In this special episode, Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified, steps away his hosting duties to take us through his legendary 13-year journey at Salesforce. Hear about his most successful demo and marketing insights for ongoing innovation. Plus, we revisit the past year of "Inside the Ohana" and the remarkable guests Dan has had the honor of interviewing.
In this special episode, Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified, steps away from his hosting duties to guide us through his legendary 13-year tenure with Salesforce. You’ll hear about Dan’s most successful demo and his marketing advice for continuous reinvention. Plus, we reflect on the past year of "Inside the Ohana" and the extraordinary lineup of guests Dan’s had the privilege to interview.
Featured Quote:
“I think the biggest lesson I learned [at Salesforce] was don’t be complacent. You hear me say this all the time, don’t be boring, you know? That in my mind, it’s the same thing.” - Dan Darcy
Episode Timestamps:
*(01:30) - Looking back at 1 year of Inside the Ohana
*(03:00) - Ohana Origins: Dan’s Introduction to Salesforce
*(07:00) - What does the Ohana mean to Dan?
*(11:00) - What’s Cooking: Dan’s role at Qualified
*(14:00) - Future Forecast: What’s in store for the future of the Salesforce ecosystem?
*(15:00) - Advice for aspiring marketing professionals
*(16:30) - Lightning Round!
Sponsor
Inside the Ohana is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.
Links
Introduction: Welcome to Inside the Ohana our featured guest. This special episode is Dan Darcy, along with being your host of Inside the Ohana. Dan is the Chief Customer Officer at Qualified and a Salesforce veteran and legend. In this episode, it's Dan's turn to pull back the curtain into his impressive 13 year tenure at Salesforce where he was a key player in creating the future of software as a service and worked alongside incredible people in the [00:01:00] business world, you'll hear Dan's marketing advice to help prevent complacency plus a behind the scenes story of his most successful demo. But before we get into it, here's a brief word from our sponsor. Inside The Ohana is brought to you by Qualified. Qualified is 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 dot com. So please enjoy this conversation between Emma Calderon, the Senior Director of Content and Communications at Qualified, and your host Dan Darcy.
Emma: Hi everyone. I'm Emma Calderon, senior Director of Content and Communications at Qualified. For our final episode of Inside The Ohana, we needed to bring on the biggest hitter in the Salesforce ecosystem. With that, welcome Dan Darcy as our last guest for this season of Inside The Ohana. Dan, welcome to Inside The Ohana.
Dan: Well, [00:02:00] I mean, it's so great to be here and it's great to be on the other side of the, basically the mic being interviewed. So thanks for having me.
Emma: Of course. So, after doing this show for almost a year now, yeah. You've had incredible guests. Yes. What are some of like the biggest lessons you've learned?
Dan: I mean, there's been an, uh, I mean, many incredible lessons that I learned, but one of the biggest things that I'm still just truly impressed by is the amount of talent that the people brought and passion. Everyone that I interviewed loved what they were doing. They loved being a part of building something greater than themselves. And I mean, I couldn't be more honored than interviewing all of them. And I really do thank them for their time, but I would say the people and the passion are some things that I'm like, that's hard to even be taught. Like that's just something that is what made Salesforce.
Emma: As you reflect on the show, what has surprised you the most?
Dan: So what surprised me the most is that people had different experiences across the many events that happened at Salesforce during that time. So there are just so many different [00:03:00] perspectives and just seeing the different values and different. Learnings that came from the different folks is what really impressed me is I think that was the biggest lesson, is like everyone has a different experience based on the same event that happened and everyone learns something different. And so that's what I really liked about that the most.
Emma: Okay. I'm gonna do my best, Dan, as we jump into our first segment. Ohana Origins. So how did you discover Salesforce and what was your first job there?
Dan: My first job at Salesforce was a technical product marketing manager, and I actually discovered Salesforce through a great friend of mine, who brought me into Salesforce. His name is Jagger McConnell. He's currently the c e O of Crunchbase, and I definitely owe everything that I have in my Salesforce career to Jagger because he had an opening on his team and he brought me in and basically stuck his neck out for me. To get the job at Salesforce.[00:04:00] And I would say the rest is history. And I think one of what's something that he will say is that one of his biggest claim to fames is hiring me. So just like your biggest claim to fame is hiring me. Yes, exactly right. That's so true. Exactly.
Emma: Alright. Some people call you the GOAT of Salesforce. Did you know that?
Dan: No, I did not know. Well, yeah. Some people is me also. What is the biggest success you've had while working at Salesforce?
Dan: Well, one of the biggest successes. It is a fun story that I think pretty much changed the direction of my career, and I really have Mark Benioff, the c e o to owe for all of that, and it was building a customer demo for him, for the CEO of Toyota. He was gonna have a bunch of his executives fly out to his house because they were on a tour of going around to learn about innovations in Silicon Valley. Mark asked me to build a demo. With a car chatting on the network. Chatter was a big product way back in the day. Now Slack is the product that's happening now, but imagine if your [00:05:00] car was chatting to you and telling you that your tires were low and telling you that it, you know, it needs more gas or it needs a tuneup of some sort, and it could chat with each other.
Dan: That was his idea, and he wanted it to come to life in a Salesforce demo, and so I had a great team that helped build that demo. We went out and presented it. And at that time, you know, it was something unheard of where, you know, back in 2008, it was basically the Internet of things was one of the things that was happening at the time. And we showed a demo to the c e O of Toyota and their executives, mark said that was one of the best demos, and it basically showed that Salesforce could punch above its weight. And from that point on, mark was like, I want you to help me build these prototypes and visions for customers and go around and present them with them.
Dan: So that was one of my biggest successes that I'm most proud of because it put me on a trajectory at Salesforce and meeting so many incredible people and being a part of so many great memories. And that's something that I will always cherish as a, as something that changed my life.
Emma: Conversely, what is a [00:06:00] project or program that didn't go so well and that you learned the most from?
Dan: Yeah, I mean the, I mean, there's many, then been many failures and projects out there, but I think the biggest lesson I learned was not to get too complacent in your role. You have to always continually disrupt your own self. You know, even though a process may have worked one year. You gotta look at it again, blow it up, break it down into little parts, and then try to put it back together in a new way because technology, people and process that all happened, they all changed so fast. And I think sometimes, you know, where I learned a lesson was I was complacent and I just let that thing continue running and the way it was, and I should have really kept going back to it and really checked on certain things and blown it up and challenged myself to like, Create something new and better.
Dan: So I would say that that's the biggest lesson I learned, uh, with the projects that I have failed at at Salesforce, is that I just got too complacent. And that's something that I think is a good lesson for everyone else to learn too.
Emma: So it's kind of the opposite of if it's not broken, don't fix [00:07:00] it.
Dan: Yeah, exactly. You, you, you should definitely break, blow it up and, and, and fix it again.
Emma: But what does Ohana mean to you?
Dan: I mean, I've asked this question a million times to everyone and, uh, I loved everyone's answers from it. I mean, it's about the people. It's about the community. And I will continue to echo that same thing. I mean, Salesforce is made up of incredible people. There's an incredible alumni, there's an incredible ecosystem, you know, out there when former alumni haven't spoken to in 10 plus years. Whenever they reach out to me on LinkedIn, and this has been paid forward for me too, is because I'll reach out to other alumni.
Dan: Everyone always answers the call and everyone hops on the call. How can I help you? You know, how can, how can we connect you with someone? What can that be? And that's what I love most about the Ohana is just the constant support and of each other and helping each other. And so I. That's what Ohana means to me is really the community that Mark and Parker and the entire [00:08:00] Salesforce executive team and the ecosystem everyone built together.
Emma: Is there a specific Ohana memory or moment that sticks out that's a little more behind the scenes that as you look back at your time at Salesforce, you're like, wow, that was special?
Dan: I will pull on the thread of the Toyota meeting. Okay. 'cause this was definitely a very, very unique story because, uh, Salesforce is definitely a customer company and pride ourselves on really knowing our customer and really, Helping our customers understand their customers.
Dan: And so when we had the Toyota executives over to Mark's house, Mark's house was in Hawaii. Okay? So we presented this big demo to the Toyota executives at Mark's house in Hawaii and the night before. You know what's customary for Japanese executives is we present them with a gift. Before, you know, they come onto the island and they were staying at their own house that they had, but we presented them with gifts from the local hotel where it was a swim trunks and a t-shirt and flip flops, and it was just like, Hey, enjoy your time here while you can on the beach and whatever.
Dan: Well the morning [00:09:00] of the meeting and for folks that are out there that don't know, when you meet with Japanese executives, it's very buttoned up. We're in a very suit and tie, like tied up everyone, and I'm in a suit and tie In Hawaii, we're over at Mark's house, but then all of a sudden we heard from our sales team that was picking up the Toyota executives, that the executives all dressed in the gifts that we gave them. So they were all in swim trunks, a t-shirt and flip flops. And that is not customary for them 'cause that's definitely way out of their comfort zone. But they were like, we're in Mark's home, let's honor him by dressing in the gifts that he gave us.
Dan: And so we're all dressed up. And then all of a sudden all we know is that Marcos, okay, everyone, everyone needs to dress down. And we're like, how do we do that? Because I'm like, I can't run back to the hotel and get my swim trunks. And that was kind of an interesting thing. So everyone had to like take their jackets off, unbutton their their shirts, take their ties off, roll [00:10:00] up their sleeves, just try to look as casual, as casual as can be.
Dan: Uh, mark had the luxury of also, you know, mark was very casual. He was, had his Hawaiian shirt and he was, he was dressed to the nines. So we wanted to make the Toyota executives really like, feel at home. So we, we tried to dress down. Anyway, the, the meeting went well, but that's, that's one of those funny ohana moments where, like you gotta do whatever it takes to make the customer happy and feel comfortable and at home. So that's hysterical.
Emma: Yeah. It was specifically thinking about how hot you probably wear in a suit in Hawaii.
Dan: Yes. Yes, it was. It was great to just definitely like relax a little bit more.
Emma: So. Okay. Let's get into our next segment. What's Cooking? So obviously it sounds like Salesforce was the ultimate foundation in your transition to chief customer officer at Qualified here. What do you need to talk about? How did you get here? What has your journey [00:11:00] been like, et cetera?
Dan: Yeah, so how did I get to be the Chief Customer Officer Qualified? So look again, was at Salesforce for 13 years. Loved every moment of it. I worked in a variety of roles, but I'm a marketer at heart. I was born in marketing, born in product marketing, and I took my product marketing skillset to the other roles that I had at Salesforce.
Dan: I mean, I obviously led enablement for a few years there as well. I was missing creating and building with where Salesforce was way back in the day, and I missed working with marketers. And so I was, uh, Definitely talking to some folks. Obviously Craig Swer, the c e O of Qualified, which is obviously where we work now was the former chief marketing officer at Salesforce for a few years and he had, he was starting this company called Qualified, which is really about driving demand on the website for, uh, marketers. And he goes, I have an opening where I need someone to really work with marketers, strategize with them, and use this tool in a way that's going to help drive more pipeline and demand.
Dan: [00:12:00] Obviously that sounds like a commercial, but that is really how it was pitched to me. And, and we had this, we have this big vision of the future and how are we gonna do that? And so I was just really excited to join something from the ground up and really help build it to something different and kind of give it another big run. I mean, Salesforce obviously for over 13 years change and evolved into an incredible company that's a big machine that obviously. You know, there's still a lot of incredible talent there, but I was looking to kind of like, let's just see how again, I can disrupt myself and not get complacent. Mm-hmm. Right?
Dan: Which, which is one of the big lessons that, that I learned. How do I not be complacent, disrupt myself and start new, right? And so coming here to Qualified as the chief customer officer. We had to start all new processes, all new everything. And that was where I really rolled up my sleeves. And I mean, we're still doing it to this day, obviously it grew. When I first joined Qualified, it was 30 people. Now we're at 150 people. I'm incredibly proud of what we've been doing and what we're [00:13:00] still going to do and, and that's basically how I got to work. I am now today.
Emma: Love it. Yeah. So what are some of the challenges in your current role and how have those kind of transformed since you've started to now?
Dan: I mean, look, there's obviously, scale is obviously a challenge. We always talk about that. I mean, scale's a challenge, showcasing value to our customers. Uh, I think I. There's a lot of great things that I learned from Salesforce, which is really around surrounding the customer and making the customer the center of our world.
Dan: And so, you know what I'm incredibly honored by is that Qualified does take the customer and put them at the center of our world. I. And that's why I love doing what I do because, you know, customer success, you know, at this company is really trying to help change an industry. And what I'm proud of the team is, is like you see it in the proof with our G two reviews and we have like over 1,005 star reviews.
Dan: And it's a thank you to all of our customers that are out there. But the lessons that I learned from Salesforce around really keeping the [00:14:00] customer at the center of everything we do really helped drive kind of the success we're seeing here at Qualified.
Emma: Love it. All right time for our final segment. Future forecast. What do you envision as the future of the Salesforce ecosystem?
Dan: I mean, look, the Salesforce ecosystem, we're obviously part of it is gonna continue to grow. I think, you know, I was trying to get through this interview without saying ai, but I have to with the, with the fourth. Pretty much big shift in, in technology. You know, if you have social, mobile, I mean, I mean internet, social, mobile. Now we have AI really coming. I feel like there's a lot more opportunity that's gonna be out there, and Salesforce really continues to lead the way, not only for their customers, by bringing them into the future, but to their, the partners in the ecosystem.
Dan: So, You know, we're definitely gonna continue to grow. Um, the ecosystem's gonna [00:15:00] continue to grow and it's only gonna get stronger with the advancement in technology and kind of where that's going.
Emma: Any advice for aspiring marketing leaders? Yeah, I mean, look, I think the biggest lesson I learned was don't be complacent.
Dan: I think it's one of those things, it's, you hear me say this all the time, don't be boring, you know? And that in my mind, it's the same thing. It's like, how do you continue to be relevant and drive yourself forward? So I would say constantly be learning and constantly disrupting yourself and. I mean, look, I'm no AI expert by any means, but it's just something fun to learn and understand how technology's gonna change the world. So for marketing leaders out there, my biggest piece of advice is get close to your product. If you are marketing a product, you have to live that product. You have to breathe that product, you have to experience that product, and then you have to understand how it impacts your customers in a different way.
Dan: And basically then, Translate that into how we get other people out there to understand what that technology does. So that's [00:16:00] my biggest piece of advice for marketers. So go use chat g p T. Yeah, I mean that is actually super fun too. But I mean, I look, you know, I think it's just. What are the different prompts you can do? I think that's one of the fun ways of just learning, you know? Couldn't agree more.
Emma: Yeah. All right. Before letting you go, it's time for the lightning round. What is a secret skill not listed on your resume?
Dan: Secret skill? Not on my resume. Well, I play a mascot part-time. I did it at Salesforce for, and I also am doing it here, Qualified Plus. I'm also a part-time actor here.
Emma: You're also really good at karaoke.
Dan: Yes, that is, that's, that's definitely a secret skill. Taylor Swift songs. Exactly. Especially.
Emma: What is your favorite way to spend an evening after work?
Dan: I mean, right now obviously I'm loving my son is a year and a half. I'm loving, you know, picking him up and having fun with him before he has to go to bed. [00:17:00] So that's my, and then after that, my wife and I cook dinner and we watch Bravo. There you go.
Emma: What is your favorite brand? And this can be of anything.
Dan: So obviously Qualified is one of my favorite brands, but Yeti is also another thing. And the reason why I love Yetis is because it take, it took a, speaking about being disruptive, it took a very simple. Industry of coolers and things had made them more durable and indestructible and there's a community around it 'cause they, they really expanded. Like even there's Yeti dog bowls, which I thought is like awesome. Not that I really need a, an indestructible dog bowl, but like why not, you know?
Emma: So. Alright, last or two more questions. You just won front row seat tickets to your dream event. What is it?
Dan: It would be the Eras tour somewhere in Taylor Swift's tour somewhere in Europe.Like that would be next year. Would be awesome to go to.
Emma: What are you looking most forward to about Dreamforce this year?
Dan: Oh, Dreamforce. Yes. I'm looking forward to, of course, the concert and seeing who the big band is, but I'm looking forward to just connecting with all the, [00:18:00] the great alumni and, and ecosystem and other members out there 'cause it really is a big family reunion and I get really excited about it. And even though I'm not at Salesforce anymore, it's like we're obviously part of Salesforce and part of that community, and so I just, I'm looking forward to seeing the people.
Emma: Is anything cool happening at the sfm om A on September 13th?
Dan: Yes. Great plug actually. So we at Qualified are having an event called Pipeline Summit live at the San Francisco MoMA on the rooftop Wednesday, September 13th from four to 7:30 PM I hope you were all there. It's right before the, the big concert. So. Think of it as a pre-game. I would love to see all my friends and family there.
Emma: Love it. All right, Dan, thank you so much. Before you go, any last thing to plug? I know you just said Pipeline Summit, so thank you. But anything else on behalf of customer success?
Dan: No. No. Just, I mean, thank you to everyone who has listened to Inside The Ohana, thank you to all of the people who have participated and been interviewed on Inside [00:19:00] the Ohana. I couldn't be more proud to represent Salesforce and the podcast inside the Ohana. So thank you very much. See you guys all at Dreamforce. We'll vote. See you then.
Emma: Thank you. Inside the Ohana is brought to you by our friends at Qualified dot com, the conversational sales and marketing company that's on a mission to transform the way B two B companies sell. Go to Qualified dot com to learn more. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment to rate and review it and tell a friend. Thank you for listening.