Episode 4: Salesforce Career Conversation Richard Ferriman with ROD. After twelve years in the Salesforce ecosystem, Richard talks about his journey, which includes running his own Salesforce consulting company and now heading up sales for a growing consultancy.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee Durrant: Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of RODcast. In this episode, I am having a chat with Richard Ferriman, an industry legend whose been around Salesforce for about 12 years, as of today's recording. It's quite an interesting one for you guys if any of you are thinking of starting a business in the Salesforce ecosystem. Richard started his own Salesforce consultancy company many years ago. He talks quite openly about what it's like to build a Salesforce consultancy from scratch, the ups and downs and quite honest about the mistakes that he made, and if he could do it again, what he would do. You know, the 18 hour days... what's it's like to interview people in the Salesforce ecosystem, which there's always opportunities out there for those guys.
This is what it's like really to start and grow a Salesforce practice. And also he talks about his passion for what he's doing at the moment. So it's a really good chat. Hope you enjoy it.
Hello, and welcome to RODcast with me Lee Durrant. This is the podcast where we learn how Salesforce experts started their careers many years ago, and get under the skin of what it's like to work in the Salesforce ecosystem. Ever wondered how someone rose to the ranks of a head of practise at a consultancy or perhaps became a CTO? Then this is the podcast to listen to. We'll also get some real-life tips from them, and advice on what you can do in your Salesforce career. So yeah, hope you enjoy.
So, hello Richard and thanks for joining us mate today on the podcast. How you getting on?
Richard F.: Yeah, very well thank you, and you?
Lee Durrant: I am all right, yeah, looking forward to this one, because you and I go back a long way. I don't know how long, but it's got to be more than 10 years, isn't it?
Richard F.: Lee, I think we're about 12 years or so man.
Lee Durrant: Oh my God, blimey. And I think people would listen to this and quite like your journey because you've done quite a lot of, correct me if I'm wrong obviously, different things in the world of Salesforce.
Richard F.: Yeah.
Lee Durrant: So that's what this is about really. It's just a bit of a chat about your journey, from how you got into it, and what you've done to be where you are now. So, yeah, I'll fire some questions at you then. The first one would really be, what, actually what were you doing before, well what was your career plan up until the point where you got into Salesforce, if you know what I mean... did you get into Salesforce by accident, and the sort of journey before Salesforce, if you don't mind?
Richard F.: Yeah, absolutely, so, I started out in Visio, before it was a Microsoft product, so worked for Visio. From Visio, with them, took that through to it being bought out by Microsoft. I was part of that transition team. Went over to Seattle, working with the Microsoft team there, and then came back and promptly went and worked for IBM Software Group.
Lee Durrant: Yes.
Richard F.: So Microsoft wasn't at that point where I wanted to go, but I like the ethos of IBM, I liked the branding of IBM and even now, I still can't go to a meeting without a blue suit and a white shirt, which was very much an IBM way of doing things. They taught me a lot, taught me a lot about process, a lot about sales, a lot about how someone like me can get the most out of a meeting, and a really enjoyable part of my career.
I then fell out, was offered something even better, and the grass is greener and took that, but actually, I jumped a few times through different emerging technologies, which was okay, and it was good, and the emergence of cloud back then, the emergence of very early AI. The emergence of big data was all coming in. How were people starting to use that? I worked for a company which had an overlay to the old green screens.
Lee Durrant: Mm.
Richard F.: And that was very much actually putting a web front-end on things, so this really is going back some time.
Lee Durrant: Yeah, wow. And you're... it was always from... the actual roles you were doing were very much sales, business development and that sort of stuff, were they?
Richard F.: Sales, business development, absolutely. But I knew that I enjoyed the presales, the BA work, as much as I did the sales work. And so I was starting to look at what was next. I started to work for a process company, back in my hometown funnily enough, and that was going incredibly well, and then the backside dropped out of the financial markets and we hit the crash.
Lee Durrant: All right, so we're up to 2008 now, clearly, are we?
Richard F.: 2008 and I think a lot of people at that point saw their pipelines disintegrate.
Lee Durrant: Mm.
Richard F.: Nobody really knew what was going on and what to do, and unfortunately that ended with having to leave the role that I was being incredibly successful at, had turned a lot of money for them in that year. Unfortunately, with the crash, in the type of markets, aerospace, aviation, etc, it really did hurt that business. Thankfully they're still going, and now going really strong.
Lee Durrant: So that was, sorry to jump in, is that when you got first into Salesforce then, around about 2008?
Richard F.: Yeah, so I then went and worked for a small managed IT company in Old Street in London, completely different to anything I'd done before. I started to help to run that business, and the owner went out and moved to Australia, so really left the UK business to function well, it was doing okay, the crash was there. It was centred around charities.
Lee Durrant: Yeah.
Richard F.: So very, very different as to what we were doing. We started to look out there as far as what was on the market, and the owner of that business made an introduction for me to the Salesforce foundation…
Lee Durrant: Mm.
Richard F.: ... which was the charity piece, and I believe that's probably where we had our first conversations, for the first time.
Lee Durrant: Yeah, you're probably right, I'm trying to think back that far, but, yeah that... so basically you were introduced to them, because Salesforce was an up-and-coming thing, is that why?
Richard F.: There was a lot of on-prem, there was a lot of databases, a lot of people trying to do fundraising, or trying to do people management, mailing-lists, etc. and we saw Salesforce as a tool that they could use. I started to have meetings around the Salesforce ecosystem, started to look for potential opportunities. So it was very much feeling the market. There were only a couple of people in the Salesforce foundation at that time, Salesforce, you know, 12 years ago, was still relatively new to the UK market.
Lee Durrant: Yeah.
Richard F.: So started to get out there, it was very much about, finding opportunities, working directly with the Salesforce guys. It was a lot of fun actually. And they were a couple of people in particular that really did, I worked well with, and started to build that business, I think by the end of the first year, we looked at somewhere around 800k of revenue.
Lee Durrant: Mm.
Richard F.: And with that I decided that I would try and do it myself, and my business was created.
Lee Durrant: Yeah, so that's... so just to pause on that a minute, so you, looking at your LinkedIn at the moment, and I'm sure people will look at that, but you've had a whole, so you had a whole career really before Salesforce really, didn't you?
Richard F.: Oh, absolutely.
Lee Durrant: Yeah, because that's, so it's obviously lead you to that point, which is great, and then what you did there was that was the first partner in the UK to focus on charity sector, which sounds mental now, I mean, when you look at how many companies are out there doing it, but that then lead you, as you say, to then deciding to do it on your own, which I know a lot of people listening to this will probably have that thought, or either they have it now, or they might have it in the future.
Richard F.: Don't do it. Yeah.
Lee Durrant: Well, huh. Well, you know…
Richard F.: It's way back then, it was when I... and it was the foresight of the guy that I was working for before to see Salesforce, see that it had, there was an opportunity, there was existing systems out there, Razor's Edge and things like this from Blackpool, but were, I suppose, struggling a little bit within that marketplace. It was very much on-premise. But then, we were also up against the UK CIO, government CIO's saying that, "Cloud was never going to take off."
Lee Durrant: Oh yeah.
Richard F.: There was everybody saying that cloud was a waste of time, and what the hell were you doing looking at cloud, just on-premise, on-premise, on-premise.
Lee Durrant: I remember that, yeah, yeah.
Richard F.: Just the most expensive way of doing IT there is.
Lee Durrant: Yeah.
Richard F.: Even now we still come across, some people that will only work using on-premise, they still don't trust cloud, which is madness, because your entire world is based on the cloud.
Lee Durrant: Mm, mm.
Richard F.: You walk down the street and your data's being collected by the cloud. So, it was very much a big decision for me, for my family to actually go all-in, and decide that we would do that. I think the first deal I did was with Battersea.
Lee Durrant: Oh wow, a good one to go straight in with isn't it?
Richard F.: A good one, yes, they were lovely. Got on with them.
Lee Durrant: Can I ask really quickly, did you start your company on your own, did you do it with anybody else, did you get funding,
