Salesforce Career Conversations #5: Penny Townsend

Episode 5: Salesforce Career Conversation with Penny Townsend and ROD. Penny reflects on her journey from Salesforce Programme Manager to Chief Operating Officer of a growing Salesforce Consulting Partner. Lee: So joining me today, is Penny Townsend. Hi Penny, how are you doing mate? Penny: Hi Lee, I'm great thanks. Thanks very much for having me in for the chat. Lee: You're kidding aren't you? I'm very grateful that you said yes. I know how busy you are, and it's great to have you on the podcast. As you know, we're doing this because it's our ten year anniversary and we had this... Actually it wasn't me, our marketing department had this idea that it would be great for us to speak to people that have been around the Salesforce ecosystem for as long as we have, or even longer in some cases. Which I think might be you. So yeah, it's kind of like take ten years of being in this space, and great to speak to what we're calling Salesforce legends, but I what I like about your profile is you refer to yourself as a Salesforce veteran, which is nice. Penny: Yeah, and it frequently feels like that. Lee: Yeah I know. So yeah... So thanks for doing it, and I appreciate you're doing this kind of off the cuff as well, which is really exciting I think, because all we really want to chat about is your career, and how you got into it. We'll break it down, but how you got into it, what your first experience was in Salesforce, and then sort of the journey that's taken you from getting into it, to where you are today. And obviously, if you want to give us a little overview of you, and who you are, and what you're doing now, then we'll just sort of get going from the beginning if that's all right? Penny: Yeah, sure. Thanks Lee. Well I saw on LinkedIn, because you did a conversation like this with Gemma, and she shared it. And I saw that Frances wrote on there, "Oh, yeah I think Lee was the first ever recruiter I spoke to as well." And I was going to put a message on there saying, "Yeah, Lee was all our first." And I thought, "Lee won’t thank me for that." Lee: No you're right. As we say, you were the veteran, yeah you sort of feel like it don't you? When did you get into it though? When was your first experience of Salesforce? I've obviously gone through your LinkedIn profile trying to remember, but perhaps you can let us know? Penny: Like a lot of people, my first experience of Salesforce was by accident. So that must be about 12 or 13 years ago now when I was working at the Carbon Trust, who were an early not-for-profit customer of Salesforce. Lee: Yes. Penny: So back then, Salesforce really only had more than a handful, but certainly not hundreds of customers over in EMEA. And Carbon Trust were quite a good brand for them to win, and their not for profit space. And I was working for the Carbon Trust Standard, which was a subsidiary, and we were using an old database called ACT. So I'm showing my age here, it was a- Lee: Oh, yeah I've heard of that as well. So yeah, I'm with you on that one. Penny: Yeah and it was really... It's perfect for keeping track of people's names, and addresses, and birthdays, and stuff. But it didn't really provide much functionality. And the standard company was growing really fast, and given that core Carbon Trust had Salesforce, the decision was made to roll out an org for the standard company. So, my initial experience was, as kind of the product owner I suppose, the end user. So we got our consultant in, and I worked with him on defining the requirements, and I was initially incredibly sceptical about what Salesforce could deliver, and then was really blown away by seeing it in practice. You know, back then, having the stages, having the process flow, having the workflows, all of that was really radical, and fantastic to be able to see that. So, that was my first experience there, and we actually had a couple of really innovative things. So we did a website using Salesforce, so that small companies could put details of their energy footprint into that website, and it would automatically come through to Salesforce, and that kind of thing. So that's what first got me a bit excited about Salesforce. Lee: That was going to answer - my next question usually is then at what point did you know that, that was going to be your career? And I'm going back a little bit now, but you had a reasonable career before Salesforce didn't you? Penny: Okay. That's a very sweet way of saying, "You're really old aren't you?" Lee: Hey, you're younger than me, so let's just remember that. Penny: I'm the oldest person here at Crusader, I'm their oldest employee, which really makes me laugh every day. So yeah, I'd worked for a long time in financial services, predominantly before going to the Carbon Trust, I'd actually just before I started there, I'd had about 18 months off to be at home with my daughter. So I'd sold a business that I was... There was two of us running that company, and we sold it, and I used the money from that to spend a bit of time at home with Lottie, because she was about 20 months when we sold that business, and I'd gone straight back to work after she was born. So I was really worn out by then. And also, by the time your child gets to that kind of age, they know you, they can grab you, and they can say, "I want to be with you mummy!" So it was a lot harder to go off to work every day, so I took kind of belated maternity leave I suppose, for about 18 months. But then, I think like a lot of women, it was quite difficult for me to get back into work, more so than I'd expected. So, the job I went into at the Carbon Trust, actually was on less than a third of the salary that I'd been on before. Lee: Whoa, wow okay! Penny: Yeah it was a completely different industry and all that. It was a big, big switch. Lee: I didn't know that. I didn't know that you'd had a successful business that you sold before even getting into this space. That's quite interesting. And so, whilst the time then taking a third... Well, be on a third of the money you're used to, that I'm guessing you're looking back thinking, it's one of the best things you ever did, in terms of where you are now? Penny: Yeah, exactly. And honestly, it didn't feel like that at the time. It was quite a tough time. I broke up with my daughter's father during that time, and then with going back to work, I actually... You know, there's a lot of talk these days around diversity, and getting women back into the workforce, and for me, if it hadn't been for the working families tax credit supporting me with my childcare costs, I don't think I'd be in this job now. So I was very fortunate that I had that, and it could help me stay in work. And I think that speaks to some of the values, and the ways of working that we have here at Crusader now, which I can maybe talk about a bit later. But yeah, it's fortunate I was able to be in work. And so, after I left the Carbon Trust, I did a bit of contracting for a few months, and then I went to work at British Standards Institution, which was another one of Salesforce's early EMEA customers. And I initially went in there to be the Head of Sales for their services, which was a tough job with a big team. And they already had Salesforce, but I could see compared to the innovative brand new solution I'd had at Carbon Trust, I could see lots of scope for improvement. And basically, somebody asked me to put my money where my mouth was, and run a big project to transform their Salesforce org, which then took over my life. Lee: So basically, at BSI, you were initially Sales, as in like doing the sales, and just using Salesforce in it's basic form that they had? So that even that was still a sales role initially? Penny: Yeah exactly. So I was Sales Leader, so BSI has many different aspects to it, and the team I was responsible for was selling auditing of standards. So we had 12 territories with a field sales guy, and a tele-sales guy on each, and a really tough target... A monthly target to hit. And so Salesforce was absolutely crucial to our ability to both have transparency of what was going on, and to hit our number, and all the associated processes around that. And there were some things, like around using Conga, and Echo Sign, that I'd done at Carbon Trust that I wanted to bring to BSI. So I ended up running a really massive project there, because they've got... You know, there's thousands of users in multiple different countries, and over five apps that we brought in, including a really sophisticated early CPQ. So again, it was quite an innovative project to work on. Lee: Yeah blimey! Early CPQ. So it's so current at the moment, but to be doing it... When was that then? Sort of seven years ago. Crikey. Penny: Yeah, at least yeah, yeah, a good long while ago. Lee: Yeah, and so that then. So, even though you did Salesforce at the Carbon Trust, you didn't go into BSI thinking, "I'm a Salesforce person." You went in there still being Sales. So when was it then that you had that a-ha moment, and just thought, "Do you know what, this is for me, this technology. I'm going to just specialise in that from now on." Penny: So I guess I'd been... That had gone from being an idea of doing that project, to very quickly being a kind of change of role to be responsible for that programme of work. Lee: Yeah. Penny: And I could see the need that there is in Salesforce to combine business understanding, and process understanding with getting the best out of the technology. And I think for me, that job at BSI was kind of the perfect combination of all of those things. Because I came with a long history of working in business, and pretty good understanding of what makes business tick. Both at Carbon Trust, and BSI, they're very orientated towards good quality business process as you'd expect from an ISO 9001 auditing,