Pressing Challenges for Developers and Admins

Our conversation with Warren started with us wondering about ​one ​of ​the ​most ​pressing ​challenges he ​sees ​Salesforce ​developers ​and ​admins ​face ​today.

Technical Hurdles

In this audio clip from the podcast, Warren talks about some ​of ​the ​most ​common ​technical ​hurdles ​Developers ​encounter ​when ​working ​with ​Salesforce.

Know the Platorm’s Latest Key Features 

As you work ​within ​the ​Salesforce ecosystem, ​you ​quickly understand ​how ​the ​platform ​has ​evolved ​over ​the ​years, ​and it’s important in your Developer and Admin roles to keep up with the latest ​key ​features ​and ​capabilities of ​the ​platform. Here’s a point Warren makes about that.

Salesforce Certifications

Always top of mind with Salesforce Developers at any level, ​certifications ​are ​essential ​for ​Salesforce ​professionals ​to ​stay ​competitive, ​especially ​the ​newbies. ​We wanted to get Warren’s thoughts on what to concentrate on. Here are just a few of the ones he suggested.

There is much more to our conversation with Warren Walters. Listen to the entire podcast.

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The post Mastering Salesforce Development: Insights from Expert Warren Walters appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

In the latest episode of Ad Victoriam’s  Salesforce Simplified podcast, we dive into the transformative role of AI in enhancing customer experience. Joined by guest Nick Glimsdahl, a senior account executive at VDS and host of the Press 1 for Nick podcast, the discussion explores how AI reshapes customer interactions across various industries. They delve into practical applications, such as real-time language translation, sentiment analysis, and predictive analytics, while addressing the balance between AI efficiency and maintaining a human touch. The episode provides valuable insights for businesses of all sizes looking to integrate AI seamlessly into their customer service frameworks without disrupting daily operations. Here are some of the audio highlights from the podcast…

How AI is Transforming the Customer Experience

We kicked off our conversation with Nick by asking him, in general, how he thought AI is currently transforming the customer experience landscape across various industries.

Ways That AI is Enhancing Customer Interactions

We were most interested in asking Nick about the most innovative ways AI is being used to enhance customer interactions, among them, real-time language translations.

Integrating AI Without Disrupting Day-to-Day Operations

Always a big concern for companies, when they implement anything new, is disruption to their operations. We wanted to know Nick’s thoughts on how companies can effectively integrate AI into their existing customer service frameworks without disrupting the day-to-day.

Key AI/Customer Experience Challenges for Businesses 

As someone who talks with companies every day about their challenges, we were curious about what Nick felt were the big issues in the AI/Customer Experience arena. For Nick, it is the “What happens if…” scenario.

There was a lot more to our conversation with Nick Glimsdahl on AI and Customer Experience. Listen to the entire podcast here.

Related Resources:

Enhancing Customer Experience Through Digital Transformation (Podcast w/Nick Glimsdahl)

Top Brands Do This to Create an Effective Customer Experience 

More Ad Victoriam Salesforce Simplified Podcasts

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Depending on your instance of Salesforce®, the first main release weekend for the Summer ’24 Release was May 17, with subsequent release weekends scheduled for June 7 and June 14. 

To help get you ready for the release – on a recent AdVic “Salesforce Simplified” podcast – we spoke with  Salesforce Ben‘s Technical Content Director and 11X Salesforce-Certified Evangelist Christine Marshall about some of her favorite new features in the Salesforce Summer ’24 Release. Here are the eight she selected for AdVic®.

1. Manage Your Flows More Efficiently with the Automation Lightning App

Salesforce Notes: View and monitor your flows in the Automation Lightning app, which is now available to all flow admins and other users that you grant access to. From the app, you can create flows or open any flow that you have permission to access in Flow Builder. New list views show your most recently modified flows and flow definitions that include errors. Search for flows using a keyword in the flow label. Filter or sort flows by type, progress status, last modified date, last modifying user, and associated record fields. Additionally, find a direct link to the Trailblazer Community and to relevant learning material on Trailhead.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic in Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: In the App Launcher, search for Automation and select the Automation app. If you don’t see the app, go to Process Automation Settings in Setup, and select Enable the Automation Lightning App.

2. Let Einstein Build a Draft Flow for You

Salesforce Notes: Reach your automation goals with Einstein by describing what you want to automate and letting Einstein generative AI handle the heavy lifting. From the description you provide, Einstein creates a draft flow with elements and resources to get you started.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience.

– All Einstein 1 Editions
– Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Einstein 1 Editions with the Einstein for Sales, Einstein for Service, or Einstein for Platform add-on.
– Einstein generative AI is available in Lightning Experience.

To purchase Einstein for Sales, Einstein for Platform, or Einstein for Service add-ons, contact your Salesforce account executive.

How: From the Flows section in Setup, click New Flow (see image below), or from the Automation Lightning app, then click New. Next, select Let Einstein Help You Build and then click Next.

3. Fix Formula Syntax Errors with Einstein for Formulas

Salesforce Notes: Einstein for Formulas now helps you fix syntax errors in a formula in addition to providing an explanation for a formula that’s used in Formula fields, default field values, and record validation rules. Create a formula or use an existing Salesforce formula in the Formula Editor and get an explanation generated. For any syntax errors in the formula, use the fixed formula suggested by Einstein.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions. Einstein generative AI is available in Lightning Experience.

Why: The formula syntax checker identifies syntax errors in a formula but doesn’t provide a solution to fix them. Einstein for Formulas addresses this limitation by providing a fixed formula that you can use in the Formula Editor.

How: To fix a syntax error in a formula you entered in the Formula Editor, click Use Formula Assistant and Einstein suggests a fixed formula for you.

4. Add New Custom Fields to Dynamic Forms-Enabled Pages

Salesforce Notes: Quickly and easily add a new custom field to your Dynamic Forms-enabled pages by using a new step in the custom-field creation wizard.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: Create a custom field as usual in Setup. After setting field-level security, you see the new step to select which Lightning record pages to add the field to.

The new field is added to each record page you select as the last field in the first field section on the page.

If there aren’t any Dynamic Forms-enabled pages for the object for which the field is being created, then the new step doesn’t appear.

5. Use Blank Spaces to Align Fields on Dynamic Forms-Enabled Pages

Salesforce Notes: Customize field alignment in Dynamic Forms field sections with the new Blank Space component. Find it on the Fields tab when viewing Dynamic Forms-enabled Lightning record pages in the Lightning App Builder. You can use a blank space on its own to separate fields vertically inside a field section. To further enhance the alignment of your field section content, you can also use a blank space in conjunction with the field section property Align fields horizontally. We delivered this feature thanks to your ideas on IdeaExchange.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

How: For example, these two versions of the same field section contain account fields, with a blank space added below the Phone field. The left image shows the default behavior without Align fields horizontally selected. The blank space appears with a single-row height.

On the right, the horizontal alignment setting was selected, causing the Website field to stay aligned horizontally with the Parent Account instead of collapsing upward. The blank space height is now expanded to align with the row height of its neighbor, Billing Address.

6. Set Conditional Visibility for Individual Tabs in Lightning App Builder

Salesforce Notes: Customize tab visibility in the Lightning App Builder according to your business needs. You can set the conditions to dynamically show or hide an individual tab in the Tabs component. This change applies to tabs on LWC-enabled record pages. We delivered this feature thanks to your ideas on IdeaExchange.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Pro Suite, and Developer editions.

How: For a complete list of LWC-enabled objects, see LWC Migration for Record Home Pages.

7. See What’s Enabled in Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups (Generally Available)

Salesforce Notes: It can be tricky to track all the permissions included in your permission sets and permission set groups. To make managing your users’ access easier, you can now see all enabled object, user, field, and custom permissions on one page. You can also see which permission set groups include the permission set and vice versa. This feature, now generally available, includes some changes since the beta release. The summary page has an improved interface, and we added the ability to see included custom permissions and permission sets in permission set groups. We delivered this feature thanks to your ideas on IdeaExchange.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) in all editions.

How: From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Permission Sets, and then select Permission Sets. Or, enter Permission Set Groups, and then select Permission Set Groups. Select a permission set or permission set group, and then click View Summary.

8. Get a Summary of a User’s Permissions and Access

Salesforce Notes: If you’ve wondered what permissions, public groups, or queues a user is assigned, you’re in luck. With the User Access Summary, you can see this information directly from the user’s detail page, saving you time, clicks, and effort. There’s no need to run queries or look through each profile, permission set, public group, or queue when troubleshooting or managing access. We delivered this feature thanks to your ideas on IdeaExchange.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) in all editions.

How: From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Users, and then select Users. Select a user, and then click View Summary.

Read more Salesforce Summer ‘24 Features selected by Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall.

How AdVic Can Help

If you have any questions about the Salesforce Summer ’24 Release – or anything Salesforce-related – AdVic’s U.S.-based Consulting Team – which works on your hours – is standing by to help! Reach us now, here.

*Images courtesy of Salesforce

Related Resources:

Highlights from the Salesforce Summer ‘24 Release – Podcast
15 Hottest Salesforce Summer ’24 Features For Admins – Christine Marshall/Salesforce Ben Article

Subscribe to the AdVic Salesforce Blog on Feedly:

The post Salesforce Ben’s Christine Marshall Highlights Top Summer ’24 Release Features appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Lucy is an 11x certified Marketing Champion and the founder of The DRIP, Salesforce Ben’s sister blog for marketing professionals. 

Our conversation covered numerous topics related to Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud, and we’ve highlighted a few in this audio blog.

Overview: Account Engagement (Pardot) & Marketing Cloud

We asked Lucy to give us a high-level overview of their architecture and how they fit into the Salesforce ecosystem…

Key Differences Between the Platforms

Account Engagement (Pardot) and Marketing Cloud are powerful marketing automation tools, but what sets them apart? We asked Lucy to break down the key differences between these platforms…

Scalability of the Platforms

Scalability is a concern for growing businesses. Here we asked Lucy how Account Engagement (Pardot) and Marketing Cloud handle larger volumes of data and expanding customer bases, and if there are any limitations to keep in mind…

Standout Features of the Platforms

With so many marketing automation tools available, we want to ask Lucy her thoughts on some of the standout features and functionalities that make Account Engagement (Pardot) and Marketing Cloud unique or more powerful than others in the market…

Listen to the Entire Podcast with Lucy

How AdVic Can Help

Marketing is challenging, but it can be easier! AdVic® can help you decide whether it’s Salesforce’s Account Engagement (Pardot) or Marketing Cloud is your out-of-the-box solution to help you address your specific challenges so your department can impact the organization. Let’s get you on your way to success today!

Related Resources:

The Benefits of Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Using Data Relationships to Create Better Segmentation in Marketing Cloud

Marketing Cloud Intelligence Reports: A Deeper Dive

Subscribe to the AdVic Salesforce Blog on Feedly:

The post An Insider’s View of Salesforce’s Account Engagement (Pardot) & Marketing Cloud appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Chris Hood, former Google head of digital business strategy, the author of the new book Customer Transformation, and the host of the Chris Hood Digital Show was a recent guest on the Ad Victoriam “Salesforce Simplified” podcast. He discussed the data, digital, and AI challenges businesses face today. Here are some highlights from the conversation.

Why It’s  So Difficult for Companies to Manage Their Data

Chris started by asking this question:

“How much data do you think is in the world?

“As of 2021, there are 79 zeta bytes of data, and that number is expected to double by 2025. So that’s 100 and 60 zeta bytes of data.

“So in the classic Marty McFly, Back to the Future, what the hell is a zettabyte?

“And if we were to think about this, I have a phone here in my hand; it has one terabyte of storage on it. Now that’s just storage; it’s not even completely full. But if we were to take 1,000,000,000 terabyte mobile phones that would store one zettabyte of data. And so if we think about that, that’s 79 billion phones. And then of course, by 2025 that’s 100 and 60,000,000,000 terabyte phones. That would be the equivalent of giving every person in the entire world 21 terabyte mobile devices. That’s a lot of data.”

Well, your head may be spinning after all those numbers (ours were), but to expound upon his point, Chris added, “And so when we start thinking about how do we deal with this, it’s not just the size and the amount of data. It’s also all of these new formats that we’re dealing with.

“We’ve got the online, you know, basic text, we got multimedia, we got all of the metadata from videos. We’ve got new forms of data like artificial intelligence and analytics. We are even starting to see multisensory types of data. This is obviously critical in the health field industries.

“But how do we track the data of something like smell? Those types of data are all increasing.

“And then, of course, we also have the regulatory issues, privacy concerns, and data security issues.

“All of these factors are just, you know, creating complex situations for us in terms of how to manage it. And that, I mean, those three things alone is why it’s very difficult for companies to manage the data.”

How Companies Can Be More Effective Managing Their Data

Chris outlined a few points to heed here…

“You’ve got to start thinking about moving your data to the cloud and I’m sure we’ll, we can get into that a little bit more.

“There’s probably a lot of different opinions about moving data to the cloud, but really you’re going to be safer, the whole purpose of being able to scale, you know, going from 79 zettabytes to 100 over the next three years, you’re gonna have to be able to scale and you can do that more successfully in the cloud.

“The other area is to start leveraging technologies, foundational technologies to help you manage data like APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

“APIs are not just about creating experiences directly inside of an application or building applications that can connect with each other, those integration points.

“Obviously, it’s in the name, but it is also about helping you better manage that data across the cloud and across different platforms.”

He added, “And then begin thinking about how you’re governing that data.

“What are your internal policies to help you track, manage, and ensure that data is protected where the data is coming from? Those governance policies can be automated. Just defining what those governance policies are and building teams that wrap around those policies are going to be critical for the management of it.”

Getting Data Integration Right

On this topic, Chris drove home the point that proper data integration is pivotal for anything you’re doing, from accurate analytics or streamlining your operation to consistent customer experiences across all of your platforms.

He added, “The biggest one though, I think, is that customer experience piece. You know, we think about personalization as an example. It’s critical today. Everybody wants something that’s personalized, but you probably don’t want to personalize an experience for Sam that says, ‘Hello Paul,’ right? I mean, that’s where we’re at and this integration ensures that you’re getting proper data delivered to proper places when it’s needed.

“And it also helps drive innovation and partnerships.

“So when we think about all of those customer experiences, the ability to innovate and get to market faster and deliver those new experiences to customers that demand those experiences from you all happen within integration. That’s the customer first now.

“There’s other areas of integration across multiple platforms. When you start thinking about internal pro processes like human resources and marketing and building analytics and sharing that data across different teams so that they can see how things are working.

“But I would argue that the biggest opportunity for data integration is ultimately always going to be your customer first. And then secondary is understanding how those integrations and data management is going to help you improve operations, but you’re only improving operations to satisfy customer needs.”

How Generative AI is Fitting Into Businesses Today

Before diving headlong into this subject, Chris thought it important to give a reality check.

“We’re actually seeing a decline right now in overall AI usage. I think we’ve gotten past the hype, right? So obviously big hype, shiny new object, let’s use it.

“And we are seeing a decline, we see a decline in user subscriptions for open AI for ChatGPT as an example. I think we’re getting more settled into what is AI and what is not AI. The perspective out there for a lot of people is that they have this vision of what AI is.

“But that vision or even definition of what AI is is probably still 10 years away from today. We’re nowhere close to being able to do the things that I think people believe or it’s been hyped to do.

“And so that’s why you’re starting to see a decline in usage of AI.

“That doesn’t mean that no one’s talking about it clearly, it’s everywhere we see the government starting to take an active interest in it. We see a lot of companies trying to figure out how to use it.”

There is much more from Chris on the subject of AI, and data and digital challenges businesses face today. Listen to the entire podcast here.

How AdVic Can Help

Is your business in need of an AI solution? No worries, because the AdVic® AI team has the skills and expertise needed to get you up and running quickly so you can drive efficiencies and new revenue. Let’s explore your options and start creating your roadmap to success today!

Related Resources:

Why Forecasting Sales with AI is Important for All Industries
How to Improve Sales Forecasting in Salesforce with AI
Turn Sales Into Selling Machines, CRMs, AI, and More

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On a recent Ad Victoriam “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, we invited Refine Labs CEO Chris Walker to talk about the state of B2B marketing today. 

Chris and his team help B2B companies change how they think about measuring and executing marketing so they can stop worrying about lead volume and start generating revenue.

In addition to his CEO duties at Refine Labs, Chris also hosts Revenue Vitals podcast, which mixes live Q and A and chats with some of today’s top B2B leaders to share some tangible advice and tactics. 

Here is just a taste of the many B2B marketing topics we covered with Chris on the podcast.

Common Mistakes B2B Marketers Making Today

On this subject, Chris remarked, “I think basically you can categorize the challenges that B2B marketers face today into three core buckets. You have mindset, you have metrics and measurement, and you have execution. And my strong belief after advising and working with more than 200 high-growth B2B companies in the past four years is that the actual issues start at mindset, then get driven down to measurement, and then negatively impact execution. And so the actual way to solve this is not to have your B2B marketer try and run their ads better or make a better piece of content. You actually, as executives and business leaders, need to look at this at a much higher level and think, ‘What is the actual mindset of marketing?’”

Chris expounded, “The overall mindset inside of B2B companies is that marketing is a servant to sales. Marketing’s job is to get leads or other types of signals through MQL scores, buying lists, scanning trade show booths, running content syndication to get “leads,” contacts at an account so that their sales team can try to sell to people. And the fundamental shift in the mindset has to be our job for marketing inside of our company is to drive buying processes at scale independently with all of our target accounts all the time, to create an ecosystem with all of our target accounts so that they’re learning, progressing, understanding the business problems inside of their own business, what the metrics should look at, what the solutions could be, what people try that fail. And you need all of the key people inside of all your target accounts to be getting that information all the time.”

Tips for a Strong Digital Presence

We were curious as to Chris’ thoughts on the amount of effort companies are putting into their online presences today. Here’s what he told us:

“A lot of companies over-prioritize their websites. They build a ton of website pages and they spend a lot of time doing SEO content, which was the “best practice strategy” in the early to mid-2010s popularized by HubSpot and other vendors.

“And when those strategies were developed and popularized, social media was in its infancy. Facebook was only used by college kids. A company like Pepsi didn’t have a Facebook page when this stuff was happening. And the progression of what’s happened with social networks, private communities, a lot of places like this over the past 10 years is that it’s basically how people use the internet and get information today through social networks. And so if you are not present in these key places where your buyers log in multiple times a day, some people 10-20 times a day log in to LinkedIn to consume content and collaborate, if you’re not there, then you’re missing out on potential business.”

Measuring B2B Campaign Success

Many B2B marketing teams today struggle with measuring a campaign’s success, and so we asked Chris to talk about what marketers should be paying attention to today.

“Depends what the goal of the campaign is,” Chris remarked. “In a high-intent search, you sell FP&A software and there’s a buyer in Google Search that’s searching FP&A software and you’re going to buy that keyword, you should be measuring it on dollars of pipeline created versus dollars of ad dollars spent. You should have a ratio of pipeline dollars per ad dollar. And then eventually, if you go at it long enough, you should be able to get to a close one revenue over at ad spend dollar and just get ROAS. So for demand capture type of stuff, you should be measuring ROAS and cost of acquisition.

“And then when you think about demand creation, this is where a lot of B2B companies get stuck. And I’m sure B2C companies get stuck on it too because everybody’s looking for the attachment to revenue. And the core thing about demand creation, especially inside of dark social channels today, is that the measurement is very difficult to accomplish with the current measurement methodologies and technologies that are used in companies.”

Skills B2B Marketers Need Today

Oh, sure, Chris could have just given some blanket advice here on the skills today’s B2B marketers need, but he went a little deeper.

“It really depends on what your goal is,” he acknowledged. “If you want to be a senior marketing manager, make $120K, and take care of your family and have all the weekends, you’re going to have a different plan than the person that wants to be the CEO of a $100 million run rate company.

“But some blanket things that I think would make marketers far more effective at any level and get increasingly important as your level goes up, business acumen and financial basics. You have to be able to read a P&L. You have to understand how to calculate the cost of acquisition. You need to understand key metrics that your finance team is looking at every day, every month, every quarter. Getting primary market research directly from customers in qualitative and quantitative formats. Every marketer should be doing this, not just the product marketing team. So all marketers should be engaging with customers, understanding them, coming up with perspectives on overall strategy and tactics. I’d be hard-pressed not to say that if you are a marketer today and you don’t create content for yourself or your business, then you’re really missing out. The number one driver of business results today is content that gets put in social networks.”

There were a lot more B2B marketing topics we talked about with Chris during the podcast, including his thoughts on misconceptions about B2B marketing, we talked deeper about the relationship of B2B marketing and social media, and how B2B companies can better target their ideal customers. Listen to the entire podcast here. 

Is your business in need of a B2B solution? No worries, because the AdVic® B2B Commerce team has the skills and expertise needed to get your branded storefront up and running quickly so you can drive new revenue. Let’s explore your options and start creating your roadmap to success today!

Related Resources:

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of (Podcast)
B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 1 (Blog)
B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 2 (Blog)

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Ike Wagh is a unique independent Salesforce Content Creator who has been using his platform to share his passion for Salesforce® with the world across social media. Ike has over 13,000 followers on LinkedIn and over 3,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.

Ike was a recent guest on the AdVic “Salesforce Simplified” podcast and talked about his journey to becoming an independent Salesforce Content Creator, how he connects with others in the Salesforce Ohana, and how those inside Salesforce are reacting to his content. Here are some highlights from that conversation…

How Ike Started Creating Salesforce Content

In the Salesforce ecosystem since 2015 – with Salesforce Admin and CPQ experience under his belt – Ike told AdVic that in all of the roles he had he always felt something was missing.

“There was a creative itch that just couldn’t be scratched. Even if I could architect the most amazing thing, or at least in my opinion, if I was proud of it, there’s still something missing. So one day I was thinking, “You know what? Let me just…” I was actually, this was when I was a CPQ consultant, I thought, “I’m just going to start a YouTube channel.”

“And I think maybe there’s an audience that wants to see some reviews of apps because I’m always into new tools and trying to find new fun ways to solve problems, and I’m just going to make five-minute reviews of apps. And that was how everything started. So it really started with just putting myself out there making YouTube video app reviews.”

Salesforce Trends & Best Practices

We were curious how Ike stays up on Salesforce trends and best practices, oftentimes the subject of the content he creates and shares on social media.

“It’s really all about LinkedIn. The Salesforce Ohana is strangely huge LinkedIn fans, basically. So if I’m looking for trends, it comes down to what’s on my LinkedIn feed and also shout out to the Salesforce Ohana team. They’re great. So basically between those two resources, I can keep up with what’s going on and all the news.”

The Challenges of Creating Content

Content creation in any form presents its challenges. AdVic asked Ike how he faces his:

“There is an issue that I think a lot of content creators can empathize with, and that you get yourself deep into the metrics and you start to associate the value of your metrics directly with the value of your work and it gets kind of dangerous because then you think, “Wow, I spent so much time making this thing and if it doesn’t do,” I’m doing air quotes, “if it doesn’t do well, then maybe this wasn’t valuable.”

“And I think it’s a dangerous path because it can really deflate what you’re doing and how you feel. So it’s something I struggle with but I think a lot of the way that helps me is to try my best to always just work on the things that I truly have fun doing because in that way, even if it doesn’t do great, I can just remember that this was a fun project. Whereas your other option is work on something that you are not enjoying and if it doesn’t do well, it’s like it’s a double whammy. So just basically always choose and work on the projects that truly inspire or [you] have fun with.”

What They Don’t Tell You

So, now that Ike has been creating his unique brand of Salesforce content for a while, we wondered if there was anything that he wished he had known when he first started?

“Yeah, no one cares. No one cares at all. So care less, that is my tip. And there’s actually, one, it’s psychological and it has to do with the algorithms, many of the algorithms in which we share content on. If it’s not doing well, you don’t need to worry that… I think it’s almost like you might think, ‘Oh, I just came into a big room and everyone is looking at me put myself out there, and it flops and how embarrassing.’ But actually, your reach when you first post something is very small, and only if it gets engagement does a wider audience see it.

“So, remember, if something doesn’t do well, there’s also a good chance that not a lot of people saw it in the first place. So take a deep breath. It’s okay and people care way less than you ever think. So that is something that I struggled with, but I wish I knew from the beginning.”

There is much more to our conversation with independent Salesforce Content Creator Ike Wagh, including how people inside Salesforce are interacting with his content. Listen to the full Ad Victoriam “Salesforce Simplified” podcast here, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. 

Related Resources:

More “Salesforce Simplified” Podcasts 

Subscribe to the AdVic Salesforce Blog on Feedly:

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For those who don’t know, Product Information Management (PIM) refers to the process of handling all the data, content, and other material that you need to market and sell products. PIM also ensures that quality data is created for internal use and multichannel distribution.

PIM was the topic on a recent AdVic® “Salesforce Simplified” podcast. In that episode we talked more about what PIM is, how it can help companies, and how it can be implemented into Salesforce systems. And to talk about all of that, we invited Mike Milburn, who has a deep background within the Salesforce® ecosystem (he is actually one of the founders of Service Cloud), and is now the co-founder and Co-CEO of Pimly, which is a new and innovative solution that brings all of a company’s product information into Salesforce to easily manage and utilize product data and digital assets across their Salesforce clouds. What follows are some highlights from our conversation with Mike.

The Importance of PIM for Businesses

We started our conversation with Mike by asking him to define PIM and its importance to businesses in today’s ultra-competitive landscape.

“The image that I’d like to conjure up,” Mike began, “is actually if you pull out your phone or your computer and you pull up Amazon or Target or Walmart and you look at what you last ordered, and I would like to think or believe and I’m probably pretty sure that most of your listeners have probably ordered something in the last 24 hours or in the last week, but if you pull up that order you’re looking at a modern embodiment of product information. You see unstructured content or pictures and videos and graphics that help inform you of the product, good or service you’re looking at, you can zoom in and you can get really up close and personal with the content. Then you also see structured data, and it could be as simple as the length or width or height of the item that you purchased, it could be the kind of material, it could be the ingredients in that product. But essentially, eCommerce is driven by product information.

“So, I think almost everybody interacts with product information in some way, shape or form, especially in this 2023 kind of post COVID eCommerce centric way. So that’s what product information is, it’s the set of attributes and the set of videos and pictures. So it’s the structured and unstructured data that makes up the DNA of any product, good or service.”

The Challenges of Implementing a PIM System

Mike offered this scenario about implementing PIM from the Pimly perspective.

“When you think about your company’s product catalog, or maybe you went on Amazon and you purchased some shoes and you think about all of the different pictures and style for shoes, and you think about all that information, the first thing you’ve got to do is organize that. And so we’ve made it fast and easier and simple to organize that information in the same UI and UX that 17 million trailblazers are familiar, with the Salesforce Classic or the Salesforce Lightning interface. So, I think that’s a neat part of it.

“The second piece of it is with our partner first model, we have an incredible delivery arm that has built and designed thousands or millions of Salesforce systems. So we’re seeing implementation times that are delivered in days and weeks instead of months because they simply know the Salesforce platform. So, it’s still a process, we’re making it easier.”

Integrating Pimly Into Salesforce

We wondered about the ease of integrating Pimly into Salesforce and Mike set the record straight on the word “integrating.”

While it is easy, Mike added, “It’s kind of funny because it’s not even integrated because it’s built on core, so we don’t have to integrate. And so one of my favorite Salesforce alumni is a guy named Rob Pickeral and he invented this phrase called configuration, and it was really a hybrid of configuration and customization. And this word customization is pretty terrifying because it sounds hard and complex, but configuration is easy. It’s like a paint by numbers book, and any trailblazer can configure in Salesforce. And the neat part about Pimly is that we’re natively built on Salesforce, and that means with clicks not code. You can drag and drop and you can configure your product information natively on Salesforce. We make it fast and easy and simple. So it’s not even integrated, that’s too complex. It’s built natively on Salesforce.”

Measuring ROI

We thought it important to ask Mike about measuring ROI and what Pimly users should we be watching for.

“We’re really trailblazing a new path here and let’s start off with Salesforce,” Mike remarked. “And so every customer of Salesforce is looking for value. We’re adding value to the Salesforce platform for every single user. And this is a really important point, PIMs traditionally were for 5 people or 10 people or 15 people, maybe a product manager or an eCommerce team. We believe that modern PIMs are for every Salesforce user. So, I think of things like the value of Salesforce overall and the usage of Salesforce overall is going to go up with Pimly. That’s a pretty cool measurement I think of sales efficiency and sales. Productivity is going to go up because you’re using similar, easy, fast, simple tools that are powered by Salesforce. I think of service, service productivity, service enablement, CSAT, all the critical customer service metrics. I think those are going to go up and once they’re powered by Pimly.

“And then finally, I think that there’s an agility quotient. CIOs are looking to do more today than ever before with fewer technologies and more trusted technologies. And Salesforce has certainly earned the right over the last 25 years to be one of the most trusted technologies on the planet. And so you’re putting your critical information in one of the most critical business ready systems, and I think therein is an efficiency of trust and scale.”

Mike Milburn offered many more insights into Product Information Management on the podcast, which you can hear in its entirety here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Webinar: Unlocking the Potential of Commerce

Having access to accurate product information is a challenge and can have serious implications, especially in the MedTech sector. This issue is difficult to solve without a Product Information Management (PIM) system and strategy. This webinar provides an overview of PIM, how it helps the MedTech sector, and will demonstrate how Pimly, the only Salesforce-native PIM solution on the market, bridges the gap between product information and CRM.

Related Resources:

More “Salesforce Simplified” Podcasts from AdVic

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Since launching in 2009 – and acquired by Salesforce in 2021 for $27.7 billion – Slack has been on the front lines of offering some of the best features in the world of team collaboration. So now, what started as an internal communication tool has evolved into a much-loved unified communications tool. 

During a recent episode of AdVic’s “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, we spoke with Slack Senior Solutions Engineer Aditi Chaturvedi about the great features inside Slack, which by the way stands for “Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge.” Here’s some of the highlights from our conversation.

How Do You Explain What Slack Is?

“To me, Slack is the engagement layer where work happens. It’s where, as I said, your tools are interacting through integrations with the people that you work with, where you can automate processes using no-code workflows. It’s also a place to have a more direct human line to your external partners.”

How Has Slack Changed the Overall Work Environment?

“We understand we’re in a bit of a different work environment now post 2020. Even though people are probably going to start coming back into the office a little bit more, I think this more flexible model where some people work remotely or at least are on distributed teams is here to stay. And I think what a lot of people found in 2020 is that email is not responsive or intelligent enough to meet that challenge. And we even find with some of our most mature customers, they talk about working at the speed of Slack, and just being less reliant in general on email to get work done just because everything is so much faster to get done in Slack.”

Download AdVic’s Free “Slack: Where Work Happens” Infographic (Instant, no-form download)

How Does Slack Bring Flexibility to the Workplace?

“One concept you’ll hear us talk about a lot is the concept of asynchronous versus synchronous work. So, what can we do together in a synchronous manner, versus what kind of activities can we add more flexibility to and allow them to be asynchronous so that they work at the time that makes the most sense for that person?”

How Does Slack Protect an Organization’s Data?

“Slack was built from the ground up to be the most secure way to communicate and collaborate not only within but across company boundaries. And protecting the security of our customers’ data is a top priority for Slack. High level, our program is based on the concept of defense in depth, which is all about securing our organization and our customer’s data at every layer. And that approach focuses on things like security governance, risk management, and compliance.”

There is much more to our conversation with Slack’s Aditi Chaturvedi. Listen to the full Ad Victoriam “Salesforce Simplified” podcast here, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. 

And if you would like to explore a Slack solution for your business, AdVic’s Slack Team is here to help. Set up a time to talk today!

Related Resources: 

What You Need to Know About Slack 

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The B2B marketing landscape is continuously evolving. The last two years saw a few unprecedented changes and trends in the B2B marketing ecosystem. What trends can we expect in 2023? On a recent Ad Victoriam “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, Paul Slack, founder and CEO of Vende Digital discussed sales and marketing, SEO, and social media trends B2B marketers should watch – and possibly embrace – this year. What follows are some of the highlights of that conversation.

Video is Still King 

“Video,” Paul remarked, “as a way of delivering information, is becoming more and more important. We’re seeing video consumption just on the rise and short video consumption being the biggest form of that. I think we can thank our short attention spans, and maybe TikTok for that, but we all want these short videos. And so, video worked well in 2022. I think it’s going to work extremely well in 2023.” 

From a sales perspective, Paul added, “Video is also a really important tool. So I think the sales reps that were able to send little video messages to their customers, that’s something that if you didn’t try in 2022, I’d recommend that you try in 2023. Think about all the emails that you’re getting, unsolicited emails and things like that. And then every now and then I’d get an email and it’s a little video from a person where they’ve analyzed my website or they’ve got a specific message related to me, and that catches my attention.”

Creating Personalized Content Hubs

Championing the creation of personalized content hubs, Paul shared, “I think the more that you can deliver a message, whether it’s on the sales side or on the marketing side, that makes that recipient of that information think to themselves, ‘Wow, that was for me. That person spent some time sending me this email, delivering me this message on social media,’ whatever the case may be.” 

He added, “And there’s so many tools out there today that can help us really hyper-personalize. And so one thing that I like to bring up is, these personalized content hubs. And I know a lot of businesses are taking advantage of those now, but even into 2023, if you can have a landing page on your website for each of your sales reps and have that be personalized, which you can do with marketing automation and tools like that to where when that visitor… The sales rep drops a link, ‘Hey, check out this content hub I’ve made that’s got all this great information to help you, Mr. Prospect.’ But when they land on it, through marketing automation and personalization, it can look like it’s a customized landing page, not just for the rep, but actually for the prospect.”

Your SEO Initiatives

With an eye toward shoring up SEO initiatives, Paul suggested, “If you did a good job in 2022 of making your website technically sound and loading fast, etc., in 2023 you really need to focus on establishing really awesome content that’s tied to your content pillars where you’re calling out your niche.”

Additionally, Paul said that B2B marketers need to think about when they’re building content for 2023, “We cannot write a blog or an article, or a webpage and hope that we’re going to rank well, because that’s a key phrase that’s important for us. We’ve got to write content that answers the query of the user. So Google’s really looking at, did that user click over to your website? Did they hit the back button and go to another page because they didn’t get their answer on your page? That’s going to have a big impact. So when you write content in 2023, make sure you’re answering the user intent. And then the last thing for SEO is, just make sure you’ve got multimedia on there. So for example, audio or video or stats, things like that, that are going to really help the user along the way.”

Leadership Leading the Social Media Messaging

A huge proponent of turning employees into ambassadors for your company on social media – speaking to their audiences directly – Paul suggested it start at the top. “I call it founder branding… Positioning the head of your company as the face of your company on social media, I think is going to be really helpful in 2023.” 

Lastly for social media in 2023, Paul added, ”If you haven’t thought about advertising, you absolutely need to, but think about it as a way of getting your best content in front of your ideal customers.”

Is your business in need of a B2B solution that might include migrating from a legacy eCommerce platform? No worries, because the AdVic B2B Commerce team has the skills and expertise needed to get your branded storefront up and running quickly so you can drive new revenue. Contact us today, we’re ready to chat!

Related Resources:

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of (Podcast)

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 1 (Blog)

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 2 (Blog)

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