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Hello, I'm Leah McGowen-Hare.
Thank you for joining us
for another one of our amazing conversations
as part of our Leading Through Change series.
A chance for you to hear from leaders
who are doing their best to get through
these challenging times and support their communities.
Let's take a look at today's conversation.
Thank you so much, Leah.
And thank you all for joining us, today.
Leading Through Change is all about how we can lead
and learn from each other through challenging times.
And our guest today has had to contend
with the sales world changing right before our eyes.
So, please join me in welcoming, McAfee VP, Pilar Schenk.
Pilar, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thanks for the invite. I'm honored to be here.
Well, let me start by asking you, how are you holding up?
We were chatting a little bit about this
before the broadcast began,
and I know that you've got young kids at home,
so I'm guessing that you're right in the middle
of all of the back to school craziness.
Tell me how all of that is going for you.
Well, it's been a little bit crazy.
I feel a little bit
like we've been on this journey together,
Salesforce team and us at McAfee.
Earlier in this year,
we did a webinar together, early in 2020,
and it was kind of in this situation of,
like, let's just get through this,
like, we don't know what's ahead,
but it's a couple of months,
put our head down and make it happen.
And then it went a little longer
and then more happened in a little longer.
And it went from being, put your head down,
and go on a sprint, to more of a marathon, right?
And I think that marathons are hard,
I'm much better on let's just move forward, run fast,
cross the finish line, and move on to the next thing.
And it's really given me some pause
because I think from a marathon perspective,
we have to think about, like, how do we prepare,
and how do we train a little bit differently.
I also think marathons are hard
as I talk to people out there
and just the longevity of things
that are happening and the stacking.
And I hear people talk about how,
it's a struggle with kids.
"What do you do with back to school and kids on zoom?"
It's a struggle with work.
"What are you doing with virtual calls?"
"Are you stir crazy?"
People are worried about their health or financials.
I mean, we have smoke and we have hurricanes.
It's just been a lot this year.
And yesterday,
my three-year-old was urgently needing me to address
the band-aids on her hand,
I was in the middle of my staff call.
I picked her up, she was on the, I dressed the band-aids,
everyone saw it, and then I put her down and we moved on.
I think the great thing about for us is that
we're really all in this together.
I think we're all feeling,
and going through the same things,
and it's nice to know that we're not alone.
I also reflect like,
"Hey, thank goodness it's 2020."
And not that we didn't went through this
in 2010 or 2000 or 1990s, I mean, pick your year.
We've come a long way with technology,
and if this was the 1990s,
would we be able to have gone our kids
to go on to virtual school?
Would we all have been able to, well, not all,
but many of us go home, be able to work from home every day?
Would we have laptops?
Would we have the wifi in our house
and enabled us to do that?
Would we have the access to data?
I mean, I can see what's going on with our customers
and with our sales teams and with my kids' assignments.
In some ways, I feel really grateful that it's 2020,
and we have the technology that we have
to allow us to be able to continue moving forward.
I think with that technology,
I was really sad to see on Friday
that we lost a great icon in Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
I know she was such an inspiration to me and so many.
And she once said,
"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."
And as I think about 2020,
I think that really resonates one step at a time,
even if it takes us longer to get to that finish line.
I love that.
And I love your analogy that this is a marathon
and not a sprint.
And also that you're looking at this
at the glass half full, right?
Thank goodness, this is happening in 2020,
when we have so much technology that can help us
to actually work and stay productive in this world
and even help us with schooling kids,
if you happen to have those at home.
Or for me, my mother's in assisted living,
and to be able to just do a FaceTime call
or try to connect with her and talk to her on the phone
since I can't go and actually see her right now,
it is great to be able to focus
on the positives of the situation.
So, I know that at McAfee you talk a lot about,
together is power.
What does that mean for you?
And especially right now as the world has changed
and we're not actually together as much in person
during the pandemic?
Yeah. I love how you, I love your story about your mom.
It's a great example about technology
and enabling us to connect,
and together is power is all about that connection.
And 2020 has really proven to us
that we can help each other, we can lift each other up,
and it all starts with that connection.
I think at McAfee,
I'm really proud that we've been leaning into our values,
it doesn't really matter where we are at any more.
Whether your mom's in an assisted living,
whether my teammates in Sydney, Australia,
whether we might be have other folks in Dallas
or wherever we might be, physical boundaries mean nothing.
And we've done some really fun things to work hard
and working hard to stay connected
and collaborated within McAfee.
This week is our wellness week,
and we've been doing virtual yoga classes
and virtual Pilates classes.
McAfee really encourages our teams to give back,
and so we said,
"Hey, go take some time off, we'll pay you for that time.
And go make a difference in your community
in any way that you want to do it."
Which I think is just an amazing message.
We're also trying to explore
and probably more than we ever have,
all the different things,
different ways that we can collaborate through technology.
You talk about your video call with your mom.
Video cameras are on now, I don't know that we always,
when we weren't sitting next to each other in a meeting
had video cameras on, we do now.
We're doing virtual happy hours,
we're doing virtual happy hours,
We're doing a virtual trivia,
We're doing virtual wind sessions,
We're doing virtual Pilates classes.
It's just really, really fun,
and I think it shows us
how we can stay connected in this new world.
I'm also seeing, and when I talk to people that,
that people are taking less time off,
and 2020 has been a hard year
and we need that time to recharge.
I suppose, it's because many of us,
our vacations were canceled,
maybe you were not traveling and doing the things
that we had planned.
But in many ways, it's that much more important,
and I'm on my team all the time
to make sure to take time off,
to focus on their own wellness,
completely disconnect and recharge.
I've been taking a lot of what we've been doing
at McAfee home with me, so how do we stay connected?
This weekend, I went on a virtual video walk,
and did an online barre3 class with a couple of my friends
from all over the world.
So, we had folks in London, we had folks in Seattle,
in New York, California, Austin,
all coming together to share our triumphs,
to share our challenges and just to help each other out
and have a laugh.
I'm really proud of how we're really embodying
together is power through connection, gratitude,
and giving back.
So, you were a sales ops leader at McAfee,
so your focus is really on enabling the sales teams.
And I imagine that this crisis has posed
a really big challenge in that sense,
because selling remotely is so hard right now.
Closing deals for example is far tougher these days...
Sorry, my kids are knocking on my door
to my office at my bedroom
which you're probably hearing in the background,
it's distracting.
But how have you approached this challenge
of everyone being remote
and trying to sell in this remote world?
Well, it's harder,
closing deals is absolutely much harder
as you just highlighted.
And my job as a sales ops leader and my team
is for us to continue to look ahead
on how we can do more and how we can do more faster.
The good news, it's not 1990, right?
So, technology has come a long, long way,
and we're out running ahead to figure out
how we can bring our teams together, our customers together,
and we do all of this through Salesforce, as a hub,
getting technology to work for us.
I also think that there's a tremendous amount of tools
out there that we put in place by our inside sellers,
and now everyone's an inside seller.
So, what are the things that we created
for inside sales teams to be more efficient
and to stay connected that we can now move
to the field sales teams as well.
So, you've taken some concrete steps
to make life easier for your sales reps.
What are some of those changes that you've made during COVID
to better connect with them support customers?
Well, I bet Sarah,
and I bet a lot of people will resonate with this
that you've been asked,
"What's the impact of 2020 on your numbers,
what's going to happen?"
And we certainly have to,
and what we set out to do this year
was re-engineered processes and make sure customers
are having an outstanding experience, every single time.
We actually package this all up
in something that we call, our renewals engine.
And we pick the words, engine,
with a lot of intent because when you turn on an engine,
it happens the same way, it turns on, it runs, at hums,
it's very, very consistent.
And we wanted to create that same experience
for our sales teams and for our customers.
To do so, we had four components of the renewals engine.
The first was an opportunity assessment,
and I'm sure Sarah, being in sales that,
looking at a sales organization,
you had to do the exact same thing,
which is what's happening with all of our opportunities
and what are our risks?
And we went back and asked the sales teams
through Salesforce, we do all of this in Salesforce,
go tell me what's our risk level
and with everything that were happening
in the next four quarters,
and let's continue to do this for the next four quarters
after that, the rolling four quarters.
So that with our opportunity assessment.
The second component was a T-minus schedule.
And a T-minus schedule is something that says,
what should we be doing with our customers from a sales
and marketing perspective, on a specific timeline,
so that we have an outstanding experience
and a consistent experience for our customer,
throughout the journey
and then throughout their relationship with McAfee.
It's something we did for inside sales,
and it was something that we extended to our field teams.
And so that journey is a consistent,
it is something that we lay out a process for it,
and we track within Salesforce, and there's tasks,
and reminders, and all of that,
we can see all of that in Salesforce.
Just like an engine, right?
It turns on, and it happens the same way every time.
The third component of what we did was,
what we call an early warning system,
and this is how we're putting data to work.
There's so much data out there
on what's happening with our customers,
what's happening with our sales teams, from a NPS score,
from an NPS score, from a telemetry consumption,
what's a sales rep seen, what's our engagement.
And we have a lot of this data today in Salesforce
but we put it to work,
and we actually applied some AI modeling
so that we could see not just what the rep thinks
that is a risk, which is where the opportunity assessment,
what does the data tell us where we have risks?
The last and final component of our renewals engine
was with our risk from our sales teams,
with a consistent and T-minus schedule
for our customer life cycle,
guaranteeing outstanding experiences.
And finally with an AI based model of data
that tells us where our customer sentiment score is
and what risk we have.
where do we need help?
And we created a win room
where we bring our executive team together
to help collaborate where we see those risks
and what we need to go do about it
and how we ensure we guarantee outstanding outcomes
for our customers.
I love the thought
of how do you all help each other, right?
How do you help each other as a sales team?
How are you helping your customers and your focus on that?
I think that helping angle in my mind
is the most important thing that we can be doing
to support each other in our society right now,
as we all go through this.
So, switching gears a little bit,
one of the big questions that we spend a lot of time
talking to our customers about
is where is everybody in their digital transformation?
This has become even more important
as we've all moved into this work from anywhere,
virtual digital world,
so I want to post the question to you.
Where are you and your teams in your digital transformation?
Well, it's a marathon, right?
I think the first question I always ask
on digital transformation is,
"What do you mean by digital transformation?"
Because I think 2020,
everything's digital, right?
And all of the things that we're doing
from a connection perspective,
a lot of our apps and tools technology
is about being digital.
I'll give you four examples of things that we're doing
within McAfee that are on the top of our mind.
The first is about just bringing our teams together,
keeping that connected tissue
for across all of our different organizations
on behalf of our customer.
Our field sales teams are used to traveling,
they're used to being out with our customers,
but they're also used to being out with their teams.
We use Salesforce as a hub to bring everyone together
so that when, you know, what's going on with a customer,
if they're worried about cloud security,
as all of their employees have gone to work from home.
If they're worried about threats and what's going on,
and how do they deal with all the threats?
And yes, in 2020 threats or cyber threats are also up.
We have all of that within Salesforce,
so our teams can stay connected virtually.
It's an incredibly powerful thing
that there's one source of truth for our account teams,
so that no matter whether they're in Sydney, Australia,
or in Dallas, Texas,
they have one path to see what's going on with the customer.
The second thing we really looked for,
is how do we give back time to our sales teams?
And for this, we looked at Salesforce inbox,
Salesforce inbox is an incredibly powerful and easy tool.
We actually got 1200 of our sales reps
to implement Salesforce inbox
in a very short period of time.
And what was great about it
is that they were able to put it, install it,
and they loved it because what Salesforce inbox does
is it takes outlook and it connects it to Salesforce.
So, if you have a contact with an outlook,
you can immediately add it to your Salesforce record.
If you send an email,
you can immediately add it to your Salesforce record.
And so it was a great opportunity for them
to become more efficient with their time.
The third is how we think about connecting
with our customers of tomorrow.
And getting out and talking to customers is incredibly hard.
A, you can't go visit them.
But many of our customers,
aren't sitting at their desk
waiting for phone calls from us, right?
They may be at home, and may be a cell phone,
and so you have to find new ways to leverage data
and to get creative.
And so we use a tool called high velocity,
that's also in the Salesforce suite
that allows us to go look at other data sources
like LinkedIn and discover.org
and put all those things together
in front of our sales teams to say,
"Here's some propensity analysis,
here's who you should call, here's engaging,
who's engaging with our webinars,
here's who's concerned about cloud security."
And how do we pull all that together
so that when they do make a contact,
they find the right customer
and they find a customer that we can help.
I think the fourth and final way
we're thinking about digital transformation
is just putting our data to work.
Salesforce is our hub,
and to be able to use Salesforce as a hub,
we need to have clean data.
I have a new head of sales and marketing at McAfee,
and she has a great expression called,
brilliant at the basics.
And I love it.
And brilliant at the basics,
just means that you do the things that are basic,
you do the things that you just need to go do.
And one of those things that she wanted us to go do
is run a Salesforce cleanup day,
where we all set aside a few hours,
we had a leaderboard specific instructions.
We even created playlist,
playlist, things like Johnny Nash,
so, "I Can See Clearly Now,"
and Outkast, like, "So Fresh And So Clean."
And we all ran this, I'm sorry?
I love that you have your anthems to keep you-
Oh yeah, there's anthems,
there was a lot of creativity
and a lot of fun associated with those playlists, right?
And the team showed up, they actually thought it was fun.
And we did amazing stuff,
over millions of records were touched
during the couple of hours that we did.
We added tens of thousands of contacts,
and updated contacts, and deleted contacts,
and millions and millions in Salesforce opportunities.
And it gave us an opportunity to show off
that we can be brilliant in the basics
and put our data to work.
I love that.
I see and I hear this a lot from customers that right now,
speed is more important than ever before.
What is the fast ROI that we're going to get?
How quickly can we roll out and implement a new process?
And I think you touched a little bit on that.
You also kind of touched on the fun aspect.
And I know I feel this, kind of sitting in the same room,
my office/bedroom staring at the same couple of walls,
there is a thought in the back of my mind of,
"How do I bring fun into everything
that I'm doing day to day?"
And I love your playlist anthem piece in here.
And then the other piece that I think you hit on very well
is that your customers are not sitting there
waiting for a call, right?
And we are all sitting
in a sea of these virtual meetings right now,
and how do you actually stand out
in the midst of all of that?
And it sounds like McAfee is really setting itself up
for a lot of great success in this,
so congratulations, too, on that.
But moving forward,
where do you envision sales going in this new normal?
And what are some of the opportunities that you see
for McAfee to grow and thrive in this world?
Yeah, well, back to Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
I really love a quote from her, which she said,
"So often in life, we see something as an impediment,
when it could turn out to be good fortune."
It makes me think,
"What can we take from this
that actually makes for a better tomorrow?
How do we make our new normal, a better new normal?"
And where I think that one of the things
that we can take away
is where we might have been dragging our feet
to adopts technology, to turn on our video cameras,
to really go and all in remote working, virtual working,
connecting, virtual happy hours, travel a little less,
use Salesforce as a hub, leverage our data.
There's so much out there that we're learning how to do,
and we're getting, what we're learning is that how to do it,
and we're also learning that it works.
I think for us, every minute we save,
you talk about time is a minute back
that we can spend with our customers, our teams,
and even more importantly, our family.
You know, I am, at the end of this marathon,
I am incredibly optimistic for a better, better tomorrow.
And each day I'm fully committed to figure out
how we continue to connect virtually,
it is a lot being in one room on a sea of meetings.
How do we continue to innovate?
And how do we give thanks by giving back?
I love that.
Well, thank you so much, Pilar.
I feel that you've given back to all of us
by sharing your tips, and insights,
and the things that you've learned at McAfee.
So, I really appreciate
that you are paying it forward in that way.
Wow. What an amazing conversation.
If you enjoyed today's episode and I'm confident you did,
you can find more episodes
of Leading Through Change on Salesforce+.
In fact, stay up to date on upcoming episodes
by subscribing to the show.
Thank you for watching.
And please take care of yourself and each other.
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