Our highlights from Salesforce at the 'Trailblazers' Conference

Bella at Salesforce

I've worked with many Marketing Email Marketing and CRM tools, from Microsoft Dynamics and Click Dimensions to Hubspot, Eloqua, and MailChimp, to Marketo. I've been most impressed with Salesforce, and Pardot, particularly in the quality of their support. Salesforce and Pardot are truly built to work together as a combined sales enablement (Salesforce) and Marketing/CRM/Email tool (Pardot).

Ronan Twohig, Account executive, Salesforce, Emer Merriman, Marketing Specialist, Salesforce and Isabella Hernandez, Marketing Executive, Buzzmove

My colleague and I, Bella Hernandez, met up with our team at Pardot in the SMB arena at the excel center in the Docklands. It was great to see Ronan Twohig again and meet Emer Merriman.

Straight away we were deep into a conversation about how I could make some adjustments to better integrate Salesforce with Pardot. Then right away, I was like 'hey Emer, I want to get a better insight into our Marketing ROI. How can I best accomplish that?'

B-2-B Marketing analytics - What we may be missing

Emer asked me about our product suite, and it turned out that we are missing one component that can achieve this, the B-2-B analytics suite. We fixed up a demo next week, so I can best understand this and then, hopefully, remedy the situation.

But also We're going to talk through a couple of those questions I had about the best practices in Salesforce/Pardot integration.

Ronan then asked me 'hey, Rudy, how is that rolling out and implementing Pardot coming along, the one you mentioned a couple of months ago when we were at the Shard?'

Bella asking the Salesforce trailblazer scout for directions 

I was happy to report to Emer and Ronan my first 2 months' progress; I wrote my marketing plan, pitched it, and had it was agreed by my CMO, in the first week. By the following week, I had implemented Pardot for all our campaigns.

Emer said 'wow, two weeks, that's amazing!'  But it's no big deal - Pardot is easy to use, and there's plenty of content and people to guide you if you get stuck.

In fact, it's worked so well that I've even begun using it for more extensive B-2-C lists, of over 80,000 contacts, that's despite B-2-C not being in my job description. But in the start-up world, you do what you can to help.

Why do I love these Salesforce headphones so very much? 

1. Is it the cute logo? 2. is it that they light up with a warm glow? 

Yes, all our contact data is now inside of Salesforce, we are fully integrated, and we are running a range of campaigns from LinkedIn inmail, to events, to Email. Not only that, but the data quality is far better and more actionable by the sales team than it was previously.

I have also set up lead scoring and marketing automation, including nurture campaigns; we can roll this out for all other parts of our business too.

Ronan Twohig kindly suggested that I come and present what I've accomplished in Pardot at a Salesforce conference coming up, which sounded cool. Small businesses actually generate over 1/3 of Salesforce's total revenue.

The keynote was terrifically entertaining and informative; the CMO, Simon Mulcahy, is a natural presenter and he brought on some real powerhouses of digital and b-2-b marketing, from Ulster Bank (part of RBS) and Adidas, to run some live demos. The marketing feats they had accomplished using Salesforce were quite mind-blowing.

Simon Mulcahy, CMO, of Salesforce, hitting it out of the park with his keynote.

I was particularly taken with Simon's concept of 'trailblazers' - how it's people like 'us' - intrepid pioneers, innovators, game-changers, who are doggedly trying to improve the organizations we work for; we are the ones who are driving growth in our companies. That was a powerful message.

Which CRM provider dominates now?

There are a plethora of platforms right now. Which will dominate five years from now, in 2023 and beyond?

Along the way, I ran into a few old colleagues and friends. Bella and I had a good chat with Pedro Jose, a rockstar Sales engineer at Vlocity, a Salesforce company. I worked with him at Sigma. Pedro was pivotal in signing our biggest deal last year with Telstra, for $15 Million.

Pedro Jose, Director of Solutions Consulting at Salesforce.

He worked like a maniac on Telstra, flying back and forth from his home in Portugal to Sydney, Australia, many times. He was 'all over it'! That deal was also important from a marketing perspective; since it was our first big account in the APAC region.

I'm glad to report that Pedro was thrilled at Vlocity, performing exceptionally well and being treated even better by Salesforce.

We rounded off the day with Bella rocking the floor of over 5000 salesforce event attendees with her killer tunes, breaks and massive bass.

What I got out of the event

1. I learned valuable information that will make me a more productive marketer and will enable me to carry out more effective marketing at my company.

2. I connected with those who can help me in my journey; not least of all some of the salesforce team. This was sadly lacking when I ran global demand generation at my last company (with another CRM provider).

Financial Management for start-ups

Most founders of start-ups want to end up in one of two places; Becoming a public company (by having its IPO) or being acquired by another company. Each of these scenarios has played out at 2 of the last three companies I’ve worked at. If, as an entrepreneur, you want to reach either of these goals, someone in your organization must have a good grasp of finance.

It's been about ten years since I completed my MBA, but all the lessons remain fresh in my memory. I majored in Finance, so I was fortunate to have studied with many, primarily US (my business school was in the USA) finance professionals from organizations like Blackrock, State Street, Fidelity, and Bain Capital. I was even more fortunate to have completed an internship at a New York Investment Bank, Bryant Park Capital. 

During my internship and studies, I learned a lot about - valuing companies, presenting financial data to investors, and PowerPoint (doh! I'm an MBA, of course!). Most importantly, I started to understand the special language that Finance professionals use; Market Cap, Fifo/Lifo, beta, default risk premium, arbitrage, hedging and so on..

Back at business school, I hit it off with one of my professors, Don Margotta, who is an expert on corporate governance and shareholder activism. I want to share a few of the ideas here, that ignited my passion for Finance.

He encouraged me to take a PhD in finance, specializing in Corporate Governance (using my Law degree from LSE). But the idea of starving for five years, straight after spending two years studying for an MBA, was a bit much for me.

Here are some of the finance books, that I've found inspirational; Liar's Poker, Barbarians at the Gate, and Black Swan (where Nassim Taleb proceeded to pull apart all the concepts I'd devoted hundreds of hours learning in my Statistics classes).

First, Time value of Money. This one is crucial. A pound today is worth more than a pound you get tomorrow, which is worth more than a pound you make the next day, and so on. The interest rate drives this value.

If I said all Finance calculations stem from this one idea, I wouldn't be far wrong. For example, you could get a good read on the value of a company by using this method to calculate the present value of all it's future cash flows.

Or if you thought the company had legs, you could use the perpetuity equation here:

PV of a Perpetuity = PMT/I

PMT = $1,000,000

Interest rate = 2.5%

Company Value = $40 Million

When they start negotiations, many Investment Bankers will use earnings multiples to value a company; these vary for industries and countries, one may be x 4, some may be x 20. You will use the EBITDA figure for a company - Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, which is a standard measure of a company's operating performance. Here's an excellent example of one such valuation, using two parameters - High & Low:

At Bryant Park Capital, I began using Capital IQ, to find comparable public company data to estimate a Private Company's value. I also used Bloomberg, when I was at MFS Investments, for the same.

I hope I've given you some ideas about valuing your start-up.

I have concentrated on Financial value in this article. However, it's important to remember that a large company will sometimes buy a startup because of its strategic value rather than its financial value.