Guests

Full Transcript

Episode Teaser –

0:00:03 – Fred Cadena
We heard stories about you see firms, private equity firms reaching out to their founders, who you know reaching out to each other on Slack. That just kind of stirred up the immediacy of the crisis, and a bank, in that type of environment, needs to be able to respond with an equal amount of urgency.

Introducing Dane & Fred –

0:00:35 – Fred Cadena
Hi and welcome to Banking. on Disruption, i’m Fred.

0:00:35 – Dane Grove
And I’m Dane, and this is big episode number one. On this episode, we’ll be spending a little time introducing Fred and myself discussing what you can expect from our podcast. Afterwards, we will be introducing one of our regular features Quicktakes where Fred and I share our thoughts on what’s going on. If you’re a fan of the show, please do follow us on Instagram, at at banking, on disruption, and don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast or your favorite podcast app. Let’s get into it. We’re really excited for what we have planned for the show. But first I thought it would be good for us to give our listeners a better idea about our backgrounds. So, fred, tell me how you got introduced to Salesforce.

0:01:30 – Fred Cadena
Thanks, Dane. So I was working for a company called Options Express, and Options Express was an online broker pioneer in online trading, especially for options and other derivatives, and I was a decidedly back office guy, was an operations guy. I was head of a margin credit risk at the firm And one of the things that I took on was what I would describe as operations technology modernization. And it was interesting because, for being an online firm and being founded as a obviously tech, heavy tech first firm, we had a very dynamic and engaging front end, a lot of cutting edge tools for the time, but the middle office, the back office, were still pretty manual, and so I had taken on figuring out how to bring some more automation and some more technology to our middle and back office. And one day my boss came to see me and he’s like Hey, we just signed a contract for this thing called Salesforce And I’ll be honest with you, i didn’t even know what Salesforce was at that time, but he said, listen, responsible for getting this up and running and in our user hands in six months, and kind of good luck. And I really didn’t know where to get started. So, like I think, a lot of people, especially people that have been in the ecosystem for a while now. I am an accidental admin, but it’s been great.

What year was that? Oh gosh, that was. Let’s see, that’s got to be at least 17 years ago. So what are we? 2003 or 2023? was that’s got to be like 2005, 2006. So early, early ish days of Salesforce I don’t go all the way back to like 1999 or anything. Salesforce was definitely a very different product at the time. You know very there’s no lightning. It was all a classic interface. I’ll say this I’m so old on the ecosystem that the first org that I worked on that options express org you could still create s controls. So that’s that. That dates it.

0:04:00 – Dane Grove
Wow, and it was also a time period where I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe it was at the turning point I’m curious what your thoughts are, but it was. It was in that era when a lot of business leaders didn’t necessarily just did not value technology in the same way that they do today. You know, like technology had not fulfilled on enough productivity promises or bottom line performance promises or better customer experience promises. I think for a lot of us, like technology was still just kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, right, wasn’t it sort of like the tail end ish of that error? Do you feel differently about it?

0:04:56 – Fred Cadena
No, i definitely see elements of it. I mean, at the time I was working for a company that was founded to be technology first, but even within that company, all the emphasis on technology was put on the front end, you know, rolling out new tools, making the trading platform better, making it more dynamic, or and or making the customer acquisition process better. You know, we had a really innovative online application process where you could literally start an application and go end to end and be approved for trading and fund instantly and trade at the time within about 15 minutes, which you know going back 15 years. That that’s pretty good. But you know, when I looked at my, my middle and back office counterparts, our new account department was still, for a lot of accounts, printing out applications and documenting the approvals and then putting it in the file box.

When we were doing trade reconciliations you know our operations people were in many cases printing out trade blotters and manually reconciling trades. So there there was still very much, you know, a group of people especially well that had been in a career for 15, 20 years or more of the time, that came from a background of not using technology and were definitely skeptical. I’d also say like technology was not as ubiquitous. Right At the time, i might almost say it felt like technology was a destination Like I’m going to now go do this on my computer rather than this is just how we get work done. So it’s it’s definitely shifted. I think people that weren’t in the workforce 20 years ago probably don’t realize how different it was, and I think it’s a great point optionsXpress.

0:06:52 – Dane Grove
And then where did you go from there?

0:06:56 – Fred Cadena
Was a great journey. I was there for a little over 10 years. We were eventually bought by Charles Schwab and I stayed on after that acquisition for about about three years. You know, helped with a lot of the transition activities, but I kind of felt like I was. I was, you know, reached a turning point in in my career and we had gone through financial crisis at the time and it was really just enjoying the Salesforce part of my job a lot more than I was enjoying the other parts of my job And it just felt like a good time to make a transition. And so I started thinking about I’m liking Salesforce so much, how could I turn this into a career?

And I went to dreamforce that year and spend a little bit of time, not just learning about what was new on the platform, but I spent a little bit more time than I otherwise would have looking at partners, sv partners and SI partners and you know what having a job in the ecosystem would look like. And I ended up meeting with what we call cloud Sherpas and just seemed like a really good fit. You know, Salesforce is starting to become a little bit more industry focused. Cloud Sherpas had one of their main offices in New York, and so they got a fair number of financial services clients there, as well as financial services clients across the country, and they started to see the value of combining that industry knowledge with Salesforce knowledge, and so it just seemed like a good fit. We had some conversations over the next couple of months. I ended up transitioning over and becoming a consultant in the Salesforce ecosystem following January.

0:08:43 – Dane Grove
Well, yeah, cloud Sherpas was definitely, you know, one of the early, very, very successful SI’s in the Salesforce ecosystem. And then, just bringing you to today, you know you center around, obviously, Salesforce and financial services. How are you still spending Like when your day in and day out work and financial services? is it centered in any one particular aspect of FS or do you sort of run the gamut?

0:09:25 – Fred Cadena
You know I do run the gamut. I tend to probably spend most of my time working with banking clients. It’s an over’s game. There’s way way more banks than there are, you know, insurance companies or or invested banks or asset management firms.

0:09:44 – Dane Grove
So tell me about your consulting journey after Cloud Sherpas. Where did you go from there? What was, what was that experience?

0:09:53 – Fred Cadena
Sure, So Cloud Sherpas was acquired by Accenture and I saved through the transition and I learned a lot at the time working at Accenture. But I definitely felt that I enjoyed working at a at a smaller, more nibble firm, and so I started looking and I found a company called Silverline and at the time we’ve been around for a while and we’re really growing. They had two industries that they focus on at the time. One was healthcare. There there was financial services and they were looking for somebody to come and help specifically around helping to scale up the financial services side of the business, and that sounded like a really big opportunity. So I joined the leadership there, initially to lead financial services delivery, ultimately to lead financial services go to market and sales for about a total of four years, and that was a really exciting challenge. From there, i went to Capgemini running their North America financial services Salesforce business Towards the end of 2021, i moved to IBM And for the last year and a half I’ve been a partner in IBM and I am a leader in our North America financial services Salesforce business.

So, Dane, enough about me. Tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the ecosystem.

0:11:28 – Dane Grove
Yeah, interesting question. I started my recruitment career 90s with a company called Aero Attack. At that time very hard charging culture, for example, kaizen Fridays could probably never get away with this today from an HR standpoint. But sitting around with the team, you know ties loose only feedback, constructive criticism. You were not allowed to say to someone, Hey, you’re great at this and you’re great at that. You could only talk about what their weaknesses were and where they needed to improve. There were I’m thinking back on some of those conversations all designed to help grow. He was a very sales oriented, growth oriented organization. But, for example, feedback was, i mean it was harsh at times. For example, you have really bad breath, you need to brush your teeth more often, you stutter, you don’t speak clearly, you say um too much, your car is dirty, kids do not. But a lot of the criticism was actually helpful, kind of looking more like a process and plenty of people there that took the edge off of things and we’re trying to be mean but really help a colleague advance, grow, learn, et cetera.

0:13:19 – Fred Cadena
I love the concept And I love the concept of Kaisans in general and I’m sure that a lot of it evolved as a person matured in their career. You’re probably not giving the you have bad breath and your car is dirty feedback to somebody that’s five years in right, but that’s a very real thing to somebody that maybe is new in a position where they’re out selling themselves, selling roles, selling the company, and then as somebody matures, there’s always room for improvement. I think that’s what I like. the best about that Kaisan approach is it comes, if I remember, from Japan with that always learning kind of a mindset.

0:14:05 – Dane Grove
Exactly Like constant improvement, always learning. And you are right, a lot of us were. We were young, we had a lot to learn and the organization had that program in place to just help accelerate that process. Look at it more silver linings, and for sure it was very effective. We, you know, our goal was at that time to go from I think it was actually 120 million in sales. We were already a decent size organization, by the way, all staff, we weren’t placing people into permanent roles, we were only doing staff log. And the goal was to go from 120 million in sales to a billion.

And the career path at that time was recruitment, senior recruitment sales, senior sales. That was, that was the career path And I kind of booked the system Bye. I at that point in my career, i just wanted to focus on recruitment. I wasn’t ready to let go of that, and so myself, a couple of others, we kind of forged a new direction within AeroTech at that time And basically helped establish a bona fide, you know, recruitment career path that still to this day, you know is thriving and exists. And so I also took a lot of interest in technology. There were a few of us that, working with Boston Consulting Group helped, you know, design, innovate our first applicant tracking slash CRM tool. We had one at the time that was green screen, so to speak. No one was using it, so obviously something with a GUI, windows based, and I really enjoyed that experience working with the guys from BCG. It was about a three month project And my first deep dive into technology and I really got hooked at that time.

0:16:42 – Fred Cadena
What was it about the technology that really hooked you?

0:16:48 – Dane Grove
It was really the process of working with BCG and how they were diving deep into our workflows And documenting those workflows, asking a lot of questions, you know, clearly looking for opportunities to refine or sort of optimize those workflows, all to ultimately develop a custom software application from. I wasn’t involved, obviously, in the development piece but played a big part in the front end of that process and helping to define those workflows, at least for the recruitment side of the business, and it was just really cool.

0:17:34 – Fred Cadena
No, that’s really exciting. So you mentioned you weren’t involved in the development of the technology. Was that because you weren’t technical or is that because you moved on to do something else?

0:17:46 – Dane Grove
Was not technical, actually did end up to go do something else. I, after about a three and a half year run with Aerotag, i started to feel like I needed to go do other things. Recruitment wise, i wanted to explore corporate side of recruitment. I wanted to dive deep into placing people into full time jobs versus just doing everything. Contract or staff all Felt more meaningful to head in that direction and work with people in that sense versus just you know, hey, are you interested in this job and what’s your rate kind of discussion. So it was also an interesting time period Aerotag to leave.

At that time They took a really strong position on non-compete. They had a big legal team and they were aggressively pursuing people that would leave the organization and in any form or fashion try to continue their recruitment career with a competitor or inside an organization, really whatever it was. And so I took a different approach. I was very transparent. I kind of turned over all of my data. I just made it clear to them that, hey, this isn’t about you know me trying to be sneaky with you. This is not about me trying to leverage the people I know, the people that I’ve built relationships at my Aerotag career somewhere else. It’s really just about me continuing my recruitment career, but in a little different direction, and so that’s how the conversations were unfolding.

0:19:41 – Fred Cadena
No, that’s really great. I love that you know transparent approach and really helping to build that trust in you, even as you were transitioning out of that role. So how did that end up working out?

0:19:59 – Dane Grove
It worked out great. I went to Ericsson. I felt like home. You know I’m Swedish, at least Swedish descent. Ericsson obviously very successful Swedish company, and was actually helping them run their university relations program. It was very interesting. I was especially being young, i enjoyed being on the road. So for months on end we were. We were in two, sometimes three cities every week. I know what it’s like to wake up in a hotel room in the middle of the night and ask yourself where am I? So I worked with Ericsson for a while in that capacity. I then basically continued my contract recruiting career leading me into consulting firms, management consulting firms, technology consulting firms. Ernst Young did some work with Deloitte, actually did work with IBM, and then some kind of mid-tier type firms like MCI and some other organizations that said different specialties. You know, some of them kind of focused in the federal space, others with a much broader focus.

0:21:25 – Fred Cadena
Tell me now what really gets you excited and passionate about getting going to the morning.

0:21:32 – Dane Grove
Well, it was at Quest when I first worked with Salesforce. The leaders of that office were looking for an applicant tracking system And also a way to keep up with some of the deals that they were managing more like on the sales side of things with their customer, utc, and they took an interest in Salesforce and asked me actually to play a point role. They knew my background At that point. I had implemented and been part of implementing quite a few applicant tracking systems And there’s definitely a lot of similarities between applicant tracking and CRM And so, leveraging that background, they asked me to implement Salesforce. I want to say that was 2004.

I worked a lot with Salesforce over the phone, needed a lot of help to make that happen. It was a much different experience than some of the other platforms that I had worked with prior And, looking back, there’s probably a lot that I would do differently today, but that was my first experience with Salesforce and really enjoyed it. Advancing to today, workstream is we’re a startup and our platform is built on Salesforce technology And we think about career advisory. We think about supporting company growth, we think about talent acquisition in its future state, digitally transformed, and so that’s the direction that we’re heading in today And all of that on Salesforce technology and largely, almost entirely, actually focused on the Salesforce ecosystem, and that’s definitely what gets me up in the morning. It’s really exciting.

0:23:41 – Fred Cadena
And it sounds really interesting. I’d love to understand a little bit more about how it is that you’re leveraging your Salesforce technology and your background in being hands on, as well as, obviously, your background in doing consulting and doing recruiting and staffing work and bringing that all together.

0:24:09 – Dane Grove
That’s a good question. I think even today my strength is still more on the workflow side of things, closer to, maybe, a solutions architect role, getting better at the configuration work. I spent a lot of time on the trailhead. I do administer our stack, oftentimes with getting a lot of help from industry colleagues and a couple of partners that I’ve worked with. Obviously lots of interactions with Salesforce and their support teams, but no, no less excitement And in terms of where we head from here, i’m gonna say unveiling that soon and a story for another time. Ha ha, ha, right, i like it.

0:25:06 – Fred Cadena
Leave the people wanting more. I like it.

0:25:10 – Dane Grove
So, coming back to our podcast, spent several weeks planning, thinking about who our audience is, what’s important to them and what we’re gonna bring to the table to help them learn, help them grow, keep them entertained. And with that in mind, Fred, I’d love to get your take on this. What do you see that’s unique about this podcast?

0:25:43 – Fred Cadena
No, I love the question and it has been a journey. I’ve really enjoyed the last couple of weeks talking through how we were gonna create a real value proposition. I’m a big consumer of podcasts and when I open my podcast app there’s no lack of options of things to listen to. So why do we need one more? And what I think, from my perspective, this really boiled down to is combining the two of us and our backgrounds. we’re able to really fill a niche that I don’t see filled by another medium out there. So I’ve got my hands up and I realized this is an audio podcast and not video. but if you just picture a Venn diagram, right, And the first circle is financial services you know, FinTech, with a sharper focus on banking, And then the second circle overlapping, is technology with a focus on the Salesforce and the Salesforce ecosystem, And then the third circle is career and business development, And where those three circles come together is where I sort of see this podcast living.

The other thing that I think really makes this podcast unique is that we’re an unscripted co-hosted show. So I hear a lot of shows out there have a single host and guests. I like the dynamic of having both of us interacting both one-on-one and also when we have our guests on. I kind of harken back to growing up and watching Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, or, for people that are primarily from this millennia, maybe Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest’s example makes more sense. But the point is we each bring our own perspective to the conversation and we’re not here to constantly agree with each other. You know most of the podcasts I listen to where there are two hosts. when they have different perspectives and they’re bringing contrasts and different angles to the conversation, it makes for a much better conversation.

0:28:11 – Dane Grove
Couldn’t agree more. I think that one aspect of what you’re sharing that I find particularly interesting is the process of being able to disagree with each other about different topics and still be friends and maybe even come away from those conversations closer than before. You know, we’re living in an era where it’s oftentimes difficult. I think a lot of us are struggling with not being on the same page all the time, totally Yeah. So that aspect of our podcast and those dynamics, i’m keen about.

0:28:57 – Fred Cadena
Totally, it’s in. You know, like we said before, it’s been a journey We’ve had I think I estimated earlier, before we were on the air, about 25, 30 hours of discussion and planning and debate. We’re clearly both coming to the table with perspectives on how things can be, and I’m not gonna say like every conversation was just us giving each other high fives and like, yeah, let’s go, man, this is perfect. I mean, we both had points of view on what we wanted to accomplish and I think we did a really good job, even to date, in creating the podcast of getting both of our fingerprints on it, and that’s the same type of a dynamic. I would have read to all the conversations.

0:29:51 – Dane Grove
For sure, really enjoyable process too, so excited to see it all unfold.

0:30:00 – Fred Cadena
Absolutely. So you wanna talk, Dane, a little bit about the general format that we’re our listeners are going to expect every time they tune into one of our episodes.

0:30:09 – Dane Grove
Yeah, sure, this is something we actually, but we really dove deep into this and where we landed is each episode starts with a main topic, you know, features one or more industry leaders. After the main topic, we have shorter segments that cover things like current trends, salesforce, isv products, definitely excited to go deep into that, career advancement, what’s happening with careers in general, also being able to dive into, like market creating opportunities, strategies, things that inspire creativity and innovation. I think we’re all looking to to kind of spend more time looking at our work and what we’re trying to do with our customers from a blue ocean perspective versus red ocean perspective, and so hope to, you know, share, share techniques and kind of put concepts and ideas out there that that feed that sort of creative side of what we do. You know, day in and day out, and definitely find time for just storytelling and entertainment, hopefully to crack a smile or to kind of keep people you know, lifestyle stuff, et cetera not always being so serious about things. What’s your take? Are you feeling the same way about that, fred?

0:31:53 – Fred Cadena
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think you’re spot on, Dan. I mean, I’m very excited by the way that we’ve structured the show, with that main segment where we’re gonna bring in other voices, experts, to talk about trends, digital transformation stories, career transformation, etc. And then those additional rotating segments that you mentioned where we’re going to be able to dive a little bit more deeply into some topics. I know we have a few different rotating segments. Which one are you most excited about?

0:32:28 – Dane Grove
You know, there’s a side of me that wants to say all of them and not just to promote, but I think they’re each going to be interesting in their own light. I think today I’m going to go with Quick Takes.

0:32:44 – Fred Cadena
Yeah, i think I’m on the same page with you. We obviously the only two people that came up with the different features, so I think we’re both excited about all of them. But there’s a reason why we decided to include Quick Takes in that first episode, and it’s also the one that I’m probably the most excited about doing, and I think that makes a perfect segue. First, a transition from our introduction Have our first Quick Takes segment.

Quick Takes –

0:33:04 – Fred Cadena
Alright, we’re back and we’re excited for our first ever Quick Take segment. First, this week I’ve been meaning to ask you, Dane Have you been keeping up with the four day work week study? What’s your take?

0:33:29 – Dane Grove
I have Not following it super close at this point. Definitely keeping up with it. You’re talking about the one that was sort of hosted out of UK, correct? Yeah, absolutely.

0:33:45 – Fred Cadena
The latest one was in England but I know they’ve they’ve run a few over the last couple years And it’s just part of this movement of getting people to move from a five day work week to a four day work week.

0:33:57 – Dane Grove
I looked through some of the results of the study Definitely interesting. I see some challenges ahead, especially generationally speaking. Some generations are going to flow with that, so to speak, a little easier than others. But what are some of the challenges that you anticipate with that? Yeah, you know there’s a few things that come to mind.

0:34:22 – Fred Cadena
I mean one is obviously Europe and the US have very different work cultures. I think one of my favorite memes is that thing that goes around every year that has the US out of office compared to a European out of office. The European one says I’ve gone hiking for the next six weeks. Reach out to me when I’m back. And the Americans is like I’m having surgery this afternoon, i’m having surgery this afternoon, i’ll have my mobile on me. You know, ring me if you need me. You know we Americans don’t disconnect from work in the same way that Europeans do. I also think that it will be difficult to get people who have compensation that is directly tied to effort You know variable compensation, whether it’s bonuses or commissions to throttle back if they’re really hard drivers. You know I love the idea, but I think there’s going to be challenges with it as well.

0:35:19 – Dane Grove
I agree. I think there’s going to be challenges. Obviously, the other factor is how do products like chat, gpt, how do they sort of fold in to this improving productivity? Do they put us in a place where we’re more easily attaining a four day work week? It’s going to be an interesting story to continue to watch it unfold, and I think it’s definitely going to have its challenges, but I’m supportive of the idea. I’d love to see something like that happen here.

0:35:53 – Fred Cadena
I think it would offer a lot more flexibility to some people, especially people that are in life transitions, whether they’re caring for children, caring for a parent. So I love the idea. One of the things I know the group behind it says is that, you know, in the industrial revolution we went from seven day work weeks to five day work weeks, and now that we’re in this information revolution, you know, is it time to look at that again, and I’m totally open to it. I think it would be a neat experiment, for sure.

0:36:25 – Dane Grove
Absolutely Switching gears. We heard a lot, you know, banking crisis not really a story today, but we heard a lot about SVB and signature. Not much since Any reflecting back. There’s been more information shared. Obviously, that’s your world, fred Financial services. What’s your take on things?

0:36:54 – Fred Cadena
I think I’ll remind everybody by saying the balance sheets at those two banks were very different than the ballot sheets at most American banks. What kicked off the panic a little over a month ago was that one Wednesday evening Silicon Valley Bank announced that they were planning on raising about $2 billion. And you know they were doing that to help strengthen their financial position. And their position was weak because they had a significant amount of their assets invested in long dated securities, long dated bonds. And these bonds were reset if they were primarily government bonds. But as the Fed continued to raise interest rates, those long dated securities lost value, at least on paper. And so long as the bank could continue to hold those securities to maturity, they’d be fine. But if they were forced to redeem them before maturity to give their customers deposits, they would have to take a loss. And that’s exactly what happened. And then, once the blood was in the water, it was pretty much a straight run on the bank. Silicon Valley Bank wasn’t liquid enough And that’s why regulators stepped in. Signature bank had some very similar issues. Lots of depositors are that balance is above $250,000, as well as some exposure to crypto. But the story was pretty much the same. Oshers customers began to look at them and the same story played out. You know, the last couple of weeks we’ve also had, you know, a little bit of easing in the rates. You know the Fed sets rates, but rates market fluctuate. In the last couple of weeks Those long dated rates have come down a little bit And so it’s given banks a little bit more breathing room.

What I think is interesting coming out of it is, you know, i continue to think about what could have been done in that period between Wednesday and Friday.

You know, to get ahead of the story, to reach out to customers that are critical either from a size or from a network of influence perspective, and I think banks right now definitely need to continue to look at customer experience. You know, making sure they have the right technology and tools to understand their customer base, to understand, you know, who’s potentially at risk At leaving, to understand who their big influences are amongst their customer base. You know one of the things that Silicon Valley Bank is we heard stories about. You know VC firms, private equity firms, reaching out to their network companies. You know founders who, you know, networked various events. You know reaching out to each other on Slack, and you know that just kind of stirred up the immediacy of the crisis And a bank in that type of environment needs to be able to respond with an equal amount of urgency, and That’s one of the things that I hope banks are taking away from the situation.

0:39:51 – Dane Grove
The really good point communications happened much more quickly today than, say, 10 years ago, the last time we were seeing these types of failures in the banking space. I think it’s an excellent point on your part. So is this to say that within a bank’s sort of risk mitigation, there’s much more emphasis on its ability to communicate and sort of manage the tone of things, the vibe of things? I’m not sure if I’m using the right terms, but that’s sort of what you’re getting at.

0:40:34 – Fred Cadena
Yes, It’s absolutely what I’m getting at. It’s one of my favorite stories coming out of last month or so is a couple of different bank CEOs went to the degree of sending an email to all of their depositors with their phone number and said, hey, if you have questions, call me, and I think that’s beautiful from a transparency perspective. It’s frightening from a scalability. You can do that potentially if you want to work very long hours and you’re a bank that has a couple billion dollars in assets. If you’re a $20 billion bank or $100 billion bank or a top five bank, that’s not scalable And most people I think their understanding of bank runs maybe goes back to. It’s a wonderful life In that era.

You had to walk into the bank branch and banks had strategies to mitigate the rate at which deposits could leave. You only have so many tellers. You don’t have to have all the teller windows open. Tellers can process transactions a little bit more slowly. In today’s era, with a couple of taps of your phone, you can take your $5 billion, your $10 million in deposits and instantaneously move them someplace else. And when communication and transactions are moving that quickly, banks are able to get ahead of stories just as quickly and have the right message in front of the right people so that they have an opportunity to save off the crisis. It would be interesting to see.

0:42:13 – Dane Grove
Maybe if polls were conducted, the truth is put into that poll, asking people the question had the bank sort of done an excellent job, or a better job, of getting in front of that? Maybe scalable is a recorded video from the CEO that immediately goes to everyone. Maybe a better sense of customer behavior, all things we do on Salesforce. Maybe that personal email call me if you have any questions goes to sort of those key influencers within your bank. So you’re thinking an approach kind of more along those lines.

0:43:00 – Fred Cadena
Yes, Yeah, absolutely.

I mean people like, appreciate and, frankly, these days expect you know, personalization And I think that making sure you have your data systems in place so that you know who are potentially the most influential and the most vulnerable customers to leaving, and then you can.

You can activate a number of different channels to reach out to them. You know, maybe for some of them it is that CEO or that market president reaching out directly, maybe even with a, with a phone call. Maybe for some other ones it’s putting an action item in the inbox of your relationship bankers. Maybe they each call their top 20. You know, maybe the next tier down are getting a more personalized email. Maybe in some cases you’re calling up, you know somebody who’s a very influential person in your, in your bank but accountants, financial advisors, they’re very influential in their markets. Maybe you know somebody has a push to reach out to them so they could reach out to their customers and help you know with that message of stability. The point is to make sure that you understand in real time what your depositor base in your customer base looks like and what they’re potentially experiencing, so that you do have the data it can respond you know in the fastest, most effectively possible.

0:44:31 – Dane Grove
It makes makes a ton of sense, really does fundamental stuff right.

0:44:39 – Fred Cadena
It’s bread and butter stuff, but I think it’s something a lot of banks don’t necessarily look at. I want to shift the conversation I know we’ve only got a few minutes for quick takes. Back to Salesforce a little bit. Salesforce recently announced that they’re launching a new community alongside the trailblazer community, and this community is being called sales blazer. Ignoring for a moment that sales blazer isn’t actually a word. What do you think about it as a concept? It’s interesting.

0:45:10 – Dane Grove
I a few things that come to mind, you know, when researching Salesblazer. It’s clearly still taking shape. I understand the message is learn relevant skills, connect with fellow sales professionals so the network effect, grow your career, you know, earning resume, worthy credentials, etc. So in that sense, very similar to trailblazer sort of experiences. What happens to trailblazer, though? So sales people get their dedicated space? Do we start to see trailblazer sort of segment divest, if you will, in a similar way? Does that already exist And maybe I’m just not attuned with it? What’s your take on that?

0:46:13 – Fred Cadena
I think that they’re two very different and not necessarily as overlapping communities. I mean, one of the things I know I’ve noticed trending over the last couple years is that Salesforce is putting out more trails that are less functional configuration, developer and more about, you know, business and industry and those types of skills, including selling, And I think this is kind of a more formal way to draw a bright line between you know, we want to help our people that are technical on the platform get better And we also want to help our users that are maybe less technical but are still critical and still need to understand all the new houses of this very sophisticated platform get better at their job. What I kind of hope is on the tail end of it is, you know, some other communities focused on users that are more service oriented, as well as users that are more marketing oriented, And I don’t know if that’s in the works. But I love the idea that Salesforce is thinking about these different types of Salesforce professionals differently as far as what their exact needs are.

0:47:39 – Dane Grove
Interesting points. I recently had some experiences with call it, soft skills trainings, trainings, presentation skills related marketing strategy within within trailblazer. I was really impressed with the content. It was super helpful. I definitely came away from those you know those learnings in a better place, especially the presentation badge that I’d earned there. It was really fantastic content. So interested to see how that continues to take shape. Another thing that I’m noticing is It’s Salesforce Really staying front and center around sales people. That makes sense. That word is in their company name. It’s very center to their organization, so that aspect of it I also love. Makes makes all the sense in the world.

0:48:49 – Fred Cadena
It’s been. They’ve got some. They’ve got some pretty sick hoodies and I got to get my hands on one of those.

0:48:54 – Dane Grove
Exactly exactly The shifting a little bit. So Salesforce world tour is coming up, i guess about three weeks or so, and again at the Javits Center, followed by a concert featuring the roots at Madison Square Garden. What are you looking forward to at Salesforce world tour in New York?

0:49:22 – Fred Cadena
I’m really excited I’m going. I actually missed both of them last year. I was on vacation for one and I had another conflict for the other and It gelped a little bit like there was a hole missing in my Salesforce calendar. So I’m excited to go back This year in, pretty excited, primarily because they’ve like blown it up to be Three times the conference they took last year. As I recall, they had Slack frontiers the day before and then world tour was the next day.

This year They’re taking all on one day three floors of the Javits. One floor is going to be You know regular kind of Salesforce core marketing cloud, you know the customer 360 experience that most people are used to at the world tour. Then another level is going to be dedicated to slack is You know kind of the the reimagination of slack frontier conference. And then a third level is going to be mule, soft focused, and so I’m excited for all that additional content and so it should be a really exciting day.

I’m also excited, kind of selfishly, that They’ve decided this year to put a little bit of a break in time between When the content ends at world tour and when the concert happens, so the contents ending like at five o’clock and The concert, i don’t think, kicks off until seven or seven thirty and so there’s a couple hours in there. It’s together with clients and other people that I know. You know, kind of after the event, and now there’s a couple hour block where I’ll get to meet with people, kind of reflect on the day and then, you know, go into concert mode, and I’m a big fan of the roots and so that should be a good show. Also Hopefully I’m I’m around to go to work the next day after half to 12 hours of talking in concerts for sure Are you.

0:51:22 – Dane Grove
Are you heading up Interesting online? I’m Salesforce plus. We’ve got Sometimes difficult for me to travel. My my partner, my wife Christina, works in health care. She’s pretty far up the food chain. It does make it difficult for us to get away and we had already postponed Some travel plans just where she and I need a break. Yeah, i’m prioritizing. I guess I’m being a little European right now. Yeah, i’m, i’m prioritizing that, but I do plan on on participating, enjoying some of it through your Salesforce plus.

0:52:09 – Fred Cadena
I like it. Well, that’s awesome. Well, thanks, Dane. I think this was an awesome first edition of quick takes and we’ll talk again soon.

0:52:17 – Dane Grove
For sure, have a great day. Fred, you too.

Episode Outro –

0:52:24 – Fred Cadena
Well, everyone, we hope you enjoyed the first episode of banking on disruption. We have a lot of exciting stuff planned for our upcoming episodes, but most importantly, we want to hear from you, Dane, and I would love to hear your thoughts, feedback and ideas for new episodes. Why not drop us a line? New episodes drop every other Thursday, but in the meantime, you can visit our website at banking on disruption comm for show notes Including a full transcript of today’s show. Also, if you like what you heard today, please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review. And Finally, we’d love if you followed us on LinkedIn and Instagram at banking on disruption. Until next time, this is Fred Cadena, wishing you success in your digital pursuits.