71 - Be Bold - Part Two of A Far-Reaching Conversation with Tiffani Bova.

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Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ and the second installment of my interview with Tiffani Bova.

Tiffani Bova is a Business Anthropologist, Growth Evangelist and Transformation Advisor, Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author, and Thinkers 50 Member.

She hosts the “What’s Next Podcast with Tiffani Bova” and is the author of the Wall Street Journal Best Selling Book “Growth IQ, Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make Or Break Your Business.”

Tiffani and I continue discussing her book and how partnerships can be a critical accelerant to growth. We also discuss why many organizations don’t get partnerships right. Tiffani also gives examples of what organizations need to do to lead and come out of this time better. As with each of my episodes, we finish the interview with Tiffani’s sound career advice.

I hope you enjoy Part Two of my interview with Tiffani Bova.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai Please excuse any typos.

Vince Menzione 0:14
Let’s dive into the book for a moment. If you don’t mind, I made sure. I mean, we could talk about all 10 growth paths I wanted to ask you about why 10. But I have a sense that they were all situational. And you would come to them through you know all your experiences working with organizations, but specifically growth path eight obviously for this podcast, Ultimate Guide to partnering. Partnering is a big part of your background as well. You also talk about Co Op petition and chapter nine. So wanted to spend a few moments here because you had blogged and I have been blogging as well about this time like no other. And there’s the need for the channel and accelerating partnerships. Now in terms of how we move forward, move past this time, or actually expand from a solution set perspective, our growth path in terms of selling and all the other areas. What are you seeing now that you didn’t see, when you wrote the book,

Tiffani Bova 2:51
I’ve been inspired both ways on partnering and then Co Op petition. So I you know, kind of one side of the coin is seeing businesses partner in order to either keep their doors open, right, or their supply chains running or delivery, like restaurants, I never used Uber Eats or I never use grub hub or what you know, now this has happened, I got to partner with them, right because my drivers can’t do it. And you know, the the staff isn’t full staff. And so like something as simple partnership like that, right, or the store isn’t going to be open. And so we need to the restaurant could be open, we need to build out, you know, the places for them to eat at people to eat outside, like those natural partnerships to keep the businesses afloat, where it might have been something you had been thinking about, but you’d never taken the time to do. So that’s kind of one side of the coin. The other side of the partnering coin is really partnering to solve big challenges, right getting PP equipment built and shipped and done, like I worked for Salesforce. And our CEO was very committed to getting it early on and brought in I think it was five or 7 million PP equipment and fully donated it, but he had to pull together. I mean, I don’t know everything, obviously. But he had to pull it together logistics of having it made having it’s flown in having it distributed, you know. And so you reach out to your network and you pull partnerships together in order to solve big problems, and it could be education or healthcare. I’m on board for making sure that our next future, which is the term I use, I don’t like new normal that our next future is more equal and more diverse. And I don’t just mean from an employment standpoint, but I mean access and opportunity to things like bandwidth. There’s 19 million people in the United States who still have no access to high speed and now you want everyone to educate and do health care and work from home where 19 million people

Vince Menzione 4:42
can’t do it. Yeah, this is a topic near and dear to my heart as well in the work that I got to do with voices for innovation.

Tiffani Bova 4:48
Even then there was something on the news in Silicon Valley that kids were sitting outside the Taco Bell because they were trying to get free Wi Fi so they could go to school in Silicon Valley.

Vince Menzione 4:57
Yeah, because their parents couldn’t afford it.

Tiffani Bova 4:59
Yeah. Because you You know, it’s just not everybody is not the haves. And so, you know, I that that kind of partnering I’m really inspired by. And then the competition is, you know, putting aside potential competitive differences in small areas of the business to think about the greater good both for the customers and the environments and the communities and the societies we serve.

So, you know, we’ve been seeing changes in the channel for quite some time, right? The old days was the, you know, the bronze silver gold programs, and the, I’ll call it the old clunky channel partner models. I’ve had Jay McBain from Forrester on as well and talking about the future roll the channel. What do you believe to be the future roll the channel in this new world, we’ve got three hyper scalars we’ve got large organizations like Salesforce SAP that are really the top platform companies, what is the role of the channel playing in this ecosystem?

Well, I you know, I started saying this way more than a decade ago, in my reading the tea leaves presentation at the Microsoft worldwide partner conference, which was kind of what I was known for, right, the reading the tea leaves was my presentation. And I would say that, you know, back then I sort of broke the channel into three distinct swim lanes, you had the fact that they had to optimize the business, or are you selling the right stuff? Are you partnered with the right vendors? Or do you have the right customers? Do you have the right selling engine? Do you have the right structure, you know, sort of optimize the business? And then really transform the business to think, okay, where do I need to be two to three years from now? And how do I start to prepare myself for that. And then the third category was sort of this innovation. And it would lay out just like a resale partner, you know, on prem, pure resell to the middle lane was about hybrid, I’m going to deliver a hybrid on and off Prem. And so for everyone listening, right, I want you to just keep this in timing. This is almost This is over 10 years ago,

Vince Menzione 6:51
at this point, remember this presentation?

Tiffani Bova 6:53
Yep. And so it was hybrid on and off premise. And back then Microsoft was s plus s, it was software plus service, it was not office three, it was B POS, it was B POS, then it was s plus s, then it was, you know, office 365. And now it’s something else. And so back then everyone was like be POS, you know, digging their heels in the in the in the sand, no way, I’m not going along, right. VMware is like Amazon is, you know, not good. And Amazon didn’t have a partner program. And you know, like, it’s very different. And so that hybrid was that middle section. And then the third sort of swim lane was those that were pure born in the cloud providers. And at the time, it was like cloud Sherpa, it was a period, which have all been bought by the global size. And if you look like a tradition, if you looked at a traditional var, who was buying out a distribution and reselling me trying to explain to them that they needed to be an ISV, they needed to be in DevOps, they didn’t need to understand IT Service Management, they needed to get in the capabilities of on and off Prem, that, you know, they needed to work with, it’s got they looked at me like I had seven heads, right? They were like, Oh, no, not gonna happen. And the only reason why I knew that’s where the flag was moving was because of everything. As I was just saying that the other Gartner analysts were writing about how global organizations and companies and users were going to become more hybrid. And if that was the case, then the selling engine had to be able to be capable, to deliver hybrid. And so I knew that if that’s where the enterprise was going, and even mid market companies was going that the channel had to follow that I also believe that it would help small businesses compete better with medium and large enterprises, because they could not worry so much about spending on the asset and maintaining that from an on prem perspective. But they could spin something up really quickly, to compete more. Now, I gave that presentation for five straight years. And, you know, distribution, couldn’t figure it out. The partners were really, you know, dragging their feet and even the largest, if you look at the far 500, right, you know, if you look at the top 20 of them, and you take out the vendors, like I think IBM is on that list, too. But if you take out the vendors and you purely look at partners, some of those largest partners have still made just slight pivots into being hybrid, because there’s just still so much money being made on on prem. And while I get that as a strategy standpoint, that leaves out in my opinion, what do the customers actually need for them to stay competitive for their business to be competitive? Two to three years from now, because if you think about it, if the channel was the IT organization for a medium sized business, let’s say right, an SMB, the channel most likely is the IT person right there, the CIO, IT manager for a small business because they don’t have anybody in house and the pandemic hits. And that small and medium business is absolutely nowhere prepared to have everybody work remote because why everything’s on prep. And okay, maybe the apps aren’t on prem, but they have desktops and laptops so they can take those home and then you don’t have security and you don’t have collaboration tools. And you don’t have all these things, you don’t have a video strategy, you don’t have it right? And so what is the reason that some SMBs were caught flat footed on this is because of a lack of investment three, four or five years ago now, please channel do not, you know, let your head explode. I’m not saying it’s your fault, because I know many partners will sit in front of a customer and say you need to make these investments. And they say no. So it’s very, I realize it’s both sides, right? That it isn’t just the channel, and it isn’t just the customer. But for those of you listening, that, you know, have had to really dig in and go, we have got to make sure that our customers stay, you know, open and button continuing to conduct business and and capable of being successful during this time now is the opportunity for you to say, Okay, what other things do I need to be thinking about in order to get them prepared for the next 2345 years and beyond? Because we’re never going to go back to the way that it was, it won’t look like it looks now. But it’s not definitely not gonna look the way it looks in the past.

Vince Menzione 11:00
I so agree with you. So we’ve talked about this, you don’t call the new normal, what was the term you use the next future? Next future I like next future.

Tiffani Bova 11:09
So and people go look next, and future is the same thing. And I go, I get it. But next is negating new. And future is negating normal. So doing that on purpose that I’m trying to say back, it’s not new, it’s next. And it’s not normal. It’s it’s, it’s the future. Right.

Vince Menzione 11:27
And to your point, it’s now forced this transformation to happen. We’ve been talking about it for years and years now, we’ve been talking about the cloud for 10 years. You know, Satya Nadella says we’ve seen more transformation in seven months than we saw on seven years. And with all of this transformation that’s happening right now, what what advice do you give to these organizations on what they should do next?

Tiffani Bova 11:49
Yeah, for partner organizations. For me, it’s, it’s really how do you start to, I would say, change management, it’s top of my list. So do you have those capabilities to help your customers understand if I change this, what’s the implications to the remainder of the business, to my employees, to my customers, to my vendors, to my supply chain, right, like change management right now, because things are changing so fast that skill set, I’m gonna date myself, but I remember when Microsoft Project came out, and it was like the PMI Institute was like, you had to understand project management. And as a salesperson, I got PMI certified, so that I could sell a large, multi billion dollar, you know, multi year contract from a services perspective, like, deploy all the desktops for Toyota, which I did, and then sold the break, fix contract for it, which I did. Like that didn’t happen overnight. It was like an 18 month project totally managed in, but I had to know, if you know, North America delayed or if us delayed, then Canada would delay. And if that delayed, then Asia would delay, you know what I mean? And so you had to understand the implications. So I’d say change management, huge. Second, I’d say is design thinking, just really tearing apart all the processes in the business to reimagine how to optimize not only for yourself, but for your customers with a customer centric lens. And that means you have to allow and give your employees all the tools they need to be successful. It’s employee first and customer centricity. And so with that, you then need that kind of design thinking, which is agile, which is Scrum, which is, you know, Tiger teams, whatever you want to call it, that sort of, that’s the second one. And these are in no order. These are just things that I would say, to to invest in. The third would be the sort of the development capabilities. And I mean, you know, developing to integrate those hybrid solutions, you know, whether it’s API’s, whether it’s using something like a mule, soft, you know, it’s super important for that. And then fourth, I’d say, really get good at data analysis and insights. So what what are your customers? What is your data that you have on your customers today? What is it telling you? Are there signals in there that you could be thinking about the next offering? Do you have a voice of the customer team? Are you out doing customer advisory boards? Are you talking to your customers, not to ask them what they want? Because the at the end of the old saying of, well, if I asked them what they wanted, what they’d have faster horses and cars. And if I asked them what they wanted, they never would have said they wanted an iPod, obviously. But if you ask them correctly, and you understand the jobs to be done, you can figure out what do you need to develop in the future. And so data for data’s sake is not that interesting to me, you have to analyze it. And then you have to use those insights to do different things. And many partners. For example, like you know, Gartner is sharing data, you need to go left, this is where the market is going. It’s going left, it’s going to the cloud. 15 years ago, hello is going to the cloud. And Nope, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. So I’m going to ignore the data ignore the signals now. Is it right every time? Absolutely not. So scenario plan if it is, right, if it’s half, right, a quarter, right? What does it mean to your business, but just to think what got you here, we’ll get you there or the way you did things will always be worthwhile. I realize many partners have lifestyle businesses, and they’re, you know, profitable, they make a little bit of money, they employ people, they’re happy, they enjoy what they do. Thumbs up, keep doing it. But if you’re really looking to make an impact, you’re going to have to start to make some of those pivots.

Vince Menzione 15:27
So you talk about the importance of putting customer first and you know, it’s the first chapter, the first path in your book is customer experience. And I, you know, I think back to SAS based companies wanting to own the customer, and in many cases saying, Well, I don’t need to have a channel strategy, because I’m going to own the customer, I’m going to deliver all the services and the channel is an intermediary that I don’t need in that, in my process. What do you say to those organizations? It’s not about you. It’s not about you. Yeah, go back

Tiffani Bova 15:56
here. I don’t care that you want to own the processes. I don’t care. Good for you. The only person that owns the customer is the customer. Okay.

Vince Menzione 16:07
And it’s not only about your solution, right? Like the customer doesn’t just have your solution, right? Look,

Tiffani Bova 16:11
it’s just not about you. That’s not about you. So that’s my quick answer. I’m glad. That’s what you think. And my answer usually is, I’m glad that’s what you think good to know. What are your customers think most of the time I get a blank stare. So most of our customers don’t know what they want. Really? Have you asked him? We I asked him what they want. They go I don’t know, what do you think we should have I go, then you’re not a very good asker.

Vince Menzione 16:30
Very good, good, very good analogy. And you know, my own experiences with some very large ISVs in certain vertical markets is just that, like the customer might have 100 different solutions that they’ve stitched together. You mentioned mule soft, they’re stitching them together with some type of glue. And it’s not just about your one point solution that they’re delivering, that they’re using.

Tiffani Bova 16:48
Yeah, yeah, full stop, there is not one partner on the planet. I don’t know if that’s true, but let’s go for it. I don’t know if there’s one partner on the planet that could deliver everything. And and for a company, you know, individually, individually, meaning like, there’s one vendor that has everything a customer needs not possible, which means you’re going to have a multiple vendor solution, which means unless you’re a partner that can deliver every single one of them, like if someone goes, Oh, I’m a, you know, I resell for a major router company, pick one back, then I would go like, great. Are you selling the pipe? Well, why would I do that? Well, so you don’t really own the customer. And you don’t really own their network, you own the router, or a data center, you own the brake fit. And then so you know, I was talking at the channel partners event a good 10 years ago, as well. And I was one of the only ones that started paying attention to that telecom partner channel, I was definitely the only analyst. And none of the vendors were there. And for sure, none of the distributors were there. But as I started pushing that, and saying, you got to think hybrid, you’ve got to think that it’s going to be a different set of partners, that’s going to get you going forward, all of a sudden, now that channel partners event is, you know, a very popular event, because people are thinking more holistically around, you know, nothing works in the cloud, if you don’t have the pipe, and then, you know, the pipe has to go through the data set has not ever will never be 100% in the cloud, because you need equipment in the data center to make the cloud, you know, sort of connect with each other, right? What’s happening on prem, what’s happening in the cloud. So you’re always going to need that data center piece. But the further you get to the customer facing employees, the types of products and services you have to represent is very different. It isn’t the servers storage, networking, supply chain, er, p work, or HR, that’s all back office, you know, and most of the spend still sits in keeping the lights on. But you have an entirely separate set, that’s another thing I would say is that the channel that I was very familiar with was very versed in the back office. And the second the conversation started going to front office like CRM, or customer journey mapping or customer service applications, or marketing tools. Until Gartner said that the CMO was going to spend more than the CIO the channel was not very interested in the CMO as a target customer.

Vince Menzione 19:02
That’s true. And they finally had a pivot in that direction. So you know, you were an advisor to many of the top channel chiefs, I’m struck at times by how organizations don’t get it right, either building out their own channel ecosystems or being a partner to another organization, what have you seen? What are the things that you’ve seen? And we’ve also seen too, like, I’m struck by how some of these channel chiefs struggle to drive relevance in their organizations? And why do you think that many organizations lose patience with their investments in leadership and partnering within their organizations?

Tiffani Bova 19:35
I think it’s a great question. And I’ll tell you why I don’t think the same level of rigor goes into sales period, that goes into the rest of the business. Hmm, direct or indirect. So I’ll give you an example. I’m going to put my I’m going to put my last channel chief hat on that I had, it was a fortune 500 company, right sitting at the table with all the executives and we’re having this conversation and it was Wait a second. We own the customer, we’re direct selling organization, Dell doesn’t sell through the channel. I was at Gateway at the time. Dell doesn’t sell through the channel, which they didn’t at the time. And I was competing against IBM think before Lenovo took them. Compaq, HP? And whitebox. I’m really going to date myself. Wow. Right? So I said, Okay, well, so you say it’s, we’re gonna make less money. So let’s let’s let’s just for you know the fun of it. Let’s do that math back of the envelope. Well how many points do we make on and I don’t remember the numbers. So don’t anybody hold me to this but let’s say well we make 10 points on selling direct. And when I say direct at the time, the gateway stores were just closing and we were starting to go into retail. So it was right when he machines and gateway merged and he machines was all about selling through retail gateway was all about selling through the gateway stores, which was prior for those of you who didn’t realize this to the Apple stores. And gateway actually had genius bars before Apple did. And that’s also in the book. But if you think about when that happened, and they were like, okay, 10 points in direct selling. And we have to give five points to the channel. Once again, I don’t remember the numbers, but for the conversation. So we’re losing five points by going through the channel. Why would we do that? And I go, Okay, I get it. But let’s count all the sgma and the cogs on selling direct. So you just flew 10 people on a plane to go to New York from Los Angeles, which is where gateway was at the time we were in San Diego, and we moved to Irvine. And so did you really make 10 points on the deal? And then we know from the thousands of desktops, we’ve sold that in the first 30 days, the average phone is like two and a half calls per new desktop to set it up. We’re taking those calls.

Vince Menzione 21:48
Yeah. All part of your SGA.

Tiffani Bova 21:50
Yeah, in the channel model. Number one, we’re not paying to fly 10 people someone else is. And when they call, we’re not tier one tech support. We’re tier two or tier three. So if you really want to have a conversation about which one is more profitable, and so just that very quick back of the math, that kind of rigor is no, we’re not going to give up points by selling indirect, it’s like, well, let’s do the work. Let’s make the assumptions of how much we really do make an either one and how much we’re really going to be able to scale. So are you going to be able to hire 5000? More salespeople? Or could I get 5000 salespeople who don’t work for us to sell our stuff? So how do you inform a growth mindset? In that instance? Like how do you get the leaders of the organization to see through their I’ll call it opaque thinking, for me in that particular situation. That was the turning point for me. So they hired me to help stand up the channel program at the time, they never had had one because they were you know, had stores and they were direct, literally, you know, 99% direct. And I was hired specifically to be the very first channel chief and to do that. And so I’m sitting with the executive team, and I’m having this conversation. And even though it makes kind of sense, as we’re talking about really quickly, I couldn’t get them across the line. And so they said you know what you might be right. But we need to sort of prove it out. So go out and you know, get a bid from the mackenzies. The at Kearney’s, the pains they Accenture’s and the gardener’s and tell us what it would cost for them to do an analysis to tell us that indirect is a great compliment for us. And so I said, Okay, so you know, went out to bid ended up doing it with at Kearney and not gardener actually. And so but what it taught me was this a lot this is sort of this is how I ended up a gardener is so now at Kearney knows nothing about the channel, really. So I become their subject matter expert, I educate them about channel 101. And they sgma what a deal looks like and who a distributor is and what a channel partner looks like and how it all flows and, you know, MDF funds and Co Op dollars and how long it takes you to recruit, train, enable, manage onboard, you know, portals, the data that gets stuck in distribution, why does it you know, all that kind of stuff. I had it now this is literally in 2004

Vince Menzione 24:04
and why at carny versus Gartner.

Tiffani Bova 24:07
So they actually had a very small channel practice a guy who ended up leaving there actually, and went on to work at Salesforce, ironically, and now works for Chuck at Cisco and a small world anyway, so Kevin Fandi if he’s listening, but so we worked on this project together and I then you know, we had to present it to the executive team. And it was literally like Tiffany had said the sky is blue for you know, six months and they looked at me like there’s no way the sky is blue and 80 Kearney walks in and goes, the sky is blue. Everyone went oh my god, the sky is blue. How did we not know that the sky is blue? And I literally was like, Is this a joke? Anyway,

Vince Menzione 24:59
it is remarkable.

Tiffani Bova 25:00
Right. So I realized the power of the third party voice at that very moment during that project. And everything I learned during that project, by the way, was the foundation for the first two years of me being at Gartner because I realized I could have a greater impact in more organizations to help them overcome that very bias that I had just faced, as a channel chief write for about the 20th time, but that was the last. And I said, How can I go and actually help more companies overcome that objection? And that started my path to working at Gartner.

Vince Menzione 25:35
I feel like Kindred soul with you. I really, after hearing that conversation, I feel like I’ve been in that same seat as you.

Tiffani Bova 25:41
Yeah. And and really, like, you know, and whenever I would walk in, and that’s why I think channel chiefs appreciated my work so much, because I’m like, Look, tell me, what color is the sky? It’s blue? Great. Let’s go tell them it’s blue. How are we gonna? You know what I mean? Because I know that you know the answer, I’m not going to come in here and tell you something you don’t know. What I’m going to do is I’m gonna add a little color around it to help you with that storyline, right to get executives to buy in number one. Number two, I’m going to give you some lessons learned from around the globe from you know, without sharing things I couldn’t share under NDA, obviously. But hey, I think directionally This is what you need to be thinking about, like you’re a major hardware manufacturer, I get it. But you might need an ISV program, what? Like, you really need an app exchange like Salesforce, what are you talking about? You know, or even other people we’ve talked about here? I can’t tell you how many times I had that conversation with a major software company, you’ve already named about an app exchange, quote, unquote, like, thing? Yeah, for them, right. And it was ultimately this massive pushback, or even AWS, they didn’t have a channel program, I helped them sort of, you know, figure out what’s the power of the partner in that scenario. And so sometimes it was that and and you know, the The wonderful thing about my role now here at Salesforce is I get to, in some small way, continue to play that and have that agnostic voice, even though I have Salesforce on my card, because I’m not talking about the technology, I’m talking about the art of the possible, where do I think the market is going. And Salesforce created this role for me to continue doing the work I was doing around the future of, and now I’m spending a lot more time which is just so amazing for me into the community cloud product, which is really our partner, partner relationship management.

Vince Menzione 27:17
Well, you continue to be such a big advocate for the channel. And, and I thank you for that. And I do want to shift gears here a little bit because I am sensitive how much time we have with you today and your compressed schedule. I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, what are we seeing now during this time. And I’m reminded of Winston Churchill, right how he led the British people during the outbreak of World War Two. We’ve been discussing the importance of leaders and leadership, particularly in the tech sector, I’ve been talking about the fact that we in the tech sector have an opportunity and perhaps an obligation to be leaders during this time. Satya Nadella has been very strong. Your CEO has also been very strong in terms of doing things demonstrating leadership. What are you seeing now? What are some great examples of leadership that you can share with our listeners?

Tiffani Bova 28:02
Here’s what I’d say as my CEO Marc Benioff says business is the greatest platform for change. And we have to figure out ways to not only do well, but do good. And so during this time, it’s been great to see CEOs really stand up and stand for something and stand for values that they either had that people were not aware of possibly, or they actually pivoted, and said, Look, what kind of company do we want to be in this world, knowing that we could really make a positive impact to many more people, if we just did one, two, and three. And I think that’s what we’re going to do. And so from a leaders perspective, this is about becoming a master asker. And I’m gonna steal that term from my friend, Mark Victor Hansen, who wrote the book, Chicken Soup for the Soul. He just he has a new book out with his wife called Ask and becoming a master asker is you have to be able to ask the right questions to your customers, to your employees, your vendors, to other executives, whoever it might be, and then get really good at listening, then you have to become sort of this, you know, increase your empathy, your understanding, your compassion for things that everybody’s going on, happening in their lives, both personally and professionally. And how do you keep people engaged, motivated, inspired, that they feel safe and comfortable in, in just, you know, living through what we’re living through, and you have to be the lighthouse for your people. And if you don’t know what that means, then then you have to really, really kick up you’re asking at this point. But I think from a leaders perspective, right now, this is all about have as many conversations since you have can with people who work for you. Even you know, like pick up the phone and call a customer service rep. You know, Hi, this is Tiffany, both. I’m the CEO of the company. I want to know what’s the hardest thing you have to do every day. And it has everything to do with letting people know that you are there for them and that you have some vision but it’s really grounded in trust and values. I think those two things go a long way. And if you’re not authentic in either one of those things, we have seen countless times where it backfires where someone goes, Yeah, that’s what they say not what they do. So being a brand that that not only says it, but does it, I think, especially during these times, it’s only been amplified, kind of what you just said, right? We’ve seen more digital transformation in the last seven months than we’ve probably seen in the last 10 years. And we’ve seen more conversations around values in equality and social justice and all of that than we’ve been I’ve ever seen, right? Where you really are seeing people have difficult and hard conversations. And even though they sometimes fall flat, or they back, it’s all about learning, what is the best way to navigate these times, so that we can just be better, and just build, you know, build back better?

Vince Menzione 30:48
Yeah, I agree with you so much on this, by the way, the asking piece, it brings me back to as a channel chief spending time when COVID first struck, getting everyone on the phone, all of the partners on the phone and asking them, how are you doing through all this? Right? I mean, it’s, we need to be doing more of that.

Tiffani Bova 31:03
Yeah. And I will tell you that one of the my favorite things about my job is is I get now at Salesforce is I get to have these really amazing experiences with customers now in different ways. You know, last year 2019, I flew 370,000 miles, I was on six continents gave 100 keynotes or so so, you know, this is a very different year for me. I was there. Yeah, I was in Sydney in March, and I got sort of in a day before we shut down. And thankfully, otherwise, I would I mean, not that I wouldn’t mind being stuck in Sydney, but I sure wouldn’t want to still be stuck in Sydney, right? And so I’ve been grounded. And I’d only have sort of clocked 50 or so thousand miles by that time. And so I cannot I you know, I was doing sort of one or two a week of those big keynotes or big trips, or whatever I was doing. And I have, you know, a handful or a dozen or so customer meetings, and I’m doing three to five a day. You know, I’m having customer advisory boards and executive briefings, and I’m doing virtual keynotes, and I’m doing, you know, webinars and podcasts and things like that. And so I’m having even more conversations than I ever could have imagined. But what I do miss is the stranger conversations, you know, where you heard a keynote, you’re standing, getting a cup of coffee, and someone standing next to you and you strike up this conversation that’s really interesting and compelling. And you’re thrilled that you got an opportunity to meet somebody new, like, that’s what I miss. But I think ultimately, I’ve really enjoyed hearing how everybody is a lot more open and transparent about their struggles and their challenges, but also really inspired by when they hear someone has been able to do something, and then take that idea and apply it to their own organization. Like for us. Marc Benioff gave us a challenge to make a million connections in a quarter

Vince Menzione 32:47
a million connections. Mm hmm.

Tiffani Bova 32:49
Wow. And so you know, whether it’s a video call a phone call, you know what I mean? Like a million. And we did 1,000,005. And so he said, Well, great. Now you can do 5 million. So,

Vince Menzione 33:00
you know, not not an overachiever there.

Tiffani Bova 33:04
And snow and all those connections, though, right? It’s virtual cocktail hours and sending an Uber Eats card and having everybody ordered at the same time and sitting and having a meal together virtually and having a conversation. And it’s not about technology. It’s not about the products. It’s about, Hey, how are you doing? How have you been able to keep communication open with your employees? What have you done to get people back to work safely. And it’s companies actually having the conversations with themselves and us being in the position to facilitate that communication. And that learning and for me to get 15 insights in an hour timeframe is is amazing.

Vince Menzione 33:39
So I’m going to pivot here, I’m going to shift gears, given the amount of time we have today, Tiffany. And you know, as you might know, I’m fascinated by how people got to this spot in their life. We’ve talked a little bit about your background and experiences from your 20s 30s 40s and 50s. But I wanted to peel back a little bit if you didn’t mind. I’m passionate about overcoming adversity and the grit, perseverance and persistence that’s required there. And I can’t believe that path. We talked about the number of jobs and what you did. But being a woman in the late 80s, early 90s, couldn’t have been easy in terms of that trajectory, anything you could share with our listeners about things you needed to overcome or adversity that you needed to work through during that time.

Tiffani Bova 34:22
Yeah, I answered this one a couple ways. And it one, the first thing I’m going to say is, maybe I’m totally naive, but I don’t feel like I ever got a job because I was a woman. And I don’t feel I ever didn’t get a job because I was one. But again, I might be totally naive. I don’t know. I just never felt it. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. On the back of that though, and also say that there’s a lot to be said for you can’t be what you don’t see. And so what did I want to be if I didn’t see women in leadership? No. Is it not possible? I remember the day when Carly Fiorina was named CEO of HP. I remember clearly like it yesterday and I was working for gateway. And I was like, Oh, I want to be that. That’s what I want to be. But I was already, you know, well into, well into my career, right and didn’t have an MBA and you know, all the things I probably, you know, the only way I probably could have been a CEO is if I’d started my own company at that time, probably. And so, you know, I think there’s a lot to be said, and so if you can’t be what you don’t see, that says everything about people of color, people with disabilities, if you don’t see those people in those roles, how do you ever see yourself being that person on screen as an actor? You know, last night was the Emmys depending on when this plays? Right? As an actor, if you don’t see yourself on screen, how are you going to do it? If you don’t see yourself in? You know, the VC world? How are you going to do it? If you don’t see yourself in startups that get funded and become unicorns? You know, the top, you know, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, you know, it’s 2020, there’s still I think it’s 14 women, ultimately, and I think none of color. And so, you know, ultimately, I think there’s a lot to be said, For you have to see what you want to be or you have to be a kick ass Trailblazer. Then you have to be like RBG, right? You have to be an absolute Trailblazer to be like, I don’t care what isn’t in front of me, I’m going to go create it. And so there’s a lot to be said for those trailblazing women. And when I became a channel Chief, Allison Watson was the channel chief at Microsoft. And she was that role model, right? She was, oh, I can be that channel Chief, because Allison is the channel chief of one of the largest technology companies in the world. So you know, that led me to say I want to be a channel chief. And during that time, the channel chief of Symantec was a woman, Xerox was a woman kept trying going around the table in my head. I think that might have been, it might have been it. Oh, Rico was a woman. Because it was Alison Salinger. It was Julie Parrish, it was Alison Watson. I mean, I can rattle it off, I’m really gonna date myself. But, you know, ultimately, I could see it. And I think a lot of that is because channel chiefs, in many ways grew up out of marketing. And marketing tends to be much more equal than other areas of the business. There’s a lot more women that are marketers. And so you know, that’s, you know, something I would just leave with, with those listeners here that, you know, if you’ve got people on your team, they want to be something they want, they need to see it. So you really try to either find a trailblazer in your own company, or you know, make the investments to help people find their way to the path they want to

Vince Menzione 37:30
pursue. I love that advice. Is there someone you look up to now today, we’re talking about Alison and all the others, but who, who is somebody you admire or look up to the most now?

Tiffani Bova 37:40
Oh, wow. I don’t know if there’s one person right, because there’s so many facets to what I get to do every day, you know, in the thinker world, you know, kind of everybody on the thinker’s 50 list is somebody I you know, I say all the time, I’m number 50 on the thinker’s 50,

Vince Menzione 37:55
congratulations. But we’ll put a link to that list, by the way in the show,

Tiffani Bova 37:59
but but the point is, is that there’s 49 people above me

Unknown Speaker 38:03
to write good,

Tiffani Bova 38:05
yeah, and, you know, and I’m glad I’m not number 51. But you know, ultimately, that I feel like I stand on the shoulders of giants. And I’ve, you know, watched so many of their careers over my career, which is why I, you know, wanted to be on that list. And many people listening to this podcast might say, I don’t even know what that list is. And so I knew what it was early. And that goes back to that vision board, right? I put that on as a goal for myself. But you got people on there, like, you know, this past year, I was up for sort of a new innovative idea award up against Clayton Christensen.

Vince Menzione 38:36
Wow, wow. I can’t see him speak. But but by the way, while he was still alive,

Tiffani Bova 38:40
yeah. And so you sort of go, I don’t even care if I win. Like, at the end of the day, like I literally framed it. And it’s on my wall like I am, you know, in a category with someone like that, you know, and I didn’t win, but it didn’t matter. Like literally that is one thing. I had no problem losing.

Vince Menzione 38:57
Absolutely. So I so I so admire your work. I really do. And I know we have a lot of early and career professionals that listen to this podcast, people that either I’ve mentored or other people have mentored? Is there a piece of advice you would give to them? Like if they if you were mentoring any of them now,

Tiffani Bova 39:15
stay really curious and build a really strong network. Those are the two things I mean, it goes without fail. I could reach out to Kevin Gilroy, who was the channel chief at HP under Carly and did the integration of Compaq into the HP program and stood that whole thing up. And I could call him today. And that was a gazillion years ago. And Kevin was someone I admired. And I could call him today and be like, Hey, I got a question for you. He would take my call. And so you know, at the end of the day, it’s really about, you know, building those networks or Frank, particularly Otto, who was the channel chief at IBM at the time, and now is the CEO of GDC. You know, so I could call Frank and be like, Hey, what do you think I could probably call Allison today she’d take the call, you know,

Vince Menzione 39:57
I’m sure she would

Tiffani Bova 39:58
and Chuck Robbins. was a you know, channel leader in North America for Cisco when he and I were friends and now he’s the CEO of Cisco. So, at the end of the day, you know, this is all about connections. And you know, you get those opportunities in your career. I did. Steve Palmer’s very last public interview at Gartner symposium event in Florida, gave him a Magic Quadrant, we call it the Balmer quadrant as a good buy, and a thank you for his you know, service. And Steve asked for me to give it because he felt he trusted the fact that I would not try to get him all worked up, but it would be much more personal and compassionate in an interview and I was touched. And I did the very first introduction of Satya onto the WPC mainstage following Tony prophet who now is our chief, Chief equality officer at Salesforce. So,

Unknown Speaker 40:47
you

Tiffani Bova 40:48
know, I will tell you,

Vince Menzione 40:50
I was there, by the way, when you did that.

Tiffani Bova 40:52
Yeah, and, you know, that was just in front of, I don’t know, 15,000 of my closest friends at the Verizon center in DC. And so, you know, I would say that those two things, you know, really, it’s about the network and stay curious and don’t be, you know, too big for your britches, that you don’t take certain opportunities and jobs so that you can round out your capabilities and your knowledge, right, so that you are just far more valuable. I love that piece

Vince Menzione 41:17
of advice, right? We’re not we’re not too big to take a job that helps us round out or not, that was a really great piece of advice for a lot of young people today. Some that are, you know, unemployed because the COVID are looking for their next gig, right? It’s,

Tiffani Bova 41:30
yeah, they’re gonna if they’re unemployed and looking for their next gig, I would say you have to become a student of your profession. This is about rescaling. So we have something called trailhead, which is a free online learning management platform, check it out, you can get you know, it’ll teach you how to storytel it’ll teach you how to run a team meeting at a pipeline meeting and a forecast meeting, you know, isn’t just about how to use our technology, you know, what does it quality mean? What does, you know, everything that’s, you know, how to hire and have a process of hiring for quality and, you know, everything you can possibly imagine. And we, you know, we’ve been so thrilled Since launching trailhead that now you know, it’s people are putting it on their LinkedIn profiles and on their CVS, because people are looking for people who have skills. And so, you know, there’s no excuse if it’s free.

Vince Menzione 42:17
That’s right. And today’s a time where people can dig in and take, you know, because they’re not they’re not traveling, either. They could be working a job and then learning on their off time. And not Yeah, not on a plane like you were 360,000 miles or whatever it was. Yes. Well, Tiffany, I want to thank you again, you are an amazing guest. I’ve used the word amazing many times to describe you. I hope you don’t mind. That doesn’t make you blush. But it was great to have you back on the podcast. Is there any last words or advice for our listeners, especially now?

Tiffani Bova 42:47
I’d say people, I always say people, that’s sort of my new thing. I sign it in the inside of my books. It’s just be bold. I mean, unless you’re a surgeon, or it’s illegal, give it a try.

Vince Menzione 42:59
I love it. Be bold. Be bold. I want to thank you again for joining. And it was so great to have you today.

Tiffani Bova 43:06
Thanks for having me Vince, I appreciate it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai