Inside the Ohana Live! at Dreamforce
Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified, interviews Melanie Fellay, CEO of Spekit live from The B2B Marketer's Lounge at Dreamforce '23.
(upbeat music)
- All right, welcome to the B2B marketers lounge
presented by qualified.
My name is Dan Darcy.
I'm the chief customer officer
and I'm joined by a great customer,
a great friend, the CEO and founder of Speckett,
Melanie Flay.
- Thanks for having me, except me here.
- Well, Melanie, welcome to Dreamforce.
Welcome to the B2B market lounge.
Like how's your Dreamforce been so far?
- It's been a blast.
I mean, I tell my team, it's like our Super Bowl.
- Yeah.
- For your, we're fun.
Yesterday, we actually had a first.
We closed a deal on the floor at the booth.
- No way.
- Yeah, someone we talked to back in March,
wasn't the right time at the time we came back
and yesterday on for finally the deal.
- No way.
- Yeah, that is awesome.
I mean, so they just came, I mean,
tell me a little bit more.
They just came up to the booth and...
- I unfortunately wasn't there for it.
Though I did see the signature after it.
And we actually recorded the moment.
So, so special.
- Like an actual physical situation?
- Like, Esig.
- No, Esig, okay, but great.
- Esig.
- I mean, that's the awesome.
- But yeah, and it was over 10K.
It was a sizable deal.
- Yeah.
- So it was awesome.
Yeah, we'd met them back in March at a conference
and at the time the person was new to their role.
So it was kind of getting, you know,
lay the lands on their feet and they came back to the booth
and we're like, you know what, we're ready.
And we're like, how ready are you?
- That's...
- And we made it happen.
- I mean, that's what happens.
- Magic, happening at Dreamforce.
- Exactly.
And we've been doing this for like, you know,
six years of Dreamforce, that is definitely first.
And, you know, hopefully not a last, but a first.
- Anything else exciting about Dreamforce going on today,
tomorrow, what else you got going on?
- You know, this is one of my favorite times of the year
just because not just Dreamforce,
every conference, like it's your time to get face-to-face
time with your customers.
In a way that's really special,
it's the right environment.
I feel like everyone's here to learn,
to share their, you know, share everything
that they've learned over the last year.
I think this environment,
this ecosystem has changed a lot over the last couple years.
And it's just such a fun way to catch up
with your customers, you know, talk strategy,
but also get ideas and inspired and sell.
- So this podcast is called Inside the Ojana.
And, you know, we talk about Salesforce
and I bring on incredible leaders around the Ojana,
from our partners to, you know,
X Salesforce alumni or even in Salesforce employees,
current Salesforce employees.
So I want you to talk about,
like how did you first come about
to know about Salesforce and when was that?
- So funny enough, I was working on first-in-market,
so I could see the Salesforce tower under construction.
But didn't know much about it at all.
I started at a, it was like a real estate,
crowdfunding startup, so not your traditional B2B SaaS company.
And I'd heard rumblings of IT implementing Salesforce,
but knew nothing about it.
Long story short, that initial implementation
was not very successful.
A lot of the common mistakes that companies do
in implementing Salesforce, you know,
not having the right kinds of strategic planning,
internally not having the right stakeholders involved,
all that.
And long story short, I ended up kind of inheriting the project
and being responsible with re-implementing it,
working with our internal stakeholders
and kind of became that accidental admin.
So, and I loved it.
I mean, I became obsessed.
I, when I get really passionate about something,
there's no off button.
It's just I'm on and I was on Salesforce
and it was an absolute blast.
- Did you, as an accidental, so for the folks out there,
what are accidental admin is, is folks who inherit Salesforce,
because someone needed to do it.
- And have no clue what we're doing.
- Yeah, exactly.
But you figure it out and you set it up.
But, you know, when you turned an accidental admin,
did you come to any dream forces before?
- No.
- No.
- No, I'd never been to dream force.
I'd never even been to like a user group.
- No.
- Until after starting the company
and being like, oh my goodness, there's this massive,
so I knew about the like online community.
Like the, I can't even, I mean, it's changed so much,
but it wasn't even like the trailhead community at the time.
It was like the help center.
I mean, Steve Moe would answer all my questions.
Like, I mean, you know, I knew that there was this community,
but I did not realize what the O'Hanna was
and how big of a community it was
until I started the company.
And I'm like, oh, this is awesome.
- Yeah.
- Right?
Having all these events that we could go to,
talk to people from the community,
get advice from them.
And my experience was that everyone was very both welcoming
into the community and also so excited to help us.
And so it's been a really fun ecosystem
to kind of fall into over the last few years.
- Well, what I love about Mel's story is that
when your story is just that, you know, you created
spec it, your company out of leveraging and using Salesforce.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
- Yeah, so as I was mentioning,
I kind of inherited Salesforce
and the rest of our technology stack.
And in re-implementing it, working with our reps,
working with our leadership, constantly rolling out changes,
which was kind of disruptive frankly to their day-to-day.
We were still dealing with the challenges
of different individuals on the team
having different interpretations of our stages
and our data points in Salesforce.
And we were a compliance driven organization.
We were regulated by FINRA SEC.
So like the margin for error isn't just,
hey, you put a closed date that's expired.
It's, hey, if you put the wrong date on a loan,
like that's gonna cost you as a business.
And so we had compliance issues.
We had forecasting issues.
And it was just impossible for us to ramp new hires
because Salesforce, if implemented correctly,
really becomes a reflection of your business, right?
So again, we weren't your typical B2B SaaS company
where a lot of your fields are a little bit more common
in terms of closed day ARR number of users.
Our opportunity was a loan.
So all of those data points is someone that didn't come
from that industry, like you're learning new acronyms
and we had like an 80 page loan policy.
It was a lot to learn.
And so I'm like, okay, there's just gotta be
an easier way for us to manage change,
for us to train employees on these different tools
for them to learn their jobs
and started looking for a solution.
And I looked at LMS platforms,
looked at content management systems,
looked at digital adoption platforms,
looked at knowledge bases.
And basically spent about six months
demoing 30 different platforms.
And I'm like, this is just crazy.
You know, I just wanna make sure people know
what they need to know, when and where they need to know it.
And all these platforms have like a foundation of content,
but then they have arbitrary features
that kind of separate them.
I'm like, there's just gotta be a better way.
And somehow was wild,
wild enough, crazy enough, whatever you wanna call it,
to create it.
- Yeah, well, I mean, talk a little bit about the challenges
of the different LMS platforms that are out there.
It's, you try it, I mean, you learn it once
in a classroom or a learning setting.
And then when you apply that learning,
it's like later and sometimes you'll forget that.
- I mean, listen, the, I think the easiest answer I can give
is I've been doing now this for six years,
plus research for another year prior.
So then doing research on this whole like challenge
of workplace learning and knowledge,
we're going on seven years now.
And I have yet, when I ask a question,
do you love your LMS?
Have ever gotten a single person to be like, I do.
I love it, here's why.
You know, most reps, most employees, they do it
'cause they have to.
It's like checking a box.
It's like having to take a test at school
where you're like, I just want to get this over.
And I was, I was an academic.
I love learning.
I like taking tests, wildly enough.
But still, you know, like you're not,
you're doing it to check the box to get it done, right?
And everything we know about just how adults learn,
how our brains work just proves that like,
you're just not gonna retain it.
I mean, I can't even remember what I had for dinner last night,
let alone try and remember like whatever hour long
core side did yesterday.
We've talked for the last 15 minutes.
And if we quizzed each other on like,
what did we just talk about?
We wouldn't be able to have the answer.
And so, you know, I just think that we've been approaching,
you know, we're driving digital transformation,
using all the latest technologies.
I mean, look how much your products changed.
Qualified over the last two years.
And you're trying to like get your reps to learn
everything happening in the industry,
master their competitors, all this information,
and trying to do that over an hour long course
and expecting them to be able to fly and go crush it.
It's just not gonna happen, right?
So I really believe that learning needs to be
much more personalized to the individual.
It needs to meet them in their moment of need.
And for one rep, they might face that competitor tomorrow
for another rep.
They might not face that competitor for another through nuts.
But when you go do that thing is when you should find
the knowledge, the information, the learning that you need
to go be successful and it shouldn't have to be an effort
to go find the answer.
I believe learning should meet you in your full of work.
- Yeah, just in time.
- Just in time, baby. - Yeah, just in time.
- Which I love, just in time, enablement.
Well, let's talk about spec it.
Tell us what is spec it, what do you do,
what is spec it do, I would love.
- Yeah, you tied me up there.
We are just in time, enablement platform.
Turns out, yeah, so we meet you just in time
with the information need to be successful now.
So we're essentially, think of us almost,
our mascot's an octopus.
- Yes. - If you've seen it,
we have the little emoji everywhere on LinkedIn.
Yes, spec you, there you go.
We've actually got like a giant life size version,
like almost my size at our booth.
So got it, got it, got it, got it.
- No, that's awesome, I'll go check it out.
But anyway, so our mascot became this octopus
and it's really a metaphor for our product.
The whole idea is you can centralize your information
kind of in the main brain.
So think your sales enablement, your knowledge,
your sales process, your kind of internal policies.
But then, just like an octopus has a--
- The tentacles. - A brains,
the tentacles. - Yes.
- We have different basically ways
to surface that information where you're working as a rep.
So that could be inside of sales force,
inside of LinkedIn, it could be inside of outreach,
it could be inside of Slack.
The whole idea is wherever you're working,
the information's meeting you.
- That's awesome.
- And it's been a really fun product to build, so.
- Yeah, well I mean, you know, I've been
obviously following you for a very long time.
We met when I was at driving enablement at Salesforce
and I just love your story and you wear pink all the time.
- Okay, I sure do. - Which you have,
you're wearing it today.
So tell us what's the origin around the pink
and like what does it mean to you?
What do you want to drive with that?
- So, funny enough, if you look at our original content,
like if you use Wayback Machine or whatever
to see the original website, it was a little bit more blue.
And there was always dashes of pink,
but it was definitely more blue
with kind of like pink as an accent.
And it was actually Dreamforce 2019.
I got invited to the Salesforce Ventures party
and it was all basically CEOs of enterprise
to ask companies and VCs and turns out
a lot of those just happens to be men.
And I went to that event and I was dressed,
I think in like black and white or something,
I mean very standard.
And I just, it was at the Jewish Center.
- Yeah, a contemporary museum. - Yeah, there you go.
Anyway, it took me two entire floors of people
to finally find another woman at that event.
And I think for me, it was just kind of a,
the first time it really sunk in for me,
just how few women there are, frankly,
is not just leaders, but CEOs of B2B and I'm a crisis.
And it was kind of a feeling of discomfort,
but also like, I'm either gonna lean out
or I'm gonna lean in.
And in that moment, I remember that night
or like the next day called,
"Zah, I'm like, you know what?
If we're gonna do this and be uncomfortable,
might as well have some fun with it.
- Yeah. - Wow.
- And so from that days, you know,
we moved a lot of our brand, started leaning in more pink
and we just really leaned into the fact
that like we were two female founders
in a very, very kind of male dominated space.
Like, I don't know any other female founders
than your kind of typical or your classic
revenue intelligence platforms, LMS, CMS,
like it's largely male dominated.
And I'm like, you know what?
If we're gonna stand out,
we might as well lean into what makes us unique,
what makes us differentiated,
and hopefully be the kind of product and company
that people look out in the future and look at us
and think, wow, they changed the game
in terms of how employees learn
and how reps are productive and hit their goals.
And also, by the way, they did something special.
And here, you know, they wanna study us
and see that we look different.
And that's a good thing, so.
- That's awesome.
- Yeah, it kind of became my,
(laughs)
my power suit, my pink--
- Yeah, so I mean, I'm just curious
as to what your wardrobe looks like, you know?
Do you wear anything but pink?
- I said to the picture, we have our Dreamforce channel.
I sent a picture of my team.
I'm like, is this too much?
It's literally like all pink lasers.
But we have fun with it.
And the team does too.
I mean, men and women on the team,
they have a blast with it because they're like,
you know what, let's lean into it.
And we go to conferences and I'll just be randomly walking
or my team will be, and they're like,
do you work for Speckett?
It's like people just recognize the pink now.
And it's great for branding.
Like there is a lot of value from a company standpoint
and having a brand that's recognizable.
I mean, look at, I'm looking at the crowd here.
There's a bunch of shimmery, fun, you know?
- Yeah, we take the same thing.
- Totally, yeah.
- So I love it.
So you talked about Dreamforce in 2019
with the Ventures Party.
Was that, when was Speckett's first Dreamforce?
And like the spot when you guys first sponsored?
- Yeah.
- And like how did that sponsorship really go for you?
- So our first Dreamforce is actually 2018.
- Okay.
- And we officially, you know, like incorporated the company
in February that year or in January.
So we'd only been a company for six months.
So to say that we had like an MVP is being generous.
- Yeah.
- But, and we also hadn't fundraised from Venture Capital.
So at the time, I know we had under 150 grand in the bank.
And I--
- That's a tight wire.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, and I mean, my co-founder and I,
we didn't pair ourselves for the first 18 months.
Like it was--
- That's awesome.
- I mean, awesome, but I mean--
- Awesome, but I mean-- - Also not awesome.
But also like, that was the state of the business at the time.
And I just had it, I'd never been to Dreamforce.
I had never been to like a big B2B conference in my career.
But there was just this, my gut was telling me,
like listen, if you're gonna launch a company
in the Salesforce ecosystem, like Dreamforce,
that one event of the year where every top customer comes
to learn to want to kind of see the latest innovations,
this has gotta be it.
- Yeah.
- And so we took a giant bet on the company,
and basically invested a third of what we had in the bank
to launch a Dreamforce.
- Wow.
- Had no clue what we were doing.
I literally didn't have sales reps at the time.
So I got like my friend who worked in sales
to come and stand at our booth.
- That's awesome. - So for us, we had an intern.
Like I mean, we were scrappy.
But that's how we got some of our first like large customers
who became our case study customers,
who became our references.
And you know, the next year at Dreamforce,
like one of our large customers,
they had like very much an MVP,
like Salesforce MVPs, Salesforce team.
And they had like five sessions,
that next Dreamforce in 2019,
every single one of their sessions,
they brought up spec it,
talked about how beneficial it been to their organization.
They'd like grown by acquisitions,
so lots of onboarding, lots of change management.
And that got us our next week of big customers.
So that's why Dreamforce is just special place in my heart
because there's such catalyst moments
for us as a company that took place.
- I mean, I think about that.
I think we met in 2018 through,
I got introduced to you through my friend Layla Sika.
- Yeah. - Right.
And then, but Brett Queener,
who's also a friend and mentor of mine,
is on your board as well.
So I feel like the O'Hanna is really strong,
you know, and kind of that Salesforce, O'Hanna.
But what does the O'Hanna mean to you?
- I mean, I know it sounds cheesy,
but it's the community, you know.
But to me, what's been,
and I know we talked about this a couple of weeks ago,
but what I've admired the most is that,
one, even last night at dinner, you know,
I told you I had dinner with the Glandis and fulfill.
- Feel clarity, yeah.
- And when you hear their stories
of like the early days of Salesforce,
I'm like, man, one, I feel like I've heard so many stories
that I almost feel like I love them because,
you see all, but it just sounded like it was
so fricking hard and so much fun.
- Yeah. - And there's just this community,
both of like the folks that helped build Salesforce
that really appreciate the passion and the hard work
that went into building Salesforce to what it is today
and have built their careers, have built their brands
as, you know, as leaders.
And then when you look at the kinds of stories
that have come out of the ecosystem,
like just yesterday, we had someone from the USA team.
I don't know if you've heard of the partnership
that Salesforce did with the USA team.
I hadn't heard of it and we had a Paralympian come up to
our booth and she was sharing about how, you know,
she was formally competing in the archer.
Archer competition and, you know,
she was sharing how difficult it is for athletes
to make a living.
- Yeah.
- You know, it's not government funded
and long story short, eventually she partnered up
with Salesforce and has been doing the trailhead thing
and she had her shoes, I mean, top top spot
and she was just talking about how transformative it was
for her life. - Yeah.
- And when I hear that kind of stories,
I'm like, that is the power of Salesforce,
the community trailhead and that to me is Ohana, right?
- Yeah. - The kinds of stories
that have changed people's lives
and then they get back, they wanna pour it back
into the community as well.
- Well, I wanna talk about the future.
What is the future of specic?
I know that's a very loaded question, but I mean,
- Right now, I mean, right now I am 100% focused on us
being the absolute best way to learn in your role.
- Yeah. - And so when I think
about the future of learning, the way I like to either
interview a candidate or talk to someone
that's not familiar, I ask them, and actually,
let's do this live here. - Yeah.
- When you think about the future of information at work,
right, so thank like enablement, the resources you need
as a rep to close deals, to be able to engage
with your buyers, to learn your job,
to learn your competitors, do you see the future
of that knowledge being more personalized to you
or less personalized? - Yeah.
I mean, it's obviously more personalized, yeah.
- Do you see it being more context relevant,
meaning more based on the deal specifics,
the experience of these are less?
- I want to know more about me and like,
where I'm at at that moment in time.
- And to believe it'll find you, or do you feel like
it's gonna become more and more buried in the destination?
- It better find me. - All right.
- There we go. - There we go.
Those are the three principles
that we're building the company on.
- That's very fun, that's awesome.
- And with AI coming on the market,
there is just so much that we can do to make learning
more personalized to you, more context relevant,
more, you know, at the right time,
in your field of work, and I'm just really excited
because I think we're barely scratching the surface
of what's possible there. - Yeah.
- And that's 100% what we're focused on.
How do we make every single rep your best rep
by empowering them with the information they need
at every step of the way to close more deals?
- Love it.
Last question before we get into a lightning round.
What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs,
leaders out there, kind of thinking about, you know,
Mel's first starting out,
what advice do you have for those leaders?
- It's gonna be hard.
(laughing)
- But all great things in life are, you know,
I'd say figure out, you know, how to really
embrace the journey, enjoy the journey,
find the people, you know, in your network,
mentors that are gonna be able to really help you
as a guide through the tough moments,
and find ways to bring the fun into the day to day, right?
The pink, the emojis, like those are always
that we try and bring the fun into our culture,
in turn, play-based, and you need that.
- Yeah, culture, I mean, eats strategy for breakfast
any day, so.
- Zari, my co-founder, that was always her line,
and actually enjoy the journey was,
in our original founders agreement,
we had no clue what we were doing,
so we like, Google's like a founders agreement,
and you had to write your like values as a company,
enjoy the journey was one of them.
- Oh, that's awesome.
- And simple and spectacular was too.
- Simple and spectacular.
- Yeah, let's keep things simple and spectacular.
Let's delight at every moment,
let's keep the user experience,
let's keep our processes,
let's keep everything as simple as possible.
- I love it.
- All right, lightning around, you ready for this?
- About to be.
- Okay.
- Secret skill, not on the resume.
- It's probably on the resume,
but I speak a few languages.
- What languages?
- I grew up speaking French,
so French is my first language,
and then I've learned Spanish,
so pretty fun, there's now.
- And I think you're really good at English as well too.
- Decent in English, yeah, decent in English.
But you also are a big chess player, right?
(laughs)
- I have not had the time that I,
but yes, I was our high school chess champion.
- Look at that, boom, all right.
Best way to spend an evening afterward.
- This is so cheesy, but I found that playing a game,
I'm not a big TV watcher when I do,
I totally binge a show, but my boyfriend and I,
we play like card games after dinner,
and it's just kind of a way of disconnecting,
but also disconnecting from work,
and we're both super competitive,
so it's just a fun way to kind of bring that into
our relationship and also just not think about anything.
- What's your favorite card game?
- I swear I am not an 80 year old woman, guys,
is this a British, - Yeah, a British.
- A British, I was thinking we were to say bridge,
but all right, good group.
- No, a cribbage is like the next level up, actually.
- Yeah, that's awesome.
- Yeah, that's great.
- Favorite brand of anything?
- Beyond specic.
- Yeah, qualified, so.
- Yeah, duh, thank you, good, great answer.
- Okay, no, but all Dix aside, I do think that as a company,
I walked in and I was like,
every detail of your branding is just spectacular.
So I will say, I think you guys do a phenomenal job.
- I mean, it's all about the details,
and I think a big thing that we say internally
is don't be boring, so it's kind of--
- You know what, you all were generous enough
to lend us your office yesterday,
and the wifi password, I mean, it's down to the wifi password.
You're creativity.
- Well, we will not talk about what the wifi password is here,
but it is a fun wifi password.
- It's a fun one.
You just won front row seats to your dream event,
what is it, and it's not Dreamforce.
- Okay. (laughs)
- Yeah, I'm going to Odessa.
That is my favorite artist.
Favorite music to Jamtale, and that is who I'm seeing.
- Wow, great.
Well, Melanie, thank you so much for joining me today,
and in the B2B Markers Lounge,
really appreciate your time, and have a great Dreamforce.
- Thank you, I appreciate it.
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