Andrea Tarrell, CEO & Founder of Sercante and 12X certified Salesforce MVP & Marketing Champion, shares with Dan what makes Dreamforce special, dishes on the incredible Ohana vibes that shaped her career, and reveals what's next in the thrilling evolution of marketing.
Meet Andrea Tarrell, the dynamic CEO & Founder of Sercante, as well as a 12X certified Salesforce MVP and Marketing Champion. She caught the Salesforce bug at Dreamforce 2011 and has been on an exhilarating journey ever since. Tune in as Andrea and Dan share what makes Dreamforce special, discuss the incredible Ohana vibes that shaped her career, and reveal what's next in the thrilling evolution of marketing.
Quote:
“There’s no other more energizing place to fill your Salesforce tank than Dreamforce. It’s just great energy, great people, and great vibes. Oh yeah, and lots of epic parties.” - Andrea Tarrell
Episode Timestamps:
*(00:00) - Ohana Origins: Andrea’s Introduction to Salesforce
*(07:00) - What does the Ohana mean to Andrea?
*(11:00) - What’s Cooking: Andrea’s Career Post-Salesforce Ecosystem
*(15:00) - Future Forecast: What’s in Store for the Salesforce Ecosystem?
*(15:00) - Advice for Aspiring Leaders
*(17:30) - Lightning Round!
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Producer: Hello and welcome to Inside the Ohana. This episode features an interview with Andrea Terrell. Andrea's, the CEO and founder of C, as well as a 12 time certified Salesforce MVP and marketing champion. Andrea caught the Salesforce bug at Dreamforce 2011 and has not looked back since. She's worked for consultancies, agencies, and client side marketing teams over her career and is passionate about making marketing and sales team [00:01:00] successful with their tech stacks. In this episode, Andrea and Dan delve into the energizing power behind live engagement by swapping Dreamforce stories. Plus how the Ohana influenced the trajectory of Andrea's career and what's next in the evolution for the field of marketing. But before we get into it, here's a brief word from our sponsor. Inside the Ohana is brought to you by qualified, qualified as the pipeline generation platform for revenue. Teams that use Salesforce intelligently grow your pipeline by understanding signals of buying intent and having real time conversations. Learn more over on qualified.com. So please enjoy this interview between Andrea Terrell, founder and CEO of Sercante, and your host, Dan Darcy.
Dan Darcy: Welcome to Inside the Ohana. I'm Dan Darcy, chief Customer Officer at Qualified, and today I'm joined by Andrea Terrell. Andrea, how are you doing? Doing great. Thanks for having me [00:02:00] here. Good. Good, good. So I wanna dive right into our first segment. Ohana Origins. How did you discover Salesforce and start your journey?
Andrea Tarrell: So I did not know what Salesforce was when I first entered the workforce. Um, but I was a marketing coordinator working for an insurance brokerage. Our VP of sales pulled me into his office and said, Hey, we have this thing called Salesforce. We don't know really what it is. It's on some guy's credit card. We have 18 admins. Um, if you can figure out what it does and how we can optimize it, we'll send you to San Francisco for Dreamforce and to fresh out a school meeting. I was like, yep, that sounds amazing. I, I can figure anything out. Put me on a plane to San Francisco and, um, never looked back. So it was totally an accidental admin, but, um, was really grateful that that was a part of my early career journey.
Dan Darcy: And explain an accidental admin for everyone, because I, I, I know that term, but I want you to, to explain it.
Andrea Tarrell: Accidental [00:03:00] admin means like, you started, you kind of fell into this ecosystem on accident. And when I went to school, studied a little bit of marketing, studied a few other things. Like I, I had never even heard the term crm. Um, marketing automation also, like as a category. Like I knew what an email was obviously, but like marketing automation was a buzzword that like, hadn't really taken root yet fully. So I was, it was accidental in the sense that I was like, I have no idea what I'm getting into. Like I just, I know I want things to be more efficient. I wanna get more done with the resources that we have on our team. And Salesforce was like the ultimate gateway into that, into that world.
Dan Darcy: What was your job at the time? I'm curious the title and like, you know, your first impression of actually diving into Salesforce.
Andrea Tarrell: My title was Marketing Coordinator. Mm-hmm. I managed our website, our social media, HubSpot we were on at the time, and I knew a little bit about like databases. Um, had worked a little bit with access. In past roles and looked at Salesforce as just like, [00:04:00] okay, this is a repository of where we're storing all of our customer information, where our sales team is like managing day-to-day work. And for me as a marketer, this is a tool where I can figure out like who are we running campaigns to? How are we making sure our events get filled? That being the main driver and the big thing at the time that our, our sales leader wanted built into Salesforce that he kind of charged me with building was. Essentially what like path on opportunities has become where it's like, okay, for each stage, what are we asking sales to put into the system? What are we giving them back? So like, are we serving up presentations? Are we serving up helpful tips? Like what can we, how do we kind of nail the give get equation with Salesforce? So we built a version of Path before, before path was.
Dan Darcy: Cool. I love that. That's awesome. So you started dabbling a little in obviously sales, operations, incentivizing, you know, and, and, uh, helping drive the adoption of Salesforce. That's pretty cool. So I want you to brag a little bit because I know, I, I know your career in working with Salesforce, um, but I want [00:05:00] you to tell other folks what do you think is the biggest success you've had with working with Salesforce or something that you're most proud of thus far?
Andrea Tarrell: I'm most proud of starting my company, Sirte. Um, so I launched the business in 2017 with the goal of helping marketers be successful on the Salesforce platform, Pardot, marketing cloud, other parts of the MarTech stack that connect back to the marketing automation tool. And it's been a fantastic learning journey for me, but also an opportunity to give other people some of their first roles in the ecosystem and. Get their feet under them in starting that company.
Dan Darcy: I think that's awesome. And I love cte. What, what would you say on the opposite side of the spectrum, what's your biggest lesson learned?
Andrea Tarrell: Two things come to mind with that question. One is, content marketing is alive and well. When I first started the company, I launched a blog called The Spot for Pardot, and it was, for me, it really wasn't for the business or to be like a growth driver. My thinking was just, okay, I've been blogging for all these other businesses for decades at this point, and. I wanna just write about what I'm learning, what I'm passionate [00:06:00] about, and I was shocked to see how many people that resonated with and how many people wanted to contribute content and be a part of that. So that was a, a lesson learned, like I wish I would've done that way earlier. The other lesson learned that I'm continuing to learn all the time is, so the Ohana is full of a lot of super passionate people everywhere on the interwebs. Like they're active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, slack. They're creating content, they're in events. And there could be sort of like a keeping up with the Joneses thing that is really hard to navigate. So I've had to learn to be okay with, all right, I'm gonna put out there what I can, what I can right now. And there's a point where it, it's enough in knowing where that is for you is. It's something I'm learning.
Dan Darcy: I mean, being part of the Ohana obviously is addicting cuz there is so much to stay on top of. But I think that's a, that's a great lesson learned. If you could go back and talk to Andrea just starting out your Salesforce journey, what advice would you give yourself?
Andrea Tarrell: I would tell myself to go all in on Salesforce sooner for [00:07:00] the. Earlier part of my career, Salesforce was one of the hats that I wore, and it took me a while to say, okay, yep, I'm gonna specialize and this is gonna be the the main thing that I focus on. There's so much opportunity in this ecosystem, and if I could go back and do things a little differently, it would be specializing sooner.
Dan Darcy: So I wanna ask you about the meaning of Ohana. And I ask this of all my guests because I feel like everyone describes this completely differently. But I'm curious, how would you describe the Ohana and what does it mean? What does it mean to you?
Andrea Tarrell: The word that comes to mind when I think about Ohana is generosity. Generosity is like one of the common themes that I see a lot. Like people that are willing to go out of their way to help others, even when there isn't an immediate. Payoff for them. People that are just looking for opportunities to just genuinely be helpful and be resources to other people. That's what comes to mind for me and that that's unlike many of the, the places where I've lived and worked. So it's something I very much appreciate about the Salesforce world.
Dan Darcy: Are there any special stories or han moments that are a little behind the [00:08:00] scenes that you'd wanna share?
Andrea Tarrell: I guess one that sort of comes to mind is when I was first starting sir, and first kind of getting things off the ground with my blog, there was this epic Twitter DM thread called Kardashians. Sarah McNamara started it actually. Um, and Laura Black and Beckham Miller, and. Uh, a few of the folks that were really active around Part A at that point in time, and this Twitter thread just became this, like, it was giant, like dozens of people that were a part of it. It was like the most active social channel of like all things that I was on. Like, it got to a place where like, I wasn't even checking Twitter. I was just checking that one DM thread. Um, and then finally we hit a wall where we're like, okay, we need, we need to graduate to Slack. But that became a Slack community called Kardashians. And yeah, I don't know how many people know that it actually started as just like a big Twitter dm, but that's where it came from.
Dan Darcy: I love that story because I, I was always curious, I never knew how, what the origin of that name was, but a shout out to the Kardashians out there, so I can't take
Andrea Tarrell: credit for coming up with that [00:09:00] name. Um, cause I think, I think Adam Blitzer used to call the people Kardashians like. In the very early part days, but we, yeah, the community definitely co-opted it to describe who, who we are and what platform we represent.
Dan Darcy: I love it. I love it. Now, before we get into our next segment, I wanna talk a little bit about Dreamforce. Do you have any Dreamforce moments or stories that are special to share? Dreamforce
Andrea Tarrell: is, is so, has some of my fondest memories of the ecosystem because there's no other. More energizing place to fill your Salesforce tank than Dreamforce. It's just great energy, great people, great vibes. Yeah, lots of epic part out parties. I feel like somehow I always end up missing the concerts, even though the concerts are a really great time. The one thing that stands out in my memory from last year is, Did a bio of the pink elephant alibi and our marketing team bought, made these stencils of like elephant footprints, like spray painted pink chalk, like leading up to the site. Like they did it in front of police, like they stopped traffic to do it in a crosswalk. They did it [00:10:00] in front of a police officer in front of like security for the St. Regis, and I'm still amazed that we were able to accomplish that without like somebody coming and slapping us on the wrist.
Dan Darcy: I mean, in San Francisco, do whatever you want. So, um, I want you to tell us about that first Dreamforce that you spoke about earlier, um, that you attended, that your boss sent you to, you know, and, and why it meant so much to you. So
Andrea Tarrell: the theme of that Dreamforce was the social enterprise. It was right when Chatter came out, social media was kind of like, Like a new thing that businesses were investing in. But number one thing I remember being surprised by was like going to keynotes and thinking it was like, all right, we're gonna be talking about tech and like we're, I'm here to learn about the platform and what I need to build on a platform. And I felt like every five minutes, mark Benioff was like, and now here are the Blackey Peas, and now here's so-and-so. And I never, I'd never been in a room with so many celebrities at the same time in my life and I kept wondering like, what do all these crazy people have to do with Salesforce? But. Yeah. No, I've learned that's just [00:11:00] part of, part of the process.
Dan Darcy: I mean, everyone needs crm, even even RockEye. Even will I am even Will I am needs crm. Yes. So let's get into our next segment. What's cooking? You're now the CEO of Sercante. I wanted you to talk a little bit about how you got to where you are now, how you thought about, you know, starting CTE and what that journey has been like in starting that company.
Andrea Tarrell: Yeah, so kind of going back to that first experience that I shared of like landing in a role where Salesforce was one of the many hats that I wore. After that role. Um, so I, I joined that company as a, their only marketing person, and then helped them grow a marketing team as the company scaled and opened other locations.
Andrea Tarrell: And then after that took kind of a more specialized route where my next, the next stop on the train was working for a digital marketing agency who was looking to broaden their footprint to include [00:12:00] more marketing automation and more content marketing types of services. So I helped lead kind of that pivot into those service areas.
Andrea Tarrell: And then the role after that, um, worked for a Salesforce consultant, helping be there to me on the team. And what I learned from kind of those two experiences were that marketing agencies and Salesforce consultants come at marketing automation in two very different ways. And they come up short for customers in slightly different ways.
Andrea Tarrell: Like marketing agencies are great at strategy, they're great at creative, but as soon as a lead hits Salesforce, that's often out of their depth. So things like analytics, things like streamlining the marketing sales handoff. Those typically aren't spaces where marketing agencies really shine. Salesforce consultants have the opposite problem where the process and technology side, like they can do all day, but when a customer comes to them and says, what kind of content should I be creating?
Andrea Tarrell: What kind of nurture journey should I be thinking about? Like, how do I bring this to life on my marketing team? That's not really their wheelhouse either. So when I [00:13:00] started, my goal was to sort of position us right between marketing agency and Salesforce consultant, where we're bringing strategy, technology, creative, um, and analytics.
Andrea Tarrell: So that across the whole kind of life cycle of using marketing automation, uh, marketers have what they need to be successful.
Dan Darcy: Awesome. I love that. Love hearing how you thought about solving that problem. So what challenges are you seeing now and how are you applying, you know, what you've learned obviously through, you know, years of working with Salesforce to those challenges.
Andrea Tarrell: One of the biggest challenges slash opportunities is mm-hmm. The way the platform is evolving and how critical data is across every step of the marketing journey. I think most of the folks that set out to be marketers didn't realize how much. Like data would drive everything that we do, but your ability to run complex segments to look at, um, data from other systems that aren't just sales and marketing owned, like that's the secret sauce behind all of these beautiful campaigns that get spotlighted [00:14:00] on at Dreamforce and really move the needle on sales revenue.
Andrea Tarrell: So that, that I would say is the biggest challenge is navigating kind of all the different components of the future tech stack and. Increasing data literacy and making sure that you have the tools to get that incorporated into your marketing strategies.
Dan Darcy: I'm seeing that across all the customers I'm working with too. And it's surprising. It's just, I I do feel like there is going to be almost like data analysts in marketing. Obviously it is. It's a happening and it's part of obviously the operations role. Well,
Andrea Tarrell: I think too, like the, the definition of like what is marketing has expanded so dramatically cuz. It's your customer experience. It's your customer service journey. Like what isn't marketing anymore? Like pretty much every customer interaction comes back to marketing in some way. It's a challenge, but it's also a major place where data savvy marketers can shine.
Dan Darcy: Absolutely. So what's next for sota and how are you guys shaping the future?
Andrea Tarrell: Yeah, so I would say continuing to evolve, um, to support marketers with those data needs [00:15:00] and being a full stack marketing cloud partner. So marketing cloud engagement, marketing, cloud intelligence. Marketing Cloud loves to rebrand its product. So these names change often, but, um, marketing Cloud, personalization, um, that full suite of marketing Cloud products we support customers with and expanding capabilities there so that we can support marketers wherever they need us most. And I'll just, I'll just give a rest in peace to part the, the brand. The, the brand will never die when the, when the last person stops calling it part i I think I'm gonna fall over cause it's gonna be hard to take that, take that one outta customer's lips.
Dan Darcy: Yeah, absolutely. Let's get into our final segment, the Future Forecast. What do you envision as the future of the Salesforce ecosystem?
Andrea Tarrell: I mean, it seems like there's no space that Salesforce won't touch these days, like broadening across every industry, [00:16:00] across every department within an organization, and again, looking at data as sort of the underpinnings of how this all comes together. So I think we're gonna continue to see Salesforce. Expand in relevance in terms of like number of businesses touched and the number of people it touches. I think we'll also start seeing less focus on individual products and more solutions orientation. So instead of like, okay, I have to grab these 10 SKUs off the shelf to build whatever I'm trying to build. Salesforce coming to us and saying, this is kind of the suite that we recommend for companies like you, which is really exciting. Cause I think that that helps cast a vision for. Where companies need to go with their technology roadmap and gives them things to grow into versus like trying to implement solutions a little bit more piecemeal.
Dan Darcy: So Andrea, you're an incredible c e o, uh, and founder. What advice do you have for aspiring founders or leaders that are out there?
Andrea Tarrell: My advice would be just start. Just start whatever it is that you're trying to do and go for it. I [00:17:00] had a lot of head trash before I started ante about like needing to come up with like a very unique, like there's no other company out like this in the marketplace before launching my business. And what I've learned is there's a lot of room for a lot of successful people in the ecosystem. So even if your business or your idea is similar to somebody else, there's still probably a lot of people that you can help. Go for it is my advice.
Dan Darcy: Short. Love it. Love it. Just go for it. All right. Before letting you go, let's have fun with a quick lightning round. Secret skill, not on the resume.
Andrea Tarrell: One of the things that I'm very good at is packing. Incredibly efficiently. Like if you have a large number of objects to fit into a very small space. I'm your girl for that.
Dan Darcy: I thought you were gonna mention your homemade gin.
Andrea Tarrell: I agree. At making homemade gin. I also briefly had a, a winery that is not a secret skill.
Andrea Tarrell: It's. [00:18:00] Secret. Very challenging endeavor.
Dan Darcy: Yeah, absolutely. It definitely is. What's the best way to spend an evening after
Andrea Tarrell: work? The best evenings after work for me are unplugged from technology. Um, hanging out with my 21, my 21 month old daughter, um, hanging out with my German Shepherd Murphy and my husband.
Andrea Tarrell: So just awesome kinda quiet Evenings, walks in the neighborhood, um, decompressing for the day. Favorite
Dan Darcy: brand of anything, favorite
Andrea Tarrell: brand of anything. Roth's Shoes is one dry shampoo. It's the best for busy professionals. Those are, those
Dan Darcy: are two that stand out. Awesome. Love it. You just won front row seat tickets to your dream event.
Dan Darcy: What is it?
Andrea Tarrell: I really want Taylor Swift tickets. She's coming to Atlanta at the end of the end, the end of April. Um, I definitely procrastinated on trying to look at what those availability of those, um, but yeah, that'd be amazing.
Dan Darcy: Well, we'll get this episode out there fast. So if anyone in the Atlanta area has tickets to [00:19:00] Taylor Swift, um, please reach out.
Dan Darcy: Yeah, yeah, reach out. You know what? I would fly to Atlanta for Taylor Swift tickets as well too. So anyway, Andrea, this has been so much fun. Before I let you go, uh, we let the listeners know where they can find you and is there anything else you'd like to share or, or plug? Only
Andrea Tarrell: other thing I'd like to plug is, um, Mar Dreman our conference for all marketing cloud and product customers.
Andrea Tarrell: It's coming back on October 31st. Um, so we'd love to see everybody there. Um, in terms of where gonna find me, I'm pretty active on Twitter, LinkedIn, and then my blog, um, the spot for
Dan Darcy: part.com. Love it. The spot for part.com. Well, thank you, Andrea, for our conversation today and. We'll see you soon. Thanks for having
Andrea Tarrell: me.
Andrea Tarrell: Have a good one
Producer: Inside. The Ohana is brought to you by our friends@qualified.com, the conversational sales and marketing company that's on a mission to transform the way B2B companies sell. Go to qualified.com to learn more. If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to read and review it and tell a friend. Thank you for listening.