Episode 44: Tiffany Dunn – The Trailblazer
Tiffany Dunn used sales as a tool to carve out her own unique career path, and that’s only scratching the surface of the matter.
A self-admitted introvert, Tiffany wasn’t shy about leaving her mark on memoryBlue. She succeeded in multiple roles at the firm before ultimately creating her own dream job right within our walls as the first Salesforce administrator in company history.
Today Tiffany is a successful 3x Salesforce certified professional and Senior Consultant for Publicis Sapient. And you better believe she didn’t get there by accident or through luck.
In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, you’ll hear how Tiffany convinced memoryBlue ownership to invest in her and her vision for a more robust sales operations unit at the firm, how she relies on her own rabid curiosity to build expertise, and why breaking out of her comfort zone was crucial to future success.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: Tiffany Dunn
What She Does: Tiffany is a Senior Salesforce Consultant within the Salesforce Center of Excellence for Publicis Sapient, a global consulting firm focused on digital business transformation. She’s also a 3X Salesforce Certified Professional.
Company: Publicis Sapient
Noteworthy: Tiffany was a major part of the memoryBlue team and fabric of the firm, where she got her first Salesforce certification. She’s also the main reason why memoryBlue decided to invest in Salesforce, which eventually turned out to be one of the best decisions for the operational functionality of the company.
Exit Year from memoryBlue: 2018
Months at memoryBlue: 4 Years
Alumni Path: Internal Elevation
Where to find Tiffany: Linkedin
Key Insights
⚡ If you can’t find a dream job, try creating your own. Tiffany is a real-life example of how determination and hard work can get you to your dream job. Even if you find yourself in a job that doesn’t resonate fully with you, there could be plenty of different options for you out there. Figure out what other avenues you could take in your company or industry. Focus on what you like to do and do more of it. “My real goal was to get to do Salesforce. I told you I wanted to be your Salesforce administrator, and I wanted to make it functional for you.”
⚡ Develop your skill set to advance in your career. Every job is important for your career advancement. Even when you feel like you’re falling back, in reality, you could be preparing yourself for another career opportunity. Tiffany shares how her time as an internal recruiter helped her become a Salesforce consultant. “I had some Salesforce technical experience, but I think the skill set of really being able to sell yourself, and again, those skills from recruiting and being able to sell people, sell skills and sell yourself is really how I got into the role that I’m in now.”
⚡ Hard work, curiosity, and perseverance eventually pay off. If you’re not happy within your current job role, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should quit. Explore your possibilities, try to learn from your managers and senior salespeople as much as possible so that you can become a better salesperson yourself. To work in Salesforce, you can start by becoming a power user. Opt for pro bono work and educate yourself. “Become the user who helps all of the people around you. Learn how to make your own reports. Make your own dashboards, impress your manager with the data and the information that you can glean from the activities that you’re doing every day. Take some Trailheads.”
Episode Highlights
Being surrounded by supportive and encouraging colleagues is essential for career advancement
“That’s just the culture you guys create. There’s such energy surrounding the blitz and the excitement, and it’s kind of funny when someone hangs up on you and you get like this camaraderie surrounding it of everyone’s going through the same things you’re going through. I also remember a training early in my memoryBlue days, I think it was you, Marc, who said like these people are just like you, like that CEO woke up this morning in the same way that you did. And just pick up the phone and call them. It was just like something to constantly remind myself, that it was like everybody you’re talking to is just another person. They’re not that much more important than you. You’ve got something great to sell them. Just pick up the phone.”
Where you start your career is not necessarily where you will be forever, especially if you are determined and proactive
“So after a couple of months on the external placement team, I realized number one that it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. As I said, I’m really not that extroverted person naturally. So I started kind of trying to figure out what other avenues might be out there for me in tech sales. I knew I didn’t really want to go back and be an SDR. I thought about what, if I became a candidate and I was trying to get placed somewhere else, where would we be placing me? I just didn’t really see anything at the time that fit. But what I had been doing was lecturing my entire team on how we should use Salesforce. And I had been doing that for a few months with the search and sales team.”
Trailhead is a great resource for Salesforce users who want to hone their skills
“I Googled everything I learned. I wish there was Trailhead at the time. Trailhead is a wonderful feature from Salesforce that everybody should go on. If you’re a Salesforce user, go learn something on Trailhead. It didn’t exist when I was trying to learn so I do own two books.”
Organizational change management is key to improving salespeople performance
“I think having a person really dedicated to change within your company, and focused on how that change is going to impact you in a good way, and making sure that users are trained appropriately and that they can follow their entire job process within your product. And it’s easy. Having a focus on that I think is really the way to go. Even now, we have specialists within Publicis Sapient who focus on organizational change management.”
Transcript:
Tiffany Dunn: [00:00:00] It is humbling to relearn how to ask for help. Um, but my company is fantastic. We’re very culturally focused, much like memoryBlue is, and that whole collaborative environment is definitely there. I mean, I can reach out to anybody at any time with a problem and not feel like I am, not doing my job or I’m not learning. I’m just learning from my colleagues and my peers and the people around me who have done some of these hands-on projects before , um, and have implemented some pretty cool solutions. All right, everybody. We’re back today. We’ve got Tiffany Dunn on the podcast Tiffany not only is a three X Salesforce certified professional, she got a first certification when she worked here at memoryBlue. She moved out to Denver with her husband from Virginia, they drove the truck themselves.
[00:00:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:00:51] She’s been to the memoryBlue office in Denver, despite the fact that she left working for us nearly three years ago. And during her tenure at memoryBlue, did multiple roles and did a really good job of making sure I use Salesforce the right way, which is a tough thing to do. Tiffany say hello, tell everyone where you work, what you’re doing now.
[00:01:31]Tiffany Dunn: [00:01:31] Hi. so now I am a Senior Salesforce consultant within the Salesforce Center of Excellence for Publicis Sapient. so we’re a global consulting firm focused on digital business transformation.
[00:01:43]Chris Corcoran: [00:01:43] Tiffany, great seeing you again, I got to start off asking this question because you are the only person I think that we’ve worked with that has successfully rebranded through marriage. We never, we never refer to you as your maiden name. It’s always the marriage name. How’d you do it?
[00:01:58] Tiffany Dunn: [00:01:58] I have no idea because I think before I left the office, you were still calling me T Kulp
[00:02:14]Chris Corcoran: [00:02:14] I guess we all, we all got accustomed to the new last name. So great seeing you again, I’m looking forward to catching up with you.
[00:02:19] Tiffany Dunn: [00:02:19] Great to see you guys too.
[00:02:21] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:21] All right. All right, well, let’s break it down a little bit. So this is going to be a listened to podcasts because of what you’re doing now and your greater transition, I think, but let’s just let everyone get to know you a little bit. Knowing our audience of people who are thinking about coming to work here, people who work for us now and other alums.
[00:02:40] Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, what you like as a kid high school college.
[00:02:45] Tiffany Dunn: [00:02:45] Sure. So I grew up in Warrenton, Virginia. I think Warrington was a little far from restaurants. You don’t have too many people from Warrington. I think Jesse Matthews was one of the others. I grew up in Warrington. I went to Fauquier high school. I was a cheerleader for many years competitive cheerleader.
[00:03:25]I started working pretty early in high school. I worked a Glory Days Grill for five years mostly through high school and college and went to Virginia Tech to start off college. Spent some time at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, and then finished up my college degree at George Mason.
[00:03:47] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:47] The Mace.
[00:03:49] Tiffany Dunn: [00:03:49] Mason. Yeah.
[00:03:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:50] All right. Okay. So what’d you end up majoring in when you got out of Mason?
[00:04:01]Tiffany Dunn: [00:04:01] Business Management.
[00:04:03] Marc Gonyea: [00:04:03] Business management.
[00:04:04] Tiffany Dunn: [00:04:04] I really had no idea what I wanted to do.
[00:04:07] Marc Gonyea: [00:04:07] Okay. And so, so keep going, what did you end up doing?
[00:04:10] Tiffany Dunn: [00:04:10] So out of college, I went to Enterprise Rental Car, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that I was good at being in front of people. They had this great program that they told me I could get a job anywhere once I had finished their training program.
[00:04:48]So I went and did that. I washed cars for a year. Uh, but I met my husband, which is great. and went on to work for K-12, it’s an online education company. I think they’ve gotten pretty popular this year with online school and COVID, so I was there for a little while and realized that I was pretty good at sales.
[00:05:05] And really I wanted to get into more of a sales role and less of a selling an idea kind of role. And one of the girls I was working with at the time had interviewed at memoryBlue and gave me Tiana’s card.
[00:05:26] Marc Gonyea: [00:05:26] Wow. So there’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s back, back it up a little bit. First of all, let’s give a shout out to your husband because I felt like he worked here. Right? So what’s his name? Let’s give a shout out to your husband because I felt like he worked here.
[00:05:49]Tiffany Dunn: [00:05:49] My husband’s name is Phil Dunn. Yeah, he’s also in sales.
[00:05:51]Marc Gonyea: [00:05:51] I mean, ’cause he was with you through the whole memoryBlue journey and beyond, I literally felt like Phil worked at memoryBlue.
[00:05:57] Tiffany Dunn: [00:05:57] Yes. Every happy hour. Every pirate ship event. Yes.
[00:06:01]Marc Gonyea: [00:06:01] Right. And I don’t even know him that well, but I was like, how’s Phil? So, so, and Chris and I respect people who come come out of the car rental business. I know you said you washed cars for a year, but that’s a tough job. Like what did you learn in that role?
[00:06:18]Tiffany Dunn: [00:06:18] It really is a tough job. Um, I mean, basically from day one, you get asked to do everything. Underwriting contracts, day one, you’re given full authority to give as big of a discount as you want to give to make a customer happy. And that’s a pretty big responsibility when you’re in your first job a couple of weeks out of college.
[00:06:39]Pretty stressful. I learned a lot of perseverance working there, I think is really what it was. I learned I could do anything for a year. But it’s a tough job. You’re selling products that people tend to not really want to use, um, you know, the rental insurance and like the extra insurance, the extra coverages too.
[00:06:59]So it was a tough job. You had to stay on the top half of the matrix, which was like the sales board for the area in order to keep your job. And it was, I think, At the time we had about 500 people on our matrix. So you had to stay in the top half. If you were in the top, like 10%, that’s really where you were trying to stay.
[00:07:18]Um, so I did make the top 10% from there for a little while and went to work at the airport which they call their like best person program. and the airport I think is where you really get a lot of that like high volume sales experience.
[00:07:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:30] Good. Yeah. And you work odd hours, right? 5:00 AM. So you learn to work.
[00:07:35] Tiffany Dunn: [00:07:35] Yes. So you also work a mandatory 55 hour work weeks, and there’s no such thing as a 40 hour work week. Your schedule is 55 hours and you won’t get your full salary if you don’t work those.
[00:07:46]Marc Gonyea: [00:07:46] There you go. Yeah. So I wanted to give a little respect to that because I know you take stuff serious that you do highlight the fact that you were a baller there. ‘Cause I mean, I’m pretty sure I remember that from our interview. So then you went to K-12 was that a more of a taste of sales or less of a taste of sales?
[00:08:01]Tiffany Dunn: [00:08:01] I think it was more of a formal introduction to what technology sales could be like. I mean, essentially you’re trying to sell the online schooling platform technology to customers, to end users, not even to other businesses, but to customers who don’t know technology very well. And that’s a difficult thing to do, but it gave me more of that formalized process of using Salesforce.
[00:08:26] It was my first introduction to Salesforce. I think it was 2012 pre Salesforce classic. but I mean, it was a great introduction to the more formal process of it and working on the phone , um, at Enterprise, I was face-to-face all day long at K-12. I was working in a call center on a phone, my entire shift.
[00:08:44]Marc Gonyea: [00:08:44] So now you got to Tiana and I think you were just satisfied as well that it wasn’t a bad place to work, but maybe there are supposed to be some promotions or something that happened?
[00:08:51] Tiffany Dunn: [00:08:51] Yeah, there wasn’t much career longevity. My husband had gotten into tech sales. Phil got into tech sales and I was like, wow. You’re like excelling and accelerating in your career so much faster than me. I’m here selling, I’m doing the same activities that you’re doing and my career is not moving.
[00:09:09]So that was really the driving factor behind me looking for, for tech sales and stumbling across memoryBlue.
[00:09:15]Marc Gonyea: [00:09:15] Got it. All right. So then Tiana, what happened?
[00:09:17]Tiffany Dunn: [00:09:17] So I got handed Tiana’s card. Um, I applied online because I was terrified of calling her. The thought of cold calling someone like completely terrified me, which is funny looking back on it cause that’s all I did, but it was a brand new interview experience for me. I came in and interviewed, I was supposed to interview with Mishler.
[00:09:37]He didn’t even show up. I interviewed Ben Decowski. He was a brand new DM. It was an interesting interview. I remember thinking when I walked in, there were a lot of guys that worked there. I was trying to find the female sales reps. Um, but I didn’t see much in the office. Um, I remember debriefing with Tiana afterwards, and that was a new concept for me in terms of that really like strategic recruiting process and following up with candidates. So when I came back and interviewed with Marc
[00:10:07]Chris Corcoran: [00:10:07] Wow.
[00:10:07]Marc Gonyea: [00:10:07] It looks like April of 2014. Probably we were in love with your Enterprise experience and the fact that you put two solid years in the K-12 and we’re always looking to get women into the profession for all sorts of reasons.
[00:10:18] Tiffany Dunn: [00:10:18] I remember doing my call script in Tommy’s office, and then I remember getting coached on it a little bit afterwards. And I was like, I really have no idea how well I did in this interview. Um, but I don’t remember it being a bad experience. I remember you throwing around a few F bombs during my interview.
[00:10:33] You kept saying, sorry.
[00:10:34]Marc Gonyea: [00:10:34] There you go, that’s, some things haven’t changed. All right. So you started as an SDR, back then we call them Account Executives. What was that like?
[00:10:40]Tiffany Dunn: [00:10:40] Um, so when I started, pretty sure the night before my first day I told myself I can do anything for 15 months because this job really scared me.
[00:10:48]Chris Corcoran: [00:10:48] Good for you.
[00:10:50] Tiffany Dunn: [00:10:50] Yeah, it scared me a lot. So I mean, my first day was, we were in the old courthouse office. I sat next to Jim Gandolfo though. He was my first day buddy.
[00:11:00]We sat in the back of the office by ourselves. And I just remember everybody going to lunch on their first day and being like, oh, you can get up and go to lunch whenever you want. It was a whole new concept for me having come from a call center. Um, just new, whole new, like, office life process.
[00:11:15]Um, but my mentor was Ryan Cooper.
[00:11:19] Chris Corcoran: [00:11:19] Wow.
[00:11:20] Tiffany Dunn: [00:11:20] Still talk to Cooper on occasion. But yeah, he was my mentor and I was on his client. So I was on Smartlogic and Summit7 Systems. Summit 7 Systems left shortly after that. So I got put on Box.com, which I remember at the time was a big deal. I think it was one of the biggest deals you guys had closed at that time.
[00:11:38]Marc Gonyea: [00:11:38] At the time, that was the biggest deal in the history of the business. which was a big deal, right?
[00:11:43] Tiffany Dunn: [00:11:43] Now I use Box every day.
[00:11:45]Marc Gonyea: [00:11:45] Yeah, now you use it every day at that point, we had been in business for like 12 years and , uh, Tommy brought that deal in and that was super big. So we wanted to make sure we put all our ballers on that thing.
[00:11:55]Tiffany Dunn: [00:11:55] Yeah. I remember getting coached by Tommy and he was like, you’re ready to start on Box, right? Coach me every day. Like, are you ready? Yes, I’m ready. Gimme some people to call. Those were the only three clients they worked on. Um, I had a handful of PPMs. I didn’t really chase down PPMs too much.
[00:12:11]Um, there was, I think probably about four months into my SDR tenure. Justin Brown came up and did a stump announcement, did a stump announcement standing on a desk. I miss those, said that he was hiring. I had no idea what he did. I’ve never had any clue either. But he was hiring for the Search team.
[00:12:30]So I was like, oh, well, I could go be a Recruiter. That sounds fun. You recruit some people to work at memoryBlue. I love the story of how memoryBlue got started. So I applied for Justin’s role and started on the Search team after, I think, about six months.
[00:12:45] Chris Corcoran: [00:12:45] Wow. So from SDR to Search in six months,
[00:12:47]So what was the difference between the two roles?
[00:12:49]Tiffany Dunn: [00:12:49] I think the biggest difference between the two roles, at least at first, was how you were getting your, your prospecting list. Um, when I first started on the Search team, I was doing all internal search. So just recruiting candidates for memoryBlue. So learning how to search the job boards and put together a list of candidates.
[00:13:06]Um, it was just a little bit of a different list. Building style from math copy and paste style previously, it was a little bit more strategic. Um, and then we can talk about me moving into external Search. I think that’s really the biggest difference.
[00:13:19]Marc Gonyea: [00:13:19] I got one thing, got one thing real quick, we’ll get into and I’ll shut up. And this is for everybody. You said like the night before, like you were stealing yourself, I can do it for 15 months. And you were hesitant to call it Tiana. Who wanted you to come work for the company? How did you transition into this really good person at their job from an outbound standpoint? Like what happened? How did that transformation take place?
[00:13:39]Tiffany Dunn: [00:13:39] I think that’s just the culture you guys create. There’s such an energy surrounding the blitz and the excitement, and it’s kind of funny when someone hangs up on you and you get like this camaraderie surrounding it of everyone’s going through the same things you’re going through. Um, I think I also remember a training early in my memoryBlue days.
[00:13:59] I think it was you Marc, who said these people are just like you, like that CEO woke up this morning in the same way that you did. And just pick up the phone and call them.
[00:14:08]Yeah, I don’t it was just like a something to constantly remind myself of that it was like everybody you’re talking to is just another person.
[00:14:16] They’re not that much more important than you. You’ve got something great to sell them. Just pick up the phone.
[00:14:21]Marc Gonyea: [00:14:21] Got it. All right. I love it. Sorry. I think we’re going back to, I’ll give the ball back to Corcoran.
[00:14:25] Chris Corcoran: [00:14:25] She went to Justin’s team and she was doing internal and, and it was a little bit different in that you had to be more strategic in your list building as opposed to just cut and paste. Although we want our SDRs to be more strategic and know what is going on there was building.
[00:14:36] Tiffany Dunn: [00:14:36] This was a long time ago.
[00:14:38] Chris Corcoran: [00:14:38] Yeah, so then you got the hang of doing the internal thing.
[00:14:40] And then how did you go from doing internal to helping support our Search clients?
[00:14:45]Tiffany Dunn: [00:14:45] I think the kickoff to my external search experience was you sent us to, According to Danny in Connecticut. Um, so I think I had been doing internal search for a couple of months. I placed Katie Braesicke down in Austin.
[00:14:59] Chris Corcoran: [00:14:59] That’s a great placement right there.
[00:15:02] Tiffany Dunn: [00:15:02] Yeah. So I placed her and then I think, I don’t really know how their transition to external came, but we went to, According to Danny that kick off retreat with Ryan Hasbini and Stacey (Suggs).
[00:15:14] Chris Corcoran: [00:15:14] Oh, yeah.
[00:15:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:15] Our Leadership Coach.
[00:15:16]Tiffany Dunn: [00:15:16] Yep. So the three of us road tripped up to Connecticut. We went to the search consultant retreat and it was great. Um, I feel like that really like, kind of motivated us to like really come back and try to rebuild memoryBlue Direct placement at the time. came back and worked with Julianne. Um, I think um, I’m keeping you busy with that bell.
[00:15:33]Chris Corcoran: [00:15:33] Yep.
[00:15:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:34] You were with us for four years.
[00:15:36]Tiffany Dunn: [00:15:36] True. At first, I was only doing direct placements for deals that Justin or Julianne had closed. Um, so just calling people and recruiting for positions that had been found for me. Um, so I guess just half of the recruiting desk. After a couple of months, we started working on finding our own deals.
[00:15:54] I don’t think I ever found any of my own deals, but I did make the first placement in California. Um, I placed somebody at Conversica in California.
[00:16:01]Chris Corcoran: [00:16:01] That gets a bell ring right there.
[00:16:04]Marc Gonyea: [00:16:04] Tiffany, you have a robust body of work at memoryBlue.
[00:16:09] Tiffany Dunn: [00:16:09] It’s also kind of a very like confident feeling to know that I think recruiting is a very good skill to know.
[00:16:15]Chris Corcoran: [00:16:15] Oh, I’m sure. Talk about three roles, the SDR, the internal recruiting, and then the external recruiting – kind of the differences between the three, what you liked, what was the most challenging? Just share with the listeners a little bit about, because a lot of them are considering different career paths, and I think that would be helpful for them to hear your experience and what you liked and what you didn’t like in just the comparison of those three roles.
[00:16:36]Tiffany Dunn: [00:16:36] Sure. I enjoyed the transactional kind of nature of being an SDR. I feel like a lot of your interactions with your client or your prospect are very short, you know, you’re kind of interacting and handing off the deal. Maybe you follow it a little bit down the road, but you really get a very brief interaction.
[00:16:51] You don’t get to know your client that well, which is great. Um, I think it has its time and place. I really enjoyed being an internal recruiter for memoryBlue. I enjoyed really getting to know everybody who worked there. I think that’s why I know and remember so many alumni because I talked to them for hours on end. Um, I think I did some of my best work in the old courthouse hallway just telling, telling the memoryBlue story to dozens of candidates a day. Um, but I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed that relationship building of getting to know people who are coming to be at memoryBlue and then go on to do some pretty amazing things.
[00:17:26] Chris Corcoran: [00:17:26] And then what about the external piece?
[00:17:27]Tiffany Dunn: [00:17:27] External recruiting was hard. Um, I think I mentioned this to you guys before, but having the nerve to pick up the phone and call somebody at their desk who, you know, is a top performer at their job and doing well, and making a lot of money, and trying to sell them on an opportunity that they’ve never even heard of.
[00:17:46] And really you’re just selling them on yourself. Because why, why should they trust me that I have some amazing job for them? Um, that was hard. That was definitely some of the hardest cold calling I’ve ever done.
[00:17:56]Chris Corcoran: [00:17:56] Help me understand, how is that different from calling as an SDR? ‘Cause you’re calling someone at their desk as an SDR.
[00:18:02]Tiffany Dunn: [00:18:02] Yeah. But you’re not calling and interfering with that person’s whole work life. I remember calling people and being, like, my manager is standing right behind me. Um, you also kind of run the risk of calling sales reps that their phone calls might be recorded. You know, there’s a good chance. You know, you guys record a lot of your phone calls for training purposes, and there’s a good chance that some of those people I was calling were having their phone calls recorded and playing them back for their manager, you know?
[00:18:27]Here’s this headhunter who’s calling and trying to recruit me for some new role. Um, but I think it takes guts. But I’m also glad that it’s a skill I know how to do. It’s great experience.
[00:18:37]Chris Corcoran: [00:18:37] I think one of the skills that you’ve developed on your own is the ability to leave your comfort zone.
[00:18:42]Tiffany Dunn: [00:18:42] I try, I try for sure. I’m not a very extroverted person to begin with. So being in sales and recruiting was kind of a difficult, a personality adjustment, I think, for me on a day-to-day basis of really having to put myself out there.
[00:18:55]Chris Corcoran: [00:18:55] Gotcha. Okay. Now, let’s talk about your great transition. Like, one of the greatest moves in memoryBlue history.
[00:19:00]Tiffany Dunn: [00:19:00] Sure. So after a couple of months on the external placement team, I realized number one, that it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. Um, like I said, I’m really not that extroverted of a person naturally. So I started kind of trying to figure out what other avenues might be out there for me in tech sales.
[00:19:19] I knew I didn’t really want to go back and be an SDR. I thought about, you know, what, if I became a candidate and I was trying to get placed somewhere else, like where would we be placing me? I just didn’t really see anything at the time that fit. But what I had been doing was lecturing my entire team on how we should use Salesforce. And, I had been doing that for a few months with the search and sales team.
[00:19:41]Chris Corcoran: [00:19:41] So share with the listeners about kind of your experience as an SDR using CRM, because we were in a much different situation. And then your experience working with Salesforce as a sales person and as a recruiter, and kind of what you ultimately observed and then what you brought to my attention.
[00:19:56]Tiffany Dunn: [00:19:56] Sure. So as an SDR we didn’t use Salesforce in our day-to-day world. We used Excel and we had some fancy little dialer where you hit F3 and F4 to dial and hang up. The only thing we used Salesforce for at the time, I think was when you actually booked a meeting. And you just went into Salesforce, entered in your meeting.
[00:20:15]Everybody logged in to , like, the same place, but they’re meeting in, that was it. We had no reporting, no tracking. I didn’t even know at the time if you guys were looking at it, I didn’t really know what it was for. Um, so we really didn’t use Salesforce at all. Um, as a search consultant, we did use Salesforce regularly.
[00:20:31] We were importing resumes into Salesforce , um, and adding all of our candidates and calling and leaving notes within Salesforce. Um, at least I was, what I very quickly realized is that a lot of, the whole rest of my team really was using Salesforce to look people up and then they’d call them and not actually leave the note in Salesforce who had no history on any of the contacts.
[00:20:52] I remember going in and asking like, can I call this list? And. No one had any idea whose contacts they were. How updated they were , um, it was kind of a mess. that was my focus, at the time, I was trying to get our teams to really kind of hone in on like, who owned what in Salesforce? I remember you kept telling us that everything was Greenfield.
[00:21:11] And I was like, I don’t like this. I want to own my contacts and follow up with them. But that was such a difficult concept for us because we had so many duplicates and we couldn’t figure out. Where had it all it all had come from. Um, so that’s really kind of where my, my sales operations dreams came from.
[00:21:26]Um, I started specking out this , uh, sales, operations job that I would do. And then I would just pick up slack on all the things that Chris seemed to not be able to find time to do
[00:21:37] Chris Corcoran: [00:21:37] That’s a long list.
[00:21:38] Tiffany Dunn: [00:21:38] It was a very long list. Um, but the things I really threw out to you to propose the job where the DHR , um, taking over reporting and trying to clean up reporting
[00:21:49]Chris Corcoran: [00:21:49] listeners about what the DHR is.
[00:21:51]Tiffany Dunn: [00:21:51] It is the daily huddle report and is essentially the, the lifeblood of what the SDRs are doing. I mean how well the teams are performing by rep, by client, by manager, by month, by week. I mean, you could really break down that by day. So that was , um, pretty incredible data of looking back at it now. It’s an impressive, impressive collection of data and way to look at the information.
[00:22:12]Chris Corcoran: [00:22:12] And so, how was it getting delivered? Kind of, when you, when you saw this could be done better, how was it getting sent out?
[00:22:16]Tiffany Dunn: [00:22:16] Um, it was supposed to be getting sent out daily. Um, I think it was going out once or twice a week. Um, and usually with not correct information because nobody put their information into Salesforce to make it correct. Um, but I think Mischler was sending it out. Um, I think it was , uh, a Mischler document.
[00:22:30]Chris Corcoran: [00:22:30] the same guy who no showed on your interview. All right. so you saw the opportunity with Salesforce. You saw the opportunity at with DHR. , what, what else did you see as in terms of opportunities that you wanted to bring to my attention?
[00:22:41]Tiffany Dunn: [00:22:41] Some of the very first things I took over were the client packages. Um, so sending out client welcome packages, getting the t-shirts, letters , um, all that put together and sent out. Um, I took over office supply ordering. Um, and all of the coffee and notebooks. Um, I think I was your resident printer fixer for a couple of years.
[00:23:00]Um, fixed that printer more times than I can count. I took over basically all of the, like the odd jobs that were just kind of out there. And my real goal was to get to do Salesforce. I told you I wanted to be your Salesforce administrator, and I wanted to make it functional for you. I think we had just started the process of talking to InsideSales.com who were working on getting InsideSales.com implemented for the sales team.
[00:23:25]Um, we had looked at it a little bit for search and then everybody left the search team. So. it felt like it was just good timing.
[00:23:31]Chris Corcoran: [00:23:31] just, just to set the stage for the listeners. So. Up to this point, this is, we’re 12 years in as a company. Um, when we started the business, we viewed that the data that you’re collecting and the updates that you should be making it’s valuable. It’s important. As such, we would work within our client’s CRM system, whether they had Salesforce, or Microsoft dynamics, or Shugar or whatever they were using, we would use it.
[00:23:54] We would just get a user ID log in and we would track our day-to-day conversations, all our activity within their system our clients liked it. And it was good because it didn’t cost us any money, which was great. So Tiffany said, Hey, you know , no, no, no guys, listen. Uh, Salesforce is a great investment.
[00:24:10] And if you guys buy into it, it can become help you guys build up a sales stack technology stack, and you guys can get fluent in using that, and that can help you guys , um, be more competitive in the marketplace, even though it’s going to cost you a ton of money. And so, not only did you convince us to uh, create the role that never existed in the history of the company.
[00:24:30]You also convinced us to make a substantial investment in technology, which we did. And I’m thrilled that we did both. So talk to us a little bit about when we went from having, I don’t know, 10 licenses to the next day, we had a 100 licenses and you completely installed Salesforce at memoryBlue.
[00:24:47]Tiffany Dunn: [00:24:47] I think that was about the time we bought , um, InsideSales.com for all of the sales reps. Um, we had done some kind of, you know, user acceptance testing with Tommy’s team to really see how InsideSales.com function, what type of reporting functionality and what type of information you guys could gain
[00:25:03] from how many times you were touching leads before you had contact, you know, how many times did it take of, you know, a a cadence , um, to really get in touch with a prospect? I think that was really the driving factor was that reporting and the information that you could gain from it. So, yeah, we switched from, 10 to 25 total users to about a hundred
[00:25:24]um, when we first launched InsideSales.com, which was a huge admin responsibility, I didn’t realize I was taking on , um, setting up a hundred users, but in all, honestly it was great. I mean, at the time InsideSales.com was like the hot new technology, you know, we had the automated dialing, we had the emailing capabilities, local presence , um, was really, really big at the time.
[00:25:45]So it was great. It’s also actually funny. Um, I have since worked with an implementation manager that we worked with at InsideSales.com.
[00:25:53]He was one of my solution architects when I started in my role now.
[00:25:56]Chris Corcoran: [00:25:56] Oh, that’s awesome. So , uh, real quick. think of these sales that you’re making, like not in the traditional sense of you with a purchase order and closing a prospect, but you essentially came to me and persuaded me to create this role, , this, this function that was a hundred percent overhead. Right.
[00:26:11]And you convinced us to do that. We did. And we would gladly do that. And then, and then on the heels of that win, that sale, you convinced us to buy all this technology to Salesforce and InsideSales.com, which for the listeners was probably over $200,000 of software, and it’s not just like a one-time cost.
[00:26:27] You have to pay that every single year. So those are some pretty big persuasions.
[00:26:31]Tiffany Dunn: [00:26:31] Yeah. it’s, it’s a lot of legwork work to, to keep up in integration like InsideSales.com too. Um, so I think that’s kind of what led me into my next sale of I started working on researching, you know, other solutions for calling and cadencing sales. Um, and I came across DialSource , um, and started working on kind of researching what the difference in costs would be first, because I did have to convince you to buy it.
[00:26:53]Um, but also just, you know, really vetting out the differences between the two calling systems and why DialSource might work better for memoryBlue at the time. Um, and that was a hard sell for me. Um, Marc is nodding. It was a very hard sell through Marc , um, to switch the systems that we were using for day to day sales life.
[00:27:11]Marc Gonyea: [00:27:11] it’s why I still like classic, but let me ask you a question. So, you know, we have folks who work for us right as SDRs and it’s most of them, we’re trading them and grooming them and exposing them in a, going into the high-tech sales world, primarily as sales professionals.
[00:27:25]Although. We’re under no delusion of grandeur that everyone’s going to do that. Chris and I are, are powerful believers in the importance of operations, sales operations, sales enablement, whatever you want to call it to a accompany.
[00:27:35]Chris Corcoran: [00:27:35] Some of us more than others.
[00:27:36]Marc Gonyea: [00:27:36] Yeah. I don’t know. who you’re referring to, but , um, what’s interesting about it though, is. what intrinsically with you attracted you to that side of the business? Like, Hey, this Salesforce stuff, was it when you were working on recruiting and you were more involved in Salesforce and you kind saw the power that it could have on productivity? Like talk, talk to us about that.
[00:27:53] Cause I want the people who are listening, it’s great that we’re talking about what memoryBlue did, but kind of want your personal experience so they can maybe, or maybe not relate to that.
[00:28:02]Tiffany Dunn: [00:28:02] Sure. So, I mean, that’s a hundred percent where my motivation came from was I had been a sales rep or a sales user in a variety of capacities, working with many different systems, Salesforce being one of them. Um, I worked on a green screen at enterprise. Um, not even close to an updated system.
[00:28:21] But I think when I started working as a search consultant, I really kind of went back to the training I had received at K-12 within Salesforce and all of the different things that I would be able to do with it. Um, and then I realized how useful that would be for the SDRs. I mean, like I said, at the time I wasn’t even working out of my client’s CRM.
[00:28:39] I was working off of an Excel spreadsheet, which was not very organized. You guys were gaining no data really from that, I think it’s always been kind of a really data and reporting perspective for me to have. What kind of information are you getting from the activities I’m completing for you other than meetings, which meetings are the end goal, but there’s so much that goes into those meetings and being able to show like what you’ve done , um, and how those actions drive sales.
[00:29:07]Marc Gonyea: [00:29:07] You’re right. Because our business is very bottom line oriented. You have to book and you have to occur these meetings. And if you don’t do that, if you’re not quality, the clients are going to get upset and angry and people are to get frustrated. And discouraged, but there’s a lot of work that goes into that.
[00:29:20] And if you don’t have the numbers behind it, you don’t really know data tells a story and how are you going to organize it if you’re working in clients’ systems. Right.
[00:29:27]Tiffany Dunn: [00:29:27] Exactly.
[00:29:28]Marc Gonyea: [00:29:28] Yeah, so I’ll save this piece and then I’ll step aside again for a second. were able to convince Chris to a certain extent me, to do these things, and then you did them.
[00:29:36]And all of a sudden, congratulations, you’re the person who wanted to do these things you know, and the two people who you convinced to let you do these things, they don’t know shit about how to implement these things and make them work. So you’re like looking around, like you said, and you hit at it, like all of a sudden I’m the administrator of Salesforce and InsideSales.com and all these other things.
[00:29:56] How did you learn how to do this? Like, where’d you pick this up?
[00:29:59]Tiffany Dunn: [00:29:59] Um, I Googled everything I learned. Um, I wish there was Trailhead at the time. Um, Trailhead is a wonderful feature from Salesforce that everybody should go on. If you’re a Salesforce user , um, you know, go learn something on Trailhead. It didn’t exist when I was trying to learn. Um, so I do own two books.
[00:30:16]Printed books that I bought on Amazon. And I studied from those. I did a lot of Googling , um, a lot of , like, asking for help within the Salesforce communities. Um, so just reaching out and trying to see other people who had similar problems to me. Um, I mean, you guys gave me some great resources. I really got so much of
[00:30:35]the experience and the technological stuff that I know now really came from my time at memoryBlue and having to figure it out on my own. I didn’t have an architect or a developer sitting behind me to ask questions. Um, I really had to kind of, you know, pull out all of the resources I could find and do it myself.
[00:30:50]Chris Corcoran: [00:30:50] You also were able to kind of upgrade us in a lot of areas, not just terms of our CRM system with Salesforce or our dialing with, InsideSales and then DialSource. But we, we had this concept of scoring leads and , uh, you know, we had the process and we want, we want to see how our clients think of our leads is really, really important for us.
[00:31:06]And it was a project that I was working on And I went out and bought I wasn’t talking to anybody, but I went and I bought this technology and I got it to work and I throw it over the fence to you. And I was like, Tiffany, just make sure this work. And then I think you went to Dreamforce and take the listeners from there.
[00:31:18]Tiffany Dunn: [00:31:18] Sure. So first and foremost, thank you for sending me to Dreamforce. And I haven’t been to Dreamforce since I left memoryBlue.
[00:31:26]I know I’m so sad, but
[00:31:28] Marc Gonyea: [00:31:28] sounds like you didn’t come back.
[00:31:29]Tiffany Dunn: [00:31:29] Yeah. You asked me three times and I loved it, at Dreamforce is so much fun. Um, but it’s also like Salesforce candy land. Um, you go and you find so much cool technology and so many things you want to buy.
[00:31:39]I left Dreamforce and , uh, get feedback was one of Dreamforces sponsors that year , um, and they were doing the post Dreamforce surveys and on the post Dreamforce survey, they had , um, on their score, you know, rate 1 to 10, they had Salesforce clouds. I remember seeing those Salesforce clouds and thinking to myself, Chris could have elephants.
[00:31:59]That would be really cool. Um, I think that’s, that’s really kind of how we started going down the path of get feedback, was that they were the ones who offered us custom, custom elephant buttons. Um, and they were a lot easier to use also.
[00:32:10]Chris Corcoran: [00:32:10] Ridiculously easier to use and those elephants are. I loved it back then. I love it even more today. We’d love those client surveys. It’s awesome. And just to kind of, shed a little bit more light on that. Uh, I’m just gonna to talk very personally through the COVID experience is, you we were all working remote from our house and it’s a far different experience working remote than it is kind of the sales floor and the energy and all those things that you talked about before.
[00:32:30]And, you know, every once in a while, I I’d be a little down or depressed about kind of the situation and this, that, and the other. It happens to everybody. And then all of a sudden, a lead score would come in and it would be like a 10. And I was like, man, we’re we’re doing it, the STRs are delivering for our clients.
[00:32:43] And it would just put me in a much better mood. So Tiffany, thanks for your part in setting that groundwork to , uh, really kind of the lifeblood of, of the, of the business. Now we get them all day, every day. These lead scores just funneling in from the clients. They get sent out internally to everybody.
[00:32:57] Number one, and then number two, also broadcasted out on memoryBlue.com on our website. So thank you very much for making that a reality.
[00:33:03]Tiffany Dunn: [00:33:03] Of course and on your blog I saw , um, yeah, those are great. I, I really consider that to be like one of my first big Salesforce configuration projects , um, you know, InsideSales.com and DialSource are integration lifts of their own and are definitely not to be scoffed at that. It’s hard work, but that was my first real configuration project. It was the first project I was really proud of. Um, I still show people your website. So you get like some free advertising for me showing your website , uh, show what I built. Um, but yeah, no , it’s, it’s a great feature and I think it grew tremendously while I was even at memoryBlue, you know, just from internal lead scoring was how we kind of started our user testing just on Tommy’s internal sales team.
[00:33:40]Um, but I remember that first day going live and sending emails to clients and just waiting for somebody to send them back. Um, are you guys still doing the $250 gift cards for lead score surveys?
[00:33:51] Chris Corcoran: [00:33:51] Yep. Every month, every month. it’s a great program.
[00:33:53] Marc Gonyea: [00:34:45] we’re talking a little bit inside and outside the box. So people who may or may not be listening, who are, are part of the company, the people who work at the company know, if you don’t work at memoryBlue and you happen to be listening to this, if you go to memoryBlue.com and you scroll down, you can see every lead score from a client.
[00:34:59] So memoryBlue sets up a meeting books, a meeting for a client, and than they record the meeting, the client sales rep gets a, a note and they get, could score it. And their response ends up on our website. And I would say at least half the sales calls that I’m on to is I always have the number of new salesperson share their screen.
[00:35:15]And I got it down to a science that where they can do, and it’s not awkward. And we roll this out. We show this to all of our prospects, Tiffany, not all of them, least at least half, at least half of them. And they’re like, wow, that’s pretty, insightful and interesting. So we get Tiffany built that.
[00:35:27] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:27] Yeah, so Tiffany, one of the clients, they decided we won the work and we asked them why they chose us. And they said, well, your lead scoring and you know what it was about your lead scoring. It was the, once we, we know that you guys are, not covering anything up.
[00:35:38] It’s just all live the good, the bad and the ugly, which is cool.
[00:35:41] Tiffany Dunn: [00:35:41] Yep. I’ve talked to him a few times every once in a while you see a one or two , um, I think most of the time I’m on there. I, I see pretty high lead scores. So your STRs are doing pretty well.
[00:35:50]Chris Corcoran: [00:35:50] All right. So I want to, I just want to let everyone know where we are at from a company standpoint, right? So obviously we have a lot at stake with Tiffany. Like she is running the operations. She knows everything about our CRM system, our dialing system, our lead scoring system. So, needless to say, we’re terrified that she’s going to leave.
[00:36:10] She’s going to need to win the lottery or it’s going to get lured away by someone else.
[00:36:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:36:15] Or Phil, Phil’s going to be like, I’m tired of the shit, you need to quit that place.
[00:36:18]Chris Corcoran: [00:36:18] I was scared. And then one day she comes into my office and she talks about how her Dad played golf with someone down in Disney World. So Tiffany, talk a little bit about that.
[00:36:28]Tiffany Dunn: [00:36:28] Yeah. So my parents have gone to Disney World every year for as long as I can remember. They actually live in Florida now. So my dad head out onto a golf course now and then, but I remember they were down there one year and my Dad called me from the golf course and he was like, guess who I’m playing golf with?
[00:36:42]I was like, I have no idea, I’m at work. Um, and he was like, I’m playing golf with a guy named John Sisson, he says he knows your boss. And I was like, okay, I’m not sure. And I just remember coming to your office and be like, do you do you know, John Sisson at Salesforce, something about Salesforce? Um, it turns out he was a good friend of yours and in Salesforce consulting, which is a small world and that’s where I wound up.
[00:37:04]But. it was, it was just a very strange timing, I think too.
[00:37:06]Chris Corcoran: [00:37:06] Did it look like I saw a ghost?
[00:37:10] Tiffany Dunn: [00:37:10] I mean, a little, you know, I also didn’t think you’d let your friends like steal away your employees.
[00:37:15]Chris Corcoran: [00:37:15] John Sisson at the time ran a Salesforce consulting company and was one of our very first clients, years and years and years ago back in like 2003, 2004 , uh, and then has done some Salesforce consulting work for us. So he’s always on the, on the look out for people like you always, always.
[00:37:30] So I was like, Oh my goodness, please. No, don’t let this happen. A golf course in this whole thing is going to come to a crashing and fiery end because of a golf course in Orlando.
[00:37:39]Tiffany Dunn: [00:37:39] Unfortunately it’s hard to get into consulting. Um, I think I was listening to Matt Genoa’s podcast yesterday and he mentioned that too. It’s it’s pretty difficult to get into Salesforce consulting without experience consulting , um, or in my opinion, without the experience to sell yourself that you can do consulting because that’s what I did.
[00:37:58]Chris Corcoran: [00:37:58] Yeah, let’s talk about that.
[00:37:59]Tiffany Dunn: [00:37:59] consulting is kind of just a whole different beast. I guess. It’s when I started, I was, I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I I’ve done some sales consulting at memoryBlue. Um, then when I was working for you guys, I had also worked with a couple of your clients on some small Salesforce things.
[00:38:14] We did a Salesforce to Salesforce connection with Smartlogic for a little while. Um, so I had some Salesforce technical experience , um, but I think the skill set of really being able to sell yourself , um, and again, those skills from recruiting, and being able to sell people, sell skills and sell yourself is really kind of how I got into the role that I’m in now.
[00:38:32]Um, I’ve never been a Salesforce consultant before now. Um, I’ve always been an admin where I’ve owned my own Salesforce instance. I was in charge of my Salesforce , um, and I got to make all the decisions. So consulting is, is a whole new world of product delivery methodology, and really how to deliver a product to clients.
[00:38:50]Marc Gonyea: [00:38:50] Talk about that selling yourself part as a consultant.
[00:38:52]Tiffany Dunn: [00:38:52] It’s what I do every day. Now. It really is, I’m on the engineering side of consulting. So a lot of what I’m doing is technical work. Um, and then presenting my solutions to the client or demoing solutions that we’ve built to the client , um, and really kind of, I think it starts with just knowing like their business process, really.
[00:39:12]Um, and then just also using my knowledge of business process from working with you guys for so long to really sell them on, I know what I’m doing, I know Salesforce, I know how Salesforce works, and I know how to make these processes more efficient for you.
[00:39:26]Chris Corcoran: [00:39:26] So, walk the listeners through your journey from like you left us and became kind of a Salesforce admin and what you learned there, and then what you took from that and how you were able to parlay that into consulting.
[00:39:34]Tiffany Dunn: [00:39:34] Sure. So before I left you, I also had to sell you on the idea of me moving to Denver. And that was long before your Denver office.
[00:39:41]Chris Corcoran: [00:39:41] There’s a theme developing here.
[00:39:43]Tiffany Dunn: [00:39:43] Um, you guys taught me well,
[00:39:44]yeah. Uh, back in 2016, Phil and I decided that Northern Virginia was just not for us. Um, he had a job opportunity out at Colorado, and I remember being terrified walking into Chris’s office and just being like, Hey, can we talk about me potentially doing this job from Colorado.
[00:40:02]Um, at the time I was really trying to push you guys to open the office in Denver. Um, hoping I could just be like your first chair in Denver, but , um, I mean, other than Tiana, you guys didn’t really have any remote employees. So it was nerve wracking for me at the time, you know, long before the days of COVID working from home.
[00:40:18]And thankfully I did a very good job during the DHR, I think. And you said it was okay.
[00:40:24]Chris Corcoran: [00:40:24] So I don’t know why you were so nervous. You had a track record of asking me a lot of stuff and me always saying yes.
[00:40:28]Tiffany Dunn: [00:40:28] Yeah. I mean, to be fair between the two of you, you are the scarier one to come talk to.
[00:40:34]Chris Corcoran: [00:40:34] That’s such a myth. Actually. I wish it was a myth.
[00:40:37]Tiffany Dunn: [00:40:37] You say that now.
[00:40:38] Chris Corcoran: [00:40:38] Yeah. You and Phil moved to Denver and then you start doing your thing for us remotely.
[00:40:44]Tiffany Dunn: [00:40:44] Yeah. So, um, it was right before you guys opened the Jones branch , uh, drive office. Um, I had hired Brittany for that point, Brittney McGuffey and she was, she was helping you on the office front, get the office moved , um, since my team had taken over a lot of that office management responsibility as well. Um, but yeah, I moved out here to Denver.
[00:41:01]Um, I did the same job that I did in Virginia. Really? I worked from like 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM every day, so that I could work East coast hours with you guys. Um, and then right before I left, I think I had migrated your phone systems to the Cloud. Um, so suck my toe into the CTI world at soft phones , um, and migrated your phone system to the Cloud.
[00:41:22]Chris Corcoran: [00:41:22] Great. talk about what you did. You said you ended up leaving and you ended up talking about where
[00:41:26] Tiffany Dunn: [00:41:26] Okay. Yeah, went to work for a company called Digital First Media. They are the company that owns the Denver post, Boston globe or Boston Harold’s bunch of newspapers across the country. And they were implementing a brand new Salesforce sales cloud instance with a Salesforce CPQ, which is Salesforce’s configure price quote.
[00:41:48] It’s now called revenue cloud. Um, and pretty cool functionality. I’m in over my head a little bit when I started there, I think , um, I knew what I was doing, technically at least , um, how to do the Salesforce work, how to do the implementation. Um, but I started working on an agile project team. And I had never worked with other people in technology, and I had never really worked on product development before.
[00:42:09]So that was a whole new experience. Um, it was a really expensive Salesforce implementation. I think they spent somewhere close to like a million dollars for a couple year deal, plus an implementation contract with the company I work for now. And so that’s where I got to meet a handful of consultants. Um, I met some project managers with a consulting company and really kind of got, I guess, an intro to what consulting could be in terms of delivering a product solution to a customer versus being the everyday admin on that product.
[00:42:39]Chris Corcoran: [00:42:39] I see. what’s the difference between the two in terms of, you know, your likes and dislikes.
[00:42:43]Tiffany Dunn: [00:42:43] I think I like being my own product owner. I like having that, responsibility of owning the Salesforce, but you also really have to, as a product owner, you spend a lot of time in meetings and spend a lot of time talking to stakeholders and training , um, and just kind of repeating yourself a lot.
[00:43:01] You don’t get to do a lot of the technical work really, which is what I enjoyed. I really wanted to dig my hands into Salesforce and configuration and learn some different technologies that I had never seen before. Um, so I don’t think there’s really that I prefer one or the other. I think it was just timing and really wanting to experience more of a technical role.
[00:43:22]Um, rather than public facing.
[00:43:24]Chris Corcoran: [00:43:24] so I’ve got the million dollar question for you.
[00:43:26]Tiffany Dunn: [00:43:26] What is that?
[00:43:27]Chris Corcoran: [00:43:27] How do you get salespeople to put their activities in Salesforce?
[00:43:31]Tiffany Dunn: [00:43:31] Um, pay them for putting their activities in Salesforce.
[00:43:34]Chris Corcoran: [00:43:34] talk more about that.
[00:43:35]Tiffany Dunn: [00:43:35] If it is not in Salesforce, it does not exist. You don’t get paid if it’s not in Salesforce. Um, I mean, that’s not my end all be all answer. I think that’s the way to get sales reps to put their information in. But in reality, I think it takes organizational change management and a pretty hefty focus on organizational change management.
[00:43:53]Um, it’s something didn’t appreciate as much when I was at memoryBlue. Um, and I think having a person really dedicated to change within your company , um, and focused on how that change is going to impact you in a good way, and making sure that users are trained appropriately and that they can follow their entire job process within your product.
[00:44:12] And it’s easy. Um, having a focus on that I think is, is really the way to go. Um, and, even now, I mean, we have specialists within Publicis Sapient who focus on organizational change management
[00:44:22] Marc Gonyea: [00:44:22] Publicis Sapient. That’s how you pronounce it. Okay. what type of advice would you have for , uh, Tiffany Kulp before she was done? on , uh, you know, before you started at memoryBlue. And I’m going back a little bit because I’m learning, this is like a one of three questions I might hit you with right now.
[00:44:38]Tiffany Dunn: [00:44:38] I mean, other than I can do anything for 15
[00:44:40] months?
[00:44:41]Marc Gonyea: [00:44:41] knowing what you know now, right. That that would achieve you would have used some different advice.
[00:44:44]Tiffany Dunn: [00:44:44] Um, no, I don’t think I would have changed my advice to myself. Um, I think I really, I went into memoryBlue , not, not really knowing what I wanted to do at the end of my time at memoryBlue, but knowing that there were avenues for me to explore. And I think that I went into it with really the right mindset of this is what I’m doing for 15 months and I need to figure it out and find my place and find my way.
[00:45:09]Um, you know, I led culture club for a couple of years and some of those smaller things that I, I really tried to like, as you said before, get out of my comfort zone and really try to, you know, expand myself within the company. Those were some of the best lessons I learned. Um, so I don’t know if I want to change my answer or changed my advice.
[00:45:28]Marc Gonyea: [00:45:28] if there’s someone listening now, who’s like, man, I kind of want to get into the Salesforce game. Like what advice in this puts in their working memoryBlue what advice would you have for them now?
[00:45:37]Tiffany Dunn: [00:45:37] Uh, become a power user, become the user who helps all of the people around you. Um, you know, learn how to make your own reports. Make your own dashboards, impress your manager with the data and the information that you can glean from the activities that you’re doing every day. Um, you know, take some Trailheads.
[00:45:52] I recommend all sales reps take some Trailheads , um, on reporting dashboards. Um, just some of those day-to-day sales functionalities. Um, even if you don’t wind up in Salesforce or in a technical role , um, I think some of those, those skills are going to get you far.
[00:46:06]Marc Gonyea: [00:46:06] if you were working at memoryBlue today, how would you architect us , uh, getting people to use Salesforce more?
[00:46:11] Tiffany Dunn: [00:46:11] You’re going to ask me how it architect your Salesforce. I was like, I have nightmares about that. I still think about it.
[00:46:20] Yeah. I have nightmares about some of the early work that I did looking back now I know better. Um, but I have thought about how I would fix it in case you ever need it fixed. I don’t really know if that’s a tough
[00:46:29] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:29] Yeah, so we’ll just go back to what you’re doing now. If someone wants to do what you’re doing now, I mean, what advice would you have for them? I mean, like there, a lot of people say, man, I want to be a sales, a senior Salesforce.com consultant at a, at a really reputable consulting company.
[00:46:42] I what’s your advice for them?
[00:46:44]Tiffany Dunn: [00:46:44] I mean, my advice would be to, probably try to find some pro bono work. Um, you know, there’s some sites out there like catchafire.org , um, where you can go out and try to find some Salesforce , uh, volunteer work. Um, my company does the 1% , um, volunteer work. Uh, similar to Salesforce and I use Catchafire , um, to try to find opportunities local to me.
[00:47:03]So try to find some pro bono work. Like I said, I mean really focusing on Trailhead. I think over the past couple of years, I have seen and heard from more and more recruiters that Trailhead is becoming as important as certifications. Um, it shows you’re hands on experience and you’re hands on
[00:47:22]working knowledge of Salesforce , um, versus coming across somebody who’s an excellent test taker. Um, and can just pass some certification tests because they’re, you know, good at studying. I think it really shows that hands-on experience. It also poses some different questions from different perspectives , um, and different niche markets.
[00:47:39] Salesforce has so many different Clouds now. I mean, they’re in every industry. Anything that you could possibly think of. Um, I think one of my favorite demo units from Dreamforce is , uh, an all hydroponic, greenhouse that’s run on Salesforce. Like, I think that’s so cool. I would love to be in charge of running a hydroponic greenhouse because I know Salesforce.
[00:48:00]Um, so I think really just kind of exploring what’s out there. What’s what’s your niche? What are you good at? Um, I know for me, I’m not only good at sales process. Um, Because of you guys. , it’s, it’s what I did for so long. Being in sales operations is really that sales, process, you know, how to track activities, KPIs, and how to attract deals to close.
[00:48:18] And then the data points that you’re looking to gain from that.
[00:48:21]Chris Corcoran: [00:48:21] So Tiffany, I’ve got a question for you. So. your Salesforce learning and development continues to this day I view it that you’ve had two chapters in that development thus far. The first chapter was from the jump, you’re the guru, you know, the most about it, even though that was at the beginning of your journey and you had to teach yourself everything.
[00:48:42]And then kind of in chapter two has been you join a company where there’s bunch of Salesforce experts who know more than you. talk a little bit about those different environments and the learning styles and what you prefer, what you gather from each those chapters.
[00:48:56]Tiffany Dunn: [00:48:56] Sure. Um, so I think it’s funny the way that you described it, the way that I think of it is ghost against snowman.
[00:49:02]that reference is always, always stuck with me too. Um, and I think also, I mean, I just, I just started my role as a consultant now, and I think more than that ever, I’m in a position now where there are so many people who knows so much more than me when I have been the resident expert on Salesforce in my organization, since
[00:49:20]2014, so it’s a whole new experience. It is humbling to relearn how to ask for help. Um, but my company is fantastic. We’re very culturally focused, much like memoryBlue is, and that whole collaborative environment is definitely there. I mean, I can reach out to anybody at any time with a problem and not feel like I am,
[00:49:42]not doing my job or I’m not learning. I’m just learning from my colleagues and my peers and the people around me who have done some of these hands-on projects before , um, and have implemented some pretty cool solutions.
[00:49:53]Chris Corcoran: [00:49:53] What about when you were learning you were self-taught.
[00:49:55]Tiffany Dunn: [00:49:55] I mean, I’m still self-taught. Um, I’m pretty sure before I ask anybody, I still exhaust every single option available to me, but I was also pretty surprised to learn that majority of the people that I’m working with came into Salesforce the same way. Um, you know, they kind of fell into Salesforce or fell into consulting in some cases.
[00:50:14]Um, but I, I mean, just this morning on a call, one of my solution architects, that I’m not sure, let me Google that really quick. Um, and I think we all really kind of Learn the same way, which made me feel better that I wasn’t missing some specialized training on Salesforce. That there’s really a lot of accidental admins who become pretty incredible
[00:50:31] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:31] And you have to have just like curiosity off the charts.
[00:50:35]Tiffany Dunn: [00:50:35] You have to want to know everything.
[00:50:37] If something isn’t working, you have to really have a strong desire to fix it, and know why it’s not working. Um, it is a constant battle of finding bugs and fixing your own mistakes.
[00:50:48]Chris Corcoran: [00:50:48] Another question for you. So looking back, what’s the biggest mistake that you’ve seen your contemporaries make either while they were working at memoryBlue or after they leave?
[00:50:58]Tiffany Dunn: [00:50:58] I think the biggest mistake some people making at memoryBlue is leaving too early , you know, not completing their tour , or I don’t think this happened too often in my tenure, but sometimes even, SDRs getting hired out a little bit too early. And then I probably could have even used a little bit more time as an SDR, however difficult the role is, it really prepares you for the real world and for just how to handle yourself in difficult positions on a day-to-day basis.
[00:51:26]So stick with the process. Stick it out. Learn from Marc and Chris, ’cause you guys have so much to teach everyone. I think that was my favorite part about recruiting for you. It was really telling your story and telling everybody how much you really want to improve people. You really want to improve these sales reps and watch these guys develop and grow and become incredible salespeople.
[00:51:48]Chris Corcoran: [00:51:48] I love your journey at memoryBlue because it’s untraditional and you literally built it and created it. You’re like a trailblazer.
[00:51:56]Marc Gonyea: [00:51:56] You just reminded me of some crazy story. You were, you were working at, when you had a job in college or something, you were driving up from someplace to go to the job and drive it back to some other place to go back to school.
[00:52:05]Tiffany Dunn: [00:52:05] Yeah I did use to drive from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Gainesville, Virginia, to work at Glory Days for the weekend.
[00:52:12]Marc Gonyea: [00:52:12] And the fact that I remember that is a testament to your commitment, to like either working or making money. I don’t know what it is. ‘Cause that’s a little bit crazy, but like, I was like, man, this girl, this young woman, we’re bringing her in.
[00:52:24]Tiffany Dunn: [00:52:24] I also ran fireworks stands. I don’t know if you guys remember that.
[00:52:27]Marc Gonyea: [00:52:27] So far, it’s crazy, but those are the things that are you’re defining moments. Someone tells you something like that. You’re like, all right, this person is a harder worker than I am. They’re coming in. But it’s not a coincidence that you learned all this stuff, a lot of it on your own, because you’re, you’re willing to make, put the drive in, put the work in.
[00:52:44]So that’s what’s gotten you to where you are now. You’ve worked with us for over four years and you created all these roles, changed the operational functionality of the company.
[00:52:52]Chris Corcoran: [00:52:52] Quite a legacy.
[00:52:53] Marc Gonyea: [00:52:53] Awesome. Yeah. Good. I’m glad you had fun. Sometimes it was like, I don’t know. It’s just having much fun, man.
[00:52:58] Tiffany Dunn: [00:52:58] I mean, there were days, there were days. There was the day that an SDR asked me if I was the person who mailed things. That was a rough day. I’m talented and I know Salesforce, I’m not the person who mails thing.
[00:53:11]Marc Gonyea: [00:53:11] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s obviously not the case. well thank you today, Chris, you got any more? We had gone for awhile.
[00:53:16] Chris Corcoran: [00:53:16] No, this is good. This is awesome. Uh, it was great kind of walking and sharing with the listeners, your journey and kind where you came from before memoryBlue, and then how you took the situation , uh, was very , um, observed situations, observed kind of what you wanted to do and then kind made your case and didn’t come in kind of half baked, but really thoroughly presented to me all these different options and you got all these things that you wanted, you got to create the job you wanted.
You got to bring in technology that you wanted, you got to, uh, move to a different city across the country to have the life that you wanted. And then you’ve been able to leave memoryBlue and then continue to grow and take the skills and the experiences that you had here and help propel your career forward.
[00:53:57] So it’s amazing, your story. And I love the fact that we’re able to share it with the listeners.
[00:54:01]Tiffany Dunn: [00:54:01] And the network, the memoryBlue network is incredible. I mean I know that there’s a handful of alumni out here in Denver. I’ve seen a few of them since I’ve been here. Um, you know, I talked to Abby Lacey over the summer when I was interviewing for jobs, um, just to get some advice. So really the network has been pretty, has been pretty incredible also.
[00:54:17] And I think that’s something not to take lightly either.
[00:54:20]Chris Corcoran: [00:54:20] That’s great. So when the COVID thing finally kind of settles down, we’re going to be coming to Denver for an alumni dinner and we’ll get you we’ll even get Phil out there.
[00:54:26]Tiffany Dunn: [00:54:26] There you go.
[00:54:27]Chris Corcoran: [00:54:27] Awesome. Well, Tiffany, this was great. We really appreciate it.
[00:54:30]Tiffany Dunn: [00:54:30] I had so much fun. Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:54:33]Marc Gonyea: [00:54:33] Tiffany, we miss you. All right. Well, you’re crushing it. Shout out to Phil and you got anybody else running around there?
[00:54:42]Tiffany Dunn: [00:54:42] I do. I have a one and a half year old toddler named Keegan.
[00:54:45] Marc Gonyea: [00:54:45] Yes, you do. Shout out to Keegan, but shout out to Phil. You know, everybody’s going to have a partner and obviously you and Phil have a great thing going and support each other, and we appreciate him supporting you through all this craziness with us and everything else. So we will see you.
[00:54:59] Tiffany Dunn: [00:54:59] He also tests out some of my dumb Salesforce solutions, so right.
[00:55:03]Chris Corcoran: [00:55:03] Before we go, is the little one gonna go into Salesforce or is the little one going to sell data storage?
[00:55:07]Tiffany Dunn: [00:55:07] I think he’s going to sell data storage. He is a chatter box.
[00:55:13]Marc Gonyea: [00:55:13] We’ll get him here first. I would teach them to listen and ask good questions, you’re probably already doing that.
[00:55:18]Chris Corcoran: [00:55:18] Awesome. Well, Tiffany, thanks a bunch.