am I going to set thisup so that other people can come
(13:08):
in and not make it so technicalthat only I can fix it.
Which is what I don't likeabout consulting and development
is people can make it sotechnical and so specific to
them that only they know how tofix it.
But how can I, how can I layerin something else?
And then, also, going on thatsame note, the other side is
(13:30):
being proactive with my admin.
I think an admin, I think a lotof people and me, to start out,
was like okay, I got mycertification to be an admin?
Where's all the work?
Why am I not getting paid?
Like, shouldn't everyone justcome to me?
Like what is going on?
I just assumed that if I spentall this time getting an admin,
(13:51):
like that was like getting adegree and then also having a
place for a job lined up, whichis just completely not the case
and it's a harsh reality.
And so how can I be moreproactive in my reach and kind
of again put that sales hat onbut also understand someone's
environment?
On Upwork, it's a lot of smallmedium business.
They don't want to pay for aconsulting service to come in
(14:13):
and have that really heavy liftand heavy cost.
And so what can you bring tothe table of?
I need some user provisioning,some reporting, some dashboards.
Oh well, how are your securityand permissions?
Or let's do a health check.
Or let's use Salesforceoptimizer to come in and just
kind of give you a report of thestatus.
And let's, let's do an ERD,which will take more time, which
(14:35):
takes more, which you get paidmore, but then that also gives
you a good foundation to reallybuild that relationship with the
client instead of hey, I'm justin here doing some work and I'm
leaving.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I love that and that makes that's exactly the right
mentality to kind of have, butit takes that experience, that
sales hat to kind of know.
These are the steps I need totake.
My follow up to that, though,and is kind of around how are
you defining your value?
So you're on Upwork or a lot ofthe even not even just Upwork,
(15:08):
but really on any of these kindof I'm a freelance consultant,
hire me out sites and servicesthat are out there.
A lot of times you kind of haveyour profile there.
You give them your backgroundof here's what I know, here's
what I can do, here's my rate.
Maybe to your point, youpackage how you do certain work
together.
How are you recommending folkslike that define that value, to
(15:32):
figure out what should thatnumber be?
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, I don't know if this is best practice I don't
think that I'm a best practicekind of guy at this point but I
can tell you what I did, whichwas, you know, the market
dictates the price.
And so I went on Upwork and Iwas like well, what's the
average rate?
Or Salesforce been right, likeeveryone uses Salesforce, been
understanding hourly rates,taking Upworks, charge out of it
(15:57):
and then dictating my actualhourly rate that way.
But then on the back end, whenI was studying for my admin exam
, what helped me the most was torelate it to my personal life.
So I would create dev workswhich are free to create, and I
would just create differentprojects, like I had.
I wanted to digitize my recipes, for I love to cook and so I
(16:23):
just create custom objects forall my recipes and have my own
ingredients and I can trackevery time I made this and then
the caloric intake, and I wantedto do it for weight loss and so
, like I see, that's really coolyeah.
And so like, and then, like, Ihad my dogs as users.
So, like my dogs names areTortuga and Lola.
So it'd be like, oh, lola madehamburgers or Lola's food intake
(16:44):
.
Like I just humanizedtechnology into my life and that
helped me very, very easilyunderstand what I was doing and
then could do it on the back end.
But then also from that I wasunderstanding how many hours it
took me.
Right, when you're starting out, things take more time than
someone who's five, 10 years inthe role.
So I just learned how long itwould take me, how long would it
(17:07):
take me, to provision an org,to set up the users, to create
those custom fields, and thenalso, how many custom fields do
you think are really needed in,you know, in a company, right,
because you could could varycompletely based off of that and
so.
But then what I did was how doI figure out?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
that number.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And so I just typed in Salesforce Quick Starts on
Google, which everywhere hasthem, and so, and they have the
description of them.
And so I basically took thedescription of the Salesforce
Quick Starts from all theseconsultants and took a range of
prices starting from 3000 to15,000.
There's such a wide range,average average.
Those out took the descriptionsof each of them, what I was
(17:50):
comfortable doing, and thenproductize that, and so I didn't
reinvent the wheel.
I basically just took otherpeople's work, what the market
was dictating, the way that Isaw if people had a lot of
success was based on theirreviews, so if they had more
reviews.
You know our reviews are alwaysambiguous, the actual content
(18:13):
of the reviews or mean nothing.
But on Salesforce every reviewhas to be tied to a project.
I believe, or most of them do,and so you can get in the
partner community.
So you can see, okay, thiscompany is offering this Quick
Start, but let me go back andlook at their reviews Seems like
they're getting a lot ofbusiness, so whatever they're
(18:33):
doing is working from amarketing perspective.
So let me build that into myprice and let me use theirs as a
model for building mine.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I love that and, to your point, we're not trying to
reinvent the wheel.
By no means are we necessarilygiving the best practice advice
in this situation to yourearlier point but at the same
time we're not doing anything.
That's super difficult, that'snot just kind of I said it on
the last episode the best thingsthat we are like figuring out
(19:07):
when we are evolving as adminsare the really easy.
Oh crap.
I wish I thought of that kindof things Like we're not trying
to do anything different.
So I really appreciate thatinsight around.
Take three, four hours of work,do a little bit of research on
what other people are doing inthe ecosystem and try to make it
your own.
(19:27):
Don't plagiarize but at thesame time find that balance that
makes sense for you and usewhat works.
We're all trying to help eachother out.
So you've had, as you'vehighlighted, an amazing journey
to kind of touch on a lot ofdifferent points inside of this
Salesforce ecosystem.
I'm curious your take on howyou think Salesforce has evolved
(19:54):
from when you first started tonow in being a tool to shape the
customer experience and whereyou're kind of seeing that going
over the next few years.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, I mean that's the hot topic.
I think that's a loadedquestion.
What I think is interesting ismy CEO, adox Zano.
He was actually one of thefirst clients of Salesforce.
It was actually really cool to.
Maybe you can interview him too.
I'm sure he would happily be apart of it.
But I would think it was like2002 when in one of his
(20:27):
companies he bought Salesforceand it was fun.
It's just not night and daywhat it is today.
It's back then.
It was an online Rolodex usingthe cloud to be able to capture
sales data and I remember ifthey had a problem he said that
they would call in the supportline I know like a 1-800 number
(20:49):
and someone from San Franciscowould pick up and they would
troubleshoot on the phone in SanFrancisco.
Wow, you don't get that anymoreno which is good for us as
admins and consultants.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah 100%.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, but I mean from that which was I was not even a
part of, to my journey, startedas a user, a seller, and now a
user again for more of aleadership capacity and then
also a developer andconfigurator.
I've just kind of doneeverything within the ecosystem
(21:23):
and I see it shaping as not aCRM.
I think that CRM is inSalesforce.
I always told my clientsSalesforce yes, salesforce is in
the name, but we're not thatanymore.
We don't compete with the hubspots and the pipe drives of the
world anymore.
It's a full, robust platform tomanage every single aspect of
(21:47):
your business in one place.
And so where I think thedifference of Salesforce is to
the other ones is maybe the hubspot to the pipe drives focus
more on aesthetics User maybe itlooks nicer, there's some
pictures there or something likethat.
But where Salesforce investstheir dollars is in the backend.
From an admin perspective,clicks, not code.
(22:08):
So much more talent that cancome into the marketplace from
all these different backgrounds.
Like myself, from a businessbackground, I didn't have to
have a computer science degreeto learn how to configure
Salesforce, which was awesome tobe able to give them that
opportunity, but then also froma user perspective, having the
(22:31):
ability to connect all of thesedifferent softwares that you use
and have it in one place towhere, if you see a customer,
you can see, yes, theirinformation, which is a CRM, but
you can also interact with thatinformation, and interact with
that information from anaccounting standpoint, from a
service standpoint, from amarketing standpoint, from an
(22:52):
operation standpoint.
It just gives you so muchflexibility to have everything
in one place, which that, to me,increases adoption, more so
than some colors or somepictures on another page that
other people might wanna go to.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
That makes a lot of sense and I like how you
highlighted that we are seeingthings go from the older days of
to do some more advanced things.
You needed code, you needed Apex, you needed SQL SOQL, you
needed to have some knowledge ofthat.
Now we are shiftingdramatically into the click not
(23:31):
code kind of focus of being anadmin.
So, to that point, how do youthink the introduction of
Clixnot Code, some of the APIintegration, some of the new
advanced analytics, with moreadmins being able to come into
the ecosystem to learn the toolsbecause it is night and day
(23:53):
easier than it used to be how doyou feel that kind of on the
two part or one for thecustomer's purchasing sales
force, it's going to you'regoing to see more of an adoption
of this Clixnot Code and you'regoing to see fewer devs hired
but at the same time more adminscoming in and kind of
(24:14):
saturating the job pool.
So I'm curious your take on thepros and cons of what that
looks like with fewer devs andmore admins who don't know dev,
what that kind of is lookinglike or what you think that
might look like.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, and where I don't know and where I struggle
just kind of in this wholesentiment is is AI going to
replace admins?
That's kind of the questionprobably on the back of every
admins mind, every consultant'smind of am I going to be out of
a job in 10 years?
And I don't think we're thereyet but where the developers I
(24:55):
mean I just with AI being soopen to the public, I don't.
Maybe in five years it'll bethat way where you don't need
dev, but I do think you stillneed it.
You still need to have thatdeveloper that does that apex,
those classes, those triggers,apis like that.
It's not going to go away rightnow until we can somehow figure
(25:18):
out a way to secure that datafrom being widespread.
You know, I talked to someonelast week who fired one of their
developers because he wasplugging in their proprietary
code into chat GBT to fix the,to fix a bug.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's an unfortunatefumble, but that is a fumble
right there Shifting a littlebit, though.
Actually, no, go ahead.
I want you to finish with that,no.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I was going to talk about the other part of that,
which was kind of the saturationof admins entering the
marketplace, maybe through AI,through clicks, not code,
through Salesforce's motto orjust in general.
Just, you know, people cominginto the marketplace.
You know, I think that it is,over the years, become a very
heavily commoditized space.
(26:07):
Just transparently, we'reseeing it in the consulting
space, right, like why would yougo with us when you can choose
20,000 other people?
There's the value, and thatgoes back to what you can bring
beyond the actual code, right, Ithink anyone.
You can probably find 10 peoplein a room that could probably
do flows and can do what you'reasking of them, but what it?
(26:30):
How is it going to apply toyour business?
That's the real value thatadmins, developers, consultants
can bring is translatingbusiness goals into Salesforce
production and then not onlySalesforce production but then
also track, like having usersadopt that and use it and being
able to leverage that within thebusiness.
And so admins, more than evertoday, need to be more proactive
(26:52):
, and I think that a large partof admins is not just the behind
the scenes work, it's actuallytraining, having weekly sessions
with your team, whether you'rea full-time in-house admin or
you're a consultant on a managedservice, because, hey, I just
had this new feature come out.
I want to test it, let me get apilot program and let me train
(27:13):
them and let me get super usersand all of this like that is
something that is not talkedabout enough, which is something
that I really strive toprioritize within our business
today.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
No, that makes I really like how you called that
out, because there are a lot ofadmins, as you mentioned, and
it's a matter of which ones aretaking that next step in the
journey.
So for me I was very sourgrapes about growing as an admin
(27:47):
.
I knew enough to get my jobdone.
I knew what my business neededfor right there in that moment.
But I wasn't necessarilythinking one, two, three years
down into the future justbecause I was going a thousand
miles an hour and I was justtrying to solve the next problem
in front of me.
There was not a whole lot ofstrategy of how can we evolve
(28:09):
our org, how can we enhance andmake things more efficient.
It was just solving all the newproblems as they come up.
So to your point of we have tobe better about thinking about
the business so that we aren'tsaturating the kind of talent
pool out there.
(28:29):
How do you recommend adminsfind that kind of have that
click without jobs job jumping?
Because I know for me I had togo through a lot of different
journeys to get where I am nowand now it clicks.
Five years ago I would love tostay at the company I was
(28:50):
originally with and use myknowledge now to help them grow
a lot faster.
However, you don't know whatyou don't know, so I'm curious
your take on how do people getthat click moment?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, I think for me, I think we can take Salesforce,
we can take admin, we can takeit all out of the picture and
talk about the bigger problem,which is a psychological group
think atmosphere and a businessatmosphere and culture
perspective as really what theissue is.
And so it's tough if you're inkind of the culture of your
(29:26):
business is very reactive.
If I say reactive thensomething breaks.
I need to fix it or a new useris onboarded, I need to add them
, or I need to do my weeklyreport updates and dashboard
updates and all that jazz whatan admin typically is.
But then you have that otherpiece, which is the proactive
piece.
I found that two things.
(29:49):
One is if I'm doing the samething over and over again to me
that's the definition ofinsanity right, doing the same
thing over and over again,expecting the same results.
If the head of sales keepsasking me for this one thing
over and over, and, over andover again, I should probably
stop and take a look at like Iwonder if I can create a flow to
automate this right, justhaving that one extra step of
(30:10):
okay, there's going to be a timewhere I'm not going to keep
doing this forever.
I need to get more time back inmy day, and so can I just let me
automate this in a sandbox andtest it and see if it works.
And if it's a culture that'snot responsive, then just put it
into prod right, Like that'swhat I have done before.
And the other side is findingadmins.
(30:34):
I feel like they all havethings that they love.
They hate.
They're going to find admins.
I love flows, Admins I hateflows.
I hate doing this, this, that,whatever it may be.
And so finding that hobby foryou that you really love and
treating it as a hobby, andtaking initiative to grow
yourself as an admin, bepromoted to senior admin,
(30:56):
whatever your career path is.
It takes that extra level ofinitiative, and in order to find
that initiative and drive, youneed to have passion for it.
And so if you can findsomething that you really love
whether it's a flow, whetherit's something that you want to
learn and then take that back toyour business, that would be my
recommendation.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
That is the ideal recommendation.
I adore that.
Sometimes I'm thinking aboutmaking this podcast like a
YouTube series, because I wish Icould highlight these reactions
of big clapping at theseanswers.
Because you're 100% right, youcan take all the time in the
(31:36):
world to learn how to enhanceyour system, but if you're
company or just you aren'twanting to be proactive or think
proactively or promote thatmentality, it's not going to
happen.
So often are we talking abouton the podcast or even just in
(31:58):
the user groups I go to, we talkmore about the personal, the
soft skills.
I don't want to say anyone canlearn Salesforce, but as I've
talked to a lot of peopleactually most anyone can learn
Salesforce it comes down to thekind of soft skills and those
how you manage your time, yourcareer and just work with other
(32:22):
people that really determine howthe solution is going to be
successful.
So I really like that kind ofbreakdown game.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, I think too from me as you can tell by my
journey of being in sales to nowbeing on the technical side is
you got to have passion for whatyou do.
You can't be an admin to getinto this and say I want to make
money.
Like those, there's going to bea pool of people that are
saying you know, I think I canmake, I'm making 60 a year and I
want to make 75.
I'm going to get thecertification, I'm going to make
(32:50):
my 75, my nine to five be done.
Those are the people that aregoing to be the commodity, right
.
They're going to struggle tofind a job.
They're going to struggle intheir job.
They're never going to grow,they're never going to do
anything.
It's just the classic Americanjob of nine to five.
Go home, get my pension andleave, right.
And then you have the otherside of the people that are
(33:11):
genuinely interested in becomingan admin and they have other
goals.
They want to become anarchitect, they want to become a
developer.
Those are the people that youwant in your organizations and
those are the people that arereally going to make a
difference for you and foreveryone.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, completely, completely agree with that,
shifting a little bit on to thetopics of the every word, this
question, shifting the subject alittle bit to talk through the
balance of how we are using AIand how admins are using
(33:45):
automations to make their liveseasier.
We just went through and talkedabout how you have to have
passion, you have to haveinterest and intrigue in growing
, and maybe it's a matter of, ifyou're definition, of insanity
you're doing the same thing overand over again.
Maybe automate some of this.
At what point, though, are we,as admins, working with sales
(34:08):
marketing operations and gettingto automated again?
Thinking of how Salesforce andhow we are no longer just a
self-employed person Automatedagain.
Thinking of how Salesforce andhow we are no longer just a CRM
this is, again avoiding thecliches, but this is customer
360.
We are having touch pointswithin this technology that can
do all facets of the facets ofthe business, instead of just
sales cloud.
(34:28):
How are we making thingsautomated but still personal,
having a level of authenticitywithin our relationships with
our end users, to make sure thatit's not just a?
I can automate 80% of my joband I'm twiddling my thumb at my
desk.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yeah, and I think that we talk about this a lot in
my business and practice andthe best analogy that I give
people is if you think about acar, right, you have the
gasoline, is your data, right,takes to run the car, and then
the car itself is the engine,whatever it's producing, but
(35:08):
then you still need to havesomeone to steer the car and
drive the car and stop the carand all of that.
So it still takes three thingsin order for it to be leveraged
successfully.
It takes data, which is thebiggest crux to this whole AI
thing and why I think everyoneshould not be talking about AI.
Everyone should be talkingabout data, because the amount
of organizations and clientsthat I see, that I see their
(35:30):
data.
It is unstructured, it isduplicative.
It is just not where it needsto be to actually extrapolate
the data you need to actuallymake better informed decisions,
for AI is the biggest problemthat I see with this whole thing
.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
But you need all three.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
You need the human element, you need the AI, you
need the natural language, youneed the machine learning, but
then you also need the data.
You need those three things towork in tandem for something to
actually be productive andsuccessful, especially you're
talking about from a sales andmarketing perspective.
I think human interaction isgoing to be so important, at
least coming up into the nextcouple of years, because even
(36:10):
now, like when out, if it's assimple as customer service on
AT&T or my car insurance orwhatever I am trying to like
point out maybe this is me beingin the industry, but I'm trying
to figure out if they're AI ornot.
So I'll ask some extraquestions or make it a little
bit more like generic in myslogan, or just try to see if
(36:33):
they understand, and a lot ofthe times I do so.
To me it screams that it's anactual person, but it's just.
I think you're just never goingto get rid of the human element
.
I just don't.
I don't think that's possible.
I think you're going toautomate business processes.
With it, you're going to makebetter informed decisions.
So, instead of a salespersoncalling whatever if they're
(36:55):
calling 20 people a day, right,kind of aimlessly or maybe
they're sorting it by revenuewhat if you call 20 people that
you know are interested inSalesforce and that you know why
, and that you can understandwho their business is, why their
business is, so your conversionrates are higher?
That, to me, is what AI isgoing to bring to sales and
marketing group, not automateyour business.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And you made a comment that I really liked of.
We can talk for hours aboutdata.
It shouldn't be about well,what about the AI?
What about the automations?
Is your data clean?
And you need that person inthere to make sure the data is
usable.
Shifting a little bit to kind offocus and highlight, because we
(37:41):
could have a whole hour longconversation talking about data
cleanliness, I bet, but kind ofputting it into the last, kind
of like 15, 20 minutes of thisepisode, though, how do you
believe the job of an admin isgoing to evolve from the person
to create the automations andorganize the backend and all
that to be the data manager?
(38:04):
Because I say this specificallybecause I had an example where
someone came up to me when I wasat one of the world tours a
little while back and they weresaying hey, how many, what's
your team of admins look like?
And I was telling them, for ateam of 100 to 150, I have about
three to four admins, and thenit just kind of gets
(38:24):
incrementally larger for a teamof 500 to probably recommend
like a team of five to 10 admins, depending on how much data
you're doing, but that'sseparate from, like, the data
management team, because thedata management team has their
own hodgepodge of dealing withwhether they use data cloud or
they're organizing fromSalesforce through like a
different snowflake, like datadata warehouse tool and so on,
(38:48):
so forth.
And this person just came to melike, oh, I'm just the admin,
but I'm also being told I'm thedata manager and I'm supposed to
clean up all this stuff.
And now my day to day, whichwas just fixing tickets, is 100%
cleaning up junk data.
So I'm curious your take onadmins versus data managers.
(39:08):
Are they one the same?
How should they be separatedfor for the newer admins coming
on?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, see, that's a yeah.
That's a tough question, Ithink, to answer, and I think
we're still figuring it out withthis new AI and data, and you
have your, your admin that's incharge of all this, but then
they're just getting added morestuff to their plate, and so do
they have the actual time tospend?
(39:34):
Do they have the knowledge also?
And so in the Salesforceadministration exam and advanced
administration exam, do theyreally talk about data structure
and data cleanliness?
No, so if you were to go basedoff of Salesforce's you know
procedures and policies, youwould say it's out of scope.
I would just say out of scope.
(39:54):
But from a practical standpointof you know small media,
businesses or any business,you're just going to wear more
hats than one, and so you'regoing to have to figure out how
to do it, and so I definitelyrecommend data analysis and data
management as a really strongway to even differentiate
yourself.
Going back to you know admins orcommodity, how do you
(40:15):
differentiate yourself?
Well, if you have an extralevel of skill set where hack
and structure and clean yourdata for you understand what
kind of the end goal is rightand then from back there, then
we can use, start to structuredata in a way that's going to
make sense in the future.
I think about, like marketingcloud and Einstein prediction
(40:37):
and all of that stuff.
There's all these programs thateven then themselves require
time to analyze the data.
And so you AI is.
It's not instantaneous, whichmost people might think, because
they get jet chat, gpt and justpulls data from the web.
That's public information, butit actually takes a lot of time
(40:59):
to process, learn, iterate, andyou actually have to.
You have to train it.
You have to train it tounderstand what the output you
want is.
What are you trying to determine?
Am I trying to determineconversion rates?
Well, I have to figure out whatvariables are related to
conversion rates.
Is it what the correlation is?
And it's almost a statisticalanalysis problem and takes me
(41:19):
back to when I was a financialanalyst of running regressions
all day long, like it's, that's,that's, but that's out of scope
of the everyday admin.
And then now you're now you'rekind of leaning towards well, is
Salesforce administration forfor every?
Can anyone do it?
Or anyone do data analyst is?
Is Salesforce going to come outwith more certifications or
(41:43):
increase the scope of an admin?
I don't, I don't know, but I doknow that the everyday client
needs, needs that, and so youneed to have that, that
knowledge.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
But to the point you made, though I'm with you 100%.
I am very curious to see howthis pivots, how we look at the
admin exam, and are we going tokeep generalizing that term of
admin or are we going to start?
I mean, I know for me from mypodcast we're called the admins
(42:14):
of tomorrow.
I'm absolutely generalizing itbecause I'm thinking of the
marketing admin, the sales admin, the service admin, the
experience cloud.
I'm thinking of the admin forall of the clouds within the
product suite, whereas when Iget hired for a small mom and
pop shop, they're going to saycool, you're an admin, you, you
(42:35):
are in charge of Salesforce, not, and they not realizing
Salesforce covers.
So many different things, letalone to your other point from
the beginning data, datamanagement and how that is such
an untouched thing as an admin.
That is not something aSalesforce admin has ever had to
(42:55):
think about in the history ofthis career path and now we're
getting data analysts andbusiness analysts and to start
having that mentality, but it'sunfortunately falling under that
admin bucket Right.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And like the way when we were just talking and
thinking about it, and I thinkthat a very easy way to get
started with data management isI think every admin should focus
on efficiency, right?
You'll get requests of hey, canI get a custom field for this,
for this, for this?
And then, lo and behold, you'reon a record and you're got 5500
fields.
Maybe sometimes some of theseSalesforce orgs you can.
(43:31):
I mean, it's just, it's insanehow much data is in there.
And so if you can start to tryto consolidate that and just be
actively thinking about thefields and the relationships and
look up versus master detailand how that, how that affects
once it's closed, because thenhow, like what if you close
(43:51):
something that it deletes therecord on a custom object,
that's a master detail, but youneed that data for to predict
your AI, right, like how?
You just need to be thinkingabout those things While you're
creating it, not necessarilyhave the data management
experience.
Just be thinking about that atthe top of your head.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
I really think that it's it's going to have to be
evolved within trailhead and somany other things.
I don't.
I wish that the everyday adminwas seeing about this, and
that's also part of the reasonwhy I like to have this podcast
out there, because it's a mediumto kind of share these things.
I have had admins come up to meat the user group meetings are
(44:33):
I go to in Dallas, even at thedifferent conferences I speak at
and whatnot, where people aresaying like what are you, what
was your journey?
Like what did you do to learn?
And it's like full transparency.
I have learned more in the lastfour years of me really diving
into the ecosystem, going toconferences and just getting
that hands on experience with arange of companies, way more so
(44:57):
than I did with my quote firstjob.
You just have to be willing andopen to keep learning those new
things and just know that youhave to think efficiently.
You can't just let your movingat 1000 miles an hour
mentalities cause you to stoplearning.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yep, oh, that's the biggest.
So easy once you kind of get ona roll to kind of put the
education on the back burner andget around to it and it's on
your calendar, and then you'repushing it off.
I'll do it on Friday afternoonup, I'll do it on the next
Friday, and everyone's guilty ofthat to some degree.
But I think, now more than ever, education, especially in this
(45:40):
time of uncertainty, isknowledge, is going to be the
most powerful and will alwaysbeen out.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
So I have two more questions before we wrap up,
because we are nearing the endof our time.
The first one is aroundsomething you said the beginning
around.
It's really important tounderstand the business.
You and I are a little bit morelucky in that regard.
Having one been sales side, butalso just being a consultant
and having worked with a widerange of businesses, we have a
(46:10):
little bit more of a leg up tounderstand what each business
really should be going for andlike their direction of growth
from a small to a medium to anenterprise size company.
For the new admin, the thing weharp on on this podcast is you
can learn the technical all daylong.
Go to Google, go a trailhead,go to YouTube.
(46:32):
Learning the technical is nothard.
It's the soft skills, it'sunderstanding what a business
needs.
How would you recommend thatadmin of tomorrow?
Go and try to get thatunderstanding of what should a
small business be looking at?
What should a medium sizebusiness be looking at?
What should an enterprisebusiness be looking at?
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Yeah, I think the easiest way to get the
information but the hardestthing to do would be want to
talk to them, talk to thecustomer, right, but that's not
as easily accessible.
The next best thing wouldprobably be to go to conferences
right, the world tours are allfree Salesforce conferences and
(47:11):
you learn a lot.
And they have industryspecifics right.
They segment small, mediumbusiness, large business, some
company highlights.
They always have some sort ofcompany that's highlighting
something that has some demosomewhere, right, and so from
there you can start tounderstand.
It's pretty interesting to go toa world tour, like we were in
Chicago one a few weeks ago andseeing more yell, big Lori L use
(47:36):
case and how they have everysingle thing of the customer 360
.
But then we went to a small,medium business happy hour and
they said it almost turned themoff and I think that that that
something very much to note isSalesforce is so big and can do
so much, but you have to bite itoff one piece at a time and you
(47:58):
don't have to have everythingright.
You can start out with thesales cloud and so going to
those industry specific sessionsor not industry, but you know
revenue specific sessions allowsyou to see what they care about
the most.
I think, maybe from a I don'tknow, what I would do is also
(48:18):
look at demos, for maybe, likethe hub spots in the pipe drives
of the world that are moresmall to medium business focused
, and see, you know, they aredoing a lot of research because
they're trying to capture thatmarket.
And so what, what does theirproduct have?
And then how can I relate thatto Salesforce?
And what does it?
What does it have, what does itnot have?
(48:39):
So that way I can start toarticulate the solution that a
small media business wouldthrive on.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
That makes complete sense.
That is I like that youmentioned the competitors
because, again, this podcast isab in tomorrow.
Salesforce paid my paycheck,but at the end of the day, we
shouldn't be afraid to look atall of the solutions are out
there and see what othercompanies are doing.
(49:06):
I used to say before Salesforcereally enhanced all their
products is that, oh, they allgenerally do the same thing.
It's how you use them.
That is still true to an extent, but there are definitely some
things that you can do now andSalesforce, that you can't do
with the other guys.
So you said perfectly, don'tbite off more than you can chew
(49:26):
when it comes to figuring outwhat's going to be the most
efficient Usage of theseplatforms.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I think also I mean, I'm a firm
believer of you.
You are the biggest expert andyou probably don't know it you
are a user of all of thesetechnologies, and so if you take
a look at your Grocery store oranything that you use on a
daily basis, like right, youknow the Amazon of the world,
that they have all of the bellsand whistles.
(49:55):
But if you look at more of themedium-sized businesses that you
work with that you're aCustomer of every day what
technology do they have?
How do they operate theirbusiness?
How, what, what works for them,what doesn't work for them?
So you have all the information.
You just are not thinking aboutit in a personal way.
But how can you relate yourpersonal experiences to your
(50:15):
business Experiences and bridgethat gap in order to make better
informed decisions by youreveryday job is Something that's
very valuable, completely agree.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Well, we are nearing the end of our time.
I have one last question, and Iask this for everyone On the
show.
It's something I like to justkind of call out a nice little
piece of advice for new admins.
So you've had a wonderfuljourney from being on the sales
side to working for themothership herself To then going
(50:47):
into being a VP at aconsultancy.
In that journey, what would bethe one regret you have?
That you wish you could go backto your early admin self and
say this needs to be donedifferently, so that admin of
tomorrow can take that adviceand run with it, not make
similar decisions.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yes, I would say my Biggest regret I guess you could
say is is getting theadministrator certification and
Having all of the knowledge inthe back of my head and then
going and marketing myself for ajob, thinking that my education
(51:30):
is on the back burner now Goingto apply for a job, doing that
for two months, getting thelittle job, but then, oh, you
need actually two moreCertifications to be qualified
for this job.
So if you're already gettingone certification.
You might as well go for more,I I.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Like that and you don't think about that being.
And my story is different inthat I Got an internship.
They said do you need?
We need a part-on and salesforce admin.
I said, sure, why not?
That sounds like fun.
And I Accidental admin my wayinto knowing so much, but it
wasn't until Just within thelast three, four years did I
(52:10):
finally get my cert.
So, on the other end of it, Iwas always learning and always
trying to grow, and I always hadcerts and like the rearview
mirror.
I like that mentality, though,of don't get the certs and then
think that's all you need to getthe job.
You should always want to keeplearning more and, just
regardless wherever job you have, keep getting the certs, keep
(52:33):
going in the trailhead, keepdoing more.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
They're not.
They're not agnostic right, alot of them are.
They build on each other right,and so, if you've already
learned it, you've already spentthe time, which is a lot of
time, I know you might as wellspend the extra week or two to
get the sales cloud consultant,to get the service cloud Consult
, to get the platform, to getthe advanced admin right, you
might as well do it.
There's no Spend a couple hoursa day and do it.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
Yeah, that is fantastic.
Well, thank you so much fortaking the time out of your day
to kind of have a conversationwith me about this.
We've talked about a lot ofthings around how sales force is
shaping relationships, shapingthe future of businesses,
customer relationship.
So, again, thank you forsharing your insights, sharing
(53:20):
your journey with everyone, andI'm really hoping we can bring
you on again at some point inthe future a talk yeah, even
deeper about data management,because that's a topic that I'm
very interested in Gettingpeople's opinions on.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I would love nothing more.
This has been great.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Well, thank you, sir.
You have a great rest of yourday.
We'll talk soon.
Thank you, and that concludesanother episode of admins of
(53:58):
tomorrow.
A Special thanks to our guests,john, for sharing their story
through the ecosystem andletting us pick their brain
about how they got Started andhow future admins can follow in
his footsteps.
If anyone has any interest inlearning more about John or
Oksano Technologies, you canmessage John on LinkedIn or
email us at info at admins oftomorrow comm, to get more
(54:19):
information.
Thank you again for taking thetime to listen.
I know we say this every week,but your support really does
mean the world to us.
If you have any feedback,questions or topic suggestions,
we'd also again love to hearfrom you, so don't hesitate to
connect with us on LinkedIn,twitter or email us at info at
admins of tomorrow comm.
Also, if you or someone youknow would like to be on the
(54:40):
podcast or would like to givesomeone a shout out, please go
to our website, admins oftomorrow comm.
Forward slash, share yourthoughts and fill out our form
to be on the show or give ashout out.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to subscribe, leave
a review and share it with yourfellow trailblazers.
We'd love to get in front of awider Salesforce audience, so
(55:00):
any review and any way you canshare with your fellow
trailblazers would mean theworld to us.
Once again, I'm Jacob Catalano,your host, signing off.
We appreciate you for listeningto admins of tomorrow
trailblazing the next generation.
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