Tell me a little about where you were and what you were doing career-wise in 1999.

In 1999, the Internet was just taking off, and people were trying to figure out what to do with it – analyzing web  data of what people buy, and what they looked at on your website was really important. I went to work for a web analytics company called Personify which was founded by Adam Gross. He and I hit it off and I was there for about two years. But, the company was sold, and I moved to a company called Blue Martini Software.

Blue Martini was an e-commerce software company and we had customers like Levi's and other big brands who were trying to get online for the first time. I was a product marketer there for about three years and part of my job was running events, managing the Web site, setting up email campaigns – basically, lead generation. I would need to then get those leads to sales and, at the time, this meant putting leads into a spreadsheet, emailing it to the sales team and literally praying they would follow up on them; it was impossible to track.

Was this when you considered using Salesforce to manage it all?

Right. Salesforce was big at Blue Martini – we were Salesforce's first customer so Marc [Benioff]'s attention was there, the company's attention was there and the sales team was using the application. I thought, "what if I could put all my leads into Salesforce" – and that's what I started doing. It was awesome; I put my leads in, I could see who was following up on them, see what was working and what was not working – it's the story we tell our customers all the time, but I lived it and it changed the way I approached my job.

What was the impetus for implementing Salesforce? Was it just about lead management? Visibility into your business? Forecasting?

I think it always starts with visibility. At the end of the day, it's a manager wanting to see what their sales teams are working on and having an accurate forecast – that's what starts the conversation about Salesforce and that's why people spend money.

So what was next for you?

Around this time, people were going to Dreamforce and there was so much energy with Salesforce. I thought, "wow, that company is really exciting!" Out of the blue, Adam Gross called me – he was at Salesforce at the time – and said, "you gotta come here," and that’s ultimately what led me [to Salesforce]. That just opened the door for me to a career that is has really taken off – I truly appreciate what Adam did for me from the start.

What were you doing when you came to Salesforce?

I was one of the first product marketers here for our CRM product, which is our Sales Cloud (SFA) product today. I quickly realized that the best thing I could do to get attention for this product in the market was to have our CEO on stage doing product launches. He was a prolific speaker, he had a vision for where the industry was going, and he made my product sound bigger.

Eventually, my job transitioned from product marketing to corporate marketing. I was focused on marketing our company and our vision of where we were going, which I felt was more effective than marketing just the product because we didn't have the features that Siebel had. But we didn't have the analyst support either; nobody believed in us from the press, everybody said we were going to get acquired...it was a struggle.

I worked with Marc on that vision for many years and, basically, that’s the job I still have. It has transformed from trying to establish credibility in the market to leading the market with a vision that others look to. And that's what I love about it – people look to us and want to know where the market is going, where's technology going; where are corporate values going? We have a voice bigger than we've ever had.

You've been with Salesforce for 14 years. What has kept you here?

I came here for the market opportunity but I stayed for the people. I am constantly learning from everyone I work with, and if that wasn't happening, I wouldn't be here. And that goes all the way up – I've learned a lot from Marc about marketing; our product marketers are really good, our corporate team and everyone in comms – I just feed off of that talent and love being a part of it.

Over the last decade, what’s the best piece of advice you've received?

I worked in consulting for a while and I had a manager who would say that we don't spend enough time understanding the problem; everybody wants to jump to the solution, but if we spent more time understanding the problem, I think we'd all be not just better consultants, but better business people, better leaders – we need that deep understanding of what the problem is we're trying to solve.

Marc has this phrase, “deep listening.” And what that means is having a conversation with someone where you don't bring biases or previous thinking – you listen and you learn from them. You ask questions and evolve your thinking and really come at it from a beginners mind. I think we can learn a lot from that mentality here at Salesforce and how we approach our customer's problems. We have a vision of where we want to go, but it only becomes emotional and connected when we can relate it to the problems that our customers have, really think through how they're coming at it, and then show them how we can help them get there; give them a path to that vision.

What do you hope to see from this company in the next 20 years.

As I look back over the years, there was an inflection point where we started talking less about the technology and more about the world and how we can make an impact on the communities around us. As an employee, that makes me excited for the future. As does figuring out how we lead with values. It’s hard to predict, but I think people will come to us to learn how they can run their company in the same way by leading with values and and making an impact in the world. I really think that's where this is all going.

Susan St. Ledger serves as Splunk’s President of Worldwide Field Operations, overseeing global sales, customer success and marketing. Before joining Splunk, St. Ledger spent more than eight years at Salesforce in roles that included Chief Revenue Officer for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, SVP of strategic sales, SVP of platform sales, and SVP of global services sales.  Here, she shares her thoughts on the increased importance of value-selling and the enduring power of data in sales.

What were you doing in sales 20 years ago?

St. Ledger: I had a unique role at Sun Microsystems as the Chief of Staff for both Scott McNealy and Ed Zander at that time. And then my follow-on sales job to that was running ISV Sales for Sun Microsystems. I managed about 300-plus systems engineers doing presales.

What is the most surprising change you've seen in sales?

St. Ledger:  I think that with the dot-com bust there was a huge change in sales. Prior to to it, there was a lot of selling that was done strictly based upon relationships. After the dot-com bust and the subsequent financial turmoil, I think that a lot more scrutiny went in on the buying side to make sure what was purchased really added value. So I think that the shift from just relationship-selling to true-value-selling, that was the beginning of that inflection point. And I think that that, combined with the amount of information and data available to salespeople today, the level of value-selling just continues to go up and up and up.

When I started in sales, the Internet didn't exist. And so you actually would start sales conversations with: "Tell me about your business." Well, obviously today you would and should get kicked out if you sat down and asked that. So the ability to access information and data, whether it be the financials, the stated direction of a particular company, or  the priorities of a company -- all that is now available at the sales reps' fingertips. And so that, to me, gives you an added ability to really go in and understand the company that you're selling to in a much better way and then take that to another level.

I expect my people to experience the brands that they're selling to. When I was in the Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, working mostly with consumer brands, we used to say: "Make sure that you go experience the in-store and the online experiences and see how connected they are. Make sure that you understand their loyalty programs and experience their loyalty programs. Make sure that you try to return something or call with a support issue and see what experience you get."

So this ability to not only read all the information about the people you're selling to but also, in many cases, experience the brand has changed the way that we teach people to sell and ensure that they're really upping the level of value-selling.

What’s the best piece of sales advice you’ve ever received?

St. Ledger: When I was at Salesforce, Marc used to talk about how you'll always overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do in 10. But there's this conundrum that you really need to think big in order to achieve big.  And so the best advice that I got from Marc was always about thinking bigger and really understanding the growth mindset. I've created my own principles on a growth mindset, which is: "Always be learning. Focus on continuous improvement no matter how well you're doing. Hindsight is always 20/20."

It's about always moving the bar and helping people achieve that high-growth mindset. And I think that that's something that Marc did for myself and for many others. And I think it's something that I've been able to bring here to Splunk, which is really thinking through that mindset aspect.

How has your approach to sales changed over the years?

St. Ledger: I think every time you sell new or different types of technology, or sell to a new audience, you learn  -- providing, of course, that you're open-minded and don't try and apply the same approach to everything.

I'm in a different world now, where our whole value is based upon gaining insights out of data. And so now I’m focused on mainly technical audiences as well as the LoB. So I think that really understanding that not all audiences are the same and that you have to adjust the way you sell based upon the technology you're selling and based upon the audience you're selling to is essential.

On top of it, I have more tools to leverage, and more data to leverage.  I'm a computer scientist by education and so I'm naturally intrigued by data to start with,  but I’ve become more and more data-driven every single year.

What changes do you see coming to sales in the next 20 years?

St. Ledger:  At my current company, Splunk, we actually do a lot of studies on data. Most companies say that 55 percent of the data in their environment is unowned. And what we mean by that is they don't know how to leverage it. They either don't know it exists or they don't actually know how to get value out of it. And so that's a huge part of where we're focused as a company.

In general, I think that the data landscape is going to continue to explode. And the companies that know how to take advantage of that data and make data-driven decisions in real time, or as close to real time as possible, are the ones that are going to be the most effective sales organizations moving forward.  

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Jill Rowley is a sales professional trapped in a marketer’s body.  During her 20+ year career, Rowley spent six years in consulting, 13 years as a top-performing rep in software sales at Salesforce and Eloqua, a year designing and deploying a global social selling program at Oracle, and is now evangelizing social selling internationally while also advising numerous technology startups. Here, she shares her thoughts on the increasing influence of social and the challenges those new to sales face.

What were you doing in sales 20 years ago?

Rowley: My first sales job where I carried a quota was at Salesforce. Prior to that, I spent six years in consulting. I wanted to make a change, a pivot in my career. And I wanted to get out of consulting and into sales. One of the biggest objections to hiring me was that I didn't have any experience in sales. And that turned out to not be an issue because I was someone who could problem solve.

Are there any tools that you used when you started in sales that are now considered outdated?

Rowley: Printed product data sheets. Pre-email, it was paper. I would literally get the article reprints, stuff them in an envelope, put a hat or a t-shirt in the physical package and write a handwritten note and send that.

What technology do you think has had the greatest impact on sales?

Rowley: The Internet in the palm of your hand with smartphones and social networks. The foundation for me of a good sale is research on the buyer, the buying committee, the people who your buyer already learns from, trusts, works with, etcetera;  a salesperson, if they know how to use digital and social from a research perspective, gets amazing insights from social networks.

I remember when I was initially engaging with GE and I was trying to connect with Beth Comstock. At the time, she was the CMO of GE. And I wanted to be able to have an intelligent conversation with her. So I started doing all this research on GE. I had to know not only Beth Comstock and who was on her team but what GE going through as an organization from an industry perspective.

Do you think selling has gotten easier or harder in the last 20 years?

Rowley: Sales people earned meetings in the past because they had information and knowledge that the buyer couldn't get access to. Now, the buyer doesn't need the salesperson like they used to before.

It's harder for junior salespeople to open opportunities, conversations, engagements. Tech companies have hired armies of fresh college graduates.  And they have little sales knowledge, no network, little business acumen, zero experience. And they're tasked with creating an opportunity with a buyer who is overwhelmed and inundated and avoiding engaging with sales.

How has your approach to sales changed over the years?

Rowley:  The biggest change in my approach to sales has been from being a lone wolf to being a team player. For me personally, sales -- there was a lot of competition to it. I wanted to be number one. But over time, I realized there are more valuable metrics to measure, like whose customers are generating the highest returns and whose customers are referring the most amount of new deals.

It isn't the rep who is standing in front of the group who sold the most, but the rep who added the most value to new buyers, to teammates, to the industry. Selling today is much more of a team sport than it ever has been in the past.

What changes do you see coming to sales in the next 20 years?

Rowley: I don't think this whole smiling and dialing, call, email, call, email, call, email will continue. The buyer is doing more ignore, delete, ignore, delete, ignore, delete. That model is flawed. I think we’ll see more university and MBA programs focused on teaching sales. Every institution has marketing. Why not sales when you have 10X more people in sales than you do in marketing? And you spend how much more on sales than you do on marketing?

People always argued, you're a born saleswoman, or you're not. You're born to sell, or you're not. And I don't think that's true because I think the best salespeople really are buyer advocates. They're businesswomen and men. They care about their customers and what their customers are getting out of the deal. They’re there to help their customers be successful. That's what sales is all about.

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Tibor helps B2B companies translate sales strategy to reality. Called a brilliant sales tactician and obsessed with execution, he develops salespeople who understand that success in sales is about execution. Tibor is the co-author of the award-winning book Shift!: Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects into Customers. He is ranked eighth on the list of the “Top 30 Social Salespeople In The World” by Forbes in 2014. He received the Gold Medal from Top Sales World in 2013 for his webinar “The Objective Seller.” WIth a career that spans more than 30 years, Tibor shares what he’s learned and where he thinks sales is headed.

What were you doing in sales 20 years ago?

Shanto: Twenty years ago, I was Director of Sales for a division of Dow Jones for Canada and the Midwest. I was in charge of 13 U.S. states from Illinois down to Texas. And we were primarily selling B2B information to companies of various sizes all over the world. But for me, the most important was the Midwest and Canada. I was well into my sales career and I had done the frontline and I was on my way to managing and being a director.

What tools do you think have stood the test of time?

Shanto: I think the calendar. For me, I’m a big proponent in really allocating your time to the right activities. I don’t like the notion of time management, because time already comes managed. You have 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours to a day, seven days to a week, etcetera. So I think it’s pretty well managed.

The real question becomes, what do you do with that time? What do you allocate it to? Clearly the hours between 9:00 and 5:00 are different for a salesperson than the hours outside of it. So, I think a good diary — in the old days, I remember having one of these time things where every month you have to put in a new insert into your calendar, and you would have your plans, your goals, your objectives, and your activities. I think if we look at right up today, central to salesforce success is how well [company leaders] manage their calendar.

What is the most surprising change you've seen in sales?

Shanto: I think the degree to which salespeople have become submissive in the process. I think there used to be an interesting sort of dynamic tension between the various players involved in the sales cycle, because it’s not just salespeople and buyers. There’s a whole cast of characters around them. And I think that in my — I’m afraid to admit — 30-plus years of selling all in B2B, I think there used to be a much more peer-to-peer outlook from the salespeople than there is today.

I think today, for a host of reasons, salespeople have a much more submissive posture than they need to have. And I think it’s costing them sales, because I think buyers want to deal with somebody that’s confident and seems to understand where they’re going. I think B2B is still trying to cope with some of the things that the consumer side has settled on when it comes to the internet and how we interact with our customers.

We’ve bought into the myth that they have all the information and therefore they don’t need us, so therefore we try to be a lot more genteel in our approach, as opposed to being a subject-matter expert who still has a valuable contribution to the wisdom they could deliver, as opposed to just information. So, yes, customers have a lot of access to information, but I’m not sure they have a lot of access to knowledge.

And if you look at some of the studies from trade, buyers are not as well-informed as people think. They have a lot of information, but that causes a lot of confusion. So, I think if salespeople stepped up to be subject-matter expert and delivered some clarity to all that, it would be a better relationship for both. I think we need to be less submissive. We need to step up.

Do you think selling has gotten easier or harder in the last 20 years?

Shanto: I think it’s gotten harder, because velocity of life has just gotten quicker. People’s expectations have changed. I think buyers are right to be engaged on their terms as opposed to ours. So, I think it’s gotten more challenging. But I also think a lot of salespeople step back and figure it out and make adjustments and continue to evolve. So, I think it has gotten harder all around, but it hasn’t gotten impossible. And it’s still fun, I hope, for most people.

What’s the best piece of sales advice you’ve ever received?

Shanto: I was very young when somebody very experienced in the trade I was in at the time for some reason took sympathy on me and sat me down and said the only thing I come into business with is my reputation, and it’s the only thing you have left when you leave. So, if you spend your time making sure that it’s the right reputation, you’ll generally do well in business.

What changes do you see coming to sales in the next 20 years?

Shanto: I do think there’s going to be continued attrition of salespeople, only because I think that a lot of people who have sales on their card these days are not really selling. I think there’s a lot of order takers out there, and they’re necessary. Orders have to be taken, because they lead to revenue. But they’re not really adding value to the sale itself, they’re part of the process. And when that role gets automated, then they’ll be replaced.

But I think there will continue to be a group of salespeople who really are helping customers do their business differently as a result of buying their product. So, I think it is going to come down to the better chess player.

If you look at some of the trends that started again in terms of breaking out the lead conversion process, and then having the account executive, and then having customer success and so forth, I think you’re going to see more and more specialization. But it’s going to be more and more focused on those people who can relay things to customers as opposed to just facilitate a process.

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What were you doing in sales 20 years ago?

Cohen:  Twenty years ago, I was selling at a startup company focused on Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software. It was at a time when Salesforce was evangelizing customer relationship management, and we were trying to evangelize partner relationship management. And it was way too early. We were selling a vision of a connected ecosystem of channels before most companies had automated their own customer data.  

What is the most surprising change you've seen in sales?

Cohen: I believe automation and technology should make us better at selling. Is that the promise? With technology, AI, machine learning, and everything that's happening in sales technology especially the digitization of our entire sales process, it’s surprising to me how easily the basics of selling are being forgotten.

It’s amazing to me the more I look the more I see our salespeople not doing the fundamentals and sales basics. It’s sad. I’m on a mission to coach and enable the global sales professional to be the best they can and execute their sales pursuits flawlessly.  .

Do you think selling has gotten easier or harder in the last 20 years?

Cohen: I think sales is easier today. The salespeople that embrace the fundamentals of selling, listening, asking questions, being consultative – the sales people that are really delivering value in every conversation, those are the ones that are doing really well.

If you subscribe to the notion of, "I'm going to build relationships. I'm going to focus in on old-school relationship building. I’m going to truly understand my customer's business problem, and I'm going to go solve problems," if you have that mindset, then selling is easier.

But, if you have the mindset, "I'm going to go and use all these tools. I'm going to stitch them together, and I'm never going to pick up the phone. I’m never going to call a customer," selling is going to be hard for you. I think more people are trying to look for the short path to success, and there is no such thing here. Selling is a real profession.

What’s the best piece of sales advice you’ve ever received?

Cohen: There is one piece of advice which I've never forgotten. It's: be very open, be very authentic and sincere about what you're trying to help the customer do, and don't be afraid to ask for their business.

We tend to do everything in sales around actually asking for the business. When someone has a problem to solve, don't be afraid to ask someone for the business, and don't be afraid to do it early. That way, you don't waste your time.

How has your approach to sales changed over the years?

Cohen: I'm now focused less on selling, per say, and I'm focused more on solving problems for my customers. I realized, as I've matured in my years and worked different deals, that to win a deal and to be successful in sales really requires a certain amount of business maturity that will present itself in the form of being able to ask great questions.

That's really become the foundation of how I sell. It's not the product or the features. It's the authenticity of my questions that gets me to a place of common understanding with a buyer around whether we're mutually in a space where we could help each other – I can help them solve a problem, and they will help me make money. We'll do it together. There's a value-based relationship around a give and a take.

Early on, I had the good fortune of being coached and trained by some of the best people in the industry. Before I really embraced the importance of curiosity and helping companies solve problems, I remember working a deal. I went with my manager, and we were together in a meeting. We had the customer in the room, we had our agenda.

The meeting didn't go well. After 10 or 15 minutes, the customer got up and left. They said, "Thank you very much. We don't think it's a good fit here." My manager and I walked out, and I'm like, "What happened there?" He says, "Well, what did you know about them? What did you learn about them in that meeting?" I said, "I thought we were there to sell them something." He said, "No, we're there to understand what their problems are. You didn't ask them questions. You didn't give them the space to talk and share their experiences. They didn't think you were listening, and so they ended the meeting."

We've grown SalesHood by solving problems for customers. It's not about the fast technology. It's not about the innovation. It's not about all the whiz, bang, automation that we're doing. We're ultimately solving problems that are important to customers.

What changes do you see coming to sales in the next 20 years?

Cohen: I think we're going to see in the years to come a shift back to the basics of selling. I think while the world is going to continue to push the envelope on the benefits of AI, machine learning, automation, robotics, all that good stuff that will make a difference, we're going to see sales become more of a profession. And the profession is going to rise as we're going to see more salespeople coming out of schools, coming out of sales programs. We're going to see sales become accredited inside of the university and the business school structure. I see that as a trend.

Ultimately, I see the human aspect of selling doing a full swing back. The old days of walking into a retail store and having your local shop -- I think that's going to come back in the form of skills. Automation is going to enable us to return back to the basics of selling and connecting people at the times when they need things most.

You need to be a professional salesperson in order to be able to communicate, to connect with people, and it's going to require some fundamentals skills. That's why I think the profession is going to get elevated. And then sales is going to become a universally accepted profession, and that you need to become a salesperson. You need your sales accreditation to effectively run a business, or do your skill, or do your trade.

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