I am joined by Melanie Kruger, one of the best people leaders that I ever had the chance to work with. She has deep understanding of helping to scale Salesforce ISVs of all sizes. She actually found her way into the Salesforce ecosystem via networking between her husband and J Manning, bringing her to the Head of People at Conga.I got to work with Melanie twice at Conga and TaskRay and was so impressed with how she helped set culture and nurture culture so the companies could grow. Melanie shares that when she joined Conga, lots of people were generalists - Conga had a number of Business Analysts that did everything customer facing - Sales, CS, and Support. This can be a really good model of ISVs early on, but eventually specialization is required. Something similar happened at TaskRay and one of their BAs was Jon Barlow who is now a top tier enterprise AE in the ecosystem.We talk about culture and how it shifts over time, sharing her experience with Red Canary. We explore hiring pitfalls for early-stage ISVs and the importance of job descriptions. We go deep on this topic because it is so, so important to align expectations and help secure top talent as well as touching on some creative perk ideas for employees, like “two weeks to infinity”.It was a lovely conversation that blended business lessons and life lessons. This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond!
I am joined by Ben McCarthy, Founder of Salesforce Ben, Lab.club and advisor to a number of great companies in the ecosystem like AscendX, Tequity Advisors, and PipeLaunch. We talk about his journey from university to stumbling upon Salesforce and then after being called SalesforceBoy grew into Salesforce Ben. We talk about how to approach thought leadership, holding nothing back from the reader. Give back and give value and best practices without selling first. Obviously your offering will help more, but for basic use cases consider helping those salesforce users solve their problem without using your solution. There will be time to position your premium solution once trust is established.People in the ecosystem will know of Salesforce Ben and Ben himself, but some ISVs might not know that you can actually engage with SFB to help engage the Salesforce community with things like sponsored content, thought leadership, dreamforce activations and more. Their team has data and expertise to help guide ISVs on what works and what doesn’t to drive conversions. We talk about the state of the ecosystem around things like events and how it’s changed over the last decade. Experimenting with things like video and shorts vs. things like white papers. Speaking of exploration, Ben also gives his point of view on how and why they launched NowBen, a similar platform to Salesforce Ben but focused on the ServiceNow ecosystem. I think everyone can learn from his point of view on this topic.Make sure you follow Gearset and Elements.Cloud with Kevin Boyle and Ian Gotts, respectively. Here is the link to Salesforce Ben’s parties and events guide for Dreamforce 2025 next month. https://www.salesforceben.com/official-dreamforce-parties-and-events-guide-2025/ This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors . Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, all things Data and AI, and the hyper scaler MSP cloud ecosystems with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond!
I am joined by Sean Lewis, Director of Partnerships at Vicasso and the Serviceblazer User Group Leader for AMER. We talk about his journey from customer support to sales to partnerships and everything in between. When he was selling, a Salesforce AE sent them a referral to a F100 company that really opened his eyes to the value of the partnership. Now Vicasso has two FTEs focused on partnerships to drive further top of the funnel growth. The partner team at Vicasso focuses on Salesforce AEs, SEs and leaders but has started to explore SI partnerships as well since Vicasso no longer provides SI work as part of their business as a pure ISV. Sean shares an incredibly valuable learning around focus when it comes to coselling with Salesforce. One time they found that one Service Cloud RVP has 5x the number of existing accounts and were only in 5% of their total accounts. Hyperfocus means Sean and his team knows where they will provide value to them.If your app helps add value to Service Cloud users, the Serviceblazer community events might be worth your time to check out. Here is a link to join the serviceblazer slack community.We talk a bit about Chris Voss’ book called Never Split the Difference, which is a sales classic everyone can get value out of. And Sean calls out Matt Kravitz as a great person to follow to learn about service cloud.And thanks again to Jon Schultz for the recommendation to have Sean on!This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. v2
I am joined by Ryan Sieve, the CTO at Accounting Seed. We get to talk about his journey from consulting in the Salesforce ecosystem to his time at Salesforce itself, before heading to Accounting Seed to lead their technology group as CTO. And thank you to Jon Schultz for the suggestion to be joined by Ryan!We start out talking about positioning products to buyers in ways that focus on solving problems vs. the speeds and feeds of a product. We touch on feature prioritization at a mature ISV like Accounting Seed and how best to collect feedback from internal and external constituents. Ryan and his team leans into customer and partner feedback to help drive features they build and at the 18:10 mark shares tactically how they execute and track the product feedback in their own internal instance of Salesforce. Accounting Seed has worked with Agentforce to optimize both collections and accounts payable to drive improved cashflow for their customers, freeing up time on their teams to be more strategic. Ryan shares their experience of how best to align with Salesforce on this new technology but always with an eye on what is going to help their customers as the top priority. We touch on their team's use of App Analytics from Salesforce, setting up listeners to understand better how your application is being used in the wild. And ISVApp is an option that layers on top of that for even better insights. Accounting Seed leverages Trialforce technology with org creation automation and to keep the data and config up to date via Github repository.This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google.
I am joined by Blakely Graham, who is a board advisor to Left Main REI, host of the Not All Business Podcast, Founder and former CEO of TaskRay. This one was a long time coming. On a personal note, my time at TaskRay was some of my most formative. I found a balance while there between my previous experience of excellence with true work life balance and a focus on values that stays with me. I am so grateful that Blakely and team took a chance in hiring me for a role that I was almost kind of qualified for and her friendship since then.I'll do my best to summarize this episode, but it's more than worth a listen because I don't have enough characters to summarize it all. Blakely's Salesforce journey starts in 2001 and spans a ton of roles and experiences. We dig deep into her experience founding TaskRay 15 years ago in 2010 as Bracket Labs as one of the early ISVs on the AppExchange where VCs told her that her business was not investable and it was "a lifestyle business" at best because the Salesforce ecosystem was too small. She grew it in spite of that and by the time they sold the business, they were getting endless inbound interest.We talk about culture and values and why they were so important to her and the team at TaskRay. One of the core values was Connection that was the inspiration for Project Connection where the founders and I went to 5 cities and sat across the table from over 20 customers without an agenda outside of learning how our customers used the app. It drove focus for years to come that had nearly endless valuable outcomes like clarity of product roadmap, dramatically reduced churn, drove brand/marketing strategy, and much more. She shares how founder conflict snuck up on her with Eric Wu as well as how they (eventually) resolved it. As we switched gears to talk about gtm, Blakely shares how TaskRay evolved from the primary source of leads being the AppExchange with mostly SMB customers to more enterprise selling with content strategies, partnership motions, events, and more knobs we turned. The lesson is you are going to try stuff - some will work, some won't but you have to innovate and measure.We talk about how to select and what you can expect from an advisor. At TaskRay, we rolled an advisor program out modeled after a talk Blakely listened to from Andy Wilson, founder of Logikcull. Shoutout to Phil Stern who was my sales leader advisor at TaskRay who helped me avoid many mistakes.Show notes:Jolene Chan's LinkedIn where she was talking about a personal board of directors: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolenec/Not All Business podcast with Heather Cooper: https://www.linkedin.com/company/not-all-business/Podcast with Andy Wilson from Logikcull where he discusses his advisor program that we modeled TaskRay's after: it starts at 14:05 and lasts 4 minutes starts at 14:05 and lasts 4 minutes -https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/saastr-236-logikcull-ceo-andy-wilson-on-%240-to-%2410m/id1089973241?i=1000439148009This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google.
I am joined by Heather Cooper, the COO at Baker Law Group and the former CEO at Cloud Coach. Heather and I didn't know each other when we competed against each other (TaskRay and Cloud Coach) but have gotten to know each other since, which has been really fun. She is starting a podcast with one of my favorite work people, Blakely Graham, that will launch later this year.While Heather was at Cloud Coach, they found a great talent pipeline by running an internship program recruiting heavily from the local university near their HQ, Colorado State in Fort Collins, CO. She shares lessons learned regarding sizing of that program.We talk about her experience working with Tequity advisors, who are a sell-side advisory firm, helped her navigate leading the process where Cloud Coach exited to private equity and how engaging early, way before they were ready to sell, was important along the way. Even though Heather is A lawyer, she isn't YOUR lawyer. With that in mind, her and I talk through some important concepts for every ISV to consider and hold the line around key contract terms like termination for convenience, multi-year deals, and the importance of educating the buyer on how security works with the Salesforce platform. This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google.
I am joined by Sam Yarborough, the Chief Growth Officer at Invisory and a co-founder at Arcadia. Sam and I met at a New York World Tour years ago where she shared her experience at PFL and taking a much more focused approach to partnerships than is typical in the ecosystem. Treat partners (AEs, SEs, RVPs, SIs, etc.) like customers by leveraging the CRM to track activities for them and give them a great partner experience. We talk about being like Tommy Boy and getting overly excited about things like Financial Services Cloud and Work.com when it was good for Salesforce but not necessarily good for us as ISVs. Salesforce can take more risks than small ISVs can with excitement with actionable advice around trusting but verifying stoke you hear from a single RVP.We touch on how ISVs should be thinking about their Agentforce strategy and how to test your approach to the new technology, but make sure it makes sense for your market and your resources. If you don’t have anything right now, that’s ok but make sure you put an AI concept on your roadmap to make sure you have a narrative at the ready to share.Sam is a brilliant mind and a good friend and I hope you enjoy this podcast episode. This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: in your cloud marketplace journey through a strong go-to-market strategy that helps drive prospect and co-sell opportunities with Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google.
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with George Kenessey who is the CEO of Appiphony. Appiphony is a Product Development Outsourcer (PDO) and more recently an ISV themselves with Drive Connect on the AppExchange. George is one of the best humans and business leaders in the ecosystem. This conversation took place wayyyy back pre-Dreamforce but I finally got around to releasing it and it’s one of the most insightful ones. George shares his experience of helping companies launch on the AppExchange over the last 15 years as well as their own apps, taking their learnings from the PDO world to their own AppExchange journey. He shares tips relevant to new ISVs going through the security process with Salesforce and then moves into GTM lessons from launching Drive Connect. They designed a PLG motion on the AppExchange, including building a way for customers to sign up for a trial and ability to purchase via Stripe on the backend. The best gtm motion they have found is writing specific content to help their customers and partners solve a problem that is related although not fully solved necessarily by Drive Connect. If you help people do their job for free, they will eventually give you money is something I say often and what George and team are doing over there. Drive Connect has one of the best partner resources pages out there, I encourage you to check it out as you consider how well you are set up to enable SI partners. Link to the episode in the comments (or on Apple Podcasts) This episode is brought to you by Invisory. Invisory is designed to meet you where you are: whether you’re looking to list on the AppExchange, are in the process of listing, or listed and looking to accelerate success. Links: George's LI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgekenessey/ Appiphony LI - https://www.linkedin.com/company/appiphony/ Drive Connect AppEx listing - https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000FMlVWUA1 Invisory LI - https://www.linkedin.com/company/invisory-co/ Drive Connect Partner Page - https://driveconnect.me/partner-resources/
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Stephanie Betters who is the Founder and CEO of Left Main REI. Left Main REI is an OEM and (now) ISVforce partner of Salesforce focused on building for companies in the real estate vertical. As a fellow SUNY alum, it was great to hear Stephanie’s story of how she stumbled her way into the Salesforce ecosystem. As many founder stories go, she created Left Main REI after experiencing challenges (and an expensive SOW) in building out Salesforce to fit her business needs. After realizing what she built had a market need in the Salesforce ecosystem, she started working with the Salesforce partnerships team and successfully launched after security review was completed. She shares why she decided to enter both an ISVforce and OEM agreement with Salesforce and where she’s found success in co-selling with Salesforce AEs with a clear way to help them. Now they have over a hundred customers, when they started Stephanie relied heavily on her network and thought leadership before uncovering more advanced motions like Salesforce AMP programs and co-selling. In my opinion, Left Main REI’s focus and having a niche helped them with clarity of the strategy in co-selling with Salesforce AEs. They were able to share SIC codes where they were best when they met more and more AEs. Stephanie’s ability to empathize with the Salesforce AE gave her conviction to pursue the ISVforce agreement after initially just being OEM so they had a harmonious gtm approach with Salesforce. This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors. Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-betters-a09b2a59/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/leftmainrei/ https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000FMnPoUAL https://www.linkedin.com/company/tequityadvisors/
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Andrew Walker, who is the Founder at Sanitas Accounting. I consider Andrew a friend after our time together at TaskRay where he was our full-time CFO after starting as a fractional CFO. His business is now focused on helping smaller software companies with accounting and finance so they can focus on running their business. We reminisce about our learnings alongside each other at TaskRay (where I headed up sales along with other revenue activities) from when he joined the business, including what he worked on in the first 90 days. Andrew shares how he optimized TaskRay’s cash position as we entered the start of the pandemic by incrementally improving our accounts receivable process, including moving our payment terms from Net 30 to Net 7. This created a give-get scenario for our sales team and helped us in our negotiation….in the rare cases when someone actually pushed back! Other topics include legal agreement best practices around what really matters, friction between sales and finance, sales tax (which can pierce the corporate veil), pricing strategy, exiting the business, and more. If you’re a founder without an FTE over finance, this episode is for you! If you are a gtm leader, get in the head of your finance counterpart with some lessons learned. This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors. Tequity Advisors is a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies with a focus on the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond! https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrandrewwalker/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/sanitas-accounting-bookkeeping/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/tequityadvisors/
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Jason Hoult, who is the President at Anvil App Works. We talk about the origin story of the business solving problems for his own business before launching as an OEM of Salesforce for a very specific niche. I am consistently inspired by the quality of businesses like Anvil App Works that can be built with an intentional focus like Jason and his team have done. As he puts it, “an overnight success, five years in the making”. Jason shares how building the business bootstrapped helped them at the start then moved to raise a round to facilitate growth by investing in employees slightly before they needed that person. Anvil App Works runs the EOS model to help the company stay focused and execute at a higher level, even helping define their initial target market of John Deere distributors to grow intentionally and learn the market. Since then they have widened to other distributor type organizations to expand their TAM. Jason also shares how they looked to Salesforce for guidance on things like marketing as well as increasing their average deal size by following their model of selling premium support and charging a percentage of annual spend to increase ARR. We talk about a variety of GTM topics and I appreciate Jason’s openness in sharing in this great episode. Resources: Website: https://anvilappworks.com/ Jason's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhoult/ EOS: https://www.eosworldwide.com/ Behind The Cloud book: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-Salesforce-com-Billion-Dollar-Company/dp/0470521163 This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors, a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies. They are focused on SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and the MSP Clouds. Tequity has already completed 22 transactions in the Salesforce and Salesforce ISV ecosystems. Visit tequityadvisors.com to learn how they Achieve great outcomes for our clients both in valuation and in terms.
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Sam Yarborough, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough-a96b3326/) who is the SVP of Partnerships at PFL (https://www.linkedin.com/company/pflcom/). We talk about rebooting a partnership program but starting with working on their Trailblazer partner score to build momentum and aligning closely with their Partner Account Manager (PAM) to build deep rapport. From there, they started diving deeply into an industry-specific approach vs. just having a horizontal message. Sam and team has built an impressive solution in their instance of Salesforce to track partnerships with Salesforce and SIs in a scalable manner. All Salesforce AEs are now tracked and treated as customers, with marketing focus included. Resources: Website: https://www.pfl.com/ Sam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough-a96b3326/ This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors, a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies. They are focused on SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and the MSP Clouds. Tequity has already completed 22 transactions in the Salesforce and Salesforce ISV ecosystems. Visit tequityadvisors.com to learn how they Achieve great outcomes for our clients both in valuation and in terms.
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Cynthia LeCornu (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthialecornu/) who is the Global Leader Salesforce Alliance at Avalara (https://www.linkedin.com/company/avalara/). We talk about aligning to Salesforce’s Customer360 vision, SI partnerships in the ecosystem, how to drive your ISV partner score, and more. Cynthia brings a great energy and depth of experience to her partnerships. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 1:30 What Avalara does and Cynthia's role 2:20 How did your experience inform your approach at Avalara or working with SI as an ISV? 3:30 Can you give an example to folks who are listening to what a mutual SI goal might be? 4:39 What's the best go to market program you've ever created or the team's created? 6:16 What are you most proud of that you've accomplished? 7:08 What's a mistake that you've made along the way? 9:15 How you think about prioritization when everything could be a good opportunity? 11:00 From Public to Private again, what's changed, if anything? 13:00 How do you think about partnering? 15:00 Heading into next year, what are you working on these days? 16:10 What can you share about the ISV partner score and how best to maximize, Avalara's performance on it? 23:00 Rapid Fire Questions Resources: Website: www.avalara.com Cynthia’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-getchis-57075891/ This episode is brought to you by Tequity Advisors, a global sell-side M&A advisory firm with core expertise in B2B Enterprise Cloud, SaaS, and IT Services companies. They are focused on SaaS and ISVs, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and the MSP Clouds. Tequity has already completed 22 transactions in the Salesforce and Salesforce ISV ecosystems. Visit tequityadvisors.com to learn how they Achieve great outcomes for our clients both in valuation and in terms.
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Mike Getchis, who was the VP of Sales at Zenkraft. They were acquired by Brinng earlier this year and he is now Partner Solutions Engineer. Mike was at the helm of Zenkraft’s sales organization which bootstrapped their way to a strategic exit but started his Salesforce journey with hands on keyboard. Zenkraft’s top gtm strategies included working with SIs, Salesforce, and other ISVs. They found that their AppExchange listing was the starting point for the SI community, so focused on giving them partner-ready materials and a quick way to get them in touch with technical resources. The access to technical resources is an important component to any SI partner program that is often overlooked and mirrors my experience at Conga. Mike shares his experience participating in Salesforce Accelerate and how it improved their positioning and execution of aligning with SEs and AEs. Their SDO page is a high water mark for the ecosystem in terms of enabling the Salesforce SEs to demo their solution. And when they close a deal, they are intentional about a bottoms up strategy to share the win with their peers in a lean way. Zenkraft’s app is horizontal so they have a challenge of focus which I hear from a lot of ISVs. In regards to their AppExchange listing, he speaks to the value from an Account Management perspective of knowing when customers refresh their sandbox and how Test Drive can help drive leads. His secret sauce to having over 300 5-star reviews? Asking them. After a successful implementation or great support experience, their whole team asks them to write a review. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 1:00 About ZenKraft and How Mike joined the ecosystem 3:00 Salesforce hands on keyboard, what did that teach you about selling in the ecosystem? 4:00 What was the best go to market program that you created there? 9:10 How did you prioritize with a small team that was Bootstrap? 13:20 For folks that haven’t gone through an accelerated program, what would you say to them as they consider applying for a future cohort? 15:44 The importance of the AppExchange 17:28 Tips on improving reviews on the AppExchange 18:42 Through your journey at Zenkraft, what are you most proud of? Resources: AppExchange Listing: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000DvLFvUAN Website: https://www.bringg.com/ Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-getchis-57075891/ Salesforce Accelerate: https://www.salesforce.com/campaign/accelerate/ Zenkraft’s Demo Kit: https://zenkraft.com/demokit/retail This episode is brought to you by ISVapp. ISVapp is used by leading Salesforce ISVs and OEMs as the central toolbox to reduce churn, increase renewals, identify upsell potential, and close more deals. ISVapp is the only plug & play solution for the AppExchange AppAnalytics API and provides deep product insights. The set up is easy and takes less than 5 minutes. Visit isvapp.com to learn how you can take advantage of usage data in your app today.
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Bethany Blackwell, who is a VP at Carahsoft. Bethany runs the Salesforce channel for Carahsoft, which includes Salesforce, Slack, Mulesoft, Tableau, ISVs, and SIs. Carahsoft has worked with Salesforce for the past 15 years as a Value-Added Reseller and got there start on the GSA schedule to help Salesforce sell to the public sector here in the US. They help with sales, marketing, and contracting for Salesforce and it’s partners to federal, state, and local government organizations. If you have public sector demand for your application that includes interest from a customer, it’s a good time to reach out to Carahsoft who will get you set up on the correct contract vehicle. This will expedite the purchasing process, sometimes even avoiding the need to take it to RFP. The earlier you call them the better, even before pricing is discussed. As your public sector gtm becomes more intentional with at least one FTE focused on this industry, Carahsoft will work with partners add value to your sales and marketing efforts. Top examples are Nintex, Copado, Ownbackup, and many more. Recent legislation in the US has caused even more opportunity for the Salesforce platform and ISV partners to help deliver value to it’s citizens. During the pandemic, Bethany recalls all of the amazing solutions that the ecosystem helped to create with 20+ states using the Salesforce platform for contact tracing and vaccine rollouts. We discuss FedRamp, which is a set of standards put in place for security standards for software offerings. The program is great for buyers but takes significant money and time for an ISV but is required for companies looking to go “all-in” for public sector. A common misconception for ISVs that are native to Salesforce is that because they are built on the Salesforce platform and they are FedRamp/SOC 2 Type 2 certified, you as an ISV inherit that. It’s true it makes it easier but it involves (much more) than just that. If you’re interested in exploring this channel, reach out to them at salesforce@carahsoft.com for an introductory meeting. A tip for your conversations is to ask them how they purchase today, do they leverage Carahsoft? Carahsoft can help partners with their gtm approach for public sector! Here’s a closer look at the episode: ’0:01:19 What role does Salesforce have in the ecosystem that they lived in? ’0:01:44 What Carahsoft does for salesforce and for the broader ecosystem? ’0:03:22 How should they think about Carahsoft and how you can help? ’0:06:37 What’s the best strategy on how to go to market in this ecosystem? ’0:06:57 How does your team work with the Salesforce AEs in the public sector? ’0:10:20 Who do you work with today, and some lessons learned? ’0:10:26 What are some mistakes folks can avoid? ’0:18:33 What’s a mistake to avoid for folks starting to dip their toe into federal or state? ’0:20:22 What the process for an ISV would look like? How long does it takes? ’0:25:40 What are you most proud of from your work at Carahsoft? ’0:26:59 What’s your team working on, in. regards to the Salesforce ecosystem? Resources: E-maill: salesforce@carahsoft.com Website: https://www.carahsoft.com/ Bethany’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethany-blackwell-8a3b5016/
In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year, before the downturn), I talk with Doug Landis, who is a Growth Partner at Emergence Capital. Doug spent some time at Salesforce and Box before moving into his current role in helping Emergence’s portfolio companies with go-to-market assistance. He was working in the early days of sales enablement and now recommends hiring rev ops and sales enablement roles earlier than you think, even at Series A, to drive productivity in the sales organization. Emergence Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in B2B Enterprise SaaS businesses for their Series A and B funding rounds. They’ve invested in Veeva, Steelbrick, Box, and many more household names in the Salesforce ecosystem. The biggest challenge every early stage company will face is pipeline and that can be helped by hiring Marketing leadership before sales leadership, because sales professionals won’t enjoy being full cycle for very long. His message to early stage founders is to become obsessed with pipeline. In deals over $10k, there are normally 8-10 people in the buying decision even if there is a single major person that your solution will help. A good benchmark for any AE is they should be generating ~20% of their own pipeline. Key metrics to look at are by account, how many contacts are on each account and then dive deeper into touches by contact to know depth of engagement in a given opportunity. Looking at conversion rates can help you zero in on gtm priorities to work on. Technical founders make mistakes by hiring a salesperson too early because you need to learn how to sell early on. A good target is for you to sell the first $1M in ARR and collect insane insights along the way for your product while capturing referrals. Hiring customer success people early on the other hand is wise because your first few customers need to be successful, you can’t afford to churn your first customers (unless you learn they aren’t a good fit for where you’re going). Before starting the process of fundraising, you need to know your data inside and out beyond your pitch deck that includes a strong “why”. Include customer stories to help tell your story. It’s important to make a thoughtful list of potential investors that will be good long-term partners with you who will offer you the right level of engagement to guide you on the things you might be missing. For the ecosystem specific advice, he shares a word of caution for ISVs in getting Salesforce Ventures to participate in your round. Doug’s view is when you take Salesforce Ventures money…..and it’s cause for pause. If they build something like what you’re offering, you could be in big trouble. He share the story of Steelbrick (Emergence was the lead investor here) and Apttus and how Salesforce leveraged their relationship to strong arm Steelbrick during the acquisition. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 1:37 How did you find your way into the ecosystem? 5:13 Sales enablement 9:55 Who is Emergence and what’s your role there? 14:16 What are some elements that make a great go to market approach in a series A or B company? 22:07 What’s the biggest mistake you see technical founders make before they hire professional salespeople? 25:53 So founders in the ecosystem, if they’re considering raising institutional capital, what should they know before starting the process? 34:15 What are you most proud of in your career? 36:10 The final three Doug’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglandis/ Emergence Capital’s Website: https://www.emcap.com/ Emergence Capital’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emergence-capital-partners/
In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year), I talk with Jon Schultz, who is a Director of ISV Sales at Salesforce. Jon has spent his career in partnerships, including the last 6 years at Salesforce. He got a PAM role at Salesforce after moving with his now wife across the country without a job! His team works with horizontal ISV partners who are high growth partners and/or partners who have been in the ecosystem for a long time. His team serves native, high growth, and enterprise partners in the ecosystem. Jon shares the differences in ISV team alignment from partners just starting out through Summit level partners and how his team works with their partners to align around gtm & technology strategies. I ask Jon about the WIIFM for your PAM as an ISV/OEM and how his team is measured. They are measured based on revenue share from their partners so there is a direct alignment between a partner’s revenue growth for incentive compensation. Beyond revenue, he looks to his PAMs to help them change their business with an example being opening offices overseas from their HQ. And Mike said this, not Jon…..incentives drive behavior. If you close a big deal at the end of a quarter, submit that order and share it with their PAM as they are aligned with that success. Jon adds to that concept with calling out that as soon as the order is submitted, his team can now share this win story with the direct team via win tiles and slack posts. From a partnership strategy, expect your PAM to help amplify your message once things get rolling but don’t start by asking them “where are my leads?“. I put Jon on the spot around partners to watch who are doing the right things and although he didn’t share a specific partner with me but did talk about how his counterpart worked with him to analyze data around the value of the Salesforce partnership, showing Salesforce connected customers are worth 1.5x revenue. This lead the leadership team to grow the Salesforce partner team headcount at the ISV to drive incremental capacity to align with the direct teams at Salesforce. From an AppExchange listing point of view, take a look at Accounting Seed, TaskRay and Prolifiq as examples of great from a content perspective including usage of Test Drive for leads. His team will always lean in when their partners lean in. His advice for all ISVs is to spend time to think through what the goals are for the Salesforce partnership as it relates to your organization. We talk about Salesforce SDO and Salesforce IDO integration and the right time to consider building an extension package that Salesforce SEs can demo of your solution as part of their demonstrations. Make sure you know your message, your market, and what features align with what is hitting home with customers and Salesforce SEs/AEs. Starting it too early can waste some cycles, so look for signals like SEs asking you to help them install your app into their SDO or IDO. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 1:00 How did you find your way into the ecosystem? 3:15 What types of ISVs your team serves? 4:50 What are some of the nuances that you see? 7:30. ISV PAMs on your team, what’s important to them, how are they measured? 11:30 what are some realistic asks that ISVs and OEM should be making of their PAMs 14:10 Can you share some great app exchange apps, listings or partners to replicate? 20:00 What is the right time that an ISV should start to think about SDO or IDO integration? 26:00 What are you most proud of from your time with the team? 27:30 What do you think every ISV should do this month? 29:30 The Final Three Resources:
In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year), I talk with Ari Treuhaft, who is the COO of Litify.. Apologies for the audio quality but the conversation was too good not to share! He spent time at a law firm building an operating system for law firms on Salesforce and from there, Litify was born. They offer vertical SaaS for legal organizations, who think of themselves as unique and specialized organizations who need to build custom solutions. Litify has raised a series A pre-pandemic and now has over 200 employees and over 300 customers. Litify is both an ISV and an OEM partner for Salesforce. Ari shares why being both makes sense for their business to align with buyers preferences in order to reduce go-to-market friction. They’ve found success in co-selling with Salesforce with OEM customers where the Salesforce sales teams was subsequently able to sell additional products, like Sandboxes and Marketing Cloud. And when a customer already has a footprint with Salesforce, they go the ISVforce route. He talks about how he thinks about vertical SaaS and what they’ve learned from the likes of nCino and Veeva. One of the key learnings was around how to approach services internally and through SIs. Ari shares how they chose partners to work with in the SI realm and how you have to cut through a lot of noise in order to find the great ones. Align around values and mutual skin in the game….get into the single digits with target partners if you’re just getting started to go deep vs. going wide with efforts around enablement and training for your partners. As an ISV/OEM, you need to invest in these relationships. Ari takes pride in providing a solution on the Salesforce platform in an underserved industry. On the flip side, he acknowledges that building out an internal Services team resulted in successful sales but a backlog of customers who weren’t getting live. They actually called up customers and shared candidly that they had to wait for kickoff for X months while they invested in their SI partner program training. From a lead source perspective, for OEM leads they come from internal BD efforts and their SI partners. On the ISVforce side of the world, it is mainly the Salesforce AE/SE/RVP referrals. Ari shares some details about their SI partner referral program and how they share revenue with them in addition to having them perform the services. Across the board, focus on things that are working and do more of them. As you work to figure out what gtm channels are right for you, make sure you only run as many experiments as you can successfully measure. Once you start to see success in any of the experiments in the numbers, do more of it and maybe even drop the other active experiments. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 0:16 How Ari found his way into the ecosystem? 3:36 Litify is both an ISVForce and an OEM? Why did they decide to go both paths? 6:20 As an OEM what have you learned from some of the other large OEMs out there? 8:02 What have been some of your learnings to share around that SI program? 10:24 You just need to find a handful that are really high quality! 13:55 What are good go to market examples? 12:21 What's been the biggest mistake along the way? 15:24 What’s been your top producing leads source for Litify? 16:16 Incentives program for referring business. 17:42 Experience with Tiger Capital 20:34 Program’s that provide Insight on tracking success?
Stony Grunow is a Co-Founder of Breadwinner and Co-Founder/CTO of Salesbolt. He shares how he got started in the ecosystem and how he solved a problem he was experiencing with Breadwinner - integrating Salesforce and online accounting platforms. On the Salesbolt side, they are solving the problem of customer contact data getting out of date in CRM by reaching out to LinkedIn to get the latest and greatest into Salesforce. Stony shared about his first sale as Breadwinner as an English major who stumbled into technology. They didn’t build a way for customers to actually pay for the service (!) so they eventually sent an email that their “free trial” was ending….and many paid! As a founder without a background in sales, he is a delight to talk to about all of the things they’ve figured out along the way. Stony shares how they leveraged creating blog posts with intention to rank on the first page of Google for Salesforce and Xero integration. Stony talks through how important focus was early and how their focus helped them make their decision around bootstrapping the Breadwinner business. He shares his biggest mistake being “Snow Goose”, a product they built for charities in England. The customers all wanted it, but none of them wanted to/were able to pay for it. We weaved into talking out my dog, Mellow who was a Houston street dog before finding his way to our couch. #WhoRescuedWho anyway…back to Stony! Here’s a closer look at the episode: 00:00 Introduction 00:13 How did Stony start on Salesforce? 01:35 What’s Breadwinner and its relationship with SalesBolt? 04:10 How did Breadwinner find its first customers? 05:47 What’s the best program that was created? 08:28 Was there any “aha” moment? 09:50 What’s the thing you are most proud of from building Breadwinner? 11:29 Analyzing the customers 15:14 Talking about lead sources and how they work in this business 19:55 Talking about how referrals work 23:49 Talking about the market perspective Resources: Website: https://breadwinner.com/ Website: https://salesbolt.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/breadwinner Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/breadwinner Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtKwGq3fIQ2cR0idP9gxi5g David Skok For Entrepreneurs: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/ Jason Lemkin: https://www.saastr.com/smb-sales-reps-how-low-can-you-and-your-acv-go/ This episode is brought to you by ISVapp. ISVapp is used by leading Salesforce ISVs and OEMs as the central toolbox to reduce churn, increase renewals, identify upsell potential, and close more deals. ISVapp is the only plug & play solution for the AppExchange AppAnalytics API and provides deep product insights. The set up is easy and takes less than 5 minutes. Visit isvapp.com to learn how you can take advantage of usage data in your app today.
Brooke Daniels who is a Director at Salesforce Ventures. She spent years using Salesforce before joining the core team and working on the Mulesoft acquisition integration. In her role, she is the go-to-market expert for Salesforce Ventures portfolio companies and helps portfolio companies as needed. Brooke shares the variety of funds under the Ventures umbrella including the Impact fund (sustainability and re-skilling the workforce) and the Slack fund in addition to Salesforce Ventures. The Slack fund does more Seed and Series A where Salesforce Ventures focuses more Series B, C, and Growth stage investing so now that the Slack fund is under Salesforce Ventures, they have an even broader thesis. Brooke’s advice about fundraising starts with ensuring that you as a founder understand the type of funding is right for your business. Can your business achieve the high levels of growth that is expected? She walks you through expectations at each round from Seed to Series A and beyond. If you want to connect with Ventures about funding, email the team at salesforceventures@salesforce.com The top two reasons they might not proceed is 1) not in their thesis so make sure to check their website and/or 2) it’s too early. She recommends connecting ~1 quarter before you start fundraising. Brooke points to BetterUp as a great example of go-to-market as they’ve been success in both B2B and B2C markets. She cautions companies about the importance of go-to-market focus when nailing your initial niche vs. spreading yourself too thin, too soon. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 1:52 What role does portfolio investment play at Salesforce Ventures? 3:57 Influence of the Slack acquisition 7:16 Understanding the Journey of VC funding 9: 34 How should someone reach out and what should they really come prepared with? 11:51 What are the expectations? 13:55 What are good go to market examples? 17:26 How if any involvement do you involve product management at Salesforce in any of your investment decisions? Resources: Email: salesforceventures@salesforce.com Website: www.salesforceventures.com Website: www.betterup.com Website: www.databricks.com This episode is brought to you by ISVapp. ISVapp is used by leading Salesforce ISVs and OEMs as the central toolbox to reduce churn, increase renewals, identify upsell potential, and close more deals. ISVapp is the only plug & play solution for the AppExchange AppAnalytics API and provides deep product insights. The set up is easy and takes less than 5 minutes. Visit isvapp.com to learn how you can take advantage of usage data in your app today.