To wrap up 2020, we teamed up with the SalesforceBen team to bring some holiday cheer to our friends in the Salesforce community. We gave away some awesome prizes and live streamed some really interesting conversations.
One of those conversations was a panel discussion with Ben McCarthy (Founder, SalesforceBen.com), Lucy Mazalon (Pardot & Salesforce Consultant, Editor at SalesforceBen.com & The DRIP), Matt Brown (Senior Product Manager, Skuid), and Stephanie Herrera (Computer Futures Global VP, Salesforce Saturday Founder, PepUp Tech Co-Founder, Merivis Board of Directors) to take a look forward to 2021. Each panelist shared their thoughts on what 2021 has in store for Salesforce trends in application development and design. Watch the conversation here or read the highlights below.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
2020 was a ‘year to remember’ in more ways than one, but particularly in the business world. What do you think will change going forward in 2021?
Matt Brown
So there was a post that was going around on LinkedIn back in May when things were starting to get really crazy, and I thought it was really insightful. And it was talking about how basically communication and leadership are going to change in a remote-first world… You're being very intentional about how you communicate with people, and what people look for in leadership, and in just trajectory initiative and vision, looks a lot different.
And I think that's a change for the better. And I don't think that just means we become computers and creatures of information. I do think small talk is still going to be there, you're still going to ask about the game, the kids, but you're going to have genuine conversations and then you're going to genuinely get down to business.
Steph Herrera
People are questioning how they spend their days, who they spend their time with, whether it be work or in their personal lives. I think going forward, we're going to be more intentional with the kind of work we do, and that because of what's going on with the world... People want to make sure that the work that they're doing, their professional work, is meaningful, that it's making the world better... For me, that's been a big plus to see that kind of silver lining in this storm, to see that businesses and individuals wanting to do what they can in every part of their life to make the world a better place.
I think going forward, we're going to be more intentional with the kind of work we do, and that because of what's going on with the world... People want to make sure that the work that they're doing, their professional work, is meaningful, that it's making the world better.
Lucy Mazalon
I think also this year there's been a lot of outdated ideas that have been swept out. So things like the old fashioned notion of bums in seats, you have to be seen and physically at work in order to appear valued or to appear you're being productive, whereas we know that's just not the case. And I think that's really validated across a lot of industries now, whereas before it would just be almost like a perk of working in tech or other forward-thinking industries.
Ben McCarthy
I think I had a conversation with you, Lucy earlier in the year where I thought actually sales jobs probably would be in the office regardless, but I had a conversation with a sales manager the other day who said that his salespeople are a lot more efficient at home, because there's no more distractions. So yeah, I think that's definitely an interesting one. We'll see if it carries on.
We definitely don't need to highlight any more of the negatives of this year, what positives you have seen come out of 2020?
Steph Herrera
For me, the positive from 2020 is connection.
When [quarantine] hit, I hit a brick wall and I hit it hard. And it made me realize that I was going so fast I lost connection with people that were important in my life, my family, my friends. I was forced to connect, and I felt like we realized that we don't need material things — clothes don't matter. We spent most of our time in PJs and our homes, and that connection with the people that mattered the most, like who you work with, who you're living and loving and laughing with... I realized how important those connections were when it comes down to basic human life.
Lucy Mazalon
I think the positive [thing] that I've seen this year is that people have made time to upscale. When a lot of business disruption was happening at the start of the year, businesses didn't know which way they wanted to move forward... It freed up people actually to make time to upscale. The projects were put on hold and things like that, perhaps moving in a different direction, exploring something new.
Matt Brown
If you're in a company now that is remote-first in a lot of places, you're seeing yourself as a digital community. And so the question is, how can you make that meaningful for everyone that's there? One of the knock-on effects of that is that it leveled the playing field for a lot of our remote employees. There are people in our company who I just love and I love seeing them when they come into town, and all of a sudden in 2020, whether they're in Houston or the Bay area, I've gotten a chance to see them a lot more and it's led to a lot more collaboration.
If you're in a company now that is remote-first in a lot of places, you're seeing yourself as a digital community. And so the question is, how can you make that meaningful for everyone that's there?
It's led to those people feeling like they have more of a seat at the table, where a lot of the time structures are in place that you're kind of blind to, and you don't realize that there might be people that are being left out... It's made things a lot more inclusive and it's made the digital community of an organization a lot more meaningful for the people involved.
It's been a pretty exciting year for Salesforce. They have made a lot of acquisitions, and digital transformation is being accelerated at a crazy rate. With everything going on at the moment, the acquisitions that Salesforce made in 2020, what are your predictions for Salesforce trends for 2021?
Lucy Mazalon
I see commerce being a big play… I mean, who could have predicted that huge surge where everyone is shopping online now? Outside of that, I think also there'll be big play for collaboration. We saw Salesforce Anywhere come out this year, obviously the Slack acquisition... Oh, Salesforce Meetings as well. Quip being combined with Salesforce Anywhere. I think there's all these moving parts and it's just going to be interesting to see how those combine into a combined product offering. Those will be big themes for 2021: commerce and collaboration.
Ben McCarthy
I think Salesforce is set[ting] a big precedent with Slack now, so they have to do something pretty amazing with it, otherwise we're going to be very disappointed.
Matt Brown
I think one thing that we saw a lot in 2020 was public sector growth. We've [at Skuid] worked with a lot of public sector customers... Also Salesforce acquiring Acumen shows some movement towards that. When you look at things like in the US [such as] PPP loan programs to deal with COVID-19 — there's just a need for digital transformation in the public sector more than ever. So it Seems like Salesforce is moving in that direction [which] also goes in parallel with I think a lot of the growth that they've put into Experience Cloud with communities.
So many HR communities spun up in 2020 as companies and organizations needed to interact and get key information out to their employees, and so I think you're going to see a lot more growth, at least in the Salesforce world, around Experience Cloud communities... Salesforce Knowledge, hybrid CMS, where it's all about getting critical information to your employees, to your partners, in a way that feels uniquely you, that's branded, that's part of your company experience, part of your community experience. Mobile Publisher's a really fascinating product that is a big part of that…
Steph Herrera
I think what we're going to need next year is the demand for talent is going to be even greater. We already had such a demand for talent before COVID. There was this great meme that went around, who is in charge of your digital transformation, your CTO, or COVID? And for most companies it was COVID, and they were forced to make a digital transformation. And now they need people who can do it, and Salesforce, especially with the Slack acquisition, people who didn't really know what Salesforce was before, all knew who knew what Slack was. And I kind of equate it to Slack as a gateway drug to Salesforce. And now we're going to have even more people on the Salesforce platform, and there's just not enough people to do the roles. And [in the] Salesforce ecosystem, everybody is going to have to step up to skill up all the talent that we're bringing in.
There was this great meme that went around, who is in charge of your digital transformation, your CTO, or COVID? And for most companies it was COVID, and they were forced to make a digital transformation.
Basically, I equate Salesforce to a Ferrari. You've got this powerful machine and you've got kids operating it, because there's just not enough people who actually know how to drive the car. So we need to skill people up and the ecosystem needs to make space for them and get them into the roles.
Ben McCarthy
Yeah, definitely. I'm seeing an increasing number of people now coming from other industries, skilled individuals who have a lot of experience in transformation products, project management, coming over to Salesforce, which is great, enabled by Trailhead and a lot of good organizations that you mentioned as well.
So what would you say to people that really want to stand out from the crowd, and these roles that the companies that are going to need to hire for these roles, going for the digital transformation, what makes an individual stand out amongst the crowd in Salesforce?
Steph Herrera
They need to level up. You can't just be a doer anymore. Admins need to be learning how to be developers, how to become solution architects, technical architects. [More] companies are purchasing Salesforce, and it's driving the whole business. We need people who are actually owning the instance. They have to become managers, senior managers, directors. You know how many times I get reached out to [by people who] need a director? And there's not people who can do it. There aren't people who are skilling themselves up to be in those roles.
Admins need to be learning how to be developers, how to become solution architects, technical architects.
You've got to take the initiative. We've also got to have the admins hiring the entry-level people, bringing them in, creating space. If you have been in the Salesforce ecosystem for more than two years, and you don't have an entry-level admin or an entry-level developer on your team that you're not skilling up, shame on you because you're not giving back to the ecosystem. You have a responsibility to do that. And also, at that point you're more senior, you're more experienced. The business has hired you to be proactive, to be problem-solving.
We've got community... Salesforce Saturdays are everywhere, that's what we're for. We're here to skill you up, not only on Trailhead, not only doing the technical, but on how to manage your career, how to be a manager, how to lead, how to [make] those tough decisions. I've had to go to the CEO and push for budget to grow my team. We've done it, we can show you how to do it, but you have to get engaged.
Matt, from someone that's involved in the Salesforce ecosystem in the UI/UX space heavily because of your role with Skuid, what kind of trends are you currently seeing at the moment in 2020 and going forward in the UX/UI space on Salesforce?
Matt Brown
What I think you see is an appetite for better user experiences leaking into those digital transformation initiatives. And so when you look outside of the enterprise space into the low code, no code world, look at the big names. It's Webflow, it's Bubble, it's Figma helping people create these beautiful designs and create these front end experiences. That's what the workforce is used to.
When you hire someone who comes in to use the sales app that you've built, they've spent years training on Facebook, on Spotify, on what they think that an app should feel like, and they want their internal apps to be the same. And if you're building a community or a portal, you can bet that that's the level that you're being held to, the standard that you're being held to.
Also content driven and storytelling driven experiences. You look at what Salesforce has been doing with in-app guidance and making it so easy for new users to get up to speed. That's the point. You don't want to have to schedule day long training sessions to help your users use the app that you're giving them, especially if you're giving them a partner community or something like that.
So building content that's flavorful, that has compelling stories, building those into those experiences. Even internal apps are something that I think is going to be huge for user experience in the coming year. So there's a lot more with personalization, personal connections. Connection keeps coming up, I think that's where Slack comes into play, but those are some of the things that I think that are really important for user experience, which is a lot more than just looking good. That's the kind of stuff that we're thinking about in 2021.
When you hire someone who comes in to use the sales app that you've built, they've spent years training on Facebook, on Spotify, on what they think that an app should feel like, and they want their internal apps to be the same. And if you're building a community or a portal, you can bet that that's the level that you're being held to, the standard that you're being held to.
And Lucy, so your expertise is obviously in marketing automation. So what is the next big thing in marketing automation?
Lucy Mazalon
So I'll start with Marketing Cloud. As Steph was saying, there's a shortage of skills. Massive shortage, but also of the right skills. And especially what I predict, and what I see already, is a big shortage in Marketing Cloud expertise. [Specifically] people who are experienced in a consulting role that know how to implement Marketing Cloud, the best practices, and how to extend it.
That ties into commerce — people needing to reach consumers at scale in a more intelligent way, digitally as well. So that's, I guess, prediction number one.
Prediction number two is around interactive email. I see this being a big play coming forward next year with Pardot, as well as Marketing Cloud, they've already got interactive email. And I think this is just going to be one of the main channels that people are going to continue communicating with customers.
And then third, in general, I think conversational marketing has not even scratched the surface. Things like chat bots for degeneration. I think that's just going to be something that's going to engage people on websites a lot more. From what I've seen it's not being leveraged enough.
To finish out we have just a few questions that I've seen come through while you guys have been speaking. So number one is for Lucy. What is the best way to become a Salesforce Champion like yourself?
Lucy Mazalon
As Salesforce Champions, we have to say each quarter what we've done to contribute to the community, which there's a number of ways that we do that. So that could be running a user group, it could be contributing to a blog, doing social media outreach, inspiring people. So if you're already doing some of those things that we have to do to keep our Champion status, then I guess you're on your way to doing that. The new round of Champion applications has just been announced that you can just Google it and apply. Also, there are new, different categories of champions now, different from last year. So may find one of those product areas really ticks the boxes for you. (Check out the SFBen blog post on this here)
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