For this week’s episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Mia Pacey, a Salesforce Admin at Surf Life Saving NSW. She shares how she holds weekly campfires with her users to drive adoption.
Join us as we talk about her Trailhead-inspired weekly Salesforce meetings for her users, how she gets executive buy-in, and how to make a great demo.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Mia Pacey.
“I was the fix-it person at my organization,” Mia says, “I loved figuring out ways to help my users do things a bit better.” That meant that she soon found herself getting certified as a System Administrator at a Trailhead Bootcamp in Gold Coast, Australia, and dove straight into a Sales Cloud implementation.
Hitting the ground running has meant doing a few special things to make sure everyone gets with the program. “I work with our users very closely because I feel like they’re very important for user adoption and the success of your platform as a whole,” Mia says, “so I call what I run a campfire.” It’s a weekly time for her users to get together and watch a demo, do a training, or just chat about what they’d like to see on the platform.
For Sydney World Tour Reimagined, Mia had viewing areas in her office for everyone to catch all of the different channels and content. “The users loved it so much and it was super engaging as an atmosphere,” she says, “so, I thought, why don’t we just do this again but more of an internal conversation?” That’s how the campfire tradition was born.
Because she’s working in a new implementation, Mia has found her campfires to be especially helpful when it comes to rolling out new features, landing key demos and training, and just generally making sure that Salesforce is meeting her users’ needs. Right now, they have these meetings on a weekly basis at 30-60 minutes a session, so they’re easy to fit in the schedule and well worth the time. “A campfire doesn’t sound scary,” she says, “so calling it that gives the executives something to promote and doesn’t turn off users.”
“When I’m thinking about what to demo or what to showcase, I just have to remember it’s not scary,” Mia says, “these are my users—they understand the platform because I understand what they’re using.” In other words, you’re not presenting to an audience of strangers who are coming to it cold. You know something about their experience and what matters to them, and you probably already have the material on-hand from user testing and user stories for a new feature you’ve implemented to make a great demo.
Mia’s sales users are actually some of her biggest fans, “because if I demo something that’s an end-to-end example of what they’re doing in their day-to-day life, they’ll have so much buy-in, they get so engaged,” she says. And remember, you don’t need to have meticulously crafted demos every week, you can also take the time to highlight features, open discussion, and encourage conversation.
Mike: Welcome to the Salesforce Admins Podcast, where we talk about product, community, and career to help you become an awesome admin. This week, we are talking with Salesforce admin, Mia Pacey, about how she holds weekly campfires with her users to drive adoption. That’s right. How cool is that? It’s called a campfire to get her users and her executives around to talk about Salesforce features. I just think this is so cool. So let’s get me Mia on the podcast. So Mia, welcome to the podcast.
Mia: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Mike: I’m so happy to have you on and I loved what our discussion was heading into this, but I’d love to know how you got started as a Salesforce administrator.
Mia: Yeah. Thanks. I am assistant administrator at Surf Life Saving and I got into it because I was the fix it person at my organization. I just loved figuring out ways to help my users do things a bit better. So I launched straight into bootcamp in Gold Coast in Australia, got certified as a system administrator and dived straight into an implementation for sales cloud.
Mike: So literally here’s your backpack and they pushed you out of the plane.
Mia: Yeah. It was so fun. I’m still on a high. I love it to this day.
Mike: Yeah, that is neat. Now, one of the things that we talked about and it’s so true to me and I love what you call this, so I’m going to let you introduce it. But one of the things that we talk about on the admin team in our essential habits and a lot of the content that we do is around meeting with users, meeting with stakeholders, and when we were chatting with you before we pressed record, that was one of the main topics that you brought up. So I’d love to know what you do when you meet with your users and you meet with these stakeholders and especially to start off the conversation, what you call it.
Mia: Yeah. So I work with our users very closely because I feel like they’re very important to user adoption and the success of your platform as a whole. So when I run is called a campfire.
Mike: I love that. Very on brand.
Mia: Yes. It really brings home what it is, which is probably users getting together and me running them through either a demo, a training session, or just having a user chat to see what they want done in the platform.
Mike: Oh, neat. So let’s talk about these because one of the things that you brought up doing your campfires is that you do a demo, highlight a feature. I’d love to know, how did you launch that? Where did this just come out of the blue? Or did you have a plan?
Mia: Yeah. So there’s a lot going on in my head. I really love to get everyone excited about what they’re doing, whether it be Salesforce or whether it be in their emails for Salesforce. But where I got the idea was actually after Sydney World Tour Reimagined because I held viewing areas in my office for everyone to tune into the different channels. The users loved it so much and it was super engaging as an atmosphere. So I thought, “Why don’t we just do this again, but more of an internal conversation?” So that’s where it launched from.
Mike: Wow. Okay. Now how often do you hold these campfires?
Mia: Currently, we’re holding them on a weekly basis, but in the future we can hold them fortnightly. Currently, they’re going through a lot of new features rolling out for our users. So it was important to have it front of mind for them.
Mike: Yeah, no, absolutely. Being a new implementation, I imagine that… Did I… I forgot. Did you mention how long they last?
Mia: Currently, the campfires lasts for about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on what topic we’re covering.
Mike: Oh, so it’s easy enough to fit into somebody’s schedule.
Mia: Exactly. I think that’s one of the most important things is having it be accessible for your users and actually want them to attend.
Mike: Right. Absolutely. So that’s a million dollar question right there because I know I have sent users emails before and I’m sure other admins have done that and have wanted them to attend trainings and it feels like for the most part, some do that, but others, it really doesn’t get accelerated until the executives start giving their buy-in and start pushing that requirement. How did you go about getting exact buy-in for doing campfires?
Mia: That’s the beauty of what I call a campfire because it [crosstalk] in the name of it, and actually it doesn’t come across as something scary and it’s not training, which has sometimes a connotation of, “Oh, I don’t need training. I know what I’m doing.” So having what we call a campfire gives the executive something to promote, and it doesn’t turn off any of the sales reps or the users from having the want to attend. The executives do understand that to get a sufficient ROI out of the platform, the users need to use it. So if they feel more confident after attending one of my campfires and they use the feature that we’ve just rolled out or the demo, then that’s exactly what the executives want, and they’re always on board.
Mike: Yeah. Smart. Now, you talked about doing demos in the campfires and I know LeeAnne, who’s on our team, has done a session at a few of the Dreamforce events that we’ve done and and she’s got a blog and a video about creating demos. I’d love to hear how do you decide what you’re going to demo to the users for a particular campfire and your approach to what do you do to tackle building it? How long is it? Share with me all the things, because I think the reason I’m asking this question is a lot of admins like watching our demos, but then when it comes to showing stuff off to their users, they’re not sure what they should demo, how they should demo it.
Mia: Yeah. So when I’m thinking about what to demo or to showcase, I just have to remember, it’s not scary. These are my users. They understand the platform because I know what I’ve been demoing or I understand what they’re using. So if you’re showcasing something you know, it’s not as scary as showcasing it to people that don’t know what you’re talking about. Remember these people are in your own platform. So if we’ve just done a whole bunch of user testing or user stories about a new feature we’ve run, that’s a perfect opportunity to turn that into a demo because you’ve already gone and written out the user story, trialed it in your own sandboxes or your, so why not use that use case to just turn it into a quick high-level demo?
Mike: Yeah. Do you often find that your users like demos more that are examples? So do you pull an example from a sales user or a service user, or do you make up a completely hypothetical?
Mia: My sales users have provided a lot of feedback where they love my campfires. They actually do, which is a big deal for us because sales reps are often a niche customer on their own. If I demo something that’s an end to end example of what they’re doing in their day to day life, they’ll have so much buy-in. They get so engaged. They ask questions. They say, “What about what if this happens?” It’s not something you have to demo an end to end sales process every time, every week. You can have something that’s just as little as, what does the clone with related button do? Then showcase that on all the objects. Because even if you get one person that’s like, “That is changing my life,” you will have amazing buy-in and that person will then come back to your next campfire, because they’ve got interest about what, they picked up something of what you did.
Mike: Yeah, no, that’s great. I know that sales users are never short on their amount of feedback and examples that they can give you, that’s for sure.
Mia: Yeah. You’re ultimately there to help your users in the system because you’re there for them. So if they can provide you feedback or ideas, take it on board and see what you can do and help them out and give them that feedback and say you’re working on it. More information’s better than no information.
Mike: Absolutely. So given that all of these campfires, I’m assuming you’re doing these virtually, do you record them and give users the option of watching them later? Do they know that? Or is it a you got to attend live and then you have different times or one time?
Mia: Currently, because our org is only in Australia, we have the one time and it isn’t recorded, purely to give them a safe place to come and ask questions so that they don’t feel like they’re asking a silly question. I keep them small. If I need to run a couple of them, I will. But I will also ask some questions at the end. For instance, “Would you like me to record the step-by-step I just went through?” Then if they say, “Yes,” I will just take a little bit of time just straight after that call, just screen record a three minute quick video about what we talked about so that’s useful later.
Mike: I like that. You never really think about that when you do a recording in that it might cause people anxiety to think about, “I don’t want to ask this question because it’s going to be on the recording.”
Mia: Yeah. That’s why the campfire, it’s just a safe space where you come and have a chat or ask a silly question all you like, because they know what I do and I’m there for them.
Mike: Yeah. I’d be curious, [inaudible] anybody bring anything fun? Do you have s’mores recipes or roast marshmallows or has anybody offered up to do a sing along, typical campfire fun things?
Mia: Well, being in Australia right now, it’s very hot. So no s’mores or marshmallows, but sometimes if it’s been a Friday, may have been a beverage.
Mike: Oh, yes.
Mia: But it’s not something that we match with our food.
Mike: Yeah, no, I understand.
Mia: But it sounds like a great idea.
Mike: Even in the summer, look, it gets blistering hot here in the US too, and my friend has a backyard little fire pit thing. He lit that the other day and it was hot, but we also toasted marshmallows over it too.
Mia: [crosstalk 00:11:43].
Mike: I don’t know if they have fudge stripe cookies in Australia. I think they do. I remember buying them.
Mia: Oh, I’ve never seen them.
Mike: Have you [crosstalk] fudge stripe cookies?
Mia: No.
Mike: Okay. Well, those work too. His cheat recipe was to buy fudge stripe cookies and marshmallows because then the chocolate’s already on the cookie.
Mia: Oh, yum.
Mike: I was like, “Oh, that’s brilliant. I never thought of that.”
Mia: That’s just like skipping that step.
Mike: Skip that whole step. Yeah. Somebody else did it for you. It’s great. So the one thing I’d love as admins are listening to this and getting this idea of doing campfires, I think meeting every day, I’ve often say, get to know your users, even if it’s 10 minutes over coffee or weekly, or like you do your campfires. What would your suggestion be for somebody that isn’t going through a new implementation and wants to pitch this to their executives or pitch this to their users and start doing campfires? What should they do?
Mia: I would start off by approaching it as ideas forum, just to engage with your users. Especially since we spoke about how sales reps like to provide you feedback. Why don’t you start it off as a feedback session to see how they like the platform, see if they’ve got any ideas of improvement and then run from there. If it’s on your backlog, then you can say, “We’ll look forward to it next week when I demo it for you,” or, “Let me get back to you with a demo and see if that’s what you’re after.” Then slowly but surely, they’ll come on board.
Mike: Nice. Nice. Great. Well, Mia, this was fun and I’m sure we made everybody hungry now for s’mores and fudge stripe cookies, maybe. I don’t know.
Mia: I’m on board.
Mike: Exactly. I definitely want to thank you for being on the call. I think this was super fun just thinking about how we can engage with our users and have demos and bring more of that trail head spirit into it. I love that you call them campfires. Assuming you’re heading into the warm season now, because it’s always opposite from the US.
Mia: Yes.
Mike: So, yeah. That’s okay.
Mia: We’re definitely starting off into our beaches and getting all our, I don’t know, fish and prawns on the [inaudible] because we can’t do [inaudible] Christmas, a white Christmas in Australia, but [crosstalk] special, we always sit on the beach on Christmas. It’s different over here, but it’s what we do.
Mike: That’s okay. That’s I think that’s wonderful. I will tell you this, there’s a lot of people in the US that would love to dip their toes into warm sand on Christmas Day, because it’s usually very cold here.
Mia: Yeah. Just imagine making a sand castle snowman instead of any snow snowman.
Mike: I mean, there’s a lot of pros that go with that as well. So it’s a never a bad time. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast, Mia.
Mia: Thank you so much. Never be afraid to have a campfire with your users. I hope it goes wildfire.
Mike: So it’s so great to have Mia on the podcast. I love this idea of campfires. It just feels neat and it’s so trail head inspiring that she calls them that and that her executives are totally bought in and she does campfires for her users. I love that. As a Salesforce admin, I think everybody should do that. If you’ve paid attention to the essential habits that [Mark Baseman 00:00:15:40] does every Friday, you know that meeting with users is key. So three things that I learned in our discussion with Mia, one, she takes time out of her week to meet with her users with a campfire. That’s what this whole episode was about. But one of the big takeaways I got was that she tailors every demo based on the feedback that her users are giving her and based on features that they want to see. So kudos to her for that. I think you should do that too. The second thing, she keeps the room small. So if she has to do more than one, she does that, and that allows people to interact, to ask questions, and keeps it very personal. I liked that.
That’s a campfire, right? So I think that’s really neat. The third thing is she’s always constantly listening to her users, taking time to build and demo out those features based on what they asked for and that she works with her executives constantly to make sure that they have buy-in on it. That’s everything that you heard in this episode, but it’s just really neat to see that pay off. I know that’ll pay off for you. Trust me. So if you want to learn more about all things Salesforce admin go to admin.salesforce.com to find more resources. Of course, as a reminder, if you love what you hear, hop on over to iTunes, give us a review. You can also stay up to date with us on social for all things admins. We are @Salesforce admins, no I, on Twitter. You can find our guest today, Mia, on Twitter. She is at PaceyMia. So P-A-C-E-Y-M-I-A. Of course, I’m on Twitter at @MikeGerholdt and the other host of the Salesforce Admin Podcast, Gillian Bruce, is at @GillianKBruce. So with that, stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see you in the cloud.
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