Both speakers gave engaging talks around their topics; the power of growing your network in the Salesforce ecosystem, and thoughtful lightning page design.

You can watch Karen’s previous talk at our Women In Tech New York event, where she speaks about how to be an advocate for women in the industry here.

The Power of Growing Your Network in the Salesforce Ecosystem

Karen began the event by discussing the benefits growing your network within the Salesforce ecosystem can have, relating this to her own experience within the ecosystem.

At the beginning of her career, Karen mentions that she was an introvert, yet having been invited to many networking events by her mentors, Karen realises that networking has shaped her as a person, particularly in her career. Not only has her management style evolved as a result of networking, but she has become more confident in herself.

Wanting to give back to the network, Karen’s original intention was to share what her mentors had taught her over time. This led her to co-found a women in tech initiative at her previous company. At her current position in Saberpoint, Karen realised that in order to effectively do her job, she needed a broader reach of people, this included mentors, access to people with different skillsets and backgrounds as well as a support group; to achieve this she needed to network. From networking within the ecosystem, Karen highlights that she has been able to refer opportunities to others, share knowledge, establish connections with clients and personally develop herself.

Throughout her experience Karen has discovered 4 core values to networking: getting new ideas, making it as easy as possible for people to recommend you, improving your creativity and developing long lasting relationships.

To emphasise the power of networking, Karen shared some interesting statistics:

• 85% of positions are filled through networking
• 95% of professionals consider face-to-face communication vital for long-term business
• 70% of people found a job through a connection at a company
• The close rate for face-to-face meetings is 40%

Opening the discussion to the floor, Karen provided advice for following-up with connections in your network.

Thoughtful – Lightning Page Design: Who are those records for anyway?

The second talk of the event was given by Salesforce Administrator, Jennifer Kleinfeld, and focused on maximising your lightning page design.

A reoccurring point during Jennifer’s talk, were the aspects of good design. Good design is:

• Aesthetic – effects who is using it when they are interacting with your design
• Understandable – it clarifies the structure of work
• Purposeful – fulfils a purpose with success in mind
• Designs as little as possible – don’t burden with non-essential items

In order to create effective lighting page design, you need to consider the different needs and viewpoints of the lightning page; the customer, the businesses and the user. Make sure to ask the right questions; who is it for? How will it be used? What are your challenges? Mapping users by persona helps to understand what their needs are when making changes to the design.

Jennifer highlights three design areas to consider:

• Surface – colours, fonts, branding, visualisation
• Structure – scope, layout, flow and discovery
• Purpose – user’s intentions, goals and desired actions

Referencing a person that Jennifer learns from – Gary Vaynerchuk – Jennifer emphasises that your design has the possibility of being imperfect, and there will be a point where you have to adjust. Eventually business needs change and your design should reflect that. The important thing is to write good documentation so that people can build on your design.

Before finishing her talk, Jennifer provided a few tools and ideas to help build lightning pages (these are just a few):

• Reduce clicks and scrolls
• Consider mobile view vs desktop view
• Custom paths
• Utility item pop-up notes
• Kanban

Thank you to both Karen and Jennifer for their insightful talks, and all the attendees for making the event interactive and engaging.

We’re always looking for more speakers, if you are interested in speaking at our next Women In Salesforce event, please get in touch!

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For our first event we were joined by two fantastic speakers, both experienced Salesforce professionals: Anna Pappas, Senior Director, Financial Services GTM Lead for Salesforce at Capgemini, and Devin Spence, Solution Architect and Founder of Seelman Consulting.

Partnering With Salesforce

Anna started the event by talking about how your professional journey can get you to one of the greatest modern day tech companies. Providing a bit of background into her career, Anna mentioned how she began as a marketer in the manufacturing industry, then moved to product management in industrial products, and has also worked in banking and sales in consulting.

Throughout her career two things have remained consistent:

• The need to know who the customer is, and everything about them
• The requirement to deliver an excellent customer service

…. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Anna emphasised how Salesforce goes beyond CRM, to encapsulate an entire platform delivering a true customer 360 experience. Salesforce has understood that businesses from a digital transformation perspective require more than just a front office, they want; integration, analytics, security, IoT and collaboration.

Discussing how Capgemini work within the Salesforce environment, Anna segmented their activities into four sections:

• Innovations; proliferation of technology
• Omni-Channels; exponential growth of channels and business touchpoints
• Technologies; emergence of new online, and ecommerce platforms
• New Business Models; a new wave of Challenger banks, FinTechs and BigTechs

To hear Anna talk in detail about these segments, watch the video of the event here.

Finishing her presentation, Anna highlighted the market opportunity for this industry: the financial services industry is growing at 22% and is the fastest growing industry for Salesforce. 

Fighting Back Against the Transformative Pandemic

The second speaker of the event, Devin Spence, provided a narrative for how to turn the events of the current pandemic into a positive, alongside as a manager how you can support your team members, and finally the impacts of the pandemic as a woman in tech.

Devin spoke about three key aspects that will help you to become an all-star consultant, during the pandemic:

• Being an active listener 
• Transition to a ‘true partner’ 
• Keep the engagement 

As a manager, to effectively support your team members during these uncertain times, Devin emphasised the importance of things other than billable hours, how mental health days should be mandated and to successfully manage a team, you first need to lead by example.

The final topic of Devin’s presentation focused on how to keep your sanity as a woman in the tech industry. With the pandemic creating extra pressures on industry professionals, Devin discussed the following factors as a way to prevent the position of women in tech from both stagmenting and reversing to how it was in the past.

• Flexibility
• Reflect on what’s important and prioritise
• Accountability
• Lend a hand where you can

During the networking session both Anna and Devin spoke about the challenges they have faced throughout their career in the tech industry, and how these can be overcome. It was also emphasised how the position of women in the industry is changing with Anna commenting: “Women today dominate in a lot of these areas, it may not feel like it but I promise you, there’s a lot more women in technology today than there have ever been.” 

As always, we’d like to thank everyone who attended the event as well as our brilliant speakers, this was a great start to the Women In Salesforce series. If you’d like to speak at our next Women In Salesforce event, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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Bhavana talks about her interesting career moving from the NASA Control Centre to the Salesforce ecosystem. She also discusses what she believes has contributed to her success in Salesforce and offers her top tips to others navigating a career in the ecosystem.

Third Republic (TR): To kick off, could you tell us a bit about your career, how you got into Salesforce and your journey so far?

Bhavana Singh (BS): In 2012, I managed another on-premise CRM system, and version upgrades were a nightmare. I couldn’t believe that Salesforce does three upgrades per year that happen while you sleep. It sounded fictional and magical! I fell in love with the Salesforce platform and decided to make a career change to be doing something, anything, on the platform. That was in 2012 and I am so happy with my decision as this platform has now enabled me to work for myself doing what I absolutely love.

TR: So, before getting into Salesforce you worked in the NASA control centre. What made you decide to go for a career change and leave NASA for a career in the Salesforce ecosystem?

BS: I really enjoyed working on NASA projects. But unfortunately around that time, NASA was facing budget cuts and projects were being cancelled. So, I shifted focus and my next job was working for a financial company. This is where I eventually came across Salesforce and became truly fascinated by the platform. When I left that job, I started my own consulting firm. I am a registered partner now and am very fortunate to be doing what I love for a living.

TR: Not only are you a Salesforce MVP but you were also awarded the Developer Golden Hoodie in 2018. What do you think has helped you when it comes to achieving these accolades?

BS: If you ask any MVP or a golden hoodie recipient, they will all the same thing – they never set out to win any of these awards. Both of these awards are a recognition and a celebration of individuals who have a passion for learning, the love for community and are always paying it forward.

I am honored to be chosen for both awards. When I was awarded the golden hoodie, so many young women reached out to me as I had inspired them to also further their technical career. I am really happy that I can be that role model and am truly grateful for Salesforce for recognizing and celebrating Women in tech.

You can find out more about MVP program here and about the golden hoodie here.

TR: What are your top tips for others navigating a career in the ecosystem?

BS: Learning: Always be learning. I am personally addicted to learning and trailhead. I joined the 100 days of trailhead last year. I would start my day with one hour of trailhead. That really instilled in me the habit of daily learning. I still follow it, even on weekends. It is addictive and fun.

Networking: If you are not part of your local user groups, you are missing out on a huge resource. Join local user groups as well as the virtual ones. There is a big Ohana presence on twitter. Take an active part in that. There is so much to learn out there and there are so many Ohana members who are generous with their time and willing to share their expertise. Network and promote yourself.

Invest in yourself: I make the best effort to go to a few conferences (Dreamforce and Trailheadx) and as many community events as I can every year. I see the cost as an investment in myself. And it hasn’t disappointed me. I always return from these things with new insights and new energy. I have made many lifelong friends that I have made at these events.

Certifications: Certifications are a way of proving to yourself that you have mastered the concepts related to that part of the platform. Employers and clients are also looking for candidates with certifications.

However, don’t just cram learning to take the test. Only take the test when you have spent sufficient time mastering the concepts by doing them. We are so lucky that we are able to get free developer orgs and are able to test anything we want hands-on. Put this resource to use for yourself. I have a developer org that I have maintained since 2014. Every time I learn a new concept, I try to create a working example there so that I can refer back to it in the future.

Have Fun: If you are not having fun at your job, then you won’t be able to give it the energy and passion it deserves. If you don’t like what you do, change it when you can. If you are not able to change it right away, spend time off hours developing skills that will allow you to change it in the future. Having fun is really key to advancing in your career.

If you do these things, your career can’t help but be elevated

TR: As a woman in tech, what are some of the challenges when it comes to starting a career in the Salesforce ecosystem?

BS: I believe the challenges are similar to women starting a career in any technical ecosystem. Our numbers are small and we sometimes don’t see role models that we can look up to. But I believe things are so much better in the Salesforce ecosystem compared to other places I have worked before. I have so much support provided by other women in tech and allies.

Two years ago at Dreamforce, I found out that there are less than 5% of women CTAs in the world. I feel a movement started around that time. There are so many of us now studying to become CTAs. I believe we will see the number go up in the near future. Salesforce does an excellent job of providing support to women in technology and by being an equality and diversity role model.

If you’re a Salesforce professional and would like to join Bhavana Singh, in our Q&A series, please get in touch with us today!

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Speaking at the event we had two experienced and inspirational female Salesforce professionals, both passionate about improving diversity in tech by sharing their experiences and empowering others. Karen Lee, Salesforce Practice Director at Saberpoint and Devin Spence, Salesforce Solution Architect at Co-Pilot.

Support is key

Karen kicked-off her talk by discussing some of the stats around Women in Tech. These are just a few of the points Karen made, and why Women in Tech is still something that needs to be worked on:

•  25% of computing jobs are held by women
•  There are more than 35% of women over the age of 35 still in junior positions
•  Just 5% of tech leadership positions are held by women

As part of her talk, Karen coved three key topics:

•  How to be an ally to women in tech
•  How to progress your career as a women in tech
•  How to improve equality of WIT

Karen emphasised the importance of men in tech (the 75%) supporting their female counterparts. As well as, anyone in more senior tech positions being generous to the future pipeline of talent. Teach them and and help them to achieve success too.

Finally, Karen opened the conversation to the floor inviting any questions and prompting further insights into the world of women in tech. 

Architecting a career I love

Devin has worked on multi-million dollar project for a range of companies and explained how she has achieved such success in the Salesforce ecosystem by remaining – Hungry, Humble, Smart.

She explained the importance of ‘showing up’ and being hungry to take on new challenges. Whilst also emphasising the importance of being smart and understanding the value that networking offers, saying “tech is something that you can learn, but it’s the people skills that can be difficult”.

All three aspects are about really getting out there and demonstrating your value in the competitive world of tech.

We’d like to thank everyone who attended the event, as well as our fantastic speakers Karen and Devin for contributing to such a successful first event. There were some really interesting conversations had and insights and experiences shared around women and diversity in tech. 

If you’re interested in speaking at our next Women in Tech NY event, please get in touch.

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