0:04

This week on the Salesforce Admin's

0:07

podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome

0:09

back Dorian Erl, founder and

0:11

CEO of an a thriving

0:13

consultancy that has over 450

0:15

clients and just a massive

0:17

wealth of Salesforce experience and

0:19

knowledge. Dorian has been the

0:21

sales force ecosystem for nearly two

0:23

decades. He started as a sales

0:26

rep who needed a better way

0:28

to track his deals and opportunities

0:30

and really turn that into a

0:33

career empowering companies to embrace better

0:35

CRMs and smarter systems. Now in

0:38

today's episode, we dive into Dorian's

0:40

five steps to prepare for agent

0:42

force and AI. Now, from understanding

0:45

the buzz around AI to implementing

0:47

quick wins and long-term strategies, Dorian

0:49

shares invaluable insights to help you,

0:52

the Salesforce admin, and organizations you

0:54

work for, stay ahead of the

0:56

curve this year in 2025. Now,

0:58

of course, you know, before we

1:00

jump in, I want to make sure

1:02

that you're following or subscribed to

1:04

the Salesforce admin's podcast so that

1:06

you never miss a great episode

1:08

like this. New episodes drop every

1:10

Thursday morning. That way you've got

1:12

them boom right on your phone

1:14

before you head off for your

1:16

dog walk or your commute to

1:18

work. So with that, let's get

1:20

Dorian on the podcast. So Dorian,

1:23

welcome back to the podcast. This is

1:25

an absolute pleasure more than you know

1:27

and good to see you again at all

1:29

of the events and you know a couple

1:31

weeks back at the World Tour. So good

1:33

to see you and good to chat with

1:35

you again. You're one of the people that

1:37

I'm happy is out in the world and

1:39

we get to run into each other at

1:41

different events and you know you and I

1:43

are such easy people to miss out in

1:45

a crowd. Well I don't know if that's

1:48

the case I'm the tallest person you

1:50

have the best beard and the most

1:52

charismatic smile everybody who sees you go

1:54

literally well yeah well yeah when you

1:56

walk past and you know for the

1:58

listeners we don't hear this. What Mike

2:00

had walked past us at the, uh, at

2:02

the World Tour and Trucular Table said,

2:04

I don't know who he is, but

2:07

he has to be somebody. I said,

2:09

you don't know who Mike Europe is?

2:11

And so, so you have a

2:14

reputation. I'm surprised there's not three

2:16

people following you carrying your briefcase and

2:18

just kind of like, there used to

2:21

be, I say I'm, I'm kind of

2:23

in my late 80s John Travolta stage

2:25

of Salesforce celebrityism. you know where i'm

2:28

doing the the really bad b movies

2:30

and nobody knows who i am but

2:32

that's not true i'm hoping for the

2:34

next like pulp fiction level role to

2:37

come up and you know then then i'll

2:39

be dancing around like a Santa Claus

2:41

selling city bank cards and so i

2:43

was gonna say if you just come

2:45

out with a good costume which at

2:47

every event there are people with a

2:49

really good cut and dance moves. I

2:51

guarantee you, you'll be more relevant. Don't

2:53

forget, I gotta shave my head. Travolta

2:55

had that whole time where he shaved

2:57

his head. That's true. I would just

2:59

tell you you should keep yours. You

3:01

got good hair. I think so. You got

3:04

a lot happening. You got a lot

3:06

happening. You know what everybody who subscribes

3:08

to the podcast didn't want to

3:11

listen to? What's all of

3:13

that conversation? So let's talk

3:15

about something that'll provide business

3:18

value to our customers again,

3:20

and that is getting ready

3:22

for Agent Force and AI,

3:24

and when you and I

3:26

ran into each other, well,

3:29

to be fair, when you

3:31

belined through a hotel restaurant

3:33

to find me horsing down my

3:35

chicken fingers at the bar. You

3:37

had this wonderful thing, you're like,

3:39

Mike, we got to talk about

3:41

this on the podcast. I have

3:43

these five things that I'm helping

3:45

companies do to get ready for

3:47

AI. And I said, you're right.

3:49

So Dorian, let's get into that, but

3:51

let's start off just because, you know,

3:53

sometimes people don't listen to all of

3:55

the episodes of the podcast. What do

3:58

you do? How did you come? to

4:00

be in the sales force world. Yeah,

4:02

so I started almost 20 years ago

4:04

as a sales guy. I needed a

4:06

way to track my deals and opportunities

4:09

and if anybody's around in the mid,

4:11

I'm not going to give my age

4:13

in the mid-40s. We all used

4:15

Franklin portfolio Franklin Company

4:18

planners and I would leave them

4:20

at my client's office and set them

4:22

on top of my car and drive

4:24

off and there goes my, you know,

4:26

my pipeline and and all of my

4:29

stuff and I couldn't do that. So

4:31

kind of being a forward-thinking salesperson,

4:33

I said, I need to have a way

4:36

that I wouldn't lose my notes, my deals,

4:38

my opportunities, everything I had worked hard

4:40

to build. And I went to, you

4:42

know, purchased programs and databases

4:44

and, long behold, I found a

4:46

web-based CRM called Salesforce that was

4:49

20 years ago. That was really

4:51

became my secret sauce, Mike. I

4:53

was an average salesperson and... in

4:55

you know getting good but really

4:57

my secret sauce was organization and to

4:59

be able to stay on top of deals and

5:01

in my line of work as a salesperson at

5:04

that time we had over a hundred thousand

5:06

products to keep track of so what

5:08

kind of promotion was going on who

5:10

needed what was going on I was

5:12

a sales rep in the medical dental

5:14

supply space so we just be my We

5:17

had a lot of manufacturers and four

5:19

or five different manufacturers for each line,

5:21

like, you know, gloves. We had five

5:23

brands of gloves and masks. So who

5:25

had the promotion? Which one did my customer

5:27

like, oh, my doctor like the left-handed glove

5:30

from, you know, Cross Tech or from all

5:32

those kind of companies? And I had to

5:34

keep all those things straight because I had

5:36

300 plus clients. When the doctor would

5:38

like one and their front desk with

5:40

like another and let's just like another.

5:43

So all those things became really difficult.

5:45

for me to keep track of and

5:47

I needed a better way to do

5:49

that. So law behold I purchased Salesforce

5:51

for myself, started to get some

5:53

success, the Dowd economy hit and I

5:55

was one of a few people that I

5:57

could actually forecast my sales to my... I

6:00

can go in and say, this client mentioned

6:02

this to me earlier on in the year.

6:04

I think we can close them if we

6:06

do these things. And I was one of

6:08

the few people that are brands that could

6:11

do that. And long and short of it,

6:13

that grew to me going to

6:15

independent, started my own firm, and

6:17

then working with other companies,

6:19

helped bringing their sales or their product

6:21

in the market. And it was always,

6:23

hey, I can help you lead your

6:25

sales team, but you need to have

6:27

a database or CRM. And again. 15

6:29

years ago, it was I have this in

6:31

some spreadsheet or somebody in our

6:33

office has this in a spreadsheet and I said

6:36

you need to have a one a better way

6:38

to track your sales and deals and I would

6:40

tell them you need to go out and buy

6:42

the sales force like and so you know I

6:44

worked in tech startup helping companies take

6:46

their product you know the market

6:49

one of those products or was

6:51

acquired by Google and so I became

6:53

a contract sales manager for Google for

6:55

a while and Apple for a little

6:57

bit. That's part of my story.

6:59

And six years ago, a company actually

7:02

just reached out and said, can you

7:04

help us with the CRM and sales

7:06

thing? And then my career helping

7:08

companies from the inside out versus

7:11

the outside in kind of worked in.

7:13

And so, you know, now I'm the

7:15

founder CEO of a company with 450

7:17

plus clients and about 20 plus team

7:19

members and, you know, and things are

7:21

really fun. So, you know, that's the

7:23

long story short, right. Right, right.

7:25

You know, it's interesting because we've

7:28

known each other for a

7:30

while and we've both been

7:33

the ecosystem for a while

7:35

and we've seen CRM and

7:37

Salesforce change and

7:39

you know, add new features to

7:42

the time. I think what we're

7:44

seeing now with AI everywhere, what

7:46

is your level of, let's

7:48

start off with your five

7:50

things, what is your... kind

7:53

of level of awareness that

7:55

you're seeing with your clients

7:58

on being AI ready. or

8:00

even having thoughts of how they would use

8:02

that. So everybody knows about it.

8:04

They have said, this is what I

8:06

said, I see articles at my desk,

8:09

my team is using this. There are

8:11

everyday products that they are seeing now

8:13

that are becoming more intelligent or adding

8:15

AI. And you can't turn on a TV

8:18

today every, you know, in, you know, if

8:20

you're watching football and there's a break,

8:22

one commercial will say, this is the

8:24

product you know with AI now. So

8:27

there's a lot of buzz and really

8:29

awareness and now it's starting to really,

8:31

you know, be embedded in other products.

8:33

What I'm finding out with our

8:36

clients is they don't understand the

8:38

real impact of what this means

8:40

for their business yet. They know it's

8:42

out there, but they just don't know how

8:44

to leverage that, how elements

8:46

work, which ones to use, use cases.

8:49

But they are seeing AI being

8:51

embedded into their everyday tools. They

8:53

are seeing... email, plugins, they are

8:55

seeing these things and they are

8:58

starting to encounter it. So our

9:00

role is really just to say,

9:02

let's let 2025 be the

9:04

year of intelligence at your

9:07

company. Let's make everybody 10%

9:09

smarter. Let's make everybody, roll

9:11

and your work. Let's make

9:14

everybody 10, 15, 20% smarter

9:16

this quarter, this six months

9:18

this year. And they're really

9:21

getting excited with that.

9:23

It's it's kind of like

9:25

the early 1900s with cars.

9:28

I mean, there's how many

9:30

people making an AI product

9:32

right now, and I guess

9:35

we'll find out, you know,

9:37

how many survive and don't

9:39

because, you know, the early

9:42

1900s, there was over 300

9:44

car manufacturers, and now there's,

9:46

you know, what, five, ten, arguably.

9:49

So in the five things admins

9:51

can do to get ready for,

9:53

you know, agent force and AI,

9:56

you list number one is awareness.

9:58

So I feel like Maybe last

10:00

year that was like, oh, we

10:03

kind of need to wake up.

10:05

And most people, I don't want

10:07

to say most people, most people

10:10

I know became AI aware at

10:12

the consumer grade level. I think

10:14

it's another to think of AI

10:17

at the enterprise level, which is

10:19

where sales force operates because we're

10:21

an enterprise CRM. We're operating immediately

10:24

with millions of rows of records

10:26

and sometimes even data lakes or

10:28

multiple organizations. I'm sure that you

10:30

probably run into a few that

10:33

are aware. Let's go on to

10:35

number two, which is like the

10:37

preparedness. Where do people fall there? They

10:39

are not, because if they are aware,

10:42

and I think you hit it on

10:44

the head, and I don't want to

10:46

bury what you just said. Sure.

10:48

Really, most technology comes out

10:50

as a consumer facing application

10:53

to catch. what's called like user adoption.

10:55

Right now I remember when I was in

10:58

college and Google first launched and literally

11:00

people are going on to say you can ask

11:02

Google anything and it'll just come back with an

11:04

answer or as Amazon you can go put in

11:06

any book you want. Well it took a

11:09

few years for people to understand the

11:11

business implication of having all the data on

11:13

the internet to ask a question. It even

11:15

took Google really by storm or Amazon if

11:17

you would ask them when they started what

11:19

their business would look like that they didn't

11:21

know. So we are in early days.

11:24

But the people that are understanding,

11:26

okay, there is an entity

11:28

or there is a program

11:30

out there that can ingest

11:32

data and then come back

11:34

to you with patterns, use

11:36

cases, ideas, analysis, and that

11:38

could have some ramifications for

11:40

us as a company. So how do

11:43

we get prepared to use this? And

11:45

so when we start telling our

11:47

clients about this, I said, wow.

11:49

This could be really exciting. What

11:52

do we do then to prepare to really

11:54

turn these features on? And so I'm going

11:56

to mention this, I'm going to kind of

11:58

go backward in, you know. to go forward.

12:00

And this analogy I start to tell

12:03

is I think it's maybe going to

12:05

ring true. So I was a previous

12:07

athlete and if I was going to

12:09

ask you, Mike, my knee is slowing

12:11

and it's a little sore. You would

12:14

probably tell me, rest it, elevate it.

12:16

I said, like these are common things

12:18

that this is generalized intelligence, right? You

12:20

know, if my three-year-old son falls and

12:23

scrapes his hand and it's bleeding, you're

12:25

gonna go wash it, you're gonna go

12:27

let it air. Obviously, you're gonna put

12:29

some things on it, you're gonna wrap

12:32

it up, you know, in a band-aid.

12:34

That's generalized intelligence. Now, if I told

12:36

you, as a 40-year-old male... that's 50

12:38

pounds overweight, that played basketball at a

12:40

very high level for many years, that

12:43

over exercises in my yard, and my

12:45

knee swells probably once a month, and

12:47

you would say, given that relative information

12:49

about you, you should probably go see

12:52

a doctor. You may have a micro-tail,

12:54

you may have to the night, you

12:56

may have some other things. All I

12:58

did was I just gave you further

13:00

background and relevant information versus general. And

13:03

that's exactly how AI works. You can

13:05

most people are just going asking at

13:07

generalized questions. and get in generalized answers,

13:09

but the more relevant information you can

13:12

give, AI, just in general, through prompting,

13:14

then it can come back and say,

13:16

based on information you told me and

13:18

the background and the person and this

13:20

issue, I'm going to recommend these things.

13:23

And really, AI in general is as

13:25

good as the data you've given, right?

13:27

And so one of the things we

13:29

are telling our clients is to... Prepare

13:32

to use this. So in order for

13:34

this to work at an enterprise level,

13:36

where are all of your company data?

13:38

Are you giving AI all the background

13:41

you can on your company? Where would

13:43

it find it? Do you have it

13:45

in PDF? You know, the origin story

13:47

on your company, the history, the industry,

13:49

how you service, the founders, the people,

13:52

so all of those things, the company

13:54

data, the user. Tell us about the

13:56

sales reps, their roles, their unique skills,

13:58

images on them. Products and services, where

14:01

does that data set? And how do

14:03

we adequately get it into a place

14:05

where AI can read it? One, if

14:07

it's not, obviously of course on the

14:09

internet, then we should put it there.

14:12

But two, it should be in a

14:14

place that's up to date, so AI

14:16

can go in and read those things

14:18

and answer questions. And so we just

14:21

want to give it as much relative

14:23

information as you can. general answers or

14:25

general information, which of course could be

14:27

issues. So we want to prepare our

14:29

clients and say, if you don't have

14:32

this, let's start to gather it. If

14:34

you need help gathering it, we're going

14:36

to help you put it in a

14:38

way that AI can read it. Your

14:41

company data, the user data, your products

14:43

and services, your customers, and any systems

14:45

you would like AI to have access

14:47

to. Now the good part of this,

14:50

a lot of this should be in

14:52

their CRN. It should already be in

14:54

sales force. What most people don't know

14:56

is you can go into the user

14:58

records and and being with putting these

15:01

these custom fields about roles and background

15:03

and And obviously you can fill out

15:05

information on the company You know this

15:07

is actually the good part what a

15:10

lot of people don't really know there

15:12

are there is your company data is

15:14

stored in sales force your nap your

15:16

name address phone number of the business

15:18

the website the social we can start

15:21

enriching sales force with your company data

15:23

images, logos, all of those things. And

15:25

so if we do that, we're really

15:27

preparing AI, we're really just teaching it.

15:30

So what can we teach it? And

15:32

how much can we get AI to

15:34

know about your company? So, and then

15:36

this is what I call that preparedness

15:38

stage, like, it may take people weeks

15:41

to do this and may say, wow,

15:43

how much data should we give AI

15:45

as much as you want? given the

15:47

relevant tasks. So sometimes it takes our

15:50

clients weeks to do this. Sometimes we're

15:52

putting together an entire process on. What

15:54

do we want AI to have access

15:56

to? And learn on. So that's kind

15:59

of step two. Now I like that and

16:01

you know I'm thinking of like all

16:03

of the use cases my team puts

16:05

together and when we put out the

16:08

agent force decoded series a lot

16:10

of it is thinking from the

16:12

sales or service perspective of hey

16:14

how do you summarize this account

16:16

or summarize this case one part

16:18

that you brought up that's very

16:20

salient that I think is not

16:22

to look ahead but is like

16:24

a good quick win is also

16:26

what is your company about what

16:29

is your brand voice yes What

16:31

are your, like, what are your,

16:33

you know, kind of if you

16:35

had a front door, what are

16:37

your window information, what's your address,

16:39

what's your mailing address, what's your

16:41

hours? And I say that because,

16:44

you know, if you're thinking of

16:46

creating an agent to help your

16:48

salespeople write better emails, Well, it

16:50

needs to be grounded in some

16:52

information that it knows what it

16:54

is, and it knows what company

16:56

you are, and how to sound,

16:58

right? Like, I think it's always

17:01

important that, you know, brands

17:03

have a voice, and even the

17:05

admin relations, we have a brand

17:07

voice, that they're constructing that, so

17:09

it's sounding. cohesive and that can

17:11

just be a simple PDF that

17:14

it you know that or a

17:16

knowledge article that an agent could

17:18

reference. Absolutely. A lot of things

17:20

including data cleanup is important but

17:23

it's also where do we go

17:25

to get repositories of this information

17:27

that's just you know kind of

17:29

the basic window sticker of your

17:32

company so that's that's really good.

17:34

Well and that's that preparedness phase

17:36

because if you do this well

17:38

now again I've You know, I've thought

17:40

this through, because as every company you work

17:42

for, you start with, let me give you

17:44

background on the company. Right. And then let

17:46

me tell you what we do. And let me

17:48

tell you who we service and who are ideal

17:50

customers are. And then let me tell you about

17:53

the task you're going to be doing. So

17:55

AI is almost no different. Let me tell

17:57

you about the company that you're going to

17:59

do these works. Let me tell you about

18:01

our background. Let me tell you about our

18:03

products and services. So if this date

18:05

is not in a place where agent force or

18:07

an agent can read it, then the challenge is

18:10

it's going to make it up. It's going to

18:12

make up the answer. Or it's going to

18:14

say, I'm sorry, I don't know. And both of

18:16

those items you don't want. And so exactly

18:18

to your point on brand voice, imagine a

18:20

sales rep says, I want to crack an

18:22

email. And you don't tell the AI what the

18:24

brand voice is what the brand voice is. So

18:26

then you have to prompt it.

18:28

So if you can pre-ground sales

18:31

force or your AI in this

18:33

data already, then it's that

18:35

much further ahead, which is really

18:38

kind of the secret sauce of

18:40

this. So yeah. So thinking ahead,

18:42

you know, moving on step three,

18:45

because we're in a five-step program,

18:47

got to get through our steps.

18:49

Rightfully so, and even my

18:52

team tries to do this, we

18:54

try to come up with super

18:56

complex use cases and stuff and

18:58

really show the breadth of what

19:00

some of these tools and features

19:02

can do. But you know, we

19:04

all live in the real world

19:06

and in the real world when

19:09

you're a project manager, it's what

19:11

are the quick wins? What is

19:13

the low effort, high result stuff

19:15

that we can return? And I

19:17

think implementing, you know, Agent Force,

19:19

we're looking, you know, as an admin,

19:21

you'd be looking for that too. So

19:23

when you talk through quick wins and

19:25

usage, what do you talk through as

19:28

examples with some of your clients? Yeah, so

19:30

this was really the thing that kind of

19:32

got me excited about this, because as I

19:34

look at all new pieces of tech, I

19:36

said, okay, who can use it, and what's

19:39

the level of effort does it take to

19:41

really get something out of it, right? And

19:43

so when I turned on Agent Forrest

19:45

and kind of trails, one of the

19:47

first trails, one of the first examples

19:49

I saw were record summaries. And my mind

19:52

immediately went back to, wow, as a sales

19:54

rep, I wish I had this. And those

19:56

that haven't seen this yet, you can

19:58

literally, inside of sales for us. pull

20:00

up a record and prompt and say,

20:02

summarize this record. And it will read

20:04

the record, and it will read the

20:07

related records, and then give you a

20:09

summary of what that record is. Now,

20:11

I'm going to go back to my

20:14

previous example. I was a sales rep

20:16

with 300 clients. Some days, my boss

20:18

would say, this is a new client.

20:20

Go visit them. I wish I could

20:23

click and summarize what the previous rep

20:25

was doing with them in the last

20:27

three, six, nine months. How do you

20:30

do you do that? And so if

20:32

you're a sales rep, this is great.

20:34

If you're a sales manager, and somebody

20:36

says, you need to do an account

20:39

plan for this client, and you haven't

20:41

seen them, or in a classic, the

20:43

client is upset, I want to talk

20:46

to your manager, they talked to the

20:48

sales manager, or service manager, and of

20:50

course, we've all made that phone call

20:53

of, you know, we're calling in, and

20:55

they said, hey, I have a question.

20:57

Hold on, please, sir. I'm going to

20:59

pull up your count. Let me read

21:02

it. Let me get up to speed

21:04

really quick here. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Let

21:06

me get up to speed and that

21:09

person skims through as quick as they

21:11

can to try to answer, oh, I

21:13

see you calling in on January 6th

21:15

and you were asked about this issue.

21:18

Was it ever resolved? Do you have

21:20

an open case about, right? Well, you

21:22

have the data sitting right in front

21:25

of the box. As a user, these

21:27

things are huge, because if you're working

21:29

with, you know, a mass amount of

21:32

records, any individual record, or, you know,

21:34

again, a large amount of related records

21:36

to a parent record, cases, tasks, notes,

21:38

all of those things related to an

21:41

account, opportunities, right? The record summaries are

21:43

huge. It's actually one of my favorite

21:45

features, if you know, I could say.

21:48

So that would be one of the

21:50

very first quick wins. The second one

21:52

I would say... Quick reporting I know

21:54

It's a little bit lower on my

21:57

list, but this is, you know, I

21:59

found this out just by accident. You

22:01

can just query, you can ask AI

22:04

to say, how many accounts do I

22:06

have in New York? And it could

22:08

come back based on the state that's

22:11

on the account. It will say, you

22:13

have 967 accounts in New York. You

22:15

have 300 in Illinois. Now imagine, if

22:17

you're the Salesforce admin. And I used

22:20

to get this question. Can you pull

22:22

a list of leads in this city

22:24

for me? I'm just curious. I would

22:27

get those questions all the time from

22:29

an executive or from a manager or

22:31

somebody. Oh yeah. Now, you don't have

22:33

to ask your admin, you don't have

22:36

to learn how to build a report.

22:38

You can just ask how many of

22:40

certain record do I have? And AI

22:43

can answer that question, which is pretty

22:45

cool. How many leaves do I have

22:47

in New York that's in the working

22:49

status? These are huge things when it

22:52

comes to quick reporting. Marketing should be

22:54

able to do this, sales should be

22:56

able to do this. I mean, just,

22:59

you know, a sales web, how big

23:01

is my pipeline based on this product?

23:03

It could answer that question for you.

23:06

So, really cool. Those are just two

23:08

of the quick ones I would say,

23:10

which are huge. You know, I think

23:12

sometimes people confuse like, well, that should

23:15

just be a list view. Yeah, it

23:17

could be a list view, unless it's

23:19

the one time you need that you

23:22

need that data. You need that data.

23:24

Or you also need that data plus

23:26

something else because everything you're asking for

23:28

I could create is a list view.

23:31

Why have AI do it? Well, because

23:33

it can probably do it faster and

23:35

I can also just add a quick

23:38

filter to it and it's a one-off

23:40

use case that's just faster than creating

23:42

a list view in your example. Well,

23:45

yes, yes. And, you know, one of

23:47

the things our clients always ask is,

23:49

do I, should I build a report

23:51

for this? And if you're, again, if

23:54

you're just doing analysis, just build the

23:56

report. You may say, okay, there's 900

23:58

accounts. in New York, you say, okay,

24:01

based on that, I can assign those

24:03

accounts to a person to do certain

24:05

action, to call, to follow up,

24:07

to send a postcard, to do

24:09

certain things, invite to an event,

24:11

start targeting for this, then you would

24:13

create a list for you, then to

24:15

take action against that. However, before

24:18

you get to the action stage, you

24:20

still need to do some analysis. Not

24:22

every report is going to turn into

24:24

a list view, something to take action

24:27

on. And I'm sure you're finding too

24:29

that like a lot of the quick

24:31

wins are, you know, the examples you

24:33

gave, somebody could listen, like, well, that's

24:35

not going to work for me. Right.

24:37

The quick wins, I anticipate for what

24:40

you're bringing up are department specific

24:42

and or company specific. So, you know,

24:44

as an admin, I may go to

24:46

a department and show them record summary,

24:48

and they're like, well, but that's not

24:50

going to work for us. Great. Well,

24:53

here's three other things that we can

24:55

do as quick wins. that might not

24:57

work. So, you know, record summary may

24:59

be a quick win for customer service

25:01

team or a sales person, but might

25:03

be completely different for somebody else that

25:06

has to do like deal ops or

25:08

a deal desk kind of thing. Well,

25:10

you know, I'm going to challenge your

25:12

users because I'm going to ask them,

25:14

send me a message on LinkedIn and

25:16

tell me when a record summary would

25:18

not work. Would not be wrong. Okay,

25:21

good. Please do. I've never pulled up

25:23

a record of sales force and said,

25:25

I don't want a summary of everything

25:27

happening here. I've never had it happen.

25:29

I've never pulled up a record in

25:31

sales force and said, I don't want

25:33

to see everything related to it and

25:36

really have that knowledge. Now, not every single

25:38

time, but... But I can foresee anybody that's ever

25:40

used Salesforce, you want to pull up a record

25:42

and you want to know as much as you

25:44

can about that record. Now you don't have to

25:47

know everything in to take action, but I can

25:49

see every user in Salesforce can take advantage of

25:51

the record summary feature. That's really my point there.

25:53

No, it's good. And so somebody could say, you

25:56

know what I'm using Salesforce, I would never want

25:58

a summary of a record. I'm like... because

26:00

I've never worked as anybody in sales

26:02

force that would never find that feature

26:05

useful. I don't know. We're going to

26:07

find out. I get some edge-case listeners,

26:09

man. Yes, yeah, finally. Yes, please find

26:11

me on LinkedIn. Now, if somebody is

26:14

like a lawyer during auditing or yes,

26:16

I never get in there and do

26:18

it, okay, okay, I got it. But

26:21

again, I am really, really curious who

26:23

would not use or who would not

26:25

use or who does not find that

26:28

feature useful. I guess my point was

26:30

quick wins could be different wherever you

26:32

go. I'm betting number four is the

26:35

thing you probably run into a lot

26:37

which you have done is internal process

26:39

improvement. Yes, and so this is what

26:41

really gets people to start moving. Yeah.

26:44

They're really not adopting technology for record

26:46

summaries even though it is important. I

26:48

would say internal process improvement is the

26:51

first place AI will show up. It's

26:53

what everybody's talking about in articles. We

26:55

are becoming so much more efficient. We

26:58

don't need to hire that many people

27:00

to do this now because internal process

27:02

improvement would mean you could cut tasks

27:04

down from eight or nine clicks down

27:07

to two. You can have AI augment

27:09

the workflow or work that is being

27:11

done because it is doing things on

27:14

the background that would cost you time

27:16

energy effort all of that. This is

27:18

where the big ROI is coming in

27:21

AI that a lot of people do

27:23

not understand. You could say, please create

27:25

a case to follow up. You know,

27:27

please, please create a case. Please schedule

27:30

an appointment. Please create a record. Please,

27:32

please send a sample. Please issue a

27:34

return for this record. And just speaking,

27:37

you know, of the last one, chargebacks,

27:39

returns, you know, those usually take multiple

27:41

records being opened up. So analysis being

27:44

done, five or six clicks, related optics,

27:46

and then emails going out, approvals, AI

27:48

can handle that stuff, which is really

27:51

cool, because I could say, great, this

27:53

is all done for you, as opposed

27:55

to... Okay, give me one second. Let

27:57

me see which order this is from.

28:00

Let me see what product this was.

28:02

Let me find this cute. Okay, how

28:04

did you pay? Let me, would you

28:07

like a return on your card? You

28:09

could say, A.I., please go in, issue

28:11

a return for this item and credit

28:14

it back, you know, to their credit

28:16

card. Okay, done. And so instead of

28:18

eight or nine clicks, five or six

28:20

minutes of downtime on a call, all

28:23

those things. And in some companies I

28:25

work with, they just was one person

28:27

that just issued returns, which is crazy.

28:30

Now AI can do those things or

28:32

create a case. So now you're talking

28:34

about, imagine one person having the benefit

28:37

of saying, I can do my job

28:39

and a quarter of another job. Because

28:41

you have five people doing that, you

28:43

really have five people working getting the

28:46

benefit of six. That's huge. Well, I

28:48

wasn't thinking about that. But you're point

28:50

five. So. Expand on this, external tasks

28:53

outsourced to AI. Yeah, so what I

28:55

so what I mentioned for number four,

28:57

this is where a lot of companies

29:00

are a little scared to say, I

29:02

would not have AI talking to my

29:04

clients. Okay, I got it. But if

29:06

you have in total process, if AI

29:09

is handling, if an agent, and we'll

29:11

mention agent force in this case, because

29:13

it has all the relevant context on

29:16

your company, all the relevant context all

29:18

on your production services, the people using

29:20

it. The people using it. and your

29:23

clients, you can enable it to do

29:25

narrow tasks, such as, hey, here are

29:27

a list of leads. So imagine this

29:30

workflow, Mike, and then, you know, I'll

29:32

get to extra facing. You would say,

29:34

pull up a lead, summarize the record,

29:36

draft an email based on the record

29:39

summary and their needs for this lead.

29:41

Okay, email draft, okay, put the email,

29:43

and send it out for me, please.

29:46

So that could be five or six

29:48

clicks, pull up the record, click, summarize

29:50

the record. Click draft an email, click

29:53

send the email, right? Uh-huh. and then

29:55

move along. Now or you could just

29:57

say I will have an agent, I

29:59

will program an agent or ask an

30:02

agent in sales force to do that

30:04

for all of my 30 leads in

30:06

the New York area. Pull up, summarize,

30:09

create an email, send off. Now if

30:11

it's watching you do it for the

30:13

next year it would have learned what

30:16

you've liked, what you don't like, what

30:18

the replies are like, information to add

30:20

in because it gets smarter. This is

30:22

the thing a lot of people aren't

30:25

realizing with AI. is that it becomes

30:27

smarter over time. And so you can

30:29

allow it to do these narrow tasks.

30:32

Hey, follow up with these 30 leads

30:34

that were nurturing in New York and

30:36

do this for me. Those are external

30:39

facing AI agents that are taking action

30:41

on your behalf. And then you can

30:43

say, I will have an agent for

30:46

those that are interested that we apply

30:48

back. I have a second agent that's

30:50

just a scheduling agent. So, you know,

30:52

the sales for scheduler, which allows people.

30:55

You know, at external people in your

30:57

email to look in, look at your

30:59

calendar, look at your availability, schedule blocks

31:02

of time based on their availability. All

31:04

you do is really send the email

31:06

with the link in there. They schedule.

31:09

Now do you have to send an

31:11

email like or can you have an

31:13

AI agent send the email? Okay, great.

31:15

Now that's a narrow task, but that's

31:18

an external client facing that you don't

31:20

have to be involved, they can schedule.

31:22

So now we have two agents, we

31:25

have one that's doing the nurturing, we

31:27

have one doing the scheduling. Okay, great.

31:29

Now imagine previous to this appointment scheduling,

31:32

you can say, summarize the record, give

31:34

me some bullet points, I want to

31:36

do an account review. Maybe that's not

31:38

a lead, maybe it's an account in

31:41

this case, it's doing an account review

31:43

of what they previously ordered, or most

31:45

likely to order, our recent comms, open

31:48

tickets, open tickets, open cases, anything that's

31:50

going on with them. could be, you

31:52

know, the beneficial for us to mention.

31:55

Maybe have an A to summarize the

31:57

record, come up with those things, pop

31:59

that data into a field for you.

32:01

So now we have the third

32:04

agent that, you know, somebody nurtured,

32:06

somebody followed up, somebody scheduled, somebody

32:08

summarized records, prepped an account plan

32:11

for you. We have three external

32:13

facing agents just in the sales

32:15

motion or maybe, you know, account

32:17

planning motion. Those are external facing

32:19

AIs because they're dealing directly with

32:21

your clients or your accounts. And just

32:23

in the sales motion, those are

32:25

three. Now you can have one

32:27

agent. three different ones. So imagine

32:29

having an external facing AI that

32:32

just does those three things. That's

32:34

huge, right? Absolutely. Oh, yeah,

32:36

yeah. Well, again, I'm talking about just

32:38

the sales motion, but there's a

32:40

whole other workflow in the marketing

32:42

motion, there's a whole other workflow

32:44

in the service motion, but those

32:47

are just really, really cool things. So,

32:49

either way. Well, going back to point

32:51

three, it's always looking for the quick

32:53

winds, you know, how... How do you

32:55

make sure you go through each department

32:57

and get them up and running and

32:59

then come back? And you know, because

33:02

that's what I always like to do,

33:04

as opposed to spend too long in

33:06

one department and they're fully vested and

33:08

another department is kind of like, well,

33:10

you know, where's our love? Well, true,

33:12

true. And this is where if we

33:15

can kind of step back, and I

33:17

know this is kind of being prepared

33:19

for agent for us. To my understanding, there

33:21

is not an agent that can prepare

33:23

a client for agent force. It would

33:25

be great if it could, but it

33:28

is not. But there is one, it's

33:30

called the Salesforce admin or the Salesforce

33:32

product order or whoever is in charge

33:34

of forward looking for the client and

33:36

saying, hey, in 2025, what are we going

33:38

to do with our technology stack centered around

33:41

sales force to grow our business, make us

33:43

more efficient? This is where some

33:45

intelligence, some wisdom, some understanding of

33:47

the skills, some, you know. requirements

33:49

gathering skills. This is what our team is

33:52

doing with our clients. I'm showing them in

33:54

this new era of really intelligence. This is

33:56

where Salesforce is really excited for all

33:58

of us working. the ecosystem because they

34:01

are saying we now have a

34:03

tool that you can make yourself

34:05

more efficient and we are all

34:07

kind of shepherding them into this

34:09

new era really you know intelligence

34:11

so this is really fun yeah

34:13

well I mean that's that's why

34:15

you work in tech right every

34:17

day is a little bit something

34:19

different and you never I never

34:21

would have predicted this but you

34:23

know I remember back when it

34:25

was social and mobile and it's

34:27

like where are we going? And

34:29

we're talking about connected toothbrushes and

34:32

now, I don't know, now the

34:34

toothbrush maybe is gonna start giving

34:36

me advice. Well, it could. I

34:38

mean, you know, with all the

34:40

things that are happening, you know,

34:42

obviously I used to work in

34:44

the medical dental space, you know,

34:46

I give you a lot of

34:48

thoughts and, you know, advice there,

34:50

but I cannot wait to see.

34:52

in the next year as we

34:54

enable customer-facing agents that have been

34:56

trained, right? There is something to

34:58

that. Now I wouldn't put a

35:00

customer-facing agent out there without training.

35:02

I wouldn't put regular people out

35:04

there without training. I wouldn't put

35:06

regular people without training. But in

35:08

the next year or two with

35:11

every company that I deal with

35:13

becoming smarter, right? The places that

35:15

we go to and solicit. And

35:17

they're not as intelligent, that an

35:19

agent can help the person on

35:21

the other end do their job

35:23

better, which is really cool. So

35:25

I am super excited. I wish

35:27

every company that we worked with

35:29

big and small would adopt technology

35:31

like this. And trust me, I've

35:33

been, I've been singing the song,

35:35

right? Everybody going, hey, hey, I

35:37

don't know what systems you have

35:39

internally, but let me help you.

35:41

And, you know, everything from, you

35:43

know, athletics, to all of those

35:45

things. So, you know, I'm looking

35:47

forward to it. It's going to

35:50

be good. Doreen, thanks for coming

35:52

by and helping admins out again.

35:54

You're kind of always in our

35:56

corner giving us advice and setting

35:58

us on the right path. So

36:00

I appreciate it and can't wait

36:02

to connect with you again later

36:04

this year at all of our

36:06

events. Yeah, well, and I'll let

36:08

you know how this goes, because

36:10

as we shepherd clients into this

36:12

new era of intelligence, I'll tell

36:14

you which ones are on. Step

36:16

two, step three, and step four,

36:18

and no, Sales force is really

36:20

doing a good job of telling

36:22

a story of what people are

36:24

doing with agents and AI, which

36:26

is really cool. I cannot wait.

36:29

This is really really fun, but

36:31

thanks for all you do with

36:33

helping us in the ecosystem. I

36:35

think I mentioned to you. When

36:37

I started with Salesforce 2017, I

36:39

was listening, I went back and

36:41

listened to all of your previous

36:43

podcasts and just to get caught

36:45

up and I listened to like

36:47

one a day, one every other

36:49

day and listened to them on,

36:51

you know, one and a half

36:53

or like two speed. And so

36:55

it was a really... Really, really

36:57

cool thing. One, you've got a

36:59

great, obviously, voice and, you know.

37:01

Even at two speed, I do.

37:03

Even at two speed, you'd be

37:05

surprised what Mike sounds like at

37:08

two speed. Yep, yeah, yeah. Sounds

37:10

like Alvin and the chipmunks. Mike

37:12

and Jillian at one and a

37:14

half of true speed was something,

37:16

right? Right. And so, yeah, that

37:18

was really good. But still, having

37:20

a place where people can stay

37:22

up to date and knowledgeable, so

37:24

thank you for, on behalf of

37:26

me and everybody else. We thank

37:28

you for kind of having a

37:30

place where we can learn and

37:32

obviously stay up to date here.

37:34

This is really cool. I appreciate

37:36

it. Thanks so much. Yep. Yeah,

37:38

thank you. That was another fun

37:40

discussion with Dorian. I always love

37:42

running into him at events. And

37:44

if you've ever checked out his

37:46

breakout sessions, there one for the

37:49

books. He is an incredibly powerful.

37:51

and passionate presenter and knowledgeable huge

37:53

fan of Salesforce admins. I really

37:55

loved his his five-step approach for

37:57

preparing for Agent Force, I think

37:59

it gave us some actual insights

38:01

for us to think about and,

38:03

you know, looks forward to bringing

38:05

more intelligence and efficiency to our

38:07

organizations. Now, if you've found this

38:09

episode helpful, hey, do me a

38:11

favor, share it with somebody, put

38:13

it out on social, I'm on

38:15

Blue Sky, everybody's on Blue Sky,

38:17

and if you're on Apple podcast,

38:19

all you have to do is

38:21

tap three dots to click, share

38:23

episode, and it'll take care of

38:25

posting the rest. Now don't forget

38:28

all the links, everything that we

38:30

mentioned on the episode, including a

38:32

transcript, is available at admin. Salesforce.com.

38:34

You can find everything there, including

38:36

a lot of blog posts. Tons

38:39

of information. Now, as always, if

38:41

you'd love to join in the

38:43

conversation, and I'd love to be

38:46

there with you, jump over the

38:48

admin trailblazer group that is in

38:50

the trailblazer community. You know where

38:52

the link is. It's in the

38:54

show notes, which is at admin.salester.com.

38:56

Look at that. It's like, do, do,

38:59

do, here we go. Anyway, thanks again

39:01

for tuning in, and we'll see

39:03

you next Thursday in the cloud.