Episode Overview
Today we’re diving into the inspiring journey of Brian Spitzer from Martech Ventures. Brian brings a wealth of experience, having begun his adventure with Salesforce back in 2005 as a customer user at Verizon. His path took him through ExactTarget and led him to become an industry expert in the Marketing Cloud.
In this episode, we’ll explore Brian’s fascinating career progression, from his early days as a technical producer to leading global SWAT teams and managing services at partner companies. We’ll discuss the challenges he’s faced, his approaches to aligning client philosophies, and the importance of setting expectations and embracing failures as learning opportunities.
Brian also offers valuable insights into the impact of COVID on remote work, his passion for leveraging AI in customer journeys, and the tools and technologies he prefers for efficient project management. Hear about his involvement with pioneering projects, like delivering 50 million emails per minute, and the strategic intricacies of high-volume email campaigns.
Interview Highlights
About Brian
- Based in Indianapolis, Indiana.
- Grew up in various parts of the Midwest and the United States.
- Enjoys golf and travel; prefers leisure travel over work-related travel.
- Has worked remotely since 2013, with little impact from COVID.
Professional Journey in Salesforce
- Started as a Salesforce user in 2005 with Verizon.
- Joined ExactTarget in 2008, later acquired by Salesforce.
- Worked as a technical producer, building campaigns and email messages.
- Part of a “SWAT” team, traveling globally to resolve client issues.
Career Progression Post-Salesforce Acquisition
- Led a services team at a Salesforce partner company.
- Managed a team of 37, overseeing delivery and leading solutioning teams.
Client Philosophy and Expectation Management
- Challenges in aligning clients with their philosophical approach.
- Importance of managing client expectations and allowing for learning.
- Emphasis on listening to understand client needs and expectations.
- Stressing accountability and learning from failures.
Specific Projects and Case Studies
- Worked on global communication projects post-Salesforce acquisition.
- Supported languages for APAC regions with technical updates.
- High-volume email delivery for companies like Groupon.
- Achieved 50 million emails per minute delivery to Gmail.
- Worked on optimization for rapid inbox placement.
Development of AI-Based Solutions
- Development of Orchestra, an AI-focused AppExchange product.
- Company involvement in creating marketing cloud applications.
- Focus on building apps for Salesforce and other cloud services.
Technology Preferences and Tools
- Preference for Apple devices (“blue bubbles” for iMessage).
- Use of Mac for over 15 years for development.
- Communication via Slack, text messaging, Discord.
- Project management with Jira for customers and historical use of Asana.
Salesforce Insights and Critiques
- Suggestion for more flexible Salesforce flow management.
- Desire for enhanced transparency in Salesforce announcements.
- Common issues such as hardcoded elements and piecemeal development.
Work Schedule and Operational Preferences
- Working approximately 60 hours a week, catering to West Coast clients.
- Prefers a balance of customer interaction and independent work.
- Dislikes back-to-back 30-minute meetings.
Views and Use of AI
- Belief in AI for automating routine tasks without replacing jobs.
- Use of AI for efficiency and creativity stimulation.
- Integration of GPT for automated message creation and journey management.
MarTech Ventures’ Focus and Expertise
- Building apps on the AppExchange platform.
- Offering go-to-market and security review consulting.
- Specializing in marketing cloud solutions for various industries.
Reflecting on Personal and Professional Achievements
- Leading large-scale projects at ExactTarget.
- Increasing bookings by over 50% year over year.
- Emphasis on translation efforts for multi-language support.
Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
- Effective CRM implementation involves clear goals and iterative learning.
- Stressing the importance of trust and understanding in selling CRM technologies.
- Advocacy for setting achievable goals and learning from failures.
- Concluding with the importance of data from failures for future success.
Full Episode Transcript
Jerome Clatworthy [00:00:00]:
Welcome to CRM Stories with me, Jerome Clitworthy. CRM Stories is a podcast where we talk with Salesforce professionals from all over the world about their careers and favorite Salesforce case studies. Today, we’re joined by Brian Spitzer from Martech Ventures. Brian, thanks so much for joining us today.
Brian Spitzer [00:00:17]:
Yeah. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to this.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:00:20]:
Yeah. Beautiful. So whereabouts in the world are you sitting, Brian, as we have this chat?
Brian Spitzer [00:00:25]:
You know, Midwest. Right? Like, smack dab in the middle, Indianapolis area. In Indiana.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:00:31]:
Is that sort of where you grew up or just somewhere you’ve moved to later in life?
Brian Spitzer [00:00:35]:
I think it’s where I’ve grown up in my career. But, I no. I I grew I grew up in the Midwest and then all over, parts of the United States.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:00:44]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:00:45]:
So
Jerome Clatworthy [00:00:45]:
And, before we get too deep into Salesforce, just give us a real quick snapshot of what what life looks like outside of that in terms of partners, dependents, pets, hobbies. What do you get up to if you’re not not doing Salesforce?
Brian Spitzer [00:00:57]:
Yeah. That’s good. When there’s time not be doing Salesforce, that’s funny because it’s, as I’ve always said, you know, even with teams I’ve managed in the past, we’ve talked about this, like, work life, you know, balance, and I’ve always kind of said it’s an integration.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:01:12]:
Which is the Which
Brian Spitzer [00:01:12]:
affords It affords a lot of flexibility, but then, you know, when you you do that’s where you do find yourself, you know, available to do something at 9 PM at night till the till midnight, whatever. You know? So Yeah. Just it’s kind of a special tech environment, I think. But outside of that, I do play a fair bit of golf. Okay. I love to travel. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve been able to travel.
Brian Spitzer [00:01:36]:
To go on
Jerome Clatworthy [00:01:37]:
a lot of trips and go to courses you wanna play on? Is that
Brian Spitzer [00:01:41]:
Yeah. It has. Yeah. It’s it’s yeah. It’s it’s a it’s it’s a fun past on my mind. So,
Jerome Clatworthy [00:01:47]:
Yeah. Right. Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:01:49]:
Yeah. Outside of that, just, you know, spending time at home when I can. I, I used to travel a lot for work.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:01:57]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:01:57]:
So I like to travel now for leisure. I I Yeah. Would really I’d be okay with never spending another evening in a hotel room before work. Obviously, it’s gonna happen, but,
Jerome Clatworthy [00:02:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:02:08]:
But I I’d rather I’d rather do day trips if I can. Yeah. So travel was a good one for me. Go ahead.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:02:14]:
Did COVID sort of fix that realizing you didn’t have to travel or just the nature you worked you down means you don’t have to sort of thing? What?
Brian Spitzer [00:02:20]:
That’s that’s a great, great question because I’ve not had a physical office since 2013. Wow. So Good. I’m I’m pretty old school when it comes to remote work. Mhmm. Work from anywhere in the world is where is kind of what I’ve always said. In place I have good Internet and
Jerome Clatworthy [00:02:38]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:02:39]:
So COVID wasn’t that disruptive for me from a work perspective.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:02:43]:
Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:02:44]:
And I would actually I’d actually say for me personally, COVID and coming out of the pandemic sort of allowed us to get things done faster. Right? We don’t have to wait till everybody can get in the boardroom in March.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:02:58]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:02:59]:
We can maybe make a decision now in January, which, you know, I appreciate it personally.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:03:03]:
Okay. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, that’s cool. And so how did you first get started in Salesforce? Were you already doing sort of tech serum stuff, and you just specialize in Salesforce? So that was your sort of introduction to that whole sort of ecosystem?
Brian Spitzer [00:03:17]:
Yeah. So I became a customer user in 2005 with Verizon. Okay. And then in 08, I went to work for a company that Salesforce purchased, at the time Okay. Called ExactTarget. So on the marketing side. Yep. And so Is that what became
Jerome Clatworthy [00:03:35]:
is now there’s marketing cloud, or was that different? Is that
Brian Spitzer [00:03:38]:
Mhmm. It is marketing. Yep. ExactTarget is marketing cloud. Yes. Yep. Yeah. And there’s a bunch of other, you know, ancillary products that we purchased along the way, Buddy Media, some other things as well.
Brian Spitzer [00:03:49]:
Like, you know, there’s a bunch of different social platforms we purchased, to to bolster that. And then, I stuck around for about 3 years after acquisition.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:03:59]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:03:59]:
And then started branching out on my own in, 2015, 2016. And and, yeah, I’ve been in the ecosystem pretty much the entire time. Then I went to lead a services team with a partner within Salesforce. So in SI, I had 37 folks at that company that I, was responsible for in delivery. Yep. And then from there, I went on to lead solutioning teams that, sold a lot of times, like, our products. Salesforce was our biggest strategic partner Yeah. Bringing bringing opportunities in and out.
Brian Spitzer [00:04:28]:
So
Jerome Clatworthy [00:04:29]:
Okay. So when you were at ExactTarget initially, what sort of role were you doing there? Like, client work or you were still on this came in as a sales sort of thing? Yeah. What were you doing?
Brian Spitzer [00:04:38]:
No. I came in as what we called, I was the 1st locally based, what we called kind of like a technical producer was my first role. So Okay. Building campaigns and email messages is what I started doing.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:04:51]:
Okay. So hands on helping clients actually get stuff working?
Brian Spitzer [00:04:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the services team, like, the global services team. And then Okay. About a year into that, I worked, I worked my way into this group we created. It was like a SWAT team. So Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:05:08]:
Fly anywhere in the world, fix all the problems of,
Jerome Clatworthy [00:05:12]:
you know,
Brian Spitzer [00:05:13]:
customers. And that’s where I was really starting. A guy that was afforded to see the world through XactRx Yeah. Forces, which was great. Lots of Yeah. Lots of really cool work. And and that was really, like, a really great experience. I think I’d have some really good stories out of that, you know.
Brian Spitzer [00:05:31]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Both good and bad. But, but what’s really interesting is so, like, we were a we’re a team that’s you know, the the p and l for our team is inside of product and development. So it’s a it’s a cost center to the company. Right?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:05:47]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:05:48]:
But we I’m really proud of this stat. So on average, the 3 years that I created and ran that team, customers upsold on exact target product 88% year over year for the customers we worked with who were having problems and ready to leave.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:06:05]:
For real?
Brian Spitzer [00:06:05]:
So yeah. There’s there’s kind of, like, I think one of the maybe the good the stories here. It’s like a you know, for me, it’s kind of a, I’d say it’s anecdotal because it was every single customer. First thing we do is Jerome, we come in, and I just wanna talk with business leaders and the folks who bought the product. Mhmm. And sat down and asked them, like, why’d you buy ExactTarget? Right? Why why’d you get involved with us?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:06:29]:
Yeah. We were great.
Brian Spitzer [00:06:30]:
Back to that yep. We took it back to that single thing and spent the first half day on a whiteboard just, you know, looking at that as, like, our north star. Okay.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:06:41]:
Yep.
Brian Spitzer [00:06:41]:
Here’s where you wanted to get to. Here’s where we are today. Here’s and then we come back, like, 2 days later with our recommendations on how to how to get them back to to what they wanted. Yeah. It was a great experience. I mean, I Yeah. For instance I got to see scale and a lot of other things that, you know, I think have been, have given me, kind of a unique experience or a unique perspective in this ecosystem sense.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:07:06]:
Yeah. Cool. Alright. So you eventually end up doing client work there, and then you’ve obviously evolved to now doing client work for your own shop. Is that roughly the case in that sort of same sort of space? Is that
Brian Spitzer [00:07:16]:
Yeah. It is. Do client work in, in our in our own shop, with Martech. We’ve we’ve developed a bit of a niche. We’re probably the go to marketing cloud app PDO in ecosystem. So if you wanna build an app on marketing cloud, we’re probably choice number 1. In fact, we are number 1.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:07:37]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:07:37]:
And then I think the other thing that’s maybe unique about us the other part I would I would probably preface is the last thing I typically think of is which platform or which cloud we might put a product on. Because we’ve had such a diverse experience over time, we can build on all the clouds. So Yeah. You know, we’re not we’re not typically gonna put you into a niche and say, oh, that should be a service cloud app, or that needs to be, you know, like an old commerce cloud, container app or whatever it might be. Or Yep. The last thing I do is recommend the technology after we hear where they want data, where they want business value, where do they wanna see reporting. And then we
Jerome Clatworthy [00:08:15]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:08:17]:
So real Yeah. That’s that’s become our bread and butter.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:08:21]:
And this is really, maybe because I’m definitely not a developer by any sense, but building a marketing cloud app compared to building an app for core, is it the same underlying foundation, or it’s very different given the the way the product’s sort of coming accidentally? Is it
Brian Spitzer [00:08:37]:
Yeah. They both reside in AppExchange, and that’s where the consistency is. That’s it. Everything else
Jerome Clatworthy [00:08:43]:
is different. Yeah. Okay. So it’s totally different underlying sort of platform and code based sort of thing.
Brian Spitzer [00:08:49]:
Mark marketing cloud apps are kinda like a wild, wild west web app. Any platform, any code base you wanna put it in. Right? You get a lot of Node. You get a lot of Python. But it’s just a web app, custom web app. Whereas, you
Jerome Clatworthy [00:09:04]:
know, we know that more flexibility in that sense.
Brian Spitzer [00:09:07]:
Correct. Tons of flexibility, but then also less rules. Right? Less regulation, less guardrails in place. So it’s a little more buyer viewer.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:09:16]:
So security review, like, sort of harder in that sense, or do they sort of go harder on you because there is so much more they can’t control, or they kind of take it a bit easier because there’s, I guess, so many limits what they could potentially screen for?
Brian Spitzer [00:09:30]:
I think it’s still pretty consistent when it comes to security review, though, the the guidelines are a bit different, right, what they’re looking for because
Jerome Clatworthy [00:09:40]:
Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:09:40]:
You’re a little bit of a more controlled environment building inside Apex on top of force.com and,
Jerome Clatworthy [00:09:45]:
you
Brian Spitzer [00:09:45]:
know, working within the packaging, requirements and whatever that looks like. So, yes, it’s different, but I’d say our tenure now in the ecosystem, we have a pretty good idea of what they’re looking for and and how to, you know Yeah. It still is a security review process, but we kinda know the big the big pieces to make sure you cover off and how you might build. Yeah. Okay. And if you had to Successful.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:10:10]:
Really roughly put a number on how many apps do you think you’ve had approved through the well, developed through them?
Brian Spitzer [00:10:16]:
Well, we need 16 and 23.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:10:19]:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:10:20]:
Market yeah. I’d say we’re probably around 6 dozen, maybe.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:10:26]:
Wow. Fantastic.
Brian Spitzer [00:10:27]:
Something in that range.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:10:28]:
Yeah. And then Maybe
Brian Spitzer [00:10:29]:
a little less than 6 dozen.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:10:31]:
They’re usually pretty bespoke one for one app for one customer, or are there things you are developing and having available for, I guess, general access or a good of both?
Brian Spitzer [00:10:39]:
So good good question because there’s the base framework which we can apply to another application. Everybody needs to have some sort of, like, onboarding experience. We gotta connect to the marketing cloud. If it’s a marketing cloud app, we need to connect data back to core. Right? There’s there’s this sort of, like, bone structure. But then, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s an extremely custom experience. We also do a lot of cases, like, you know, we’re working with companies sometimes who are emerging as far as their ecosystem experience in Salesforce and the app exchange. So we’re not afraid of getting in and writing a POC.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:11:13]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:11:13]:
Holding that out to prove out that, hey. Let’s build the v one before we put all the investment in. Let’s get started simple. Okay. That’s something that we’ve become quite accustomed to and are not afraid of because we’ve got a pretty good formulaic way to to manage it.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:11:27]:
Yeah. Right. Fantastic. Oh, very interesting. Well, what we love to do on this show is talk about specific stories and sort of case studies where you’re able to. So specifically one that you can sort of think of that really just absolutely blew business away in terms of the impact on, revenue or productivity depending on the type of organization it was. An example that was just really fascinating to you personally for whatever reason, whether it be the the tech side of it or the use case. And then, yes, something where things maybe didn’t go so well and, I guess, lessons learned because of that.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:11:54]:
Do you mind if we sort of move into that?
Brian Spitzer [00:11:56]:
Yeah. Absolutely, man. I’d love to. So I think I have kind of a
Jerome Clatworthy [00:12:01]:
oh, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. What’s an example? Something where you worked on where it absolutely just blew business away in terms of, the impact it had on whether it be revenue or efficiency depending on the type of implementation it was.
Brian Spitzer [00:12:14]:
Yeah. So I I’ll go back to some of the some of the earlier stuff in the marketing cloud days, during the my SWAT team, tenure. I would say, you know, a couple couple of use cases specifically in the UK stand out for me, with, with some hospitality companies and travel companies that we that we worked with along the way who, who were, you know, really struggling to to scale the experience, especially when they one company who purchased several other companies now had to write their messaging in 87 languages worldwide.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:12:48]:
87 languages.
Brian Spitzer [00:12:49]:
Yeah. Yeah. Including all of the all of the RTL languages, including all the double byte over there in, APAC. Right? So Oh my gosh. It was a it was quite it was quite an undertaking, for my team and I to to figure that out. That was more of an expansion. Right? Once we got them on track, like, okay. This is great.
Brian Spitzer [00:13:11]:
Now we need to do this because we just purchased 2 companies in the in the APAC theater, and, we’re gonna we’re gonna need to expand this out. So, you know, the the success of that, right, the spending the next few weeks doing so and getting a plan together for us was extremely I think it was an extremely rewarding process for ourselves because it also kind of helped us stretch, and we got to test our product within exact target at the time to figure out Yeah. Could we even support all these languages? Right? Like, do the databases support the languages? Can the language can the, script structure support it? Right? How can we manipulate at the time? Gosh. Were we h like, HTML 2, maybe? I’m trying to think where we were at that time, but, 3, maybe?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:13:55]:
Wow. But anyway,
Brian Spitzer [00:13:57]:
yeah. Wow. Rewriting script all the time to decide if it’s RTL versus LTR, how to handle things, like, you know, that shouldn’t be flipped, like the actual brand names of things.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:14:10]:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So,
Brian Spitzer [00:14:13]:
that was really
Jerome Clatworthy [00:14:14]:
for that in in exact target? Was there provisions for that or you had to sort of they had to sort of, I guess, evolve product at the time as you were implementing that that sort of, thing?
Brian Spitzer [00:14:23]:
We we created them. Yeah. I went back. So this is why the team lived in product. The team lived in product because that was one of the pieces. Right? We would say, okay. Our product doesn’t do this today. This is, like, a hard requirement for moving forward and scaling and growing our business and this company as well.
Brian Spitzer [00:14:40]:
And in order to do so, I would go back then and work with our chief engineers to say, like, hey. We need to add this. We need these pieces. And then, you know, what I would say is one thing I’m always very cognizant of, especially at the scale we already add is technical debt. So Yeah. I was always thinking like, okay. So let’s do this, but how can we apply it to all of the customers we have? Right? How do we make this a product offering versus a one off feature that Yeah. That is gonna push us further into that sort of technical debt piece to manage ongoing.
Brian Spitzer [00:15:11]:
But that’s that’s probably one of the most rewarding ones out of that group outside of, like, the 88%, you know, year over year stuff. Yeah. I would say the other one that comes to mind is a is, a different a different company, actually, a number of companies. So the other thing I did is we sort of specialized in working with all the daily deal sites at the time. Okay. And in working with all of these daily deal sites around the world, the Groupons, etcetera, of the world. Right? You know?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:15:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:15:39]:
That was that was extremely rewarding for us also to stretch our product, but then also to kind of understand the scale these customers have because, you know, their requirement was like, look, 75% of our sales happen in the 1st hour of going live. And if the message is delayed Yeah. Right. If the emails are delayed, if the messaging is delayed, then their revenue just goes like this. So it’s extremely important for us to be able to to move fast. And I think the rewarding part there or maybe the most interesting part of that for me was getting involved at a very, foundational level with, with Gmail and Yahoo and the other ISPs so that we could seed messages at the scale we needed to and ensure that 25,000,000 emails would be able to be sent out of, you know, our product and in in our our messaging center delivered in the inbox within 2 minutes across Gmail, across 25,000,000 sends in that 2 minute span, which is kind of an herded stuff. Right? So Yeah. That that type of scale was really, really fun for me.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:16:46]:
Yeah. So, again, very naive here. But so when you are working at that sort of scale, are there sort of reps from those companies that you deal with around the technical side of it, like to say, this is what we’re gonna be sending to you guys. How do you want us to send it? Is that or it’s like, nope. Here’s our documentation. You read it and do your best. Is it what’s Well,
Brian Spitzer [00:17:03]:
it was the latter at first, and we realized that wasn’t going to work because we were still getting, you know, not blocked, but we were getting throttled.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:17:10]:
So Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:17:11]:
We had to break through that throttling into that. And so we we actually got the messaging up to up to 50,000,000 a minute delivered
Jerome Clatworthy [00:17:18]:
My Yeah. From
Brian Spitzer [00:17:20]:
to Gmail. So think about that. 50,000,000 messages delivered across Gmail’s experience across world across the world, but, mostly North America at that time. But 50,000,000 in a minute delivered in the inbox. So it’s just just pretty just
Jerome Clatworthy [00:17:36]:
getting it to the user full stop or also getting it into the right because I was at that stage, was there the whole battle between the inbox versus the promotions tab versus all those other is is that a game, or it was just getting it in the inbox and that was the main challenge at that sort of point in time?
Brian Spitzer [00:17:51]:
We we had pretty much licked the promotion versus not. You know, we we kinda took care of that piece already. Okay. At that time, it was really just about the scale of getting it in the inbox because remember Okay. That first hour is, like, 75% of sales. And every minute that that hour is cut into I mean, we’re talking millions of revenue hourly. Right? They’re, they’re being calculated. So, I’d say the the flip side of those was the conversations where we’d have a customer come in and, you know, messages don’t always get out the way they need to, let’s just say.
Brian Spitzer [00:18:26]:
And they would come in and say, like, well, now that we missed the sale, we are asking for a $1,000,000 back on it to the bank.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:18:34]:
Wow. Okay. So they’re not mucking around.
Brian Spitzer [00:18:37]:
So no. They’re not mucking around. It’s their it’s their lifeblood.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:18:41]:
And it’s
Brian Spitzer [00:18:41]:
still true today. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s a different experience, I think, worldwide, but it’s still true today. I mean, that type of scale is something that we yeah, I mean, that type of scale is something that we at ET, I think, created. And, obviously, bunch of companies that run with it, right, since, but that was something that we really, we were the pioneers in that. And I got to I got to be at the the front, I guess, the the driver’s seat, if you will, in some cases, with our organization to to make manifest that.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:19:10]:
Right. Right. So how much of the challenge was the infrastructure on your side trying to make get get that much out at once? But, like, where was the technical challenge? Was it in product? Or is there some other intermediary that sort of deals with the the actual quantity, like, with like, at a high level for, techies?
Brian Spitzer [00:19:26]:
Yeah. It was yeah. It was it was first and foremost product.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:19:30]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:19:31]:
To to build and set up that many messages just in our own product, right, with the right amount of services and resources, utilizing the APIs, whatever. Right? Like, getting that to work was number 1. That was challenge number 1. Then challenge number 2 was now delivering it through what we call an MTA mail transfer agent
Jerome Clatworthy [00:19:49]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:19:50]:
Out to the ISP. Yeah. And we have to get all this done, right, in seconds. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Building new infrastructure, setting up a new data center, that kind of stuff was also part of that job to to get to that scale.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:20:06]:
Fantastic. That’s amazing. And just very briefly back on the, the first one you mentioned around, I guess, the the languages. So was the key Mhmm. Satisfaction there just just that multi language support function? Was that that was the key win in that that other sort of,
Brian Spitzer [00:20:20]:
case statement? Initially, but there’s a huge revenue component to this as well. Right? And that huge revenue component is the millions in bookings daily that they’re now able to successfully because the colloquialism as well is an important factor. Right? Not just, like, getting the language right. Great. But Mhmm. Translation is important, Placement on the page is important at that time. Placement in the inbox. Right? Above the fold, like, what they can see, etcetera.
Brian Spitzer [00:20:46]:
And and we did a really good job of increasing bookings over 50% for them year over year. Yeah. Quarter over quarter. Huge. The numbers were higher than that, but that’s what they shared with us. Like, it was it was a 50% bump. And, you know, they don’t wanna share, obviously, too much of that because then we would probably be able to say, well, then I think your subscription should be here, not here.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:21:05]:
Actually, did I let you know prices are also going up? Yeah. That’s a that’s a funny story.
Brian Spitzer [00:21:09]:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Something like that.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:21:12]:
And one more on the multi language. Was was the product, like, essentially auto translation or just made it easier for them to input, like, to what extent was it, here’s one plain English message that can then take care of half of those, or it was still they had to manually find someone to customize each message to certain?
Brian Spitzer [00:21:31]:
It was both. It was both. Okay. We did put some API plug ins and hooks into translate at the time Okay. Which were great and gave, like, an, you know, 90% of the way there for a lot of customers. Okay.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:21:42]:
Yeah. But
Brian Spitzer [00:21:42]:
then you also have customer brand, which comes into play, and their expectation is, like, well, that’s not really in our voice, so we’re gonna do this instead. Okay. And then they’ll go find local translation, typically. Yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:21:53]:
Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:21:53]:
Yeah. Whenever it came to that. Yep.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:21:55]:
Have you kept your tabs on that technology? Has auto translate stuff, like, got that much better in recent years, or it’s still about the same? Like, have you have you had much exposure to it in more recent times? Or I
Brian Spitzer [00:22:05]:
mean, the the API availability is much better. Right? And now AI makes
Jerome Clatworthy [00:22:09]:
it Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:22:09]:
Stupid simple. Yeah. One of the things I’m actually working on now and this is gonna be kinda like one of the other so if I talk about, like, use cases. So one thing that I’ve done too as well is, I’ve actually built a product just on top of AppExchange that that sort of builds and manages up to, like, 40 journeys inside of vertical Okay. For for customers sitting on marketing cloud, sales cloud, service cloud. And, so we built this product that that basically is journeys in a box. Right? Uh-huh. Allows you to activate journeys inside days, allows you to, you know, really jump start the, the journey experience.
Brian Spitzer [00:22:48]:
So where you have 1 or 2 journeys running, you could install our product and have 40 next week, which is which is a pretty, you know, a pretty big feat. And I I kinda mentioned that, as the other sort of use case because that I guess, use case and study is because I sell this over and over again, which is why I built this product because Yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:23:06]:
Right.
Brian Spitzer [00:23:06]:
We put this together because we kept seeing this challenge. We’d sit in boardrooms for 4 to 6 months, build out these journey plans, and go through these, you know, complex customer journeys with customers who are big Salesforce customers bought in on all clouds. Uh-huh. But they just struggle regardless of size. They just struggle to to kinda get, to get adoption moving. So we we’ve created a product that helps manage adoption ongoing.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:23:32]:
Okay. So what what type of gen like, yeah, what type of journeys could like, is it is it just that you’ve already sort of strategized or, like, a template out of the box? These things just came up so you’ve sort of, I guess, templatized those, and they can just sort of pick and choose what what’s relevant, what’s good, like, what what are some examples you’ve sort of mapped out sort of come up over and over.
Brian Spitzer [00:23:50]:
Yeah. It is it is a pick and choose, of your own experience. We also can do custom journeys on top of the product, Jerome. And the reason I’m kinda mentioning here with the AI piece is I’ve been working very diligently on this, what we call the create curation manager. But when you ask that question around, like, you know, technology and where that’s going and all that piece, the reason I was tying that back in is we’re building right now, we’re building a plugin on on our on our, curation manager with, you know, GPT to click a button, create messages, click a button, add copy, click a button. Eventually, you’ll be able to talk to it and build journeys inside Salesforce, in flows, as well as journey builder.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:24:38]:
Wow.
Brian Spitzer [00:24:38]:
So it’s a it’s a yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:24:40]:
Okay. In terms of how does it get the sort of parameters for the type of copy? If it’s click a button, here’s some copy. Is it it’s it’s reading sort of from data data on the on the page, or are you saying, give me sentence to talk about product x in a positive way? Or what sort of how’s it getting the inputs to to know what to give back?
Brian Spitzer [00:24:58]:
I mean, it’s it’s just talk to chat gpt, and he’ll the curation manager will tell you. So I’ve been teaching it. We’ve been having it learn, and we’ve been giving it, you know, context. For the demo, I I added in this idea of, like, so build, you know, the verticals. We specialize in banking regulation Yeah. Regulated industries, retail, high-tech, health care, those kind of industries.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:25:23]:
So, you
Brian Spitzer [00:25:24]:
know, a lot of those that are aligned to some Salesforce core industries. Mhmm.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:25:28]:
Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:25:28]:
And some of them yeah. Very regulated. But one of the things we can do with the product then is you can talk to it, and I’ve told it to add this sort of, you know, touch of dad humor in the way that it speaks in tone. So it’ll so it’ll give you it’ll give you back, you know, copy that has dad humor mixed in, like, you know, dad jokes. Right?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:25:48]:
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:25:50]:
So
Jerome Clatworthy [00:25:50]:
Oh, that’s hilarious.
Brian Spitzer [00:25:51]:
Yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:25:52]:
What Yeah. Have you explored or come across any, I guess, legal limitation in terms of output from, you know, chat gbt? Does it then have to be cleared by sort of legal before it can be put in journeys, or you haven’t found that to be too big of a deal, like, given it is such a regulated space that you’re you’re playing in?
Brian Spitzer [00:26:08]:
Yeah. We haven’t found that to be too big of a deal because that we’re not we’re not building, you know, copy that the customer is gonna go just run with. They have to go to legal anyway in these regulated industries.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:26:19]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:26:20]:
So this probably gets them you know, this like, this can do 98% of it for them. Right? And then there’s, you know Speeds
Jerome Clatworthy [00:26:25]:
up that first draft process dramatically.
Brian Spitzer [00:26:29]:
Yeah. Because whether it’s journeys, whether it’s implementations, whether it’s integrations within Salesforce, I think, you know, I I wrote down these, like, keys that I have, right, that I think about for, like, keys for success with Salesforce for customers as well as partners and SIs, etcetera. Yep. Doing too much at once is typically the challenge I find and not having a clear sort of, like, quick win goal. Right? So, like, so my keys essentially, if I kinda back back this into that, right, is
Jerome Clatworthy [00:27:00]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:27:01]:
You know, trust is number 1. Right? So not just trust because in Salesforce, it thinks about trust, but also trust in the implementation partner. In my case, my product. Right? Our product called Orchestra. That, you know because there’s there is still a great asymmetry in this marketplace where the consumer, the buyer, if you will, even though they have a lot of information, they might come into this buying cycle 60% ready to go. Right? Before, they were a lot further behind. But there’s still a ton of asymmetry in the technology. And you’re dealing with people that are like, well, I bought Salesforce because I’m not an expert at CRMs and marketing, etcetera.
Brian Spitzer [00:27:38]:
I bought that because, you know, I sell medical equipment.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:27:42]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:27:42]:
You guys are the experts in that. So I think really understanding your role, and taking a lot of care and empathy with that understanding of asymmetry is extremely important for success. So I found that to be kinda one of those keys.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:27:57]:
Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:27:57]:
Iteration, I cannot stress iteration enough. And that’s one of the reasons we built that product because we were just seeing everybody trying to boil the ocean all the time. And I’m like, just get get get started. Give me get 3 quick wins. Let’s get 3 goals in place. Let’s measure those, and let’s just build from there. So I think just trust in getting people adopting quickly, with a really nice clean road map of, like, hey. We’re gonna take you here, then we can go here, and then we can do this.
Brian Spitzer [00:28:25]:
Right? We can get on the rocket ship and do whatever it is you wanna do. But
Jerome Clatworthy [00:28:29]:
Yeah. That I’ve found has come up.
Brian Spitzer [00:28:30]:
Quick goals. Over and over
Jerome Clatworthy [00:28:31]:
again in the other conversations around that need to, you know, get a minimum product out there. Get them using it because not only that will help them understand, oh, yeah. No. That was I thought that’s what we wanted, but that was useless or didn’t work at all or didn’t work and then they have but I realized this could help and that would change things that I had no idea that was even a possibility. So getting them in there and actually using the system in a simple way is, yeah, so important and often overlooked when we wanna spend more time on the front end before we even deliver something they start using. You know?
Brian Spitzer [00:28:59]:
Yeah. It is. Because I think, you know, failure is an interesting thing. Right? Because for me, I look at we look at things like failure, struggles, whatever those are. Obviously, a, there are these there’s these teachable moments, but even more, they’re necessary for exception in the future. You can’t get there in the 1st iteration. You’re never gonna get there. It’s not Yes.
Brian Spitzer [00:29:20]:
You’re not gonna have it perfect on day 1. And so being willing to fail within a guardrail because it fits inside your goal, that’s important. The data from that to me is extremely important for success in the future.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:29:34]:
Yeah. So shouldn’t I still I mean, I I think corporate world overall is getting better in that sense, but it still does have a slight negative connotation overall, doesn’t it, like the word failure? Whereas, yeah, there’s a lot of managers these days of fail forward, fail fast, you know, that kind of thing where it’s it’s it’s more and more understood that it’s it’s critical. Alright. What have we learned? Boom. Let’s go again and change. Okay. Next. Let’s iterate.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:29:53]:
Boom. Let’s keep going. So, yeah, fascinating.
Brian Spitzer [00:29:56]:
But often often, I think what happens is you’re not allowed to fail when there’s too much at stake revenue wise. So you don’t have the ability to fail if you have to perform. Right?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:30:06]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:30:07]:
If the time crunch is there and you have to perform, there’s no room to fail. So that’s what I like about this idea of, like, hey. It’s an iteration. Let’s take it slow. Let’s start here. It’s okay if Yeah. Like you said, fill
Jerome Clatworthy [00:30:18]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:30:18]:
Fill forward, fill fast. Right? Let’s learn from it. I often think that the revenue tied to something or, like, an implementation specifically where you have a half a $1,000,000, $20,000 implementation, you’ve got all these goals in place and all these things you have to hit, oftentimes, that becomes more of a challenge because you aren’t given the room to fail Yeah. To the guardrails to learn so you can be better next time.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:30:43]:
Yeah. I was gonna say, how how often is that a barrel? Like, obviously, if if you guys are walking in with that mentality, how often is that define how often a client’s like, yep. We’re the same. That’s that’s in line, or you really gotta sort of take them on that journey to understand the benefits of that that sort of philosophy. Is it No. We often a challenge.
Brian Spitzer [00:30:58]:
We typically have to take them on yeah. We take them on that journey. I mean, you know, in my world, it’s funny, though, that there’s no such thing as the word no. Right? Everything’s a yes, and for what I do. So Yeah. Like, yes, we can do that, and here is the trade off. I think the the expectation setting becomes so key for success now and in the future. But as far as the failure piece, I mean, you know, there’s room.
Brian Spitzer [00:31:21]:
Right? I always give room for our team. Like, I wanna know. Let’s you know, like, you know, like, it goes back back way back in time. You can always use Edison’s, you know, finding several thousand ways not to build a light bulb. Like, that’s an interesting one, right, for Yeah. For Americans anyway. Like, that’s that’s one that we always talk about. You know, that’s a that’s a good moniker of failure and success from it.
Brian Spitzer [00:31:44]:
But yeah. I mean, I I give room for it. I think it’s important. And that’s why I talk a lot about even with, like, the product we built with Journeys. It’s like, just get the first five going. We have these 5 journeys. You can just do them right out of the box, click a button, and go. See some success, and then launch the other 23.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:31:59]:
Yeah. Okay. So are those journeys just a bit more to are they sort of, I guess, sector agnostic? Or with that product, is there, like, categories for the big sectors you work in? Or the journeys are sort of general enough that you then customize it to the to the vertical point? So
Brian Spitzer [00:32:15]:
It’s it’s a little of both. I mean, you know, we do offer to the customer to build custom and configurable journeys within the product. So we we allow that to happen, which is which is a lot of fun for us. But at the same time, we do have kinda that first five I talk about. So referrals, CSAT, a newsletter of some kind, maybe a product offering or product onboarding or customer onboarding. Those are kinda the typical ones we see that just happen, you know, regardless of the vertical that works. Health care, banking, financial services. Right? But then if you get a little more nuance, like, we go into banking, which is one of our big sectors today.
Brian Spitzer [00:32:48]:
In FINS, you know, we have specific journeys for launching your credit card using your debit card, adoption of online banking features, and bill pay, and the mobile app, and all this, you know, product value add that they have. That’s something
Jerome Clatworthy [00:33:03]:
that we Each vertical has got their own milestones about what’s gonna be really important in terms of getting that client in the system and likely to stay and likely to take more products and all that kind of stuff.
Brian Spitzer [00:33:13]:
Yeah. Exactly. How do you build the customer for life? Right? How do you how do you create the stickiness factor that you’re looking for? We Yeah. We sort of aim to get that started and give you data to to build into it.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:33:24]:
Yeah. Brilliant. No. That’s fascinating. Anything else you wanna anymore on the list there before we talk about something that didn’t go so well?
Brian Spitzer [00:33:33]:
No. I think, you know, I’ll I’ll kinda summarize the this sort of didn’t didn’t go so well. A number of times, we would walk into those conversations and and kind of not the SWAT team alone, but just along the way. I think it’s something I’ve learned in my career. This of these things that don’t go so well. Right? What I’ve learned, especially in implementations and the customer is definitely spending a lot of money, resources, etcetera, time, whether it’s our fault, it’s our fault. Yeah. And that’s just how we think about it.
Brian Spitzer [00:34:11]:
We just go into that mindset. Like, I may not be to blame, but you know what? We’re accountable and responsible because, like, we’re here. So, Yeah. First first thing I do is I listen. We listen to the customer. They voice all the concerns. And one thing I found off the back of that, and it’s worked pretty well for us, even a lot of these failures, if you will, is listening. You know, people will tell you what they wanna talk about in the first five minutes or why they’re there.
Brian Spitzer [00:34:36]:
You’re gonna get it figured out. Right? Just gotta listen actively.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:34:40]:
Yeah. We
Brian Spitzer [00:34:40]:
have 2 of these, one of those.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:34:42]:
Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:34:45]:
Yeah. And what we then do and what I often do is I I, you know, you apologize. Right? Whatever that looks like. You you lay on lay on the sword, whatever it is. And then what we often do coming out of it is to say, you know, something to the effect of, like, I can go back and I can get you all the information on what it is that went wrong, or I can start helping you today with what you need. Yeah. So let’s put that list together. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:35:16]:
I can help you now or I can help you sometime in the future. Yeah. And we can go do all the research.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:35:22]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:35:22]:
And you know what? Every single time except one except for one case Yeah. They opt for us to help them now.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:35:29]:
Yeah. Let’s go then. Thank you for that. Let’s start. Boom.
Brian Spitzer [00:35:33]:
Yeah. And I think that’s that’s the biggest kinda takeaway high level on failures. Right? Because there’s been a number of those. Yeah. Because as they talked about, like, I have no I have no I have 0 qualms about failing, learning from that failure Mhmm. And moving forward. Because I think, you know, even when we fail, we probably got 80 something percent of it right, which means we’re doing better than most.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:35:57]:
Absolutely.
Brian Spitzer [00:35:58]:
Yeah. It’s just that last 15%, 20% we gotta figure out or 22%. And, we’ll get there, but you don’t get there without the failure.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:36:08]:
Yeah. And I think yeah. It makes such a difference to take responsibility. Because even if they told you what they want and you build exactly what they asked for, you could say that’s their fault, not mine. But then you can easily flip that and say, well, we didn’t do a good enough job exploring your requirements. So understood. We’ll take that off. Yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:36:23]:
Almost there’s no way that there’s there’s almost no situation where you couldn’t take personal responsibility for it in in that approach and and then move forward. Is that No.
Brian Spitzer [00:36:30]:
Because the asymmetry is so active there. Right? You know more than them. You’re the expert. So Yeah. Their gaps are so far typically. Right? They have many of them. And so it’s like, okay. You gotta bridge them, which means you gotta take accountability for it regardless.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:36:45]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. Big learning there. I love that. Cool.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:36:51]:
Cool. Anything on there before we move on to a few, techy, geek out questions that I’d like to ask before we wrap up?
Brian Spitzer [00:36:56]:
Yeah. No. Let’s let’s go with let’s go with geeky questions. I’m good.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:37:00]:
IPhone or Android, where you at? Which side of the fence do you sit on?
Brian Spitzer [00:37:04]:
Blue blue bubbles.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:37:06]:
Which one’s that?
Brian Spitzer [00:37:07]:
For so an iPhone.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:37:09]:
Yeah. Beautiful. Good. We’re on the same team. That’s nice. Mac or PC? You guys on Macs if you’re in marketing world? What’s that?
Brian Spitzer [00:37:16]:
So Still PC? Mac. No. No. No. Mac for 15 years now, maybe even longer because it’s actually a better developer machine. Comes out of the box, right, with all the tools inside terminal. Ready to go? Okay. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:37:29]:
Yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:37:30]:
Beautiful. Fine, Max. And what are you guys using in house to sort of, I guess, communicate and manage your projects? What’s your internal tech stack?
Brian Spitzer [00:37:38]:
Well, I mean, you know, we’re Salesforce partners and whatnot. So we have Slack, number 1. Yep. Text message a lot. We, we use Discord channel as well at times. Okay. For just the more
Jerome Clatworthy [00:37:51]:
random questions and ad hoc in communication?
Brian Spitzer [00:37:55]:
That or just because we just don’t wanna type it out on, like, an Imessage or whatever.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:38:00]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:38:01]:
I have a little bit more flexibility. So we used we used Discord a lot for those kinda text things.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:38:06]:
Okay. And what about project management? Are you in Jira? Or how are you keeping track of all the the granular details in development and stuff?
Brian Spitzer [00:38:15]:
Working with customers in Jira, but we’ve used Asana historically. Okay.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:38:19]:
Yeah. That works around. Happy with that.
Brian Spitzer [00:38:20]:
I just I like the visualization for, you know, for customer experience, so the customer can see quickly. I think it’s an easier interface for the customer to interact than than Jira is, for sure.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:38:30]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:38:31]:
If they’re not a Jira shop already.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:38:33]:
Yeah. Right. Nice. And if you were CEO of Salesforce for the day, what’s, one thing you would change, whether it be bug fix or product development? Is there sort of one thing that you’re like, oh, I wish I could just wave your magic wand and change something about Salesforce. Or
Brian Spitzer [00:38:48]:
Oh, if I were Mark for the day. Josh, I I think, you know, I have 2 of them. One of them is kind of geeky techy. I’ll just say it. Yeah. If you build if you build flows inside of a product and manage in a managed package, they cannot be changed after deployed. So nothing can change inside of Salesforce flow. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:39:07]:
So we’ve built a work on
Jerome Clatworthy [00:39:09]:
them with that. Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:39:11]:
Yep. You can’t change that. So I would get on top of that if you were gonna scale the product and start using flows to manage all interactions. You’re gonna need flexibility there. On the geeky side, that’s the one I would change. The Yep. The other one, though, that I would probably change is just, you know, better transparency, with the last 2 years. Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:39:37]:
In what sense? Like, hang on. You know, from from risks to announcements Yep. Changes to the worst secrets in technology that are still there.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:39:48]:
Yeah. K. You
Brian Spitzer [00:39:49]:
know, know everybody knows them, like, Exodus and, you know, entry of new people. Okay. It’s all there. Salesforce is too big. You can’t hide it. And I don’t think I don’t think ecosystem’s done a fantastic job Okay. The last couple of years of being transparent.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:40:07]:
Okay. Interesting. Haven’t heard that one. That’s cool. And in terms of I guess, there must be cases where you, inherit an existing org. What sort of things have you seen in terms of maybe poor practice themes that when you take on an existing org or or existing configuration that you think people should be mind mindful of when they’re implementing for a client? Is there sort of certain patterns or themes that come up?
Brian Spitzer [00:40:29]:
Yeah. I got 2. Yeah. Hard coded everything inside of dev for for AppExchange apps, especially on core.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:40:40]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:40:41]:
Hard coding, like, everything, like, including Salesforce IDs of opportunities and accounts and No. Like, stuff like that. Yeah. So that’s the that’s the techie one, I’d say, like, the key one. Yeah. And then the other one I see sort of holistically is I do see a lot of teams try to solve for everything for these customers as opposed to giving them kind of a road map. And I you get to it, and it’s just the customer’s like, oh, I need this, but I need that field. I need this, and I wanna connect to that object.
Brian Spitzer [00:41:11]:
So you’ve got all these relationships all over the place that I look at that, and I’m like, that should be like 2 things.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:41:20]:
So just piecemeal development. Did this one day because they wanted it the next day. We added this field because they wanted that field. The next day, we did this. Whereas, if they put the brakes on a bit and stood back and ask some bigger questions, they might have been get a better better outcome a lot more efficiently, maybe.
Brian Spitzer [00:41:33]:
Yeah. Because I think a lot of best guys don’t know how to say yes and. They know how to say
Jerome Clatworthy [00:41:36]:
yes. Yep.
Brian Spitzer [00:41:38]:
But they don’t know how to say yes and, which is always the part that I’m, you know, very keen on, which is, like, yes and this is what that means.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:41:46]:
And that’s yeah. So that’s from Salesforce because it can do it can pretty much do almost anything you think of. We could probably make it happen somehow. But if you’re on hand, you know. And that’ll also mean Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:41:56]:
That you
Jerome Clatworthy [00:41:57]:
need a developer full time to manage that, the implications of that every time you wanna change one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:42:03]:
Yes. And this is 500 x to hours based on what you wanna integrate with your EHR. So maybe we don’t go there right now.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:42:12]:
Yeah. But I
Brian Spitzer [00:42:13]:
don’t say that part. I just you know, you put it back to the customer like, hey. Yes. Yeah. We can do it, and here’s the trade off.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:42:20]:
Yeah. Sure. Cool. Cool. How many hours do you think you work in a week on average? What would you average smooth it out to?
Brian Spitzer [00:42:31]:
Sixty something, probably. Okay. I’d say. Somewhere in there. Mean
Jerome Clatworthy [00:42:36]:
Sort of late at night stuff to complement the workday, or you’re up up nice and early? What is it what is it how does that happen?
Brian Spitzer [00:42:42]:
It’s that ebbs and flows, actually. More West Coast customers equals later nights, obviously, for me. Yeah. Okay. And, so that happens a few days a week, I’d say. I can get started a little bit later. Yeah. But, yeah, it’s probably somewhere in the 60 60 number, I think, at this point in my career.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:43:02]:
Yep. And I guess what’s the perfect day for you to door locked just under the hood, or you sort of you wanna be talking and meeting with people? What’s what’s your preferred mode of operation these days?
Brian Spitzer [00:43:12]:
It’s probably a half and half.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:43:15]:
Okay. So you you enjoy a bit of
Brian Spitzer [00:43:17]:
last 30 yeah. I wanna be in front of the customer because I wanna hear what people are talking about. I like to get the feedback. I like to have the interaction. Mhmm. But I do not love 30 minute meetings.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:43:33]:
Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:43:33]:
14 or 15 Too long. 30 minute meetings in a day. No. They’re they’re so short. Okay. The 30 minute meetings, like, when you have them,
Jerome Clatworthy [00:43:42]:
like enough time to get into it.
Brian Spitzer [00:43:44]:
Well, it’s not even that. We get into typically the conversation. I just don’t remember what I said at 9 AM by 3 3:30.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:43:51]:
Yeah. Okay.
Brian Spitzer [00:43:52]:
Like, I and there’s just there’s just so many meetings, right, when you
Jerome Clatworthy [00:43:55]:
Yeah. Right.
Brian Spitzer [00:43:55]:
Have the 30 minutes. And Yeah. But I’d also just say, like, for me, like, those are the days I don’t love. Yeah. Is is them Understood. 30 minute meetings back to back.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:44:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You walk out in Yeah. Not knowing which way is
Brian Spitzer [00:44:11]:
up. Yeah. I I I think the ideal day for me, though, is where I get to like, right now when I’m I’m working on a lot of this GPT stuff within the AI and the APIs Mhmm. That’s exciting for me. I like to get a few hours in on that almost every day if I can. So it’s kind of a half and half. Yeah.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:44:27]:
Yep. And, yeah, I guess the next question was gonna be on AI. So, obviously, you’re seeing huge value of it in terms of text generation and things like that copy. And do you think that’s the key benefit that we’re seeing right now? Like, how long until you think, you know, the role of an admin or somebody that sort of that’s working under the hood sees a real change in in their day to day life from, AI in the Salesforce workflow?
Brian Spitzer [00:44:48]:
I think the change is already happening, but I don’t think it’s replacing Okay. Anybody. I don’t
Jerome Clatworthy [00:44:55]:
I
Brian Spitzer [00:44:55]:
don’t feel that that’s the the role of what AI is gonna do. I mean, it’s it’s doing all these things that should just happen anyway. Right? But the the human brain and the sort of, like, free will and cognition that we have. Right? Mhmm. I think it’s still you know, it’s not gonna take your jobs away. I don’t see it that way. I I just see it altering, you know, higher brain function like what we need to be doing. Right?
Jerome Clatworthy [00:45:25]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:45:26]:
I love that I can talk to GPT, and it could build me, like, a framework for a node app because that’s, like, mindless things. Right? Like, it’s, like, mindless stuff to do. But what it can’t do is it can’t, you know, design the user experience the way I need it to, at least not today. And then also when it gets into, like, specific feature sets, not there yet. Right? We’ll get there a little bit, but it still has to come from somewhere. It’s not just gonna be, you know, out of thin air. This happens.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:45:57]:
Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:45:57]:
Right? There’s Yeah. There’s still a component. I’ve gotta drive what I want AI to do for me.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:46:04]:
Yeah. Definitely.
Brian Spitzer [00:46:06]:
And that’s the worst smart part for me.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:46:09]:
Yeah. And I think it just gives us more time to do the things that only humans can do, and it does. And I just find because some people love typing words and other people find it an absolute drag, and it takes all their energy to try and compose a paragraph that meets their needs. But the fact you just here here’s 3 facts. Give me a synopsis or give me an email template about blah. That’s such a like, I just find it so useful in that sense. So, here’s a formula that’s not working at all. Give me a formula for a boom or, you know, that kind of stuff that, yeah, you could do it.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:46:36]:
Yep. You can sort of get pretty close in 2 minutes and then spend 5 minutes tickling it up, and you’re good to go instead of taking a couple of hours like you would have liked for that sort of stuff. I think it’s phenomenal. But we’ve seen the challenges of a lot of the other AI products as soon as they deviate from opportunities and accounts and contacts. So given the customer, you know, given the, yeah, the customer development in so many orgs, like, I can’t imagine a single product that’s gonna come in and be fantastic at everyone’s, you know, weird and wonderful orgs I’ve got set up. So, yeah, I totally agree. I’m not I don’t see the threat. I just see the benefit.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:47:09]:
Yeah. If someone’s not adding value, then, yeah, then they might be worried. But for someone who’s actually adding value and, you know, talking to humans and trying to understand the situation and how that that could be improved, yeah. It can only be a help, I think.
Brian Spitzer [00:47:23]:
I I agree. Cool. Yeah. It’s just it’s it’s gonna it’s really gonna help. Like you said, I think it will. It just speeds up the things that take time today that shouldn’t. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Spitzer [00:47:34]:
And I actually find that it actually helps me stimulate my brain even faster. Yeah. By leveraging it.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:47:39]:
Cool. Yeah. Fantastic. Love that. Alright. Well, that was awesome, Brian. I love hearing all the different responses to those. So that’s my interrogation complete, but please tell us a bit about MarTech Ventures and, yeah, what you guys can do for people.
Brian Spitzer [00:47:54]:
Yeah. I’d love to. So like I said, we’re we’re kind of a niche as far as the AppExchange space is concerned. Typically, we build apps on top of ecosystem. A growing part of our business though now has become go to markets consulting as well as security review consulting. And, you know, taking it from MVP to v one consulting, we do a lot of that, I’d say. I spend about a quarter of my week right now consulting with companies who are building on their own, on top of the AppExchange space. And so, you know, we’re just taking that expertise and saying, hey.
Brian Spitzer [00:48:22]:
Here’s how I might recommend it. You guys obviously have some goals, etcetera, in mind, and here’s what my experience tells me, and customers seem to appreciate that quite a bit. So that’s that’s something we’re doing a lot
Jerome Clatworthy [00:48:31]:
of cloud or just app development across the board? Or It’s
Brian Spitzer [00:48:35]:
more so
Jerome Clatworthy [00:48:35]:
in that marketing experience?
Brian Spitzer [00:48:36]:
Really both. Okay. Yeah. It’s both. I mean, marketing cloud for sure because of the experience. Right? Kind of a very unique experience there. But, no, it’s not just marketing cloud. It’s it’s definitely across all the clouds that we can service.
Brian Spitzer [00:48:48]:
Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, that’s kinda what we’re up to, for this year. And then, like I said, the the AppExchange product, I’m I’m heavily involved in the AI side of getting that, building up that product and bolstering its its functionality. We do offer about I think the number is kind of a 185 journeys available in market today. So there’s there’s a way to get started. Right? Any of those companies That’s in that one product? Well, there’s
Jerome Clatworthy [00:49:13]:
a few products that’s in that single product that’s called Orchestra.
Brian Spitzer [00:49:16]:
It’s just that product. Yep. Orchestra with AK, not a CH. So orchestrainc.com is the is the site. And then martechventures.com, obviously, is our is our site, to get to get more information, but also, you know, reaching out to the Salesforce ISV team for any customers and partners. And they can they can connect us as well.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:49:36]:
Brilliant. Oh, well, I really appreciate your time. I know you’re busy, so I’ll bring it to an end. But just finish off, what’s, something on the horizon that’s exciting for you, whether it be at work or outside of work? What’s, something that’s exciting coming up?
Brian Spitzer [00:49:50]:
Yeah. So I think, probably, like, spring break, some time there. Yeah. Got
Jerome Clatworthy [00:49:56]:
a few courses on the get list that you’re gonna visit. Recharge. Yeah. Well,
Brian Spitzer [00:50:00]:
I do actually, I do have a golf trip planned.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:50:02]:
Oh, yeah? I do have a
Brian Spitzer [00:50:03]:
golf trip planned. Yeah. We do one every year. We’re, we’re going up to a place called Sand Valley in Wisconsin this year. So Okay. That’ll be a lot of fun. So, yeah, there’ll be a golf trip. That’s true.
Brian Spitzer [00:50:14]:
And then I think on the work side, though, I just like, I’m really excited about the the advent of utilizing AI to help to help bolster the offerings.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:50:22]:
And, yeah, just got me another question. Do you think, OpenAI is gonna be the leader there, or is there anything else you’re aware of that’s coming sort of, from a competitor that’s even close to being useful, or the OpenAI stuff is the only things that are on the market at the moment?
Brian Spitzer [00:50:36]:
Well, there are, but I think we’ve sort of defined a clear winner. Right? I mean, I think it’s Yeah. I don’t I don’t I mean, I kinda see that as potentially it’s even over. But then, you know, that shift the paradigm shift is gonna happen. This isn’t the this is not, you know, the last generation of it. So Yep. For now, it is OpenAI. I I can’t say whether or not I’m gonna you know, 5 years from now, I’d put that bet down.
Brian Spitzer [00:50:59]:
But for now, absolutely.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:51:01]:
Yeah. Sure.
Brian Spitzer [00:51:01]:
That’s where the that’s where the development is, and that’s where all the companies are bought in.
Jerome Clatworthy [00:51:05]:
Yeah. Cool. Cool. Oh, well, thanks to you, Brian. Appreciate that, and, have a great day, man.
Brian Spitzer [00:51:10]:
You bet. Yeah. You too. Thanks, Jerome. Thanks.