How We Got There

Heather asks and helps answer “How do you create a point of view about your solution in a way that will talk to Salesforce about how it works together for that specific customer?” For ISVs so they can take a strong point of view about a specific customer vs. approaching with just questions. “It’s easier to find this information than it’s ever been. Don’t be lazy and use the tools and you will have much better conversations.”
This episode of How We Got There features a conversation with Heather Mason, Founder of ISV Accelerators. 
Heather brings their clients her knowledge forged by experiences at an ISV (Insight Squared) and Salesforce themselves, 5.5 years at each company. Her company works with “high potential” Salesforce partners to assist their GTM motions in the ecosystem - Salesforce, other ISVs, and SIs - so the ISV can help make it easier for the customer to buy the solution.
We talked a bit about the challenges her team faced at Salesforce within her focus on the Pharma vertical, which had a strong publicly traded OEM of Salesforce in Veeva to contend/cooperate with and the new-normal of fewer people at Salesforce focused on ISVs. Partners need to adapt to how Salesforce is changing their selling motion, aligning to Salesforce AEs with modern better together messaging. The challenge is Salesforce is still figuring it (it being Agentforce) out too. 
Heather shares insights around traffic on the AppExchange listing by most common personas and what it means to ISVs through the lens of who buys their solution. At the level, the Salesforce sales team aligned to a specific account can be over 20 people but at the SMB level it might just be an AE and their RVP, who will be VERY hands on with the deal alongside their AE.
We touch on big strategy but also tactics around things like when is the right moment to reach out to the Salesforce account team in an opportunity cycle. It all starts with you having a unique value to share and if you do, you should expect an 85% positive response rate. If you are lower than that, I would challenge you to harden your messaging.
Heather loves to connect with people in the ecosystem and takes pride in making herself available to meeting new people. I learned a ton from my conversation with Heather and am grateful she is actively helping ISVs and OEMs in the ecosystem. 
Connect with Heather at the Arcadia leadership experience in Montana run by the Yarboroughs.
This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 
#salesforce 
#isv 
#gtm 
#salesforcepartners 
#appexchange

This episode of the How We Got There podcast features a conversation with Mark Rutledge, Chief Storyteller | Global ISV Partner Solutions at Salesforce. The builder advocacy program that he works on is one that every ISV should learn about and explore if they might be a fit for working with them.
Fun fact - I worked with Mark Rutledge when he as a client of my former business, GTM Guides, while he was building on the Salesforce platform for at Moody’s. Thanks to Codescience (now Bridgenext) for bringing us together.

Mark shares his journey of being in the ecosystem to working at Salesforce to bring the human aspect to partners - contemplate who we are building for vs. just what we are building. PDOs are an essential part of the ecosystem as they have a view of the technology and the market to help an ISV’s vision come to production - especially important for composite apps who don’t have Salesforce dev and architecture talent internally.
One of my favorite parts of the conversation was hearing Mark talk about constructing a hero story around the pain end customers will be feeling all the way to “the universe has been saved” in the narrative. It all starts with spending time listening to customers, approaching it with empathy. If you’re just getting started, try to end a demo of a feature with “…so you can _________” as an easy way to integrate what it actually means to your customers.
We touch on the shift from per-seat pricing to consumption-based pricing and how ISVs should be looking to adapt to the model where Salesforce is goring towards.
This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 
#salesforce #isv #gtm #salesforcepartners #appexchange

I got introduced to Jeff Freund, Founder & CEO of Akoonu, a number of years ago and I finally got to hear his full story on How We Got There earlier this year. Jeff has been in the ecosystem in 2003 and founded the business in 2014 as a native Salesforce app to solve b2b sales - inspecting pipeline and then forecasting. 

Jeff lays out the story and the why of Akoonu so clearly - overnight, in Salesforce, a large portion of the opportunities in the pipeline disappeared. Which deals were they? What happened to them? Are they lost or delayed? We all have been there. I used to (try to) solve this with a whiteboard in the office!

I appreciate his approach and point of view on AI/Agentforce for their customers. They already have some features to help users have an “on-ramp” to using AI capabilities like their embedded insights. A passive ability to get real value.

Jeff shares his decision around keeping the business bootstrapped and how it’s helped him shape the business the way he wants to vs. going the VC-backed route. He recently hired a Chief Growth Officer to help grow the business more directly and talks about why he pulled the trigger on that key hire.

I appreciate the renewed importance in the ecosystem around being native with some the recent security concerns in the ecosystem, specifically around composite apps. It’s also unlocking a true “better together” story to layer functionality on top of forecasting tools in Salesforce. 

On the GTM front, the AppExchange continues to be a great source of leads but the number one source of revenue continues to be word of mouth or a customer moves to a new company. Related to the AppExchange, they are exploring a freemium option to increase top of funnel lead flow in 1H of this year. Jeff also calls out the value of events - both from a selling perspective but also from a learning perspective to get immediate feedback. He went to places like Opstars and Dreamforce.

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 
#salesforce 
#isv 
#gtm 
#salesforcepartners 
#appexchange

I met Brittany Hart, founder of Communiscape, from an introduction from Blakely Graham. I was planning to interview her on How We Got There about her experience scaling an SI (Fortimize) as employee 2 before starting/exiting her own Salesforce SI (Platinum Cubed) but then I got to listen to her present via a professional leadership community I am a part of called Arcadia and I knew that I had to expand the conversation to have her share a bit about how ISVs can help your customers digest your app through “change architecture”.

Brittany shares her experience around industry focus and its importance from her time at SIs, who both went deep in order to more effectively co-sell with Salesforce. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes - you’re interacting across the screen with customers with a different communication style going on and then you are using this technical jargon about new screens of an app that the customers have never seen - the least you can do is work to use the customer’s industry terms to help break through the noise. 

And don’t let your depth of knowledge cause you to glaze past key learnings during demos. One that we talk about is Salesforce reports & dashboards. Every ISV I have worked with undersells the importance of this functionality.

You gotta give before you get. The best ISVs she worked with genuinely care about solving customer problems, not just growing pipeline/revenue, but also commit even before asking for anything in return like TaskRay did with them early days. The worst ones operate much more transactionally.

Brittany brings in the 5 terrains of communication through the lens of how ISVs can provide better service to their customers. As an actionable example, listen in to Brittany’s tips around voicescape which is especially important when conveying confidence and authority for women.

There is so much goodness in the 2nd half of this episode for sales and services people.

This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. 
#salesforce 
#isv 
#gtm 
#salesforcepartners 
#appexchange

Salesforce Solution Engineers are like general contractors, according to David Young, who leads a team of them at Salesforce. They need skills like carpentry and framing and plumbing but also know when to stop and call in an expert. In the Salesforce world this might be knowing when to bring in a service cloud or an Agentforce expert. They need to know enough to see the business challenge and know who to tap for help.
I have always advocated that ISVs spend time thinking about SEs, even moreso than AEs, because the math just maths. AEs have shorter tenure at Salesforce than SEs. AEs have more ISVs reaching out to them than SEs. And AEs might have 1 or 5 accounts in the enterprise, but SEs often support multiple AEs which just multiplies the number of accounts that a single session with you could reach. 
We cover a bunch of topics, but here is a summary:
What does an SE at Salesforce do?
What type of person is an SE at Salesforce?
How does David decide which ISVs to engage with?
How do SEs learn about new ISVs?
What are some dos and don’ts when ISVs are engaging with SEs? Shoutout to Myroad.io, who is doing a great job of it.
What should an ISV know/do before they are “ready” to engage with Salesforce SEs?
How do SEs work with SDOs and IDOs to demo Salesforce’s tech?
Thanks again to David for sharing with the community!
And thank you to Sam Yarborough for the intro. If any of you have a Salesforce AE or RVP that might give us the real talk, it’d be great to get their pov. 
This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications.ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals.