Sarah Patterson, CMO of Samsara, shares valuable lessons learned at Salesforce that led her to achieve a career goal: taking a company public as CMO. Learn about the challenges Sarah faced and overcame while part of the Ohana, and how these experiences set Sarah up to lead marketing at a company with a $12B valuation.
Sarah Patterson, CMO of Samsara, shares valuable lessons learned at Salesforce which lead her to achieve a career goal: taking a company public as CMO. Learn about the challenges Sarah faced and overcame while part of the Ohana, and how these experiences set Sarah up to lead marketing at a company with a $12B valuation, and much more.
Quotes
“Through my time at Salesforce, I had been prepping... What type of opportunity and challenge do I want to tackle next? I always tell this to folks: look for the job descriptions of the job you want to have next in 4-5 years down the road and think through what are the skills that you need to add to your tool belt. That's what I was doing. I was growing all of the skills to be a well-rounded marketer.”
Episode Timestamps:
*(1:43) - Ohana Origins
*(3:40) - Sarah’s first major challenge at Salesforce
*(5:33) - Insights from building the service cloud team
*(12:18) - Working on Chatter.com Superbowl Ad
*(15:58) - What’s Cooking
*(18:14) - Product vs. platform positioning
*(21:40) - Applying past lessons from Salesforce to current problems
*(24:47) - Future Forecast
*(25:55) - Advice for aspiring CMOs
*(26:59) - Lightning Round
Sponsor
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Links
[00:00:00] Dan: Welcome to Inside the Ohana. I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified. And today I'm joined by the one and only Sarah Patterson. Sarah, how are you doing?
[00:00:09] Sarah: I'm great. Dan, I get to spend this time with you.
Dan: I want to dive right into our first segment, called Ohana Origins. So thinking back, bring me back into the way back machine, going back to 2008. Tell me how you discovered Salesforce.
[00:00:24] I discovered Salesforce in 2007. I'm going to go back even further. I was. Graduate school. I was getting my MBA and went to a job fair that we had on campus and was talking to all these different companies and went up to this, smaller booth and started talking to, this gentleman there named Scott Holden.
[00:00:45] He had gone to the same business school I went to. And I started learning about Salesforce and the CRM that they had built.
Dan: I love that story because it feels like all roads lead back to Scott Holden. So I just love calling him out, all the time. But so give me the details though. What was your first job at Salesforce? Who is your team, the size of the company at the time, your initial impression, like on the inside, give our viewers and listeners,a kind of a sneak peek into where Salesforce was back in 2008?
[00:01:18] Sarah: My first job I actually was coming in and I was taking over. SMB product marketing taking over from Scott Holden, who was moving into another job. So right there all roads lead right back to Scott.
[00:01:31] So I took over and I built out our first micro-site for our small and mid-sized business customers worked on the customer references, and created all these different videos for that as well. But I also have to say the interesting piece was Al was my boss for September through December, and then I was switched to Sean Whiteley.
[00:01:51] Sarah: So I very quickly, within three months had my second boss at the time.
[00:01:55] Dan: For everyone out there, obviously Sean Whiteley is the co-founder of qualified. so obviously you have a very long history with him I remember him telling me a story about you, where he gave you a challenge to create, 25 SMB videos, and you've really absolutely crushed it at that time. I mean, anything else you want to share about that?
[00:02:13] Sarah: I think his challenge was go solve the problem. Basically our eight ease spending a lot of time answering the same questions. There's gotta be a more efficient way, right. For our customers as well as for our business. And so that was where I started doing this, digging around and brainstorming and seeing what was out there in the world.
[00:02:32] We were saying, Hey, maybe we go and try creating some short video to. Right to help our customers be able to self-serve cause then talking to customers too, they didn't want to have to wait to talk to a salesperson to get their question answered. They wanted to know in the moment they wanted a quick answer.
[00:02:48] And so, yes, I surveyed our salespeople. I got the list of the top questions that they were answering and then I. And I scoped out and mapped out the fastest way to do all of those tasks in Salesforce, everything from creating a custom object to, creating a new contact, creating an account. how do you set up, right.
[00:03:09] And start to measure your pipeline as a salesperson. And I wrote out the scripts to show people how to do this. And then I bought my own microphone. And I bought my own video editing software and the project took me a little while. Like I'm not going to lie. That was a very arduous project to enter into on my own. But the result was for almost, I don't even know how long five to eight years those videos were sitting out there.
[00:03:36] I think Salesforce even changed the UI and the videos were still out there because they were getting so much play from our customers. but that was that video project. I think that earned me a lot of, credibility in the marketing org of, wow. She learned the tool. She knew what it was doing as a product marketer.
[00:03:50] And she knew how to clearly explain the value to our customers as she was showing them how to use the product.
[00:03:56] Dan: Look, I mean, you've had an incredible run at Salesforce. You were there for 14 years. and I really want you to brag here, just for a little bit, because you've been helping with launch products, like you were just talking about with SMB products, like chatter, Work.com and the vaccine cloud, which is more recently, but for a very long time, you really helped build the service cloud into the largest product line and what it is today.
[00:04:20] So, I mean, what is the biggest success you've had in and what are you most proud of at Salesforce?
[00:04:26] Sarah: So I would go back to building the service cloud team, the service cloud as a brand at Salesforce. that is one of my biggest successes in my career. And I often tell people too, right. That when you think about your career journey, I truly believe this. There are some projects, there are some things you're going to remember, but more often than not, you're going to remember the impact you had on people.
[00:04:54] And I feel like I was really able to, as a leader, help people to develop their best marketing skills, to be able to be a part of a team that was solving some really tough challenges and went through some really hard times, but got to the other side of it and help those individuals to grow their careers, and have a big impact on the people's lives.
[00:05:14] I am really, when I think back on my career, I love the fact that I went into the service cloud world. And to take you back in time when I was approached about taking on this job. Alex Bard approached me at my manager, focused Griffin at the time, approached me about it and the product line wasn't doing well.
[00:05:32] It had missed some internal targets that had been set for it. And the company was really looking for someone to come in and do a turnaround situation for it, like really infuse some life and some excitement back into this product line and make it successful. And, So I was looking around going and as a leader, going into any new type of situation you should ask, what are the resources that are going to be there to set me up for success.
[00:05:58] And I had a team of three product marketers and Nate and I had half of a contractor to help with campaigns. Right? So 50% of a contractor's time to help on campus. It was not a situation where I thought it was really set up for success. And, that was a big discussion that I had with them at the time of, okay, this is going to take a lot of work.
[00:06:20] Is this, is everybody going to be behind me? Is everybody going to give me the time to make the turnaround happen and invest in the product line? And, and they did right to their credit. Salesforce said, yes, we understand. We need to invest in. We will be behind you. We will make those investments.
[00:06:37] Coming in Alex and I partnered, we basically looked at how do we fix the relationship with sales? There was no relationship where the teams were talking together and marketing and sales needs to be joined at the hip in order to, make your pipeline number and make sure that pipeline is going actually close.
[00:06:54] You're driving in the right types of deals to hit your ACV goals. so I fixed the relationship with sales. We repositioned the product into a broader platform play and really talked about the success we had in the world of customer service, but leading off of our competitive differentiation of being a platform and already having the sales cloud data at your fingertips, and then brought new life into the product line.
[00:07:19] And a lot of this. You know, a true partnership with the product management team, with Larry Robinson who is leading product there, and was absolutely incredible with Alex Bard as the GM and bringing in some very forward-looking products like SOS, where you could, uh, do a FaceTime call basically, but allow the person who was providing you help to see into the apps on your phone and be able to help you with them.
[00:07:44] So through that, we were able to. Really reignite and get the momentum going behind this new product lines that the company had and continue that momentum to help it become one of the largest product lines Salesforce has had. so just to replay back, what I heard was, with service cloud, it was the relationships you created with sales, to Really make sure that the marketing and sales were in check with, the messaging and how things were being positioned in the market. your relationship with product management and understanding, where the latest innovations were coming from.
[00:08:16] And then of course, product innovation, such as like the SOS, really coming through showing customer, if you're going to be there in the future. Right. That's what they want to know. Are you going to be the partner that's going to help us get to the future?
[00:08:27] and your, and service cloud is helping bring them into the future. And because of that innovation, you should come with the service cloud. That's great.
[00:08:35] Dan: So Sarah, on the opposite side of the spectrum, what would you say your biggest lesson learned at Salesforce?
[00:08:42] One of the biggest ones I would say is as I look back on myself as a leader being authentic and being vulnerable, and Bernay brown actually is someone that, at Salesforce, the company had her come and talk to different individuals, talk to the entire company at a kickoff one year.
[00:09:03] Sarah: And the biggest lesson I learned from her is that vulnerability and that authenticity draws people closer. And that's true courage, right? And early in my career, I strove for perfection all the time. I put this very high bar out there for myself of everything I needed to do. I wanted to absolutely crush it.
[00:09:26] But that's not always going to bring you your best work and that's not always going to help your team really feel like they can also achieve, what you're trying to do. And I learned through my time at Salesforce. That when I was my most vulnerable, that was when people really were able to say, oh, Sarah's fallible too.
[00:09:43] she doesn't have all the answers. I'm going to bring even better ideas because she's owning it admitting right. That everybody here needs to contribute. And it created this. The space for people to be able to talk about when they were struggling, which is a leader you've got to be able to be there for your team and help when things aren't going well.
[00:10:01] that's one of the most valuable things a leader can do, and it also just, it helped everybody to bring their best self and really create the sense of everybody banding together. So if I could go back and give myself some advice, And if I could take a look at, what I would want to change about my career it's to own that vulnerability earlier, that there is nothing wrong with that.
[00:10:23] Sarah: And that actually helps you to become a better leader faster, and helps other people to bring their best work, to work and their best selves to work.
[00:10:31] Dan: I heard so much there. I mean, bring your authentic self to work. The vulnerable and courageous, also done is better than perfect. And, my favorite was launched launch and relaunch or launch and iterate. all of those things were great lessons coming from Salesforce, and this is a great transition into, And, obviously this, the title of this podcast is inside the Ohana and, everyone talks about the Ohana and they all describe it differently, but I'm curious, how would you describe, what Ohana means.
[00:11:03] Sarah: Ohana is the fact that people are coming together to help each other, that they are. And back to what I was just talking about, a being authentic, being vulnerable people are joining together to solve problems and creating a safe space to do that, and really rallying behind each other to get through those hard times and then celebrating the wins.
[00:11:25] Right. coming together to say, let's celebrate your successes. Even if it wasn't, it didn't turn out how you thought it would at the beginning, let's all rally together and celebrate what came out of that. That is really great. That was a good learning experience. and that's what the Ohana piece meant to me because growing up.
[00:11:43] Any business and everybody in business knows this. You're going to hit those hard times, right? You look at a company from the outside and you can think, oh wow, they've never hit a hard time. They never hit a road bump, but that's not the truth. You're going to hit those hard times and road bumps. And people's true selves come out in those moments.
[00:12:02] Alana to me, men, when we hit those hard times and those road bumps, we rallied together. It wasn't a blame game. It was a, we've got a problem. Let's dig down and figure out how we're gonna solve it and fix it together.
[00:12:17] before we get into our next segment, are there any special stories or Ohana moments? That's a little behind the scenes that you want to share?
[00:12:27] Sarah: there are, that's a great question. There are so many, but given we just saw a Superbowl and we just saw another sales first ad in the Superbowl. I was having these flashbacks and talking about it with some folks to Salesforce, his first Superbowl commercial, and people may not realize it, but way back in the day.
[00:12:45] Salesforce did another super bowl commercial for the launch of a product called shatter.com. And this was a freemium version of the company's business networking tool that allowed people to collaborate on documents and share files. And, the company invested and worked with the black-eyed. Yeah.
[00:13:05] Sarah: Who were that years, a halftime show to create a commercial, two part commercial that book ended the Superbowl show and will I am wrote right? the chatter jingle and song. And, the company worked on that and I remember. We were looking at that going, oh my gosh, we're gonna have so much traffic coming into our website.
[00:13:28] It's going to break the website. What if that happens? Right. What if that was the experience that potential customers had? And so we went and set up all of these different war rooms. I remember like to a T we were going through what was going on. Specific moments in time when our fail-over product, a fail-over process would be to make sure that we didn't have servers go down, that we had a good customer experience.
[00:13:53] And I remember us all huddled. It was like 50 of us huddled in one of the office buildings during the super bowl, in a conference room. Making sure that we could keep the website up, then the website didn't go down. So it was either,the team just absolutely did their best job. I think that's what I'm going to chalk it up to, making sure that we had a great experience and all the fail-over problems were solved, but, yeah, that was one of the most interesting moments and times.
[00:14:20] and really it was through those really hard times of solving those hard problems that everybody felt truly bonded together and did bond.
[00:14:27] So let's get into our next segment. What's cooking Sarah. Obviously today you are the CMO of Samsara and you just helped them go public and huge.
[00:14:36] Dan: Congratulations, by the way, I want you to talk a little bit about how you got to where you.
[00:14:40] are now and how, and what your journey has been like, to get to your current.
[00:14:45] I joined Salesforce back when it was a little under 2000 people. And, it was under a billion in, ARR. Same SARS at the same stage. Right. And there are so many similarities that I see about this company to where Salesforce was back when I joined in 2008.
[00:15:03] Sarah: And that was one of the things that really attracted me to this opportunity when it popped up. and through my time at Salesforce, I had been prepping. I had this as a goal. I'm always thinking of where am I going in my career? What type of opportunity and challenge do I want to tackle next? And. Being CMO of a company, being able to take it public, was a big goal that I had for myself.
[00:15:26] And I worked through Salesforce. And I always tell this for folks, look for the job descriptions of the job you want to have next. And, or even five years down the road and think through what are the skills that you need to add to your tool belt. And that's what I was doing. I was growing all of the skills to be a well-rounded marketer.
[00:15:43] knowing I'm not going to be able to go deep into every area and be the expert in every area, but know enough to be able to guide and to be able to help grow the team in the right way. And that's what I worked on. Those are the experiences that I sought out at Salesforce, and there was a benefit to, and I said this at a recent Samsara event that we had, there's a benefit to being on a faster and company.
[00:16:08] Sarah: And that's that. That growth. Yes. There are different pains that come along with it, but it creates all of this opportunity for you as an individual, to be able to raise your hand and say, I'm interested in learning this new skill. And I see this as a problem we have as a company. Can I go over their boss and solve it?
[00:16:27] Right. And it creates opportunity for you to do that. And that's what I found through my time at Salesforce.
[00:16:33] Dan: You brought up something that, is something I want to pull on a little bit more, the thing between a product and a platform. And that was always a struggle at Salesforce as well. are we a product? Is it a platform? Is it both like, how do you position those things? how does it, how does, how are you thinking about that at SIM.
[00:16:50] They're not a lot of companies that can go and expand from having one really great point solution to having multiple great point solutions.
[00:16:57] Sarah: And one of the ways that you can do this and bring them together, if you're lucky enough to have that success, which Samsara has been lucky enough to have that success. Is you make one plus one equal three, by creating it into a platform solution by looking for areas where bringing the data from those different point solutions together creates more synergies for your end customers and then ultimately their customers.
[00:17:22] And that's the benefit that we are seeing, as we transition from that point solution. Into being a platform play. And it's really being able to make sure your technology delivers on that for your customers. And if your technology can deliver on that, if they can see that value, and you're able to help them solve other problems by pulling all that data together, go for the platform solution, right?
[00:17:46] This is how you can have this exponential value that you are creating for all of your customers and solving their problems.
[00:17:54] Dan: on that. What challenges, additionally, are you seeing at Samsara now? And are you applying any of what you learned at Salesforce to these challenges?
[00:18:04] Sarah: There are a lot of similarities that I see in terms of the challenges. So one it's this positioning, like we just talked about from being a point solution to talking about the value of a platform and showing that value. That was something that we had to solve at Salesforce of painting that story for our customers and showcasing that to them and then delivering on it.
[00:18:25] And that's what we are going through here at Samsara there's also a piece of. Market education about the change that we are driving at Samsara. And that's another challenge that Salesforce also faced. Salesforce was disrupting the way that companies had looked at CRM, in the past, right. And disrupting the way that people were used to accessing that information at Samsara we're doing the same thing.
[00:18:52] We are digitally transforming industries. And companies that haven't gone through that digital transformation, we're helping them to have that digital transformation. And we're educating on the value of our solution, in this world. And those are very similar challenges. And then there's the growth and scale.
[00:19:12] Salesforce grew incredibly fast and there are a lot of. Scaling challenges that you come across when you're looking at, how do you grow your teams? How do you set up teams in the right way to be able to sell the platform, but also to be able to make sure each of these product lines that the company has, are producing the best results for the customers that they can right from the product side and that you're marketing that successfully to the customers.
[00:19:40] And those are other challenges that Sam SAR is going through. As we now have multiple product lines. That are delivering this value to our customers and we're positioning a platform. How do we make sure that we set our teams up for success in the right way, build the race systems to help the company scale, but also build the right change management, methodologies and build the right structures to help people in the company basically.
[00:20:05] Uh, you said something about building the right systems to help you scale. obviously Salesforce is incredible with that. How are you thinking about actually Salesforce and is that part of your core.
[00:20:14] Sarah: We use Salesforce at Samsara. so yes it is, Salesforce is our. database of record for our customer information. And that's how we look at making sure that we've got all the right contacts in our database. We're marketing to them in the right way. We're expanding. the way that we engage with them and Salesforce has been a core to helping us to be able to do.
[00:20:38] Dan: So what's next for you, Sarah. And how are you shaping the.
[00:20:42] We're actually planning our first ever customer conference that we are going to have in the spring. And I'm really excited about the customer stories that we can bring to life there. The impact that we can show that we have on the world, because.
[00:20:58] Sarah: One of the things that attracted me to Samsara is, our products have a tangible impact on helping to solve real-world problems. So if we think about, energy consumption, 71% of the U S energy consumption is in this industrial world. There is a huge need to help the companies in this world to be able to measure and track what they are doing in terms of fuel consumption in terms of miles driven on the road, and then be able to take action on that, to see through benchmarking where they can cut down on fuel usage on CO2 emissions to have this sustainable impact on making sure that we're leaving the world a better place.
[00:21:39] And for me as a marketer, to be able to bring those stories to life. Is one of the things that is most exciting for me, because our products can actually help to leave the world a better place. And as a mom where I see my kids have smoked days versus snow days, I want to make sure that I'm doing my part.
[00:21:58] And I especially love that I can do that on my day job to leave this world in a better place.
[00:22:04] Dan: I love that. you said you're taking on your first customer conference. That's a huge undertaking. W like, tell us a little bit more about that and why don't you plug it? I'd love to hear when and where it's at.
[00:22:14] Sarah: thank you. I was going to get into that if you weren't going to open up the door for me. So I love it. Our first customer conference, we are hosting it here in San Francisco. and we are going to have. In June, we are announcing this actually on our earnings call that is coming up so people can, I'll also make a plug for that.
[00:22:34] So people can go and listen to our earnings call. but we're going to have it here in mid June at the Intercontinental hotel. And it's going to be exciting. We're also going to virtually streaming because we are living in this work from anywhere. and we want to make sure that we can give people if they don't want to come into San Francisco, the opportunity to see where this world of operations is heading and how we are helping to really create the future of connected operations.
[00:23:02] So you can tune in and watch our digital keynotes, and it's going to be an extraordinarily exciting.
[00:23:08] Dan: So let's get into our final segment called the future forecast. so Sarah, what does the future of Salesforce look like? I know you're still involved. I know you still have a piece of your heart there. Like what do you, where do you think Salesforce is? Is.
[00:23:23] Sarah: Yes, my, husband, my better half works at Salesforce. So still invested in that way. Team earth who doesn't want to get behind that. I see Salesforce as, and as mark says, business is the biggest platform for change. I see Salesforce as driving more and more of these different policies, for companies and really helping to set an example of where businesses need to go.
[00:23:51] And then hopefully. Creating the technology that will help everybody to be able to come together and rally around those different initiatives. So whether that is things around sustainability, right? How can they create software to help people be able to track more of what they're doing In climate change, right.
[00:24:09] And reducing their footprint.
[00:24:10] Dan: There are a lot of marketers that?
[00:24:12] listen to this podcast. What advice would you have for an aspiring CML
[00:24:17] Sarah: My advice for an aspiring CML. One always be learning. I really value. And I love that Sam SAR, we have this as one of our core values adopting a growth mindset. Like always be okay with knowing you're not going to know everything. You're not going to be perfect in every situation. And that is okay. And always be willing to challenge the old way of doing things right.
[00:24:44] Coming into Samsung. I was really impressed with a lot of the different ways. The team. Engaged with customers, things that, like a very fast response time to our customers that we would have loved to have had when I was at Salesforce. And I feel as,true competitive advantage for us as a company.
[00:25:02] And I would say always be willing to challenge your beliefs and challenge what you know, to keep growing and learning and to think of new ways to do.
[00:25:13] Dan: letting you go. I want to have a little bit of fun with a quick lightning round. Are you ready for this? So I'm
[00:25:19] Sarah: I'm ready. Oh my gosh.
[00:25:21] Dan: the thing that comes to your mind and there's going to be no clarification on this. just go. with it. Okay.
[00:25:27] All right, here we go. Favorite product
[00:25:30] Sarah: I was service cloud,
[00:25:32] Dan: classic or lightning.
[00:25:34] lately.
[00:25:35] Dan: Favorite Salesforce character.
[00:25:37] Uh, Astro,
[00:25:38] Dan: Favorite commercial or ad of all time.
[00:25:41] Sarah: I mean, chatter.com. Superbowl ad it's timeless
[00:25:46] Dan: Of course
[00:25:47] Awesome. Favorite brand of anything Besides Salesforce
[00:25:51] voice sweatpants right now for the work from home world.
[00:25:55] Dan: secret skill, not on the resume.
[00:25:57] Sarah: Oh, so many secret skills I can draw, little characatures for my kids to color in that are these really cute little animals with very big.
[00:26:10] Dan: you just want front row seats to your dream event. What is it?
[00:26:15] Sarah: Oh, it is a U2 or Taylor swift concert. Better yet you too. N Taylor swift.
[00:26:21] Dan: I mean, me, I love that answer. So big T Swifty fan. All right, Sarah, this has been just so much fun before I let you go. please let the listeners know where they can find you. And is there anything else that you would like to share or anything.
[00:26:36] Sarah: Oh, my gosh. So finds me at Patterson underscore Sarah on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn. we are hiring at Samsara. If you are looking at. For a career where your job is going to have this real world impact to be able to leave the world in a better place. Come join us. We are the company for you to come and join.
[00:26:58] Dan: you so much. Sarah was great to see you.
[00:27:00] Sarah: Thanks Dan.