What Salesforce Admins can learn from Taylor Swift

By

Chances are good that if I’m out for a walk there is a Taylor Swift song on rotation. One day after a walk a few news items showed up in my Facebook feed about Taylor Swift, curiously I clicked on them. After reading them I learned that Taylor Swift is great at creating memorable experiences.

As a Salesforce Admin I find these traits are ones that we can learn to be better at our profession while driving success for our companies. And if you want to have people over to your house for cookies- I’m totally cool with that.

So let’s take a look at what Admins can learn from Taylor Swift.

Stay Personable

As a Salesforce Admin there were days that I was completely overwhelmed with requests to work on, issues to troubleshoot, and meetings to attend. It’s fair to say those were the days when I was a “Grumpy Gus”. But if we learn from Taylor Swift- we need to stay personable, no matter the circumstances.  As an Admin working to drive efficiency and productivity in our companies if we are not approachable it can be difficult for our users to reach out to us. I always looked at this way- Any day I get to work on Salesforce is a good day.

Surprise and Delight

Depending on how many users you manage it’s easy to forget they are people too. I love this story of Taylor Swift crashing a bridal shower and I think delivering unexpected surprise and delight goes a long way as an Admin to drive adoption. When working with users its best to keep track of anything they struggle with doing in Salesforce. In the past I have had users who struggled to enter contacts, log calls, you name it. Of course they will get the reminder from their supervisor, but their success is in our hands as well. Not too long ago I had one user who just struggled to keep her call notes up to date. She knew it, her boss knew it, and I knew it (because I had built the report). To give her a ‘Surprise and Delight’ moment I brought cupcakes in to our Monday meeting to celebrate that she had hit 100% logged calls. Now, I know this because on Sunday I ran the report to see if her calls were logged. Find ways that you can give your users surprise and delight moments- where it’s public or private- it goes a long way to drive adoption.

Face time is the most important

In a podcast with Matt Bertuzzi he called it ‘over the shoulder time’, which spending time with your user to see how they interact with Salesforce. This is a best practice for any admin, because it will help you deliver functionality based on how your user interacts with Salesforce. But with all of the articles I shared in this post one theme holds true for most- the most impact comes from face time. Whether it’s having coffee with a manager, to taking a few minutes to give a one on one training session with a user, spending face time with them is one of the most important investments you can make.

While many of Salesforce Admins don’t have to worry about pulling our album from Spotify, I find these three things to be a cornerstone for Admins who want to drive adoption, efficiency, and be productive in their company.

And on those rare bad days we can just shake it off, shake it off.

What I learned from Girl Develop It this weekend

This weekend I was fortunate enough to spend time with fellow evangelist Mary Scotton who was teaching a Girl Develop It class on Salesforce in Atlanta. Girl Develop It is a nonprofit organization that exists to provide affordable and judgment-free opportunities for women interested in learning web and software development. Through in-person classes and community support, Girl […]

READ MORE

How Salesforce Admins Prep for Dreamforce

As a Salesforce Admin we are on the go, nonstop. From meetings to discuss process improvements, to end user training, I know that we will be busy right up to the first day of Dreamforce-  So with a little over one month to get all your Dreamforce things in order I wanted to give you a […]

READ MORE

Getting Ready for the Dreamforce Agenda Builder

Dreamforce is unlike any other event you will attend. With over 1800+ sessions, spending time doing a little planning now means you can maximize your experience. Before we get started picking sessions, let’s get caught up on the content we have available. Tuning into the Road to Dreamforce is a great way to learn about […]

READ MORE