The Value of Owning Your Narrative
Meet Jamie Domenici, GoTo’s Chief Marketing Officer. Previously, Jamie spent 10 years at Salesforce as a marketing leader in various roles, learning the power behind a strong brand narrative.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Inside the O'Hanna, I'm Dan Darcy,
Chief Customer Officer at Qualified,
and today I'm joined by my friend Jamie Domenici.
Jamie, how are you?
- I'm great, thanks for having me.
- Well, I wanna dive right into our first segment,
O'Hanna Origins.
Jamie, how did you discover Salesforce
and start your journey?
- Fun fact, even at my first job ever out of college,
I was implementing CRM.
So I had an appreciation from it early on,
and then I went to a company called Ingress,
which was open source database,
it was very cool in the 80s.
And my CIO there, he kind of pioneered SaaS,
he wanted an end to end 100% SaaS tech stack back in like 2005.
So not a lot of people were doing this.
And I was his apprentice.
So I was the Salesforce admin,
I was the V trends admin,
if you have like old school marketing knowledge.
And so my journey and like appreciation for Salesforce
started before Salesforce.
But then 2010 comes around,
and I've been admin for a long time,
going to dreamforce, drinking the Kool-Aid,
and I get a call from Mike Costow,
who you probably know,
he was my boss in the past life,
and he was working at Salesforce doing M&A.
And they had acquired Jigsaw,
which was a really big acquisition on a time,
and he said, "Hey, there's this marketing department here,
"they need to figure out how to integrate it.
"I need you to meet with this woman,
"her name's Shannon Duffy,
"and I need you to interview with her, she needs help."
So I interviewed with Shannon Duffy,
which if anybody follows me on Instagram,
you know I spent,
Shannon's now one of my best friends,
and we like travel around the world together.
So it was a good interview, I nailed it, she hired me.
And that was my start of a long 10 year run back in 2010.
- I mean, calling out V trends,
pretty awesome, like going back to old school.
Yeah, but I mean,
go give me the details though about,
the whole process, you know,
what was your job within marketing, you know, title,
what was your initial impression of Salesforce
coming into that with the acquisition?
- Yeah, and it was interesting
because I was on the other side of the acquisition.
So that was really an interesting way to come in,
like a smaller subset of the bigger company.
By big, at the time, it was 2010,
I think there was like 2000 employees,
you know, so it was a really different time
in history, it was small.
We were in one building.
And my first job then was to do integration,
M&A integration,
actually at Salesforce I had, I think eight jobs.
So I went from integration to running demand gen,
and then I was hired on the sales cloud,
which I found was kind of an interesting moment.
Linda Crawford at the time,
she was the GM of Sales Cloud with Mark Wollan,
and they were responsible for a number,
but they ran product.
So they called me and they said,
"Hey, we want you to come over to product marketing,
"but we want you to do demand gen."
And I was like, this moment where marketing at the time
was like, no way, you can't have demand gen
in product marketing.
And Linda was like, why own the number?
So I mean her over here.
So I was like this controversial hire,
but I also think it was like kind of that movement
of starting to build out more mini-CMO-type
product marketing roles where you're responsible
for end-to-end, hitting a number,
aligning to sales, driving a target,
like more than just messaging and positioning.
So I did that for a while.
I launched, I was on the Wave team,
if you can remember, Wave,
which we came to Analytics Cloud,
I ran SMB and I actually ended my run
at Salesforce doing customer success,
which was a crazy transition.
Like how did you go from marketing to customer success?
But I spent the last two years there doing a lot,
including marketing, running a sales team,
running the product team, focusing on services.
So just really having exposure
to all sides of the business.
- Salesforce was really good at valuing product marketing.
And you can hear here from Jamie too,
just talking through how product marketing
really held a lot of different roles, like demand gen,
in this example.
And so Jamie, just thinking through
your history of Salesforce
and all the great things that you've done,
I just want you to brag a little
because I know you've had such incredible success
during that time at Salesforce,
just going through all of the different roles you held.
But what's the biggest success you've had
while working there and something that you're most proud of?
- Oh, I love a humble brag.
So many things, Dan.
I mean, I was lucky I got to work on a lot of things.
And I mean, I was definitely proud of the teams that we built.
I always named my teams, which was kind of weird.
I was part of the Jigsaw Mafia.
I was part of the SMB trendsetters.
It's part of the Wolfpack.
So like a lot of incredible teams were built
and worked with over time.
And I also felt like we pioneered a lot of stuff,
like moving up market and verticalizing.
Like those are things I face today.
I'm like, wow, I did that at Salesforce.
That was great.
But actually probably if I had to pick my most favorite though,
is probably launching the Success Cloud.
So back to what I said,
I went to customer success.
It's kind of an interesting transition.
It was weird at the time.
Maria Martinez, who ran customer success,
she called me and said, you know,
I want you to come run marketing for me.
Which I was like, what is that?
You know, you're in customer success, Dan.
You know, it's a really important part of the organization,
but it sometimes can get lost, I think.
And it did at Salesforce.
It was behind sales, you know.
Everyone was growth at all costs.
And customer success was a really important piece
of the model, but it didn't really get a lot of the light,
limelight.
You know, maybe you feel that now.
I hope so.
I hope you're getting limelight, Dan.
(laughs)
- I'm getting some.
So that's good.
- Getting some.
Okay, well if you need help, let me know.
But fast forward, I joined the team.
And what we did was relaunch it.
And I will say I was one of the proudest things.
And what does that mean?
Well, we had to write a whole new narrative.
And narrative writing's really hard.
And in this environment, it was very hard.
A lot of voices.
But we rewrote a whole narrative around customer success
and how Salesforce is there to help you,
like do it with you, do it for you,
or teach you how to do it.
And this narrative was something that we enabled
all of customer success on, which was 12,000 employees,
but actually the entire company.
And like really gave this as a differentiation
for Salesforce to leverage something we had already in house.
And then two, we had to bring life back into the organization.
So we did what you do at Salesforce.
We got a character.
We launched Blaze, who was your guide to success.
She's a wolf and she's a she.
So it was a really exciting to have our own character.
We had a big presence at Dreamforce.
And we built out all of these how-to clinics.
That's people still leverage today.
We launched the Coa Club,
which for those of you who don't know,
Coa is it was an internal club
where if you were at Salesforce for 10 years,
you became part of the Coa Club.
We launched that for customers.
So customers who have been with Salesforce for 10 plus years,
we invited Mark Hamill.
He came and gave them a personalized talk
and made them feel special.
And we really put ourselves back on the map
and created and used our narrative
to become a differentiation within the company,
which was awesome.
It was a great moment.
- I remember this really well.
And I love this moment
because it really did bring a whole new life
to customer success.
And obviously Salesforce helped pioneer
the customer success organization
starting off with a customer success manager
once you bought a piece of software back in '99, 2000.
But it needed a refresh
and it started with your narrative
of really bringing that all together.
And so that's really incredible.
Now on the opposite side of the spectrum,
what would you say is your biggest lesson learned?
- You mean, did I fail?
Okay, I had a couple.
- I had a couple.
And actually it's also about a narrative.
I learned a hard lesson.
I was working on the sales cloud
and the GM at the time, Mike Rosenbaum said,
I want you to write a new narrative for the sales cloud,
like our flagship product.
And you know what?
I completely bombed.
I just didn't write a good narrative.
And I have since redeemed myself many times over,
but back in the day,
I really just didn't have the ability
to think differently at that moment about that product.
But it was a great learning moment in my career
because you know when you have those things
where you think you're gonna get this job,
you feel like you're entitled,
you think you've done the work,
and then you don't get it.
You kind of find all these reasons
like why you didn't get it.
And not to blame other things, but excuses almost.
And I had a mentor, her name is Layla Seica.
She doesn't pull any punches, you know?
And she was listening to me kind of drown in my sorrows
and she said, you know what kid,
like everything in life is half your fault.
And it was like a life-changing moment for me.
'Cause what she said, I'm like,
oh yeah, like the reason I didn't get the job
is 'cause I didn't write a great narrative.
And like, I own that.
And it's funny, I've taken that on in life
to everything I do now.
It's like how I raise my kids,
it's how I manage my teams,
it's how I think about any success or failure.
It's like what can I own and what can I do different?
And it was like a life-changing moment.
I have to think Layla the next time I see her.
- I love that.
I mean, if you could go back and talk to Jamie
just starting out with Salesforce,
what advice would you give to yourself?
- I mean, well, when it was a pretty good round,
so I'd be like, do what you did.
(laughs)
But I probably would say, yeah,
I mean, think about what you can own
and what you can influence.
But actually, the advice that I would give myself
and I'd constantly give this to anybody
who's looking for just career advice,
which is do the job that needs to get done,
not the job that you have.
Like Salesforce is a world of opportunities.
That's why I had so many different roles.
It wasn't because there was something wrong,
it's 'cause anytime there was something
that needed to be fixed,
I would just go do it.
And then eventually someone would say,
wait, you know what, this should be your job.
We should build an asset.
Like the SMB team, we had done four acquisitions,
related IQ, desk.com, Sales Cloud, a service cloud,
we're all selling to the same buyer.
It was crazy, we were marketing against ourselves.
So I went to Stephanie Buchamie and said,
hey, we should just make one team
and bring our products together
and market to small businesses under one voice.
And she was like, great idea, go do that.
So I feel like in life, don't just do what you're told,
do what needs to get done and it will reward you.
- Well, and a key point there too,
just thinking through that, and I love that lesson
is really around the narrative that you brought
to the projects that you kinda took on
and the firefighting that you did.
- Oh my gosh, that's one of my favorite narratives,
which was find when keep.
We help you find customers, when customers,
and keep customers.
I think it's still on the website today.
And it's like Nelson Hong, he worked on it with me,
I'll give him props, like, you know,
when you write a narrative and it can stand the test of time,
you know you really hit the mark.
And that was one of those moments, it was impactful.
- I just got chills because that's,
what a great feeling, I know that feeling
and it's incredible.
Now, so I wanna ask you, you talked about Nelson,
you brought up a lot of names in here,
and I know a lot of those names,
I wanna ask you about the meaning of Ohana.
And I asked this of all of my guests
because everyone describes it a little bit differently,
but I'm curious, how would you describe the Ohana
and what does it mean to you?
- Well, you know there's a song about that, Dan.
We got Ohana, no.
Okay, and that's kind of a joke,
but when we were in Salesforce,
like we talk about Ohana a lot,
a Meeds family, it's talking about your ecosystem,
but I will tell you, since I have left Salesforce
in the year or so that I've been gone,
I actually really appreciate,
and I'm so grateful I was part of that Ohana
because it was something really special and hard to create.
So for me, Ohana, it's like about people,
whether it's your employees, your customers, your partners,
your family, like it is everybody kind of rallying around
a cause that you believe in.
And in this case, it was software,
but it was more than software, right?
It was how Salesforce can help your business,
how Salesforce could help the world,
how you could drive change, do good.
And like to have that sort of energy and belief
that you were rooted in, like it really is powerful.
It is a powerful thing.
And I now looking back, like I have friends for life
from Salesforce, I put you in that bucket, you're welcome.
- I do too, I do too.
Now before we get into our next segment,
are there any special stories or Ohana moments
that are a little behind the scenes that you wanna share?
- You know, Dreamforce, obviously,
everybody knows Dreamforce and loves it.
But what happens behind the scenes at Dreamforce
is insane, right?
It's months of work and prep and innovation
and trying to be shiny, which was a really fun
Salesforce term, like when you would show up with an idea
and someone would say, "Be more shiny."
You're like, "How do I get any shiny here?"
But it was crazy.
So when I told you earlier about customer success,
when we launched the Success Cloud,
Dreamforce was where we had our coming out party,
where we launched Blaze, our narrative and all those things.
And we had to fight really, really hard to get a keynote,
which once you get a keynote,
you gotta fill that room.
And it's hard, it's nerve-wracking.
Like, what if they go to the Sales Cloud
or what if they don't like me?
You know, it's kind of like, it's a hard thing.
So one of the, on that day, I remember thinking like,
how are we gonna fill this room?
And well, I don't love natural disasters,
but at the same time, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.
Maria Martinez is from Puerto Rico.
So she said, "You know what, on top of this,
"I want to raise a million dollars for Hurricane Maria victims."
And we're like, "Okay, no problem.
"Let's do that too."
You know?
Let's think about it.
But I appreciated it because it was Salesforce,
you know, in the business of doing good and it mattered.
So we thought, how are we gonna do this?
So we went and reached out to Luis Fonzi,
which do you know who Luis Fonzi is?
- Yes.
- Do you know what song he sings?
- Oh, pop culture fail.
- Yeah.
- Despacito.
- Yeah, that's very Despacito.
- Very big hit, Despacito.
So at the time I was totally everywhere on the pop church.
He's from Puerto Rico.
We said, "Hey, we want you to come
"and help us raise a million dollars."
And Maria called him and he said, "No problem.
"I'll be there."
So now all of a sudden, we have a keynote
with Luis Fonzi singing Despacito,
which was highly unusual at the time.
This is very unique.
And I remember the night, actually the night before,
we were doing a dry run and he was dancing on stage
singing Despacito with his dancers.
And I had to stop it and say, "Excuse me, Mr. Fonzi,
"could you please ask the dancers to do less grinding?
"Like too much, not okay.
"This is a tech conference, you know?
"Things you'd never thought you'd have to say, but I did."
And then the next day comes,
he's got his dancers all ready to go.
And I remember being back behind the scenes
and you're like, "God, I hope people come to the sink."
And I walked out and I just saw an entirely packed room,
filled with press, filled with customers,
filled with employees, like waiting to get in here.
And it was, by far one of the one
of an incredibly proud moment,
but what was so exciting was this ability
to do good, raise a million dollars,
which we did, deliver this new message,
and like bring joy to so many people.
It was a really cool moment.
Also one of those behind the scene things that you're like,
"Honey, let me tell you what I did today."
It was really incredible.
- Well, I have to say that is probably the best
Ohana moment I've had on the show so far.
So, I mean, 'cause it has everything packed into it.
Obviously launching a new cloud,
getting a celebrity, raising money for good.
I mean, that is definitely an Ohana moment
if I ever heard one, so.
- And the character, don't forget Blaze.
And launch a new character.
(laughs)
- It was a big day.
- We did a lot.
- So I wanna get into our next segment, "What's Cooking?"
Jamie, you are now the CMO Echo 2.
I want you to talk about how you got to where you are
and what your journey's been like in your current role.
- One, I'll just say,
leading Salesforce is really hard.
I get asked about that all the time,
like, "Why are you leading Salesforce?"
And I'll tell you, the day that I resigned,
I called my boss Brian Mom and I cried excessively
for 30 minutes while resigning.
And he's like, "Hey, you seem pretty sad.
Like don't do it."
And I'm like, "I know, but it's time.
It was time for me."
And go to was a great opportunity.
So go to, we sold as small as small and mid-sized businesses,
technology that helps them work from anywhere.
And we help you connect and support your customers.
So pretty fundamental tools that you needed post-pandemic
and beyond, right?
And two, helping small businesses
is something I've always had a passion for.
And this company kind of reminded me at Salesforce
when I started 2000 people, you know,
on that road to, actually we're already a billion,
but on that road to growing, post-a-billion,
multi-faceted portfolio with 13 different products.
And they really needed a marketer to come in
and bring a new narrative,
like revitalize the company,
build out sort of their new brand in the market
and also go drive a ton of pipeline.
And that's what I did.
And this time I wanted to go on the journey again,
but I really wanted to do that from the Executive Suite
where I could bring all those things
that I learned from Salesforce,
but also learn some new skills along the way,
which I absolutely have.
- So what challenges are you seeing now?
And how are you applying what you learned at Salesforce
to those challenges?
- You know, it's perfect, Dan, like I have no problem.
So next question.
- Next question.
- Oh, this is easy.
No, it's actually really hard.
And it's been really challenging,
but I've learned a lot of lessons from Salesforce.
At Salesforce, we were a group of type A personality.
Everybody was different,
but people who are really motivated,
really fast moving, really like wanted to win.
It was a mindset.
And I think that's something that I've tried to bring
to go to.
So I always use the saying,
yeah, and this is by Brian Milan,
I'm really quoting him a lot today,
but this notion of better, better, never best.
I'm sure you use that many times,
but I use it every day at my organization.
And I'm just really trying to push and drive
and build that mentality.
Actually, within the first 30 days at being at GoTo,
we rewrote their values and one of them is moved fast.
And it's literally better, better, never best,
like on the website.
So I think bringing that mentality is really powerful.
- I mean, so again, just going back to, you know,
what you were talking about earlier,
it just sounds like you're also helping rewrite
the narrative internally for the company,
especially with that value set.
So what is next and how are you shaping the future?
- Well, one, when I joined the company,
its name was Log Me In.
And now it's GoTo.
So one of the most important things that I also brought
this from Salesforce and one of the really important things
that we did was rebrand the entire company.
It's a completely transformed business
in the last 18 months, starting with the name, the logo,
the value prop, the narrative.
It's a completely different narrative
of the company that I started out to where I am today.
Like, and I think at Salesforce, we always did that, right?
It was a messaging first company
really driving a forward looking state,
putting that message in market,
and then bringing the rest of the company with them.
And I was really lucky because at Salesforce back in 2015,
I was a VP, I was a tech and product.
And that's when we really went through
that first diversity exercise, if you will,
around women equality.
And if you remember, Layla and Cindy Robbins,
they went to Mark and said,
"Hey, women are underpaid.
Like we need more women in the C-suite
and we need more diversity."
And because they did that,
it really changed the trajectory of my career for better.
I was underpaid, I was got equal pay,
but two, I was part of a
Hypertential Women's Organization and Partners org
where he kind of brought together senior female leaders
that were at that VP stage
and invested in growing them in their career,
which was amazing for me.
I got exposure, I got incredible mentorship,
I got investment into my career,
and I do credit that for a lot of my success
at Salesforce.
So now that I've gone to a smaller company,
people are always asking like,
"How do you bring this diversity like DNA
into an organization?"
I always kind of start there.
Now, we don't have to recreate exactly what Salesforce did,
but this notion of bringing an awareness,
like putting together data that helps show your story
and then taking action is something
that I've really tried to bring into the DNA of GoTo
who's already there, but really expanding on it
and taking from what I learned from Salesforce
to impact and bring more diversity into our workplace
has been a huge initiative of mine.
- So let's get into our final segment, The Future Podcast.
Jamie, what do you envision as the future
of the Salesforce ecosystem?
- Well, you know, somebody used to say,
a very wise man, like, can't stop, won't stop.
That was a good thought, right?
I mean, I just think Salesforce ecosystem
is gonna continue to grow and thrive.
And it's impressive to build inside.
It's an even more impressive to watch from the outside.
And it's amazing.
I work in a private equity company.
There's a lot of portfolios and like Salesforce,
Salesforce, Salesforce, it's just a common term,
almost, that is used.
And so I think the future is to continue to grow, expand.
And there's really nothing in the way of Salesforce,
in my opinion.
- And give us a prediction of what you think
actually the company Salesforce is gonna look like
in the future.
Like, where do you think it may go?
- It's a different world, right?
It used to be all about growth.
Now I think we're thinking about growth in a responsible way,
like margin, efficiency, profitability.
I hate to be all financial and kind of boring here,
but, you know, it's a different world.
And what I always am looking for is,
how do I use a technology first, strategy, human second, right?
To drive down efficiency.
So I think Salesforce has already done a lot here,
but as they continue to grow in Pioneer,
thinking more and more about data and technology
and automation and how you can bring more digital touchpoints
and reduce the need for human interaction,
even more, like keep pushing, keep pushing there,
because I think that's where the world is going
and what we need now more than ever.
They're the pioneers,
but I think there's a lot, still a lot to do in that space.
And I think Salesforce is the person to crack the, you know,
crack the code.
- Yeah, I love that point of view.
So what advice do you have for aspiring marketing leaders
out there listening to this?
- I mean, you've picked a great field.
I love being a marketer.
So one, well done.
I do have a lot of advice.
So one is, the narrative is so powerful.
So always think about your narrative
and take an outside in perspective.
I always tell my teams, like,
the narrative is something a product marketer,
in particular, will craft,
but the places and the inspiration
where you're gonna get it is from everywhere else but you.
It is from your customer success agents on the front line.
It's from your sales reps who are pitching every day.
It is from your customers who are living,
breathing and using your products.
So it's a think about your narrative,
but the second thing is customer first marketing.
And I really, truly believe that,
especially in a downturn economy,
the most efficient thing you can do is have a customer,
speak on your behalf and put that everywhere.
It's so much more powerful than you saying, we're great.
When you have a customer say, this is great,
this has changed my business, this is driving impact.
And think about how you put that everywhere,
from your website to your display ads,
to your pitch decks, to your stage.
Like your customers are your most powerful weapon.
You use them everywhere.
And like last but not least is get scrappy.
Salesforce is so big.
We had tons of resources, but we were so scrappy.
Like innovative beyond belief.
Like some of my favorite moments were my least caught,
maybe some of my most disrupted.
Like one time at Dreamforce,
I needed to find a way to advertise our keynote.
I didn't have people.
So I made my whole marketing team
dress up as stormtroopers.
Like yes, we went to the Halloween store,
bought stormtrooper costumes.
There was one rookie, he was really tall.
And then they marched around the campus,
promoting our keynote.
Now, Julie Legal called me and hated me at the time.
She ran Dreamforce and was like,
"Please call off your stormtroopers."
Like, it's dangerous.
And I'm sorry for that, Julie, if you're listening.
But I would do it again, sorry again for that, Julie.
But it was a cost effective way of driving awareness,
super disruptive, and authentic, super fun.
So I would say all those things
are really important for marketers.
- And one last is ask for forgiveness, not permission.
There you go.
- I know, I didn't want to see it, but 100%.
- All right, Jamie, before letting you go,
let's have fun with a quick lightning round.
You ready for this? - Okay, yes.
- All right, favorite Salesforce product.
- Ooh, I'm old school, Sales Cloud all the way.
- Some favorite, I know what this answer is,
but favorite Salesforce character.
- Blaze, obviously.
- Okay, but what's your second?
- No, I don't have a second.
She's the only one.
(laughs)
- All right, favorite brand of anything besides Salesforce.
- Nike, especially now that my kids are all in sports,
like I do, I love Nike all day, every day.
- Secret skill, not on the resume.
- Oh, I'm like a very good flower arranger,
if you can't tell from my wonderful display
in the background, but I really like arranging flowers.
That's my next job. - That's awesome.
- And you just won Front Row Seat tickets
to your dream event, what is it?
- Well, I mean, I do love all things Bravo,
and Bravo Con is going on this weekend,
but I think I could afford that Front Row Seat.
So if I was gonna go with my dream,
I would have to say Tom Petty Concert.
I wish I could go back in time
and go to Front Row of one of his, for sure.
- Jamie, this has been so much fun,
but before I let you go,
will you let the listeners know where they can find you?
And is there anything else you'd like to share or plug today?
- I mean, of course, I would love to plug GoTo.
So if you're a small business out there listening to this,
and you're trying to think about your tech stack
and how you connect your employees and your customers,
and how you support them,
definitely go to our website, check it out,
no longer log me in, it's all about GoTo.
So check it out.
And definitely if you're looking for any other insights
or you wanna see Jamie and Shannon Adventures,
follow me on LinkedIn.
And yeah, cash me there.
- Thank you so much, Jamie, this was awesome.
- Yeah, thanks for having me, it was great.
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(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)