Who’s really calling the shots in the Salesforce and voice game? In this episode, Meagan Thai pulls back the curtain on the co-sell chaos, the CX magic moments, and how Telarus turns integration anxiety into opportunity. Whether you're struggling through discovery calls or navigating the vendor maze, this one’s packed with real talk and frontline gold. Don’t miss the aha moments, red flags, and green flags that could change your next pitch.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris, and this is next level
Biztech. Hey everybody, welcome back.
We're on with another new topic this week talking to you about
(00:21):
Salesforce Voice, all kinds of good stuff.
Today we've got on with us, everybody's favorite, Megan Ty,
CX architect here in the West for Telaris.
Megan, welcome back on. Yay, I'm back.
That's a good sign. You keep having me back.
So great getting back. It is a good sign.
So today's episode is is a unique one.
(00:43):
It's titled Who's Calling the Shots, Salesforce Voice and The
Cosell Conundrum. That's a lot of words, but we're
going to get into this idea of, you know, there's a lot of
things cooking, a lot of customers have Salesforce from
ACRM perspective. So let's, let's kind of kick
this off. You know, you're, you're in the
trenches every day. You've got this frontline view,
(01:03):
you're out, you know, with, with, with Sam at some of these
ascends, you're on customer calls, you're helping partners
with strategy. How has how has the role, you
know, your role evolved to become so much more central to
this sales conversation? Oh my gosh, it's definitely
evolved. So many changes.
I've been here, it's coming up on seven years, So many changes.
(01:27):
When I originally came to Telaris, it was all about, hey,
let's build out a CCAS practice.We didn't even have one.
And back then all we were talking about was CCAS.
What does it stand for? What does it mean?
How is it different from call center?
We weren't even talking about CXback then, right?
So back then it was a lot of educating our partners.
Hey, you've got to be talking about C CAS and what does it
(01:47):
mean? How do you sell it?
And while we still do that today, I still do that a lot,
but I feel like the role itself has really evolved into more of
a, hey, I'm your subject matter expert.
I'm here to help you with this opportunity for your customer,
Mr. Missus TA, how can I come inand help you have that
conversation? It's very sales driven and it's,
(02:08):
it's very opportunity driven, right.
So, you know, Teleris as a whole, we're very much focused
on less help with these opportunities to help get our
TAS the win and of course the win for ourselves.
But ultimately it's become more of a role where we're helping
with that sales cycle, that process itself, doing discovery
recommendations, trying to figure out what the customer
needs, how we can help them. It's all that encompassing.
(02:30):
So I feel like it's transitionedmore of just a, hey, it's all
technical, you know, here's whatit is, here's what it can do to
hey, how do we help you through this whole sales process and
stay in the deal with you all the way to closure.
That's what I feel. So we're doing a lot of that.
That's been a huge focus for myself and of course our our
entire SE team Intelerus as a whole.
(02:51):
So let's think about some some lessons from the field here.
You know, we call this lessons hard lessons learned, mentors,
just collective opinions, thingslike that.
I mean, walk us through something that that you try to
carry with you here as you go into every conversation.
Sure. Yeah, So and this is not
necessarily one specific experience.
(03:12):
It's a compilation of a bunch ofexperiences right over the year.
And Josh, I think, you know, we talked a little bit about this
before where we see it happen from time to time.
And it's instead of coming to usand saying, hey, customer wants
this, just this right. It's about wait, hold on, hold
on. Let's take a step back.
Do they really want this? Let's have this conversation.
(03:32):
Let's talk this through. If you have ever attended, if
anyone's attended the CXSN trainings with Sam Nelson, you
always see her hear her pitching.
It is about outcome based selling.
We're not selling just to make asale.
So if we have something come to us, especially with AI these
days, right, it's the biggest buzzword.
So we have customers coming to us saying we want AI, we need
(03:54):
AI. Well, let's talk it through.
What do what do you mean we wantconversational AI?
Are you sure that's what you want or what?
What are all the the pieces and parts that are are touching it?
Let's have that conversation. I think the lesson here is I've
seen it happen more often than I'd like.
You know, where opportunities come in, customers saying they
want one thing, but that might not be it.
(04:16):
They don't know what they don't know, right?
They don't they think they want something, but that might not be
it. So I think the lesson here is
let's have that conversation. I know it, it takes time, a time
commitment from us, from our partners, but I think it's so
critical. Let's have that conversation,
whether it's between US and the partner first to further flush
us out. If we can get the customer on
the phone, that's even better. Because what we tend to see when
(04:40):
I'm speaking personally as well is if we can have those
conversations early on, it typically leads to more success,
a higher success rate, meaning ahigher closure rate because
we're actually uncovering everything that needs to be
uncovered and we're giving or wepresenting to the customer the
solution that they need. We're not selling just to make a
sale, right? We want to give them what they
need to help solve their problems.
(05:00):
Again, outcome based selling. So I think that's just a lesson
that I keep. I keep learning the hard way,
but we just want to encourage our partners.
Let's have those conversations early.
There's a, there's AI love this.There's a couple interesting
kind of parallels here in life, like I've been told as a person,
you know, I think maybe this is a male thing.
(05:20):
I, I, I don't know of, you know,we're, we're, some of us are
just engineered to be fixers. We, we see somebody suffering,
we see somebody in pain or, or somebody tells us this thing is
wrong and our, our instant switches, we got to go fix it.
We got to get them happy or, or we need to fix the problem or,
you know, whatever, right, Whatever it takes to make that
person smile again, kind of thing.
And, and sometimes that's just not the answer.
(05:42):
The answer is just listen, just listen and understand and, and
let somebody talk it out, right.So there's this kind of innate
reactive sense in some of us. And I think we see that as, as a
little bit of a parallel to yourpoint.
When we see the customer come toa, a, a partner, we all think
(06:05):
that that customers just knows if, if they're asking for this
thing, then they must surely know that that's the thing that
they want. And, and I, I saw a great
example of this. If you remember Wolf of Wall
Street, Jordan Belfort, he was at a sales conference, right?
And, and, and somebody said, Jordan, you know, sell me this
pen. You know, one, one of these most
(06:25):
just aggressive salespeople, right?
And Jordan said this is just kind of like a hiring
conversation when you go and interview salespeople.
It's not about the whole sell methis pen exercise has nothing to
do with the pen. You got to get the reps that
come in and say like Megan, I can sell you this pen.
It's great. You can write upside down.
You're going to be in outer space.
This this you know this thing will last 100 years, blah, blah,
(06:48):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's all the benefit 123 got
it. These are these are great sign
here. Press hard.
The reality in that the, the real goodness comes in when you
step back and go, well, Megan, why are you, what's driving you
to buy a pen? Why did you change from you used
to use pencils? What, what's, what's pushing on
that? How many, how many pens do you
find yourself needing? What's, what's the reason that
(07:10):
you're even asking for pens to begin with?
Like have you thought about using other different means of
note taking? Like understand the, the, the
psyche of the person? And to your point, I, I, I think
when we see that, when we drive into that earlier and we
understand that earlier I used to think it was cliche to go to
just get us on the call like, well, let's just talk about it.
(07:31):
But there really is so much value to your point because we
don't know what anybody wants. Right.
And here's OK on the flip side, right, So I had a a recent
engagement where our partner says Megan, we do networking all
day long. We're not that comfortable with
voice. Can we bring you in this call?
We think we've got an opportunity to replace their on
Prem PBX. We get on the call, that was
(07:52):
completely not the case. But what we did uncover was they
need conversational AI. So, you know, the flip opposite
of what the, you know, another scenario that I experienced, but
so getting on that call early was uncovering this or in
contract. They're not ready to RIP and
replace yet. But here's this one huge pain
point that they're looking to tochange.
And so again, right, having thatconversation, talking it through
(08:15):
and uncovering exactly why we'reeven talking to them, What's
going on? What do they want to accomplish?
Yeah, hugely valuable. So, so from your perspective,
right, there's, there's choices out there.
What is this kind of CX practicehas evolved and we're going to
dive a little bit deeper here into Salesforce.
But I mean use that as an example.
(08:35):
I mean, how do we, how do we show up uniquely when it comes
time to talk about something more complex than traditional
UUC and Salesforce? I mean, what's what's the angle
there? Yeah, that's a.
This is a perfect segue right from this, this example that I
just presented where we we were on a call to uncover a lot of
things. We had no idea what was going
on. I think what makes us different
(08:56):
to Larus and our engineering practice as a whole is when we
come in and we speak with our partners, customers, we take a
holistic approach. I love using that word holistic
because again, we're not trying to sell to make a sale on this
one piece. We want to uncover everything
that the customer is going through, what their environment
is, where are their pain points or challenges?
(09:17):
Where do they want to be betweennow to, you know, we're starting
at point A, do they want to get to point B or do they want to
get to point Z? What does all that entail?
So what we want to do is we wantto talk about the things that
they're needing today to help solve a specific issue, but we
also want to think about, hold on, there's all these other
applications, there's all these other departments within your
company. Miss or misses customer, how is
(09:39):
that going to impact them? So we bring in this solution and
we have a tunnel vision on what we're trying to solve for here.
How is that going to impact the rest of your organization?
So we take a holistic view. We ask a bunch of questions.
Now, I was on another partner call where I said, you know
what, hold on, let's what about this or how do they interact
here and how do they interact there?
And they said, no, Megan, we don't want to talk about they
just need this piece. And I said, well, hold on, we do
(10:00):
want to talk about that because they may not just need this one
piece. We want to look at everything in
general. I'm not trying to upsell them.
I'm trying to understand what's going on in this environment and
how can we help so that we can make that right recommendation.
And if we do something now todayto solve a certain issue, how is
that going to impact the rest ofthe organization?
How is that going to look, you know, three years from now, are
(10:21):
we going to have to do this all over again because we had a
misstep here. We did, we forgot to consider
this piece of it. So I think that's how we're
different, Josh is and I like tothink that's how we're different
is we come in, we're working side by side with our TA through
that entire process, pre sales, during the the, the sales
process, potentially even post sales, right with our PM team.
(10:41):
But again, we're taking a holistic approach.
We're talking about everything and anything because that's how
we start to uncover what's goingon and what they really, really
need. So we'll stay in there for as
long as we need to on the deal. Now when it comes with to to
Salesforce and we'll talk a little bit more about it is we
have to ask a bunch of questionsthat's going to uncover, you
know how they use Salesforce, What do we need?
(11:02):
What are the bits and pieces that we need to integrate with?
Yeah. The conversation.
Let's let's let's go into that. Let's let's think about all
right, you're you're in a deal. You're thinking tech stack.
You hear Salesforce, you hear we're trying to voice integrate.
I mean, what are what are the aha moments in that
conversation? You know, what's what's the
magic to to kind of make some ofthat click and figure out, OK,
(11:22):
it's going to go this direction,not this direction.
Yeah. So when we start talking about
Salesforce, it can go one of twoways.
It could be a customer coming insaying, hey, we have Salesforce,
I'm looking at Salesforce service Cloud voice.
Now when it comes to that, we would compete with that
eventually, right. So we're either going to compete
(11:43):
with it or we can pivot and partner with them on this.
So what I would be listening forwould be, hey, we want to we're
looking at Salesforce service called Voice.
But here are some of the cool things that we want to use.
We want to do real time transcription.
We want sentiment analysis. We want a bunch of AI driven
insights around this. And I have to stop and say, hold
on, hold on. You know, with Salesforce
(12:05):
service called Voice, to get these features that you're
talking about, we have to bring in a telephony partner.
Salesforce offers a BYOT, bring your own telephony.
So because they're using open CTI now that framework within
Salesforce, these are some of the limitations, the real time
transcription, sentimental analysis.
So if I hear those keywords, I'mgoing to say, oh, you know what
though? We're going to need to bring in
(12:26):
a telephony vendor like AC Cast Player that can help you
accomplish this. So I love that.
So we're making that pivot. Instead of potentially
competing, we're going to bring in a relationship that can help
deliver that. Now, what's music to my ears
when I hear things like, Oh no, yeah, well, we're using
Salesforce. But you know, one thing we can
help solving for would be our agent average handle time.
(12:47):
Oh my gosh, it our agents take way too long.
It shouldn't be 10 minutes. It should be 3 minutes to handle
this interaction. What can we do?
That's music to my ears because now I'm thinking how we've got
the technology that can help with that and we have ways to
integrate into Salesforce. So can we bring in some cool
things like, you know, agent assist, where we're popping up
recommendations to help that agent through this conversation
(13:08):
with it with their customer? Can we give them access to the
knowledge base, bring up an article, bring up a link that
they can send out to their customer?
And by the way, to save time on all this, could we transcribe
all this and summarizes? Can we do an auto summary for
your agent so that they don't have to spend another 5 minutes
wrapping up the call, taking notes, archiving all this?
This can all be done with AI andit can all be saved within that
(13:31):
Salesforce contact account contact.
So I love that that again, like I said, that's music to my ears
when they're looking for more efficient ways for their agents
to handle interactions and have it tied into Salesforce in some
capacity. So those are the aha moments.
That's the magical thing. Is it fair to say that, you
know, look, Salesforce is great at advertising, Matthew
(13:52):
Mcconaughey's got, you know, thecool factor for sure, right, All
right, all right. But is it fair to say that
there's some presumptions from the customer side that, you
know, this, this stack of tools within Salesforce is equally as
competitive as our, you know, top CX vendors out there.
And surely Salesforce has all ofthese things.
And I think I guess to your point, like how, how do you
(14:14):
want, how do you want partners to kind of understand that of
oh, OK, once we hear, is it those things, is it once we hear
agent assist, once we hear all the we just realize that you're
going to have to do more than even bring in a full telephony.
You might have to just look at something.
You might look at have to look at a whole solution.
Like where where do you see thatkind of feature make?
(14:34):
How do you make that distinctionwhen it's time?
So I think the minute you start hearing a customer bring up
Salesforce, the first thing you want to do is figure out who in
their in their companies using Salesforce.
Is it the sales team? Is it the support team?
Who, who is it right? Is it the marketing team?
So I need to figure out how who's using Salesforce within
the organization and how are they using it?
(14:56):
And if we can figure out what pieces of it, if they're looking
for a full contact center solution to do a bunch of the
the work in their work in we need to figure out then OK, So
what pieces of Salesforce are you using or do you envision
using? We can combine the two, the
contact center play and the Salesforce play.
Are you using it for outbound marketing and you want to keep
(15:16):
that in Salesforce? Fine.
We don't have to look at a dialer or anything like that.
Are you using Salesforce chat feature?
Are you trying to queue emails in Salesforce?
And if so, do you want to leave that there or do you want that
to be done within the C cast platform?
So I think these are the questions that we have to
further uncover as a conversation progresses is
(15:37):
that's cool, we can integrate the two, but we need to
understand what are the pieces you want to keep in Salesforce
and what is it that we can bringfrom a contact center
perspective? Let's marry the two together
because there are definitely ways to do that.
And Josh, I did create, you knowthis.
I had a partner asking me about it.
He's like, hey, I got to show that I know what Salesforce is
all about and the value it brings versus the contact
center. So can you help me come up with
(15:59):
a bunch of questions? And I did, so I created a list
of at least 10 questions about the different data points in
Salesforce and how do you want it?
Do you want your contact center agent interface embedded in
Salesforce? Do you want it separate?
Do you want simple screen pops and color, you know, Click to
dial from Salesforce or is it going to be way more in depth?
Do you want it to auto create a ticket, create tasks and all
(16:19):
these questions that come into play that you have to think
about. I don't expect our our tech
advisors to ask these questions out of the gate.
It's a conversation that will progress, but I think it from
the get go, let's understand howare they using Salesforce?
How do they want to continue using it versus, you know, what
do they want out of a context inour platform and we can figure
that out, what pieces play wherewe can help them have that
(16:40):
conversation? So when you're, when you're in
that I, I love the discovery questions and we may come back
to some of those too. When, when you're in that
conversation, you know, we're talking about this idea of, you
know, this, this Co selling kindof like we know that in the TSD
community, we can't sell Salesforce licensing.
So, and we've been asked that many, many, many times, right?
(17:02):
We would be awesome if we could,because our partners would be
able to sell a ton of it. But when you're in that and
you're and you're doing this kind of BYOT stuff, are are you
finding or, or you know, just exploring this conversation?
Are you finding that are, are are we competing to your point?
Like is the Salesforce Rep ever in the conversation with you as
a partner? Do we know that they're always
there trying to push this and wewant to push BYOT if they are,
(17:24):
if possible, because that's a great advocate to kind of align
with. Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, Yeah. They there are times where some
of our vendors that play really well in the Salesforce space
somewhat like Ivanish for example, if they come in and we
know that they can integrate very well with Salesforce, there
may be a time where it can get complex where the integration
(17:47):
needs are much greater. They would bring in a Salesforce
Rep OK into a call with the customer and that's fine.
So in some of those cases that'sgreat.
We need to be able to Co sell to, to be able to, to come up
with a solution that's going to work perfectly for our
customers. But what needs to happen is
setting that expectation before these conversations happen where
(18:08):
they're bringing in a SalesforceRep.
Let's set those boundaries. Hey, we're the vendor here.
We're bringing in our platform Salesforce.
This is where we can use your help.
But we own this customer. This is our customer for this
specific opportunity. So let's set the boundaries.
Let's figure out who has what role and not step on each
other's toes. And I think even beyond the
(18:30):
whole sales force conversation, Josh, we see so many times where
our vendors are saying, you knowwhat, this is going to be much
more complex integration. We're going to need to bring in
a third party to help us with this integration implementation.
I see it happen all the time, especially in the healthcare and
in the finance space. Healthcare, you've got, you
know, Emrs like Epic, Cerner, these things may have closed
(18:52):
technologies or they have specific APIs, but unless we've
got a vendor that has out-of-the-box integrations that
have prebuilt this, we're going to have to bring in a third
party in the finance world. Oh my gosh, you've got the core
banking systems like the Jack Henry, you know, the Fi service,
the Scimitars. What I hear time and time again
is, Oh my gosh, you're such a pain to integrate with.
They're so closed off and we're going to have to have a lot of
(19:14):
conversations. Let's bring in, you know, from
the healthcare side, maybe we bring in a spin side, maybe from
the for the fintech where we bring in a novel box or
something. But here's what my concern is.
I love that. Let's bring in it takes a
village to deliver what we need right to to our customer.
That's fine. Let's bring in these, all these
parties. But what I don't like is being
blindsided. So I've had this happen before
(19:36):
where you get on a call with a customer, we're trying to talk
integrations today guys. And there's someone sitting in
there in front of you. Like who in the world is this
person? They're not with the supplier.
Who are they? It causes a lot of confusion for
the customer, for myself or our Tasmania.
Let's be transparent about it. And So what I tend to do these
days is if I'm having a conversation with our customers,
I say, hey, by the way, I know that these suppliers are
(19:59):
notorious for bringing in a third party.
Let's have that conversation when we start talking about
implementation. Let's find out, well, we need a
third party for this. Because if so, I want to have
that control. I want my TA and myself to call
the shots on this, right? Like, hey, hey, by the way,
we've used Easter parties. We trust them.
We know they're going to do a great job.
Can we control who we bring in as a third party to help us with
(20:19):
this? And by the way, it gets our
Tasmania compensated. Huge, right?
So I want more control over that.
And I'm all about being transparent.
Let's have that conversation early on.
I'm open with a customer to say we might need a third party, but
we can help you with that, you know, and just just be
transparent about it. I don't want to be blindsided.
I love, I love this call out. This is so important.
(20:42):
And I think it's a it's a testament to the amount of work
that goes into some of these deals that may not may not seem
that complex on the surface. And it may seem like magic wand
got waved and poof, you know, the deal closed.
Like if you're not really involved in this, but I think
it's a great, I think it's a great thought, you know, to, to
(21:02):
the TAS to listen in and see howsome of these really, if it
feels like it's going to get weird or if it feels like it's
going to get complicated, use that as an opportunity to kind
of just listen and learn and dive in.
And if you know, if you see something there that to your
point, like question about it, ask about it, because the more
(21:24):
you can control that sale, like I, I have this forever
overarching goal that whatever we do, we need to make sure that
it is, it is accomplishing the task of making the end customers
as sticky to our partners as possible.
And there are a lot of you know,the, the call before the call,
the call after the call, the thepre call of the pre call.
(21:44):
I mean, all those seem silly if you, if you look at that and you
know, try to look at efficiency of time, but they are so
necessary for what it takes. Because to your point, like that
third party might not even know how to spell TSD.
They don't, they don't, they're just getting on another call,
right? They're an implementer or
they're an integrator or they don't care.
They don't care. They just don't know.
See, I love, love that call out.Yeah, it's funny, right?
(22:07):
Ironically, we're trying to helpour customers improve their own
customer experience. We need to remember to give them
that customer experience, right?The utmost positive customer
experience throughout this wholeprocess.
That's part of it. All right, from a discovery call
perspective, like I, I, I alwayswant to leave people with even
(22:28):
more questions that, you know, they might not have thought of
before. So as you're sitting in on some
of these discovery calls, what'sthe, what's the best way?
I like you, you started earlier with we've got to understand
who's using, you know, whether it's Salesforce or who's, who's,
whatever. But I mean, walk us just
through, is it a, who's involvedin this process?
(22:49):
Is it a, why are we here today? What's your what's your favorite
kind of, you know, first couple steps in this path?
Yeah, I think some of our partners tend to think, should I
just out of the gate ask them what are they using?
What's your entire tech stack? What are you using today?
Which, yes, we need to know thatinformation.
We will get there. But I think to start off the
conversation, let's do it in a more natural consultative way.
(23:10):
And I'm all about use cases. You know, you'll hear me say,
and I'll say this to our partners too, or even to
customers. I'm not afraid to say this on
the call. I'll say, look, I'm the solution
architect to help you through this, but I'm not going to get
technical on this call. I really don't know how to be
technical. I got to be honest, I my
approach is use cases. Let's have this conversation to
figure out how what's happening today.
(23:31):
How are you using this? So the thing that I like to do
is say, can you walk me through,you know, customer here.
Can you walk me through how, howcustomer interactions are
happening today? So from a customer standpoint,
we or patient or member, whatever, reaching out to your
teams, how does that happen? Is it just a voice call?
(23:53):
Are they chatting with you on a website?
Are they emailing with you? How does that interaction come
in? And then which teams within your
organizations are touching thoseinteractions?
What are some of the commonly asked inquiries or whatnot?
Talk me through that whole process of what happens.
And this opens up the whole dialogue because they're going
(24:15):
to start telling you, well, it does this.
So here's where we struggle or does this, Oh my gosh, we could
do this better. You know, that kind of stuff.
It opens up that whole dialogue.They're telling you now what,
what the challenges are. And then in the back of your
mind, you think, OK, now I know where to get them to, right?
I know what the outcome is that they're looking to accomplish.
And then they're, they're helping you understand their
workflow, right? That entire process.
(24:37):
I love that approach instead of just, whoa, what are you, what
are you using today? What's going on?
You know, just just be natural about it, just trying to figure
out the use cases and you dive deeper and deeper into it and,
and as you're uncovering little,little bits and pieces of the
pain points, you can have a further discussion about that.
So that's how I would do it. It's all about the use cases.
It's all about what departments are doing what for them today.
(24:59):
How do they interact with one another, not just through the
outside world, but how do they interact with one another too?
And that really gives me a lot of insight into, OK, that
holistic approach. Remember, it's not just this
department that might need help,it's the entire company.
So just use the basis, just be natural about it.
Don't get technical. I want to, I want to push on
(25:20):
this a little bit. I mean, I'm, I'm reminded back
there was a couple episodes ago,we had Trevor Burnside on.
Trevor's got some, you know, great military training.
And, and one of the things that he talked about that they teach
you in military training is basically to, you know, figure
out your 5 or 10 things that you're going to talk about.
And procedurally, every time yougo into that conversation,
(25:40):
whatever those 5 or 10 things are that you've you've uncovered
with the customer or you deem that are important, grab thing
one, go deep on thing one, get back out of that rabbit hole.
Go to thing 2GO down, go, go down that that course, get out
of that rabbit hole. Go to things like you do not
miss the opportunity procedurally to go down the
rabbit holes that you need to. But but again, it's a rabbit
(26:01):
hole, right? It's you.
You quickly realize, Oh my gosh,we only have 30 minutes or Oh my
gosh, we have an hour. So how do you, I guess in that,
that framework of that process, right, that that everybody kind
of follows or we want everybody to follow are there what are the
what are the best green flags? And maybe what are the best, I
(26:21):
guess this would be worst red flags in that to go, oh, if you
hear that go deeper or oh, if you hear that, steer it a
different way. I don't know.
Yeah, the green flags I would say are if you start to hear a
lot of frustration, and I love this, when you have a discovery
call with more than one person from the customer side and they
(26:41):
all start to pitch in. Oh my gosh, yeah.
So, so this is this. I was so frustrating.
And our and our customers are saying, you know, they can't get
a hold of anyone. By the time they do, it's, you
know, it's the wrong person. They got to be transferred
again. They're so sick of it.
You hear that? That's like, oh, I love this, I
love this. And you just keep digging For
more information. So tell me, So what happens?
What are you hearing? So when it so the customer's on
(27:01):
hold, are you able to see that they hung up?
Are there Oh, you don't even have visibility into that.
You just hear the complaints by the time you get a customer
live, all these things I'm listening for and if they're
starting to show more frustration and they're getting
animated and more than one person from the team is starting
to say the same thing, that's what I I zone in on.
Let's talk more about this. Let's talk through that process.
(27:23):
What's happening here? Where's the where's it falling
off? Where's the mishap?
You know, and Oh my gosh, what if we presented you with some
automation or a conversational AI or a voice bot on the front
end to help with this? You know, like I had one
recently where it was that one that we thought, oh, we have to
replace their on Prem PBX come to find that they're like, no,
(27:43):
no, no, we still, we're in contract there.
Here's where we need the help, right?
It is we've got 6 folks sitting here.
They're taking calls, but by thetime the call gets to them,
they're spending way too much time talking to them because
they can't help this customer orthis patient.
It was a healthcare company. So we're like, OK, cool.
This is how we can automate thiswith some voice AI or AI agent.
It's the term that we use and here's what we can do.
(28:05):
Some call deflection and offloadit and just send it to your
agents if needed. That's a huge green flag to me
is these pain points. There's multiple people saying
the same thing. And I'll, I'll go down a rabbit
hole on that because my conversations are very organic.
And I'll, I'll, like I said, I'll zone in on the one thing
that if I hear, Oh my God, this is a huge pain for what we have
to try to solve for. We'll keep talking about it and
(28:28):
then just go back and forth. On the flip side, the red flag,
Oh my gosh, this is where it gets really tough.
And I've had this recently is, well, we're happy.
You know, we're on the solution today.
We're actually pretty happy withit, no complaints.
But we think we might be paying too much for it.
So we want to see what else is on the market.
(28:49):
I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, there's no outcome we're looking
to accomplish here other than this is a pricing exercise, OK?
You know, you just have to identify that quickly and say,
fine, tell me some of the thingsI still go through the whole
discovery. Or what are the key things
you're using this platform? What do you love about?
What do we not want to lose? What can we improve upon it?
And then I figure out what recommendations.
(29:10):
But again, in the back of my mind thinking this is a pricing
exercise. So if that's the case, we may
not have a real opportunity. But let's let's just get our
Tasmania what they need, right, to present this to the customer
and then we may just walk away from it.
So it's that another red flag orit's a red flag.
But for me it's more of a challenges when customers just
(29:30):
don't have a clue. Is there not an outcome that
we're trying to accomplish here?You know, then they always say
we don't know what we don't know.
So OK, let's, let's do some educating.
Let's talk about, and I hate this term, the art of the art of
possible, right? But essentially that's what it
is, is, hey, did you realize youcould do this?
Let's talk through what's going on with you.
Maybe we can do things more efficiently.
I'm sure we can. But that's always a challenge is
(29:52):
they they really don't know. So again, there's no compelling
reason for you to help them through this process to get them
to the the finishing line, the finish line, because so you're
just going to have these conversations that's ongoing and
you don't know where it's going to go.
You know, I think that to me is the red flags are the more
challenging opportunity. Find, find that, find that
(30:13):
compelling event to your point and I and I think you know, the,
the, the, the the I'm a big fan of objection handling, right?
So, you know, if the first layerof the objection is, hey, this
is a price thing, then naturallyI think we have to say, and this
is where we need help with the TA.
Maybe this is not with the wholeaudience of people that we're on
(30:33):
the call with. But hey, if we're able to get
you to a point of savings, what is the point of savings that
would be, that would make it interesting for you to make a
change. I'm happy to get to a yes, of
course, but I want to get to a no faster because then that
saves everybody the time. We know that this is just an
exercise and they they may have thought that there was going to
(30:54):
be some compelling savings. So they may have had honest
intent, no Machiavellian, you know, intent to come into this
conversation. But if there's not a number that
they can, I have to save 70%. OK, probably not going to
happen. Like let me we maybe pivot that
to somewhere else in technology.Like is there a cost cutting
exercise that you're really being tasked with doing right
now? Cuz a lot of people are going
(31:14):
through that. So I think it's a, it's
depending on the nature of the customer.
I suppose it depends. But everything to your point, I
love, I love being aware of those flags, but I do love the,
I love the frustration flag. Push on it, understand it.
That's a great call out. Yeah, cuz that's where we can
make the most impact, right, To help them eliminate that
frustration. And I guess to close this out
(31:35):
too is to your point, Josh, whatI love asking at the towards the
end of a call, the discovery call, whether it's a green flag
or red flag, I always say tell me three things, 3 criteria
that's going to help you come toa decision on whether or not
you're going to move to another,another platform.
If you're going to move to another platform, what are those
three things? What's going to tell?
Is it redundancy? Pricing is there, you know what,
(31:57):
whatever it is, it's a feature. Is it a support?
Tell me what those three things are.
And I put the customer on the spot and they tell me.
So that helps me also figure out, OK, what's it going to take
to to take this to the finish line?
I like it. I like it.
All right, I guess final thoughts.
You know, we're we're we we get paid by the amount of times we
(32:18):
say AI. We're not going to have a big
bonus this this call, we've onlysaid it a few times.
So I'm going to, I'm going to have to throw it out for us for
a few more here. As we think about how AI is
modernizing all of these things and, and, and the customer
expectations are evolving. I mean, how do you see, how do
you see? How does that, how does that
change what we're doing? I guess maybe take take us home
(32:40):
on this thought, however you want to talk about it.
Oh yeah, of course we got to, wegot to wrap it up with AII mean
we'd be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't talk
about AI. So here's what I'm thinking.
I mean, we've been saying throughout this conversation how
important our role is, right with hilarious as we're helping
our TAS figure this out. I think though, in the future, I
(33:00):
could be wrong. So our role is going to pivot a
little bit, I think. I think with Chat GP, Chat
ChatGPT becoming a household name now we're going to have
customers who are savvy enough to go copilot something.
Hey, I'm looking at this. What do you think?
And they might come up with solutions of their own.
I think maybe by the time they start talking to us to help them
(33:22):
through that process, they may already know or think they know
who they want to look at and say, hey, Megan, can you help me
do a comparison chart? I'm thinking of, you know,
vendors AB and C. Can you help me?
Am I on the right track? Can you validate what my thought
process is? So now I'm coming in, I feel
like it would be coming into themiddle of it versus hold on,
let's take a step back and startthis over and I can help you
(33:43):
because ChatGPT may not be the end all.
It's pulling information from multiple websites.
So it's giving you what you think you want to hear, but it
may not be correct. So I think in the future, it
could be the TA and, and us coming in just to validate a
customer's research. We need to be more, even more of
an expert when it comes to the different platforms that are out
(34:05):
there to be able to come in and say, yeah, we see where you're
going with this. But by the way, did you know,
and here's the gotchas and let us, let us help you through this
process. So I think that might change,
Josh. I think it would be our role
pivoting from a, Hey, how can wehelp consult with this to let's
validate what the customer is finding on their own, you know,
and that's, that's going to be alittle bit more challenging, I
(34:26):
think for us, But we have to remember, just take a step back,
unless you start this over and do it in a way where we, we got
to be able to make that recommendation that we feel good
about. I'm not going to feel good about
customers saying here's these three and no, we're adamant
about these three. What what do you recommend?
I'm thinking, hold on, I don't know all there is to know about
your environment. So let's let's have that
conversation. But I, I think that's what's
(34:47):
going to happen in the future isit's gonna pivot.
We might come in in the middle of things and have to put a
different hat on versus coming in from the get go and doing
consulting. Yeah, I think it's AI think it's
a good call out. I mean there's there's other
similar parallel innovations youthink about.
You know, this probably gives people a like when I say this,
but the car buying experience, you know, you think about what
(35:09):
the car buying experience used to be.
And then what the auto dealer community had to get used to was
your buyers became smarter. Your buyers could do research
and, and, and 90% of the time your buyer knows what they want
before they even get there. They've just made a choice that
they're either going to buy it from you or they're going to buy
it from you. And so I think we have, we have
(35:30):
those kind of buyers and then toyour side, you know, we have
those buyers that are like, whatshould I be doing?
What's everybody else doing right?
And I and I like where I've seenpartners be really successful in
this is this is such a great reason to have constant QBRS
with your top customers and, andtalk about all the things that
are in your in, you know, in your Rolodex of products from CX
(35:51):
to security to infrastructure tocloud, all of these things that
we have in the portfolio that you know, you have access
through distribution to do all of these things.
And so if you're, if you're in there every quarter, whatever
the, the, the sequence is, that makes sense.
I think you're going to, you're going to find yourself
opportunistically getting into these conversations at the right
(36:11):
time because I think to your point, timing needs to be even
earlier, right? We always want to see, we always
want to see in those conversations early and not
late. And I, I love it.
I think it's a good call out. But I don't know crystal ball,
so who knows? Who knows what can happen?
You know, Miss Cleo had a crystal ball.
I mean, she did she did OK, but she did charge by the minute.
(36:34):
So how how biased was she? I don't know.
It's always a good time for MissCleo reference.
No good stuff, good stuff, Megan, that a lot of good
Nuggets on here today. We talked Salesforce, we talked
just deals and trends and a lot of good stuff as always.
Thank you. Appreciate you coming on and
doing this one. Thank you.
(36:55):
Yeah, Always a pleasure. All right, everybody, that wraps
us up for this week. Don't forget, do the following.
Do the subscribing wherever you're coming to us and
listening, whether that's Spotify, Apple Music, or
anywhere else. Until next time, I'm your host,
Josh Lopresto, SVP of sales engineering at Telaris.
Megan Ties TX Architect We talk,Who's calling the shots, Delts
(37:18):
force voice and your coach S conundrum.
Till next time. Next Level Biztech has been a
production of Telera Studio 19. Please visit telaris.com For
more information.
Welcome to the podcast designed to fuel your success selling
technology solutions. I'm your host, Josh Lopresto,
SVP of Sales Engineering at Telaris, and this is next level
Biztech. Hey everybody, welcome back.
We're on with another new topic this week talking to you about
(00:21):
Salesforce Voice, all kinds of good stuff.
Today we've got on with us, everybody's favorite, Megan Ty,
CX architect here in the West for Telaris.
Megan, welcome back on. Yay, I'm back.
That's a good sign. You keep having me back.
So great getting back. It is a good sign.
So today's episode is is a unique one.
(00:43):
It's titled Who's Calling the Shots, Salesforce Voice and The
Cosell Conundrum. That's a lot of words, but we're
going to get into this idea of, you know, there's a lot of
things cooking, a lot of customers have Salesforce from
ACRM perspective. So let's, let's kind of kick
this off. You know, you're, you're in the
trenches every day. You've got this frontline view,
(01:03):
you're out, you know, with, with, with Sam at some of these
ascends, you're on customer calls, you're helping partners
with strategy. How has how has the role, you
know, your role evolved to become so much more central to
this sales conversation? Oh my gosh, it's definitely
evolved. So many changes.
I've been here, it's coming up on seven years, So many changes.
(01:27):
When I originally came to Telaris, it was all about, hey,
let's build out a CCAS practice.We didn't even have one.
And back then all we were talking about was CCAS.
What does it stand for? What does it mean?
How is it different from call center?
We weren't even talking about CXback then, right?
So back then it was a lot of educating our partners.
Hey, you've got to be talking about C CAS and what does it
(01:47):
mean? How do you sell it?
And while we still do that today, I still do that a lot,
but I feel like the role itself has really evolved into more of
a, hey, I'm your subject matter expert.
I'm here to help you with this opportunity for your customer,
Mr. Missus TA, how can I come inand help you have that
conversation? It's very sales driven and it's,
(02:08):
it's very opportunity driven, right.
So, you know, Teleris as a whole, we're very much focused
on less help with these opportunities to help get our
TAS the win and of course the win for ourselves.
But ultimately it's become more of a role where we're helping
with that sales cycle, that process itself, doing discovery
recommendations, trying to figure out what the customer
needs, how we can help them. It's all that encompassing.
(02:30):
So I feel like it's transitionedmore of just a, hey, it's all
technical, you know, here's whatit is, here's what it can do to
hey, how do we help you through this whole sales process and
stay in the deal with you all the way to closure.
That's what I feel. So we're doing a lot of that.
That's been a huge focus for myself and of course our our
entire SE team Intelerus as a whole.
(02:51):
So let's think about some some lessons from the field here.
You know, we call this lessons hard lessons learned, mentors,
just collective opinions, thingslike that.
I mean, walk us through something that that you try to
carry with you here as you go into every conversation.
Sure. Yeah, So and this is not
necessarily one specific experience.
(03:12):
It's a compilation of a bunch ofexperiences right over the year.
And Josh, I think, you know, we talked a little bit about this
before where we see it happen from time to time.
And it's instead of coming to usand saying, hey, customer wants
this, just this right. It's about wait, hold on, hold
on. Let's take a step back.
Do they really want this? Let's have this conversation.
(03:32):
Let's talk this through. If you have ever attended, if
anyone's attended the CXSN trainings with Sam Nelson, you
always see her hear her pitching.
It is about outcome based selling.
We're not selling just to make asale.
So if we have something come to us, especially with AI these
days, right, it's the biggest buzzword.
So we have customers coming to us saying we want AI, we need
(03:54):
AI. Well, let's talk it through.
What do what do you mean we wantconversational AI?
Are you sure that's what you want or what?
What are all the the pieces and parts that are are touching it?
Let's have that conversation. I think the lesson here is I've
seen it happen more often than I'd like.
You know, where opportunities come in, customers saying they
want one thing, but that might not be it.
(04:16):
They don't know what they don't know, right?
They don't they think they want something, but that might not be
it. So I think the lesson here is
let's have that conversation. I know it, it takes time, a time
commitment from us, from our partners, but I think it's so
critical. Let's have that conversation,
whether it's between US and the partner first to further flush
us out. If we can get the customer on
the phone, that's even better. Because what we tend to see when
(04:40):
I'm speaking personally as well is if we can have those
conversations early on, it typically leads to more success,
a higher success rate, meaning ahigher closure rate because
we're actually uncovering everything that needs to be
uncovered and we're giving or wepresenting to the customer the
solution that they need. We're not selling just to make a
sale, right? We want to give them what they
need to help solve their problems.
(05:00):
Again, outcome based selling. So I think that's just a lesson
that I keep. I keep learning the hard way,
but we just want to encourage our partners.
Let's have those conversations early.
There's a, there's AI love this.There's a couple interesting
kind of parallels here in life, like I've been told as a person,
you know, I think maybe this is a male thing.
(05:20):
I, I, I don't know of, you know,we're, we're, some of us are
just engineered to be fixers. We, we see somebody suffering,
we see somebody in pain or, or somebody tells us this thing is
wrong and our, our instant switches, we got to go fix it.
We got to get them happy or, or we need to fix the problem or,
you know, whatever, right, Whatever it takes to make that
person smile again, kind of thing.
And, and sometimes that's just not the answer.
(05:42):
The answer is just listen, just listen and understand and, and
let somebody talk it out, right.So there's this kind of innate
reactive sense in some of us. And I think we see that as, as a
little bit of a parallel to yourpoint.
When we see the customer come toa, a, a partner, we all think
(06:05):
that that customers just knows if, if they're asking for this
thing, then they must surely know that that's the thing that
they want. And, and I, I saw a great
example of this. If you remember Wolf of Wall
Street, Jordan Belfort, he was at a sales conference, right?
And, and, and somebody said, Jordan, you know, sell me this
pen. You know, one, one of these most
(06:25):
just aggressive salespeople, right?
And Jordan said this is just kind of like a hiring
conversation when you go and interview salespeople.
It's not about the whole sell methis pen exercise has nothing to
do with the pen. You got to get the reps that
come in and say like Megan, I can sell you this pen.
It's great. You can write upside down.
You're going to be in outer space.
This this you know this thing will last 100 years, blah, blah,
(06:48):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's all the benefit 123 got
it. These are these are great sign
here. Press hard.
The reality in that the, the real goodness comes in when you
step back and go, well, Megan, why are you, what's driving you
to buy a pen? Why did you change from you used
to use pencils? What, what's, what's pushing on
that? How many, how many pens do you
find yourself needing? What's, what's the reason that
(07:10):
you're even asking for pens to begin with?
Like have you thought about using other different means of
note taking? Like understand the, the, the
psyche of the person? And to your point, I, I, I think
when we see that, when we drive into that earlier and we
understand that earlier I used to think it was cliche to go to
just get us on the call like, well, let's just talk about it.
(07:31):
But there really is so much value to your point because we
don't know what anybody wants. Right.
And here's OK on the flip side, right, So I had a a recent
engagement where our partner says Megan, we do networking all
day long. We're not that comfortable with
voice. Can we bring you in this call?
We think we've got an opportunity to replace their on
Prem PBX. We get on the call, that was
(07:52):
completely not the case. But what we did uncover was they
need conversational AI. So, you know, the flip opposite
of what the, you know, another scenario that I experienced, but
so getting on that call early was uncovering this or in
contract. They're not ready to RIP and
replace yet. But here's this one huge pain
point that they're looking to tochange.
And so again, right, having thatconversation, talking it through
(08:15):
and uncovering exactly why we'reeven talking to them, What's
going on? What do they want to accomplish?
Yeah, hugely valuable. So, so from your perspective,
right, there's, there's choices out there.
What is this kind of CX practicehas evolved and we're going to
dive a little bit deeper here into Salesforce.
But I mean use that as an example.
(08:35):
I mean, how do we, how do we show up uniquely when it comes
time to talk about something more complex than traditional
UUC and Salesforce? I mean, what's what's the angle
there? Yeah, that's a.
This is a perfect segue right from this, this example that I
just presented where we we were on a call to uncover a lot of
things. We had no idea what was going
on. I think what makes us different
(08:56):
to Larus and our engineering practice as a whole is when we
come in and we speak with our partners, customers, we take a
holistic approach. I love using that word holistic
because again, we're not trying to sell to make a sale on this
one piece. We want to uncover everything
that the customer is going through, what their environment
is, where are their pain points or challenges?
(09:17):
Where do they want to be betweennow to, you know, we're starting
at point A, do they want to get to point B or do they want to
get to point Z? What does all that entail?
So what we want to do is we wantto talk about the things that
they're needing today to help solve a specific issue, but we
also want to think about, hold on, there's all these other
applications, there's all these other departments within your
company. Miss or misses customer, how is
(09:39):
that going to impact them? So we bring in this solution and
we have a tunnel vision on what we're trying to solve for here.
How is that going to impact the rest of your organization?
So we take a holistic view. We ask a bunch of questions.
Now, I was on another partner call where I said, you know
what, hold on, let's what about this or how do they interact
here and how do they interact there?
And they said, no, Megan, we don't want to talk about they
just need this piece. And I said, well, hold on, we do
(10:00):
want to talk about that because they may not just need this one
piece. We want to look at everything in
general. I'm not trying to upsell them.
I'm trying to understand what's going on in this environment and
how can we help so that we can make that right recommendation.
And if we do something now todayto solve a certain issue, how is
that going to impact the rest ofthe organization?
How is that going to look, you know, three years from now, are
(10:21):
we going to have to do this all over again because we had a
misstep here. We did, we forgot to consider
this piece of it. So I think that's how we're
different, Josh is and I like tothink that's how we're different
is we come in, we're working side by side with our TA through
that entire process, pre sales, during the the, the sales
process, potentially even post sales, right with our PM team.
(10:41):
But again, we're taking a holistic approach.
We're talking about everything and anything because that's how
we start to uncover what's goingon and what they really, really
need. So we'll stay in there for as
long as we need to on the deal. Now when it comes with to to
Salesforce and we'll talk a little bit more about it is we
have to ask a bunch of questionsthat's going to uncover, you
know how they use Salesforce, What do we need?
(11:02):
What are the bits and pieces that we need to integrate with?
Yeah. The conversation.
Let's let's let's go into that. Let's let's think about all
right, you're you're in a deal. You're thinking tech stack.
You hear Salesforce, you hear we're trying to voice integrate.
I mean, what are what are the aha moments in that
conversation? You know, what's what's the
magic to to kind of make some ofthat click and figure out, OK,
(11:22):
it's going to go this direction,not this direction.
Yeah. So when we start talking about
Salesforce, it can go one of twoways.
It could be a customer coming insaying, hey, we have Salesforce,
I'm looking at Salesforce service Cloud voice.
Now when it comes to that, we would compete with that
eventually, right. So we're either going to compete
(11:43):
with it or we can pivot and partner with them on this.
So what I would be listening forwould be, hey, we want to we're
looking at Salesforce service called Voice.
But here are some of the cool things that we want to use.
We want to do real time transcription.
We want sentiment analysis. We want a bunch of AI driven
insights around this. And I have to stop and say, hold
on, hold on. You know, with Salesforce
(12:05):
service called Voice, to get these features that you're
talking about, we have to bring in a telephony partner.
Salesforce offers a BYOT, bring your own telephony.
So because they're using open CTI now that framework within
Salesforce, these are some of the limitations, the real time
transcription, sentimental analysis.
So if I hear those keywords, I'mgoing to say, oh, you know what
though? We're going to need to bring in
(12:26):
a telephony vendor like AC Cast Player that can help you
accomplish this. So I love that.
So we're making that pivot. Instead of potentially
competing, we're going to bring in a relationship that can help
deliver that. Now, what's music to my ears
when I hear things like, Oh no, yeah, well, we're using
Salesforce. But you know, one thing we can
help solving for would be our agent average handle time.
(12:47):
Oh my gosh, it our agents take way too long.
It shouldn't be 10 minutes. It should be 3 minutes to handle
this interaction. What can we do?
That's music to my ears because now I'm thinking how we've got
the technology that can help with that and we have ways to
integrate into Salesforce. So can we bring in some cool
things like, you know, agent assist, where we're popping up
recommendations to help that agent through this conversation
(13:08):
with it with their customer? Can we give them access to the
knowledge base, bring up an article, bring up a link that
they can send out to their customer?
And by the way, to save time on all this, could we transcribe
all this and summarizes? Can we do an auto summary for
your agent so that they don't have to spend another 5 minutes
wrapping up the call, taking notes, archiving all this?
This can all be done with AI andit can all be saved within that
(13:31):
Salesforce contact account contact.
So I love that that again, like I said, that's music to my ears
when they're looking for more efficient ways for their agents
to handle interactions and have it tied into Salesforce in some
capacity. So those are the aha moments.
That's the magical thing. Is it fair to say that, you
know, look, Salesforce is great at advertising, Matthew
(13:52):
Mcconaughey's got, you know, thecool factor for sure, right, All
right, all right. But is it fair to say that
there's some presumptions from the customer side that, you
know, this, this stack of tools within Salesforce is equally as
competitive as our, you know, top CX vendors out there.
And surely Salesforce has all ofthese things.
And I think I guess to your point, like how, how do you
(14:14):
want, how do you want partners to kind of understand that of
oh, OK, once we hear, is it those things, is it once we hear
agent assist, once we hear all the we just realize that you're
going to have to do more than even bring in a full telephony.
You might have to just look at something.
You might look at have to look at a whole solution.
Like where where do you see thatkind of feature make?
(14:34):
How do you make that distinctionwhen it's time?
So I think the minute you start hearing a customer bring up
Salesforce, the first thing you want to do is figure out who in
their in their companies using Salesforce.
Is it the sales team? Is it the support team?
Who, who is it right? Is it the marketing team?
So I need to figure out how who's using Salesforce within
the organization and how are they using it?
(14:56):
And if we can figure out what pieces of it, if they're looking
for a full contact center solution to do a bunch of the
the work in their work in we need to figure out then OK, So
what pieces of Salesforce are you using or do you envision
using? We can combine the two, the
contact center play and the Salesforce play.
Are you using it for outbound marketing and you want to keep
(15:16):
that in Salesforce? Fine.
We don't have to look at a dialer or anything like that.
Are you using Salesforce chat feature?
Are you trying to queue emails in Salesforce?
And if so, do you want to leave that there or do you want that
to be done within the C cast platform?
So I think these are the questions that we have to
further uncover as a conversation progresses is
(15:37):
that's cool, we can integrate the two, but we need to
understand what are the pieces you want to keep in Salesforce
and what is it that we can bringfrom a contact center
perspective? Let's marry the two together
because there are definitely ways to do that.
And Josh, I did create, you knowthis.
I had a partner asking me about it.
He's like, hey, I got to show that I know what Salesforce is
all about and the value it brings versus the contact
center. So can you help me come up with
(15:59):
a bunch of questions? And I did, so I created a list
of at least 10 questions about the different data points in
Salesforce and how do you want it?
Do you want your contact center agent interface embedded in
Salesforce? Do you want it separate?
Do you want simple screen pops and color, you know, Click to
dial from Salesforce or is it going to be way more in depth?
Do you want it to auto create a ticket, create tasks and all
(16:19):
these questions that come into play that you have to think
about. I don't expect our our tech
advisors to ask these questions out of the gate.
It's a conversation that will progress, but I think it from
the get go, let's understand howare they using Salesforce?
How do they want to continue using it versus, you know, what
do they want out of a context inour platform and we can figure
that out, what pieces play wherewe can help them have that
(16:40):
conversation? So when you're, when you're in
that I, I love the discovery questions and we may come back
to some of those too. When, when you're in that
conversation, you know, we're talking about this idea of, you
know, this, this Co selling kindof like we know that in the TSD
community, we can't sell Salesforce licensing.
So, and we've been asked that many, many, many times, right?
(17:02):
We would be awesome if we could,because our partners would be
able to sell a ton of it. But when you're in that and
you're and you're doing this kind of BYOT stuff, are are you
finding or, or you know, just exploring this conversation?
Are you finding that are, are are we competing to your point?
Like is the Salesforce Rep ever in the conversation with you as
a partner? Do we know that they're always
there trying to push this and wewant to push BYOT if they are,
(17:24):
if possible, because that's a great advocate to kind of align
with. Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, Yeah. They there are times where some
of our vendors that play really well in the Salesforce space
somewhat like Ivanish for example, if they come in and we
know that they can integrate very well with Salesforce, there
may be a time where it can get complex where the integration
(17:47):
needs are much greater. They would bring in a Salesforce
Rep OK into a call with the customer and that's fine.
So in some of those cases that'sgreat.
We need to be able to Co sell to, to be able to, to come up
with a solution that's going to work perfectly for our
customers. But what needs to happen is
setting that expectation before these conversations happen where
(18:08):
they're bringing in a SalesforceRep.
Let's set those boundaries. Hey, we're the vendor here.
We're bringing in our platform Salesforce.
This is where we can use your help.
But we own this customer. This is our customer for this
specific opportunity. So let's set the boundaries.
Let's figure out who has what role and not step on each
other's toes. And I think even beyond the
(18:30):
whole sales force conversation, Josh, we see so many times where
our vendors are saying, you knowwhat, this is going to be much
more complex integration. We're going to need to bring in
a third party to help us with this integration implementation.
I see it happen all the time, especially in the healthcare and
in the finance space. Healthcare, you've got, you
know, Emrs like Epic, Cerner, these things may have closed
(18:52):
technologies or they have specific APIs, but unless we've
got a vendor that has out-of-the-box integrations that
have prebuilt this, we're going to have to bring in a third
party in the finance world. Oh my gosh, you've got the core
banking systems like the Jack Henry, you know, the Fi service,
the Scimitars. What I hear time and time again
is, Oh my gosh, you're such a pain to integrate with.
They're so closed off and we're going to have to have a lot of
(19:14):
conversations. Let's bring in, you know, from
the healthcare side, maybe we bring in a spin side, maybe from
the for the fintech where we bring in a novel box or
something. But here's what my concern is.
I love that. Let's bring in it takes a
village to deliver what we need right to to our customer.
That's fine. Let's bring in these, all these
parties. But what I don't like is being
blindsided. So I've had this happen before
(19:36):
where you get on a call with a customer, we're trying to talk
integrations today guys. And there's someone sitting in
there in front of you. Like who in the world is this
person? They're not with the supplier.
Who are they? It causes a lot of confusion for
the customer, for myself or our Tasmania.
Let's be transparent about it. And So what I tend to do these
days is if I'm having a conversation with our customers,
I say, hey, by the way, I know that these suppliers are
(19:59):
notorious for bringing in a third party.
Let's have that conversation when we start talking about
implementation. Let's find out, well, we need a
third party for this. Because if so, I want to have
that control. I want my TA and myself to call
the shots on this, right? Like, hey, hey, by the way,
we've used Easter parties. We trust them.
We know they're going to do a great job.
Can we control who we bring in as a third party to help us with
(20:19):
this? And by the way, it gets our
Tasmania compensated. Huge, right?
So I want more control over that.
And I'm all about being transparent.
Let's have that conversation early on.
I'm open with a customer to say we might need a third party, but
we can help you with that, you know, and just just be
transparent about it. I don't want to be blindsided.
I love, I love this call out. This is so important.
(20:42):
And I think it's a it's a testament to the amount of work
that goes into some of these deals that may not may not seem
that complex on the surface. And it may seem like magic wand
got waved and poof, you know, the deal closed.
Like if you're not really involved in this, but I think
it's a great, I think it's a great thought, you know, to, to
(21:02):
the TAS to listen in and see howsome of these really, if it
feels like it's going to get weird or if it feels like it's
going to get complicated, use that as an opportunity to kind
of just listen and learn and dive in.
And if you know, if you see something there that to your
point, like question about it, ask about it, because the more
(21:24):
you can control that sale, like I, I have this forever
overarching goal that whatever we do, we need to make sure that
it is, it is accomplishing the task of making the end customers
as sticky to our partners as possible.
And there are a lot of you know,the, the call before the call,
the call after the call, the thepre call of the pre call.
(21:44):
I mean, all those seem silly if you, if you look at that and you
know, try to look at efficiency of time, but they are so
necessary for what it takes. Because to your point, like that
third party might not even know how to spell TSD.
They don't, they don't, they're just getting on another call,
right? They're an implementer or
they're an integrator or they don't care.
They don't care. They just don't know.
See, I love, love that call out.Yeah, it's funny, right?
(22:07):
Ironically, we're trying to helpour customers improve their own
customer experience. We need to remember to give them
that customer experience, right?The utmost positive customer
experience throughout this wholeprocess.
That's part of it. All right, from a discovery call
perspective, like I, I, I alwayswant to leave people with even
(22:28):
more questions that, you know, they might not have thought of
before. So as you're sitting in on some
of these discovery calls, what'sthe, what's the best way?
I like you, you started earlier with we've got to understand
who's using, you know, whether it's Salesforce or who's, who's,
whatever. But I mean, walk us just
through, is it a, who's involvedin this process?
(22:49):
Is it a, why are we here today? What's your what's your favorite
kind of, you know, first couple steps in this path?
Yeah, I think some of our partners tend to think, should I
just out of the gate ask them what are they using?
What's your entire tech stack? What are you using today?
Which, yes, we need to know thatinformation.
We will get there. But I think to start off the
conversation, let's do it in a more natural consultative way.
(23:10):
And I'm all about use cases. You know, you'll hear me say,
and I'll say this to our partners too, or even to
customers. I'm not afraid to say this on
the call. I'll say, look, I'm the solution
architect to help you through this, but I'm not going to get
technical on this call. I really don't know how to be
technical. I got to be honest, I my
approach is use cases. Let's have this conversation to
figure out how what's happening today.
(23:31):
How are you using this? So the thing that I like to do
is say, can you walk me through,you know, customer here.
Can you walk me through how, howcustomer interactions are
happening today? So from a customer standpoint,
we or patient or member, whatever, reaching out to your
teams, how does that happen? Is it just a voice call?
(23:53):
Are they chatting with you on a website?
Are they emailing with you? How does that interaction come
in? And then which teams within your
organizations are touching thoseinteractions?
What are some of the commonly asked inquiries or whatnot?
Talk me through that whole process of what happens.
And this opens up the whole dialogue because they're going
(24:15):
to start telling you, well, it does this.
So here's where we struggle or does this, Oh my gosh, we could
do this better. You know, that kind of stuff.
It opens up that whole dialogue.They're telling you now what,
what the challenges are. And then in the back of your
mind, you think, OK, now I know where to get them to, right?
I know what the outcome is that they're looking to accomplish.
And then they're, they're helping you understand their
workflow, right? That entire process.
(24:37):
I love that approach instead of just, whoa, what are you, what
are you using today? What's going on?
You know, just just be natural about it, just trying to figure
out the use cases and you dive deeper and deeper into it and,
and as you're uncovering little,little bits and pieces of the
pain points, you can have a further discussion about that.
So that's how I would do it. It's all about the use cases.
It's all about what departments are doing what for them today.
(24:59):
How do they interact with one another, not just through the
outside world, but how do they interact with one another too?
And that really gives me a lot of insight into, OK, that
holistic approach. Remember, it's not just this
department that might need help,it's the entire company.
So just use the basis, just be natural about it.
Don't get technical. I want to, I want to push on
(25:20):
this a little bit. I mean, I'm, I'm reminded back
there was a couple episodes ago,we had Trevor Burnside on.
Trevor's got some, you know, great military training.
And, and one of the things that he talked about that they teach
you in military training is basically to, you know, figure
out your 5 or 10 things that you're going to talk about.
And procedurally, every time yougo into that conversation,
(25:40):
whatever those 5 or 10 things are that you've you've uncovered
with the customer or you deem that are important, grab thing
one, go deep on thing one, get back out of that rabbit hole.
Go to thing 2GO down, go, go down that that course, get out
of that rabbit hole. Go to things like you do not
miss the opportunity procedurally to go down the
rabbit holes that you need to. But but again, it's a rabbit
(26:01):
hole, right? It's you.
You quickly realize, Oh my gosh,we only have 30 minutes or Oh my
gosh, we have an hour. So how do you, I guess in that,
that framework of that process, right, that that everybody kind
of follows or we want everybody to follow are there what are the
what are the best green flags? And maybe what are the best, I
(26:21):
guess this would be worst red flags in that to go, oh, if you
hear that go deeper or oh, if you hear that, steer it a
different way. I don't know.
Yeah, the green flags I would say are if you start to hear a
lot of frustration, and I love this, when you have a discovery
call with more than one person from the customer side and they
(26:41):
all start to pitch in. Oh my gosh, yeah.
So, so this is this. I was so frustrating.
And our and our customers are saying, you know, they can't get
a hold of anyone. By the time they do, it's, you
know, it's the wrong person. They got to be transferred
again. They're so sick of it.
You hear that? That's like, oh, I love this, I
love this. And you just keep digging For
more information. So tell me, So what happens?
What are you hearing? So when it so the customer's on
(27:01):
hold, are you able to see that they hung up?
Are there Oh, you don't even have visibility into that.
You just hear the complaints by the time you get a customer
live, all these things I'm listening for and if they're
starting to show more frustration and they're getting
animated and more than one person from the team is starting
to say the same thing, that's what I I zone in on.
Let's talk more about this. Let's talk through that process.
(27:23):
What's happening here? Where's the where's it falling
off? Where's the mishap?
You know, and Oh my gosh, what if we presented you with some
automation or a conversational AI or a voice bot on the front
end to help with this? You know, like I had one
recently where it was that one that we thought, oh, we have to
replace their on Prem PBX come to find that they're like, no,
(27:43):
no, no, we still, we're in contract there.
Here's where we need the help, right?
It is we've got 6 folks sitting here.
They're taking calls, but by thetime the call gets to them,
they're spending way too much time talking to them because
they can't help this customer orthis patient.
It was a healthcare company. So we're like, OK, cool.
This is how we can automate thiswith some voice AI or AI agent.
It's the term that we use and here's what we can do.
(28:05):
Some call deflection and offloadit and just send it to your
agents if needed. That's a huge green flag to me
is these pain points. There's multiple people saying
the same thing. And I'll, I'll go down a rabbit
hole on that because my conversations are very organic.
And I'll, I'll, like I said, I'll zone in on the one thing
that if I hear, Oh my God, this is a huge pain for what we have
to try to solve for. We'll keep talking about it and
(28:28):
then just go back and forth. On the flip side, the red flag,
Oh my gosh, this is where it gets really tough.
And I've had this recently is, well, we're happy.
You know, we're on the solution today.
We're actually pretty happy withit, no complaints.
But we think we might be paying too much for it.
So we want to see what else is on the market.
(28:49):
I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, there's no outcome we're looking
to accomplish here other than this is a pricing exercise, OK?
You know, you just have to identify that quickly and say,
fine, tell me some of the thingsI still go through the whole
discovery. Or what are the key things
you're using this platform? What do you love about?
What do we not want to lose? What can we improve upon it?
And then I figure out what recommendations.
(29:10):
But again, in the back of my mind thinking this is a pricing
exercise. So if that's the case, we may
not have a real opportunity. But let's let's just get our
Tasmania what they need, right, to present this to the customer
and then we may just walk away from it.
So it's that another red flag orit's a red flag.
But for me it's more of a challenges when customers just
(29:30):
don't have a clue. Is there not an outcome that
we're trying to accomplish here?You know, then they always say
we don't know what we don't know.
So OK, let's, let's do some educating.
Let's talk about, and I hate this term, the art of the art of
possible, right? But essentially that's what it
is, is, hey, did you realize youcould do this?
Let's talk through what's going on with you.
Maybe we can do things more efficiently.
I'm sure we can. But that's always a challenge is
(29:52):
they they really don't know. So again, there's no compelling
reason for you to help them through this process to get them
to the the finishing line, the finish line, because so you're
just going to have these conversations that's ongoing and
you don't know where it's going to go.
You know, I think that to me is the red flags are the more
challenging opportunity. Find, find that, find that
(30:13):
compelling event to your point and I and I think you know, the,
the, the, the the I'm a big fan of objection handling, right?
So, you know, if the first layerof the objection is, hey, this
is a price thing, then naturallyI think we have to say, and this
is where we need help with the TA.
Maybe this is not with the wholeaudience of people that we're on
(30:33):
the call with. But hey, if we're able to get
you to a point of savings, what is the point of savings that
would be, that would make it interesting for you to make a
change. I'm happy to get to a yes, of
course, but I want to get to a no faster because then that
saves everybody the time. We know that this is just an
exercise and they they may have thought that there was going to
(30:54):
be some compelling savings. So they may have had honest
intent, no Machiavellian, you know, intent to come into this
conversation. But if there's not a number that
they can, I have to save 70%. OK, probably not going to
happen. Like let me we maybe pivot that
to somewhere else in technology.Like is there a cost cutting
exercise that you're really being tasked with doing right
now? Cuz a lot of people are going
(31:14):
through that. So I think it's a, it's
depending on the nature of the customer.
I suppose it depends. But everything to your point, I
love, I love being aware of those flags, but I do love the,
I love the frustration flag. Push on it, understand it.
That's a great call out. Yeah, cuz that's where we can
make the most impact, right, To help them eliminate that
frustration. And I guess to close this out
(31:35):
too is to your point, Josh, whatI love asking at the towards the
end of a call, the discovery call, whether it's a green flag
or red flag, I always say tell me three things, 3 criteria
that's going to help you come toa decision on whether or not
you're going to move to another,another platform.
If you're going to move to another platform, what are those
three things? What's going to tell?
Is it redundancy? Pricing is there, you know what,
(31:57):
whatever it is, it's a feature. Is it a support?
Tell me what those three things are.
And I put the customer on the spot and they tell me.
So that helps me also figure out, OK, what's it going to take
to to take this to the finish line?
I like it. I like it.
All right, I guess final thoughts.
You know, we're we're we we get paid by the amount of times we
(32:18):
say AI. We're not going to have a big
bonus this this call, we've onlysaid it a few times.
So I'm going to, I'm going to have to throw it out for us for
a few more here. As we think about how AI is
modernizing all of these things and, and, and the customer
expectations are evolving. I mean, how do you see, how do
you see? How does that, how does that
change what we're doing? I guess maybe take take us home
(32:40):
on this thought, however you want to talk about it.
Oh yeah, of course we got to, wegot to wrap it up with AII mean
we'd be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't talk
about AI. So here's what I'm thinking.
I mean, we've been saying throughout this conversation how
important our role is, right with hilarious as we're helping
our TAS figure this out. I think though, in the future, I
(33:00):
could be wrong. So our role is going to pivot a
little bit, I think. I think with Chat GP, Chat
ChatGPT becoming a household name now we're going to have
customers who are savvy enough to go copilot something.
Hey, I'm looking at this. What do you think?
And they might come up with solutions of their own.
I think maybe by the time they start talking to us to help them
(33:22):
through that process, they may already know or think they know
who they want to look at and say, hey, Megan, can you help me
do a comparison chart? I'm thinking of, you know,
vendors AB and C. Can you help me?
Am I on the right track? Can you validate what my thought
process is? So now I'm coming in, I feel
like it would be coming into themiddle of it versus hold on,
let's take a step back and startthis over and I can help you
(33:43):
because ChatGPT may not be the end all.
It's pulling information from multiple websites.
So it's giving you what you think you want to hear, but it
may not be correct. So I think in the future, it
could be the TA and, and us coming in just to validate a
customer's research. We need to be more, even more of
an expert when it comes to the different platforms that are out
(34:05):
there to be able to come in and say, yeah, we see where you're
going with this. But by the way, did you know,
and here's the gotchas and let us, let us help you through this
process. So I think that might change,
Josh. I think it would be our role
pivoting from a, Hey, how can wehelp consult with this to let's
validate what the customer is finding on their own, you know,
and that's, that's going to be alittle bit more challenging, I
(34:26):
think for us, But we have to remember, just take a step back,
unless you start this over and do it in a way where we, we got
to be able to make that recommendation that we feel good
about. I'm not going to feel good about
customers saying here's these three and no, we're adamant
about these three. What what do you recommend?
I'm thinking, hold on, I don't know all there is to know about
your environment. So let's let's have that
conversation. But I, I think that's what's
(34:47):
going to happen in the future isit's gonna pivot.
We might come in in the middle of things and have to put a
different hat on versus coming in from the get go and doing
consulting. Yeah, I think it's AI think it's
a good call out. I mean there's there's other
similar parallel innovations youthink about.
You know, this probably gives people a like when I say this,
but the car buying experience, you know, you think about what
(35:09):
the car buying experience used to be.
And then what the auto dealer community had to get used to was
your buyers became smarter. Your buyers could do research
and, and, and 90% of the time your buyer knows what they want
before they even get there. They've just made a choice that
they're either going to buy it from you or they're going to buy
it from you. And so I think we have, we have
(35:30):
those kind of buyers and then toyour side, you know, we have
those buyers that are like, whatshould I be doing?
What's everybody else doing right?
And I and I like where I've seenpartners be really successful in
this is this is such a great reason to have constant QBRS
with your top customers and, andtalk about all the things that
are in your in, you know, in your Rolodex of products from CX
(35:51):
to security to infrastructure tocloud, all of these things that
we have in the portfolio that you know, you have access
through distribution to do all of these things.
And so if you're, if you're in there every quarter, whatever
the, the, the sequence is, that makes sense.
I think you're going to, you're going to find yourself
opportunistically getting into these conversations at the right
(36:11):
time because I think to your point, timing needs to be even
earlier, right? We always want to see, we always
want to see in those conversations early and not
late. And I, I love it.
I think it's a good call out. But I don't know crystal ball,
so who knows? Who knows what can happen?
You know, Miss Cleo had a crystal ball.
I mean, she did she did OK, but she did charge by the minute.
(36:34):
So how how biased was she? I don't know.
It's always a good time for MissCleo reference.
No good stuff, good stuff, Megan, that a lot of good
Nuggets on here today. We talked Salesforce, we talked
just deals and trends and a lot of good stuff as always.
Thank you. Appreciate you coming on and
doing this one. Thank you.
(36:55):
Yeah, Always a pleasure. All right, everybody, that wraps
us up for this week. Don't forget, do the following.
Do the subscribing wherever you're coming to us and
listening, whether that's Spotify, Apple Music, or
anywhere else. Until next time, I'm your host,
Josh Lopresto, SVP of sales engineering at Telaris.
Megan Ties TX Architect We talk,Who's calling the shots, Delts
(37:18):
force voice and your coach S conundrum.
Till next time. Next Level Biztech has been a
production of Telera Studio 19. Please visit telaris.com For
more information.
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