The Value of Career-Defining Moments
n this episode, Sara Varni, CMO of Attentive, reflects on her time at Salesforce and the role she played in achieving significant milestones like AppExchange and more.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Inside the Ohana.
I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified.
And today I'm joined by my great friend, Sarah Varney.
Sarah, how you doing?
- I'm great, great to be here, Dan.
- Good, well, thanks for being here.
So I wanna dive right into our first segment, Ohana Origins.
So give me the skinny, Sarah,
how did you discover Salesforce and start your journey?
- Yeah, I, well, prior to Salesforce,
I was an equities trader in finance,
completely different career.
And I had a contractor role at a software company
prior to Salesforce, knowing I wanted to get an attack.
And I found this random role on a site
that was like a cooler monster.com at the time.
It was called like do this tang.
I don't know if anyone remembers this.
I'm dating myself like 2007.
And I applied to like associate product marketing manager role
for the app exchange.
Had no idea what it was, barely knew what Salesforce was.
And one thing led to another
and I ended up getting the role,
working for Claire Shie, who is now back at Salesforce,
the Salesforce been wearing.
So pretty lucky that I ended up where I did.
- So, I mean, give me a little bit more of the details.
You know, what was, like obviously you just said the job,
but you know, tell me like, you know,
what was your first impression, like, you know,
your first thoughts around the interview,
what attracted you to Salesforce?
- I mean, there were so many early memories of Salesforce.
And my first job in software,
I barely knew what I was doing.
Ask what an API was my first day, which is ironic.
'Cause I went on to work at Twilio,
which was a developer focused API based company.
And it's pretty amazing.
I didn't get fired in those first few months.
But you know, I put my head down.
I was really open to learning and I just kind of dove in.
And one of my earliest memories,
I think is pretty funny.
We used to have these city tours,
and which eventually morphed into the world tour.
And I don't even know what it's called now,
but it's something even grander.
But back in the day, it was like city tours.
It was about 300 people.
I remember the one that I was asked to present at
was at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston.
And my Boston time, Clara, had turned to me and said,
"Hey, you know, I had a last minute conflict.
"I can't actually present at this event.
"Can you go present?"
And this is, I probably like three months in the job.
I'm like, "Well, what partner is presenting with me?"
And she's like, "Oh, well, I think it's like Ellequa,
"but you know, they only present for a little bit."
Like, and I'm like, "Well, how long am I presenting?"
She goes, "45 minutes."
And I was like, "Oh my God, I'm getting fired."
Like, I am absolutely getting 100% fired.
I was like, definitely afraid of public speaking.
And so I took, I had Windy Close's eight steps
to CRM success deck.
And I lived in the Marine at the time.
You know, I was pretty fresh out of business school.
And I basically, anyone who came through my,
our house was kind of like,
our apartment was kind of Grand Central Station.
Anyone who came, happened to come by for a drink or whatever.
I had to sit on my IKEA couch and listen to the eight steps
to CRM success.
And I would just, I had like Windy Close's talk track,
like basically memorized verbatim.
And so I get to the event.
And I like, you know, had rehearsed it so many times.
I did the presentation and I get back.
And I'm like, "Phew, okay."
I nailed it.
Like, got it done.
I got all the words right and memorized everything.
And I get to my seat in Anchin sitting there in the front row.
It's like one of the nicest people alive.
She's still on the AR team at Salesforce.
And I was like, you know, how'd you think I did?
She goes, "That was one of the worst presentations I've ever heard."
(laughs)
Oh my God.
And that's crazy coming from Anne.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
So that was just--
So good.
You know, my first, you know, major kind of attempt
at public speaking, but it was, you know,
I just am so thankful for Salesforce for giving all those
opportunities 'cause you're never gonna learn
unless you're kind of forced to do that.
And over the years, I had to really perfect that skill.
And it's something that served me, you know,
your heart.
I mean, you're a master presenter.
It's incredible watching you, Sarah,
but I think that is a true testament to what Salesforce
is like, throw you in the deep end right at the beginning
and see what you can do.
Yeah.
(laughs)
And learn from it.
But now on the flip side, look,
you've been at Salesforce for how many years now?
I mean, how many years were you at Salesforce?
I was at Salesforce for almost 11 years.
So 2007 to 2018.
Yeah.
And obviously you were an SVP for a very long time,
but I want you to brag a little bit
because I know you've had just incredible success
during your time at Salesforce.
What would you think is the biggest success you've had
or the something that you're most proud of?
I had three very different roles at Salesforce.
I started off in the App Exchange.
It was like the wild, loud, less of cloud.
I was trying to convince these like very established
enterprise players to come bet their whole business
and livelihood on us.
But you know, I think, and that was a really exciting role.
I think there's two moments though at Salesforce
that I'm really proud of.
One's like more of a stretch of time
and one's an actual kind of launch.
The stretch in time was really at desk.com.
I had been on App Exchange for five years
and been doing partner marketing.
And we had, we really wanted,
we were nervous about the low end of the market
for the customer service space.
And so we had acquired Assistly,
which was rebranded desk.com.
And Layla Saka, who's one of my longtime mentors
at Salesforce, was named the GM.
And so she brought me in to run marketing.
And I was really kind of thrown into the deep in there,
had to build out the Team Prince grads,
not really knowing how to do that.
And I always say to this day, that role,
even though the amount of pipeline I managed
and the revenue I managed was much smaller
than what I ultimately owned at SalesCloud,
that was the best training ground ever
to ultimately become a CMO.
Because you just had to like, again,
Salesforce just throws you in the deep end of the pool
and trust people that have shown leadership in other ways
to kind of learn and grow on the job.
And that was some of the best learning I had.
And I think together as a group,
we were able to kind of restart that brand
and get people excited about, you know,
assistly and ultimately, desktop.
But I think like launch kind of moment in time,
like Salesforce style, like, you know,
it's a very launch-centric marketing culture.
You're only as good as your last couple of weeks,
you know, on the team.
Or your last launch.
Or your last launch, yeah.
Exactly.
In my last role, I was running marketing for SalesCloud
and bringing lightning to our customer base
was a super critical and exciting moment for Salesforce.
And there were things that went right,
that it was great, you know, to kind of re-energize
our core money maker in SalesCloud.
And there were things that we got wrong.
It was really hard to kind of thread that needle press-wise.
Like, I remember one of the first headlines we got.
And I think I cried for about 24 hours after.
It was just like, you know, Salesforce finally,
like, fixes its terrible UI, you know?
That was just like, okay, great.
We've worked on this for months now.
And that's the headline that, you know,
Business Insider wants to write.
But it was, that was a huge moment for us as a company.
Because we had always said, hey, you leave on a Friday,
you come on a Monday and the, you know,
the products upgraded for you, you don't have to do anything.
And in some ways, we were breaking that promise.
For good reason, we wanted to really upgrade the product,
make it more modern, make it, you know, just more in tune
with what our buyers actually wanted.
But, you know, that was going against a contract
that we had been promising in marketing for years.
And so we had to be really careful about how we did that.
So, I mean, let's take the opposite side of the spectrum,
because I know you just talked about, you know,
one of the lessons you learned in public speaking.
But what would you say is one of your biggest lessons learned?
At Salesforce, it was my first roles in tech.
And I think there's some general management missteps
that I made that I think that I'm sure a lot of people
go through when you're, you know, in an industry
for the first time and charting your way through a new roles.
And I think for me, like one of the biggest lessons is
I was a little bit, I was definitely gun shy earlier in my career
to hire my replacement and hire someone that was like,
knew more than me about anything.
I felt like I always had to be like the expert.
And if you're gonna move up into senior ranks of management,
that's never gonna be the case where you want to hire people
that, especially if you're in a general kind of CMO role,
there's no way you're gonna be incredible at brand,
incredible at growth, incredible at product marketing.
You know, there's just, the disciplines are so different
from each other.
And so it's really critical, as early as you can in your career,
to pick up that you're only gonna move faster in your career
by hiring the best underneath you that you possibly can.
Now, if you could go back and talk to the Sarah
that's just starting out at Salesforce,
what advice would you give to yourself?
Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that I learned over time
at Salesforce, as a marketer,
and I'll speak a lot from a marketer's perspective here,
obviously, 'cause that's my role,
but I think we get kind of hyper-focused
on the external manifestation of what your marketing looks like.
Like, how's it gonna look on the website?
How's it gonna show up at an event?
And I think the one thing sometimes people forget,
especially in a company like Salesforce,
which is very sales-driven and customer field-focused
and customer-facing role-face-focused,
you sometimes forget to actually market your marketing.
Like, you've got to get people internally excited
about your ideas, get them like crystal clear
on your three to four top value propositions
for your product, because they can be,
they are often your biggest lever to get that news out,
and you want them to be doing it in a really consistent way.
So I always tried to be a broken record,
like when we went through that lightning launch
I was just talking about, I would say,
sell faster, sell smarter, sell the way you want.
And I said, I did not change that messaging
in any presentation I did for a year.
And I really just wanted people to make sure
we were focused on sales productivity,
AI and intelligence, 'cause that was the theme du jour,
and then the customization of the platform.
So it's self-aster, self-smarter,
sell the way you want every, all hands,
every opportunity I had to speak to sales
or do a lunch and learn, every website,
every, anything.
Like I would just try to make sure I was a broken record
so that that message would really sink in.
- I love that lesson because I think it is something
that was really something we practice pretty hardcore
at Salesforce, because it's a different channel
if you think about it in terms of getting
the entire company aligned around the message.
I mean, they're gonna be your biggest channel
and your biggest mouthpiece talking to customers,
talking to other people in the market.
And so getting that alignment is really important.
So I love that market, the marketing
and alignment piece, that's awesome.
- Yeah, I mean, there's so many things
I'm sure we could like rattle off of like
the apartment building analogy.
Like we always use that to talk about multi-tenant.
There was like the success framework,
there was a money slide, there was the crack slide.
Like there's so many different things.
- It's funny, I mean, you mentioned that
'cause it's like you have to repeat it multiple times
even if it's, you know, to let your customers
in a whole new way, right?
That terminology, it's like getting that out there
and that message was consistent
and you just had to keep repeating it
until you actually had, you know, the sales rep
repeating your marketing for you.
That's when you know you've won that campaign
and that launch too.
I think that's also a really important piece.
- Yeah, 100%.
- So let me ask you, because I asked this of all my guests,
is the meaning of "ohana" and everyone thinks about
the term "ohana" differently.
And I know especially in the market now
with where things are, you know, the "ohana" term
is in question, but like, what does "ohana" mean to you?
- I always feel so lucky to have worked at Salesforce
for as long as I did and like I consider
a lot of the colleagues I worked with their family now.
I probably have 40 people on my phone.
I could text if I was like needing something
or how to need an answer to a question
or wanted to hang out.
Like, we're just like, we are super fortunate
that we all work there and work with such, you know,
great people.
And, you know, I was just, it's just like,
I have an example, even just from yesterday,
I was at a random gym class in Alameda,
if you're not from the Bay Area.
It's like pretty, like, it's not a random town,
but it's not like I was at like Equinox downtown
in San Francisco.
And on the treadmill next to me was a woman
who had worked on my team like five years ago.
I haven't seen her in forever.
And like, it was just like old times.
Like, I was just like, oh, it's so great to see you.
And, you know, it was just so, you know,
sometimes I've been at places at work
where you like don't wanna see people outside of work
and like anytime I wanna do a Salesforce person
and just like, so excited to see them.
We're mutually like excited to learn
what's been happening with each other.
And I just feel like really blessed
to have that kind of work family.
That's, I guess why I'd say, Ohana means to me,
that, you know, kind of has your back
no matter where you end up going.
- I mean, and yeah, I feel the same with you, Sarah, right?
Where I can call you at any point or text you
and just ask any random question out of nowhere
without any formalities.
And it feels like, you know, it does.
It's like family in that regard.
And I think, you know, it stems back to, you know,
that special time at Salesforce where, you know,
it was definitely a wartime at Salesforce
and you felt like you went to battle
with a lot of these folks and just being there.
So that's a special, I love that term.
I mean, that definition of Ohana.
Now, are there any special Ohana moments
that are a little behind the scenes that you wanna share?
- Yeah, I mean, I think over the course of my 10 years
that Salesforce, we went through so many major shifts.
We were cloud and then mobile and then social.
And when we were going to the mobile shift
and iPhones were really starting to take hold
and we're seeing a huge explosion of apps
on the consumer side, we wanted to capitalize that
on that on the enterprise side for the App Exchange.
And so we came up with this concept.
We were super small team,
probably like three or four of us.
And we came up with a concept called business app bootcamp
where we recruited a bunch of press, a bunch of VCs,
a bunch of developers who hadn't been building
on our platform yet to get together in San Francisco.
And it was the start of a series of events
we ultimately ended up doing.
But it was something we'd never tried before.
It was a little bit risky
'cause we had all these kind of outside parties coming to it.
And it was one of those career moments where I'm like,
all right, I'm either gonna get promoted
or I'm gonna get fired depending on how the segment goes.
And so we kind of worked all hours
and it came together amazingly.
And we had just a great attendance
and everyone was like super excited.
And it was just the start of really,
I mean, the App Exchange was well on its way
but it really was an inflection point for App Exchange
where we really started to see people kind of gravitate
towards our ecosystem and see the opportunity.
And so it's just cool to look back.
Now App Exchange is thousands of apps
and tons of different partners in such an established,
foundational marketplace.
And it was just cool to be part of the early days of that.
- And I love that Ohana moment
'cause I feel like it's a testament
to what Salesforce was really around innovation
and really trying to drive new innovative tactics
to drum up more excitement around,
to your point, business apps,
on the mobile device too.
So I thought that's a really great Ohana moment.
So Sarah, what was your first Dreamforce?
And are there any Dreamforce moments or stories
you'd like to share?
- Yeah, I think my first Dreamforce was 2008.
And we talked about Dreamforce in terms of bands.
I think that was the year of NXS with the new singer.
And yeah, I mean in terms of Dreamforce,
I mean, my first Dreamforce,
it's just like you've never seen anything like it.
You're like, this is like, where do I work?
Like this is like a rock show.
I mean, not just the concert itself,
but the keynotes and the campground and the Expo
and everything is just this massive, massive production.
Like you've never seen and super fun.
And I just remember this one pivotal moment
at my first Dreamforce where I was like,
"Wow, I'm really lucky to be here at this time."
And it was this, we were launching force.com
that was right around when I started.
And Ariel Kellman was running marketing
for the platform at the time.
And there was a moment in the keynote
when they brought on like three CIOs.
They kind of came out of the fog
in a really dramatic way and walked on the stage.
And like the CIOs weren't from any like,
crazy enterprise company,
but they had like the CIO of Kelly services,
the CIO of, I don't know, two other companies.
And they came on, I'm like, wow, like we have arrived.
Like this is like a real moment where like,
you know, the company is really starting to make a name
for itself and get into the enterprise.
And like literally I know that that was just the start
of many things to come.
And there's milestones that, you know,
I could see the progression over, you know,
keynote says the as the years went on.
Like I remember when the CEO of PeopleSoft came the next year
and I was like, that was more validation.
And George Lucas was there and then like, you know,
Bill Clinton and Richard Branson and just,
and not even, you know, sometimes it was celebrity guests,
but sometimes it was our customers
and just watching that progression just made you really proud
to be part of Salesforce.
- Well, and that's, you know, I think a lot of the job also
at the time was, you know, from a marketing perspective
was to make it fun, but how do you make enterprise IT sexy
and fun, right?
And that's, I think that was a lot of the goal.
And I can imagine, I remember seeing that vision now
that you actually just painted it like the fog
and then the CIO is coming out like the rock stars, right?
- Right. - Totally.
- So that's awesome.
I love that. - Yeah.
- Now, let's get into our next segment, What's Cooking?
Sarah, you're now the CMO of attentive.
I want you to talk about how you got to where you are now
and what your journey's been like to get to your current role.
- Yeah. So after Salesforce, I went to be the CMO at Twilio
and I was there for about four years.
I was working for George Hu, another Salesforce exec,
kind of a legend at Salesforce.
And just to have the opportunity to work for him,
I couldn't pass up.
And it was a really exciting time to be at Twilio.
They were a business that was at about $400 million
in revenue with only 30 salespeople.
So super healthy, self-serve motion.
And the next chapter for them was how do they build
an enterprise sales function and really grow the business
and grow their footprint in the enterprise.
So it was really fun to be there at the time.
I learned a ton about developers and had not had exposure
to that in my time at Salesforce as much.
And from there, I learned about the company I'm currently at,
attentive, which was a customer of Twilio's.
Twilio focuses on communication APIs
and attentive was using Twilio as a product
to deliver SMS marketing.
And so I'm the CMO here at Attentive.
We're about 1,200 people growing really quickly,
really focused on retail and e-com.
And we're pre-IPO.
And so that's an experience I've never had.
It's been fun to be at a company at this stage
in its lifecycle and to kind of rewind the clock
and think about, all right, what did we do at Salesforce
or Twilio when we were this size?
And what parts of my playbook should I apply?
And what parts do I need to kind of build out
from first principles?
So it's been a really fun time to be at a company like this.
It's been a challenging time given the market conditions,
but I feel really lucky to be here.
I mean, speaking of challenges, what challenges are you seeing
now and how are you applying what you learned from Salesforce
like to those challenges?
It just given the environment and the markets focus
on profitability versus growth at any cost.
We've definitely had to live the mantra of doing more
with less and just ruthlessly prioritize
what we're going to do as a marketing team.
So I'm not-- I was having a conversation with one
of my team members the other day,
and they wanted to do a customer video that
was really focused on the brand of this customer.
And I said, I would love to do that in a perfect world,
but we also-- we don't have the luxury of doing something
that's not really tied to action in the sales funnel.
And so we need to also make this metrics oriented
and not just be a high level thing.
And so as a marketer, you want to be
able to do all those kinds of-- you
want to have the long play and the shorter term wins.
But I think in this market, you've
got to really be focused on how you can put points on the board
as quickly as possible.
Metrics in value.
Metrics in value.
That's definitely--
100%.
So what's next for you and how are you shaping the future?
Generally, we've had a foothold in retail in E.com,
and we've got amazing brands and amazing customers
at all in all kind of segments.
And I think the next chapter for us
is how do we take a lot of our use cases
and apply them to new verticals, like whether that's sports
and entertainment or media and hospitality or food
and beverage.
And also, I think AI is a huge component of that.
We've just had two releases in the last month,
one around kind of generative copy and images
for SMS campaigns, and then also one just around,
like, how could you automate your whole holiday campaign
calendar for the year?
And I think these are things that some people might find scary
and be like, hey, am I going to have a job in a few years?
But I personally just think it's going
to take some of this tedious manual work off the plates
of marketers so they can be focused on more strategic
activities and drive more impact for their companies,
ultimately.
I mean, I think this is the next big shift to your point
that you made earlier around cloud, mobile, social.
Obviously, now it's AI.
So yeah, I think that'll be exciting to think,
what are the exciting tactics or strategies
you want to bring to your team to an attentive?
That's pretty awesome.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I'm talking about tools that our customers ultimately
use, but I think there's tools internally we're
going to use as a marketing team too.
We're already users of a product called Rider
to help think about, all right, we've got this blog post.
How do we translate that into email copy?
How do we translate that into a social post?
And it's pretty cool to be able to save time that way.
I mean, that could be its own whole podcast around all the AI
use cases that are coming out right now.
It's super overwhelming, but I mean, exciting, but also
like, my gosh, where do we start?
Oh, yeah, totally.
All right, let's get into our final segment,
the future forecast.
Sarah, what do you envision as the future of the Salesforce
ecosystem?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's just so many different paths.
A member of the Salesforce ecosystem
can go at this point, given how many clouds
there are within Salesforce and use cases and sales
were generally still is applicable to all segments.
And I think the partners that are really going to win
are going to think about, first off, like places
where there isn't a huge volume of apps to begin with.
Like, I remember when I was working on App Exchange,
we had a ton of bells and whistles to add to Sales Cloud,
but we didn't really have a lot of applications that were
as applicable to Service Cloud.
And I'm sure that that's matured far beyond what it was
when I was on App Exchange.
But I think like, identifying those pockets of need.
And then I also think like getting specific on segment
and industry, I really do think the more
you can think about, all right, what does--
it was revolutionary at the time just to be moving CRM to cloud.
And so we got away with having applications
that were primarily horizontal.
And you didn't really have to worry
about the vertical applications.
I think now, software buyers are definitely more particular.
And they want to make sure that it's not just a CRM add-on
that works broadly, but also really knows them as, let's say,
someone who works in an insurance company and talks
about clients with a particular terminology
and has a particular workflow that they absolutely
need to see in their product before they'll even consider
going down that path.
So I think it's just important to think about where
the TAM exists in the Salesforce ecosystem
and building applications that are really tailored to that use
case.
Now, obviously with the market where
it's at, we've seen Salesforce go through a lot of change
right now, but can you give us a prediction of where
you think Salesforce and what Salesforce is
going to look like in the future?
Look, I think everyone in software right now
is going through tricky times.
It's really difficult when, for the last 15, 20 years,
you've been encouraged to take market share at any cost,
grow, grow, grow.
And to expect any company to flip overnight,
especially at the size of Salesforce to only focus on
profitability, it's just tough.
And I think this is a moment in time for Salesforce.
I know that it can be a challenging environment,
but I think Salesforce long term is unstoppable.
And I think the clouds will part and the company will
be off into the races again.
It'll be a new day.
It'll be a new day for them.
It will.
It will.
So I know that the company still has a ton of potential ahead
of it.
And it's just a matter of the market settling down.
Yeah.
So Sarah, what advice do you have for aspiring marketing
leaders?
I think you have to just be open to always learning.
I think that people that I have had on my team
that I have seen kind of stall out have either just
not been receptive to feedback or have kind of assumed
that they knew everything that they need to know.
And I think what pushes leaders forward
into the next level of growth is being curious and taking
on work that might not be squarely in your jurisdiction,
but is going to help push you into a new avenue
or pick up a new skill that will just prep you
for the next role.
So I know I don't want that advice to come off
as say yes to everything and be a yes person.
But I think being on the lookout for leaders
that have good momentum and projects that
are going to push you into new areas where you don't have
that existing skill, you should be on the lookout for those
and take full advantage where you can.
Sage advice, I mean, it's just like I actually
have chat GPT up where I'm learning that whole API
because I'm like, open AI, I mean, because I'm like,
I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to get a hold on this.
And so the best way is by being curious.
So love that advice.
Now before letting you go, I want to have fun
with a quick lightning round.
You ready for this?
- Yep, I think so.
As long as I don't have to say like if I prefer,
if I, my favorite person, Sean or Craig this time.
- Yeah, I know.
Secret skill, not on the resume.
- It's on my Twitter profile, but I'm a pretty decent bowler.
- That's awesome.
When was your last 300 game?
- Well, I'm not that good, but.
(laughing)
- That's pretty great.
Okay, well, let's go bowling soon.
Now what's the best way to spend an evening after work?
- Probably watching Bravo, especially like given
what's happening on Vanderpump Rules these days.
(laughing)
- Scandival, there you go.
- Scandival, can't get enough.
- Favorite brand of anything?
- Gosh, favorite brand of anything.
I'd say right now I'm a huge Vory fan.
Like they can do no wrong in my eyes.
So big sweatpants person, apparently.
- You just won Front Roci tickets to your dream event.
What is it?
- Oh man, I'm a huge live music person.
So this one's tough.
I would probably say, I just won a Taylor Swift,
which was incredible.
But I feel like that's like a generic,
everyone's gonna say that.
I would say any show at the Rime in,
I'm a huge country music fan.
And if you haven't seen a show at the Rime in Nashville,
it's like an old church basically,
where they used to do services.
And it's a super cool venue.
And just kind of, if you're there,
it's a, you gotta, that's like, gotta be on your bucket list.
- I love that answer.
Now Sarah, this has been so much fun.
Before I let you go, let the listeners know
where they can find you.
And if there's anything else that you'd like to share
or anything to plug.
- Yeah, no, you can find me on Twitter.
It's Sarah Vrenny-Brite.
If I'm on LinkedIn, please reach out.
I'm always looking to network.
And, you know, like I said earlier in the session,
I'm, you know, always, I love the Ohana
because we're always here to kind of help each other out
when, and it could be something as like, you know,
serious as, you know, trying to find your next job
or it could be something like having just a simple question
to, you know, a challenge you're having day to day.
So please feel free to reach out.
- Awesome, well, thank you so much, Sarah,
for today, I really appreciate it.
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