Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the webinar with Canva and Salesforce on managing sales teams in the new economy. My name is [ Jacob Pickett ], and I have the privilege of working with sales professionals as the sales club product marketing lead for Asia Pacific. I'll introduce our panel soon, but before I do, I'd love to take a moment for an acknowledgment of country. I acknowledge the [ dark ] people, traditional custodians of the land on which I'm calling from today and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I extend my respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people here today. And now I would also love to say thank you to all of you who are listening. I used to work in sales. So know the ongoing talent defining the time. So know that I appreciate you spending your time with us today. Now I would like to introduce our speakers today, starting with Jen Howard from Canva. Jen leads the global sales and success teams for Canva fpr Teams and is responsible for leading the relationships with the company's largest customers. Her team focuses on advancing Canva's mission of empowering the world to design by bringing the power of the platform and collaboration to business customers around the world. Prior to Canva, Jen spent a career building and leading sales and marketing teams at some of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world, including Google and Meta. She joined Canva earlier this year after moving to Australia with her family. Welcome, and thanks joining today, Jen.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Great. Thanks a lot, Jen. Our next panelist is Pip Marlow. Pip is the Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce across Australia, New Zealand and ASEAN and is responsible for ensuring Salesforce delivers on its values of trust, customer success, innovation, our quality and sustainability for both our customers and our communities across the region. She is a passionate advocate for flexible and diverse workplaces that empower people. Welcome and thanks for joining us for today, Pip. Now our final panelist is Tiffani Bova. Tiffani is the global growth Evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall Street Journal's best selling book, Growth IQ. Tiffani is a welcome guest on Bloomberg, Cheddar and Yahoo Finance, among others. She is a changemaker whose thought provoking and forward-thinking insights have made her a frequent guest on a variety of industry-leading podcasts and live broadcasts. Tiffani has also just been named the Thinkers50's list of the world's top management thinkers for the second time. Welcome, and thanks for joining today, Tiffani, and live from L.A.

Thanks for having me, Jacob. Thrilled to be here.

That's fantastic to have you back at least speaking, now with us. It's always better to have you on our shows, but we can always get better next time. So for everyone in the audience, I really wanted to share with you that today's conversation has 3 chapters. We are going to start with a chapter on the macro view. And we're going to unpack how our panel is thinking about the challenges businesses are facing at a holistic level. Then we are going to move to a micro or tactical view to better understand how these leaders are prioritizing their sales team's activities. And lastly and by no means, the least important chapter is how to lead our sales teams in these challenging times. So with that in mind, let's go through to our first chapter on the macro view. So anyone that registered for our webinar today would have seen that these 3 women had 70-plus years of cumulative sales experience. And while I am tempted to ask what keeps you all looking so fresh in your early 20s, I'd love to start our conversation by asking what is top of mind for you as you prepare for the new financial year, at least here in Australia. Jen, I'd love to start with you.

Great. Thank you, Jacob. So for us, today, everyone needs to create visual content in some capacity, whether that's a presentation, social media graphic, internal newsletter, video hype reels are very popular right now. But the reality is that the traditional design tools have been too complex or too expensive for most to use and graphic design teams are already well oversubscribed. So the macro economic landscape for us means that design resources will likely shrink further, and many teams will need to do more with less. So we are very focused on teaching our customers how to streamline their workflows and stay productive by improving their processes and expanding their use cases, all while maintaining brand consistency. Canva is a complete end-to-end visual communication platform that makes design approval in publishing much faster than before. So we're really focused on helping everyone get the most from the product and to really maintain the productivity. And we also know that flexibility is key for customers, so we enable our teams to increase adoption as needed by focusing on organic product-led growth. So rather than sales in the traditional sense, our team members are trusted advisers that taylor support based on individual customer needs, which will be increasingly important as we think about navigating these new economic times.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jen. I am -- great to see that there's a focus on our customer needs because I think they really always have to be in the center of everything we do in sales. Pip, I'd love to pass it to you to get your top of mind. I think we have some issues with your mic, Pip. If it's okay, I'll pass to Tiffani and then we'll come back to you in a second, if it's okay.

All right. I'll jump in.

Thanks, Tiffani.

Yes, it doesn't really change from previous years. Look, when the pandemic first hit, clients were asking me the same question, like in terms of how to navigate all that was coming at them at once, especially as sales leaders, where it is, their job is to help bring revenue in the door, right? I mean at the end of the day. So look, there are a few areas I always ensure sales leaders are keeping an eye on. The first is optimizing the sales process and looking for ways to improve performance. From the inside out, that includes things like roles people occupy, sales development reps or account managers. Does that still make sense? The technology being used or the processes aligned to the way people are now working like the tech stack, for instance. And then next, taking care of the existing customers you have, look, don't make all the -- don't make the mistake to chase new customers and forget about those who have already chosen to do business with you. And last but certainly not least, the one thing salespeople can control is how customers feel when they engage with you. So ensure their experience during the entire buyer journey is as seamless yes, but more than that, make sure that the interaction adds value to the customer.

I love that, Tiffani. And what's beautiful about your response is that it is so principled. It always goes back to what are those things within your sphere influence and what we control as sales leader. And I know that you were [indiscernible] very early in the pandemic, and you have remained [indiscernible] like a drone [indiscernible] of these are the things we need to focus on as a sales leader. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. Pip, let's try jumping back to you, do you mind speaking and let's see if we can hear you.

Can you hear me? I am speaking.

Yes, we can. That's fantastic.

Woohoo, I love technology. I think like a quick refresh on the browser to bring that in. Thank you, and apologies for that. I think for me, top of mind is what it always is, it's my customer. And so the challenge right now for our customers is they're facing a second wave of shock and uncertainty. And whilst there are some similarities in regard to a few years ago as we entered into the pandemic and they need to quickly stand up and digitize and work from everywhere, this next wave actually does have a little bit of some differences. Firstly, I've seen the rise from our customers, they're talking about the need to drive greater levels of productivity, deliver on some more efficiencies. And whilst they've got that focus on managing their cost because cost gone up, they're also really focused on their customer. So they're really running a parallel world where they are going, "help me get more efficient, but help me have that single view of my customers, so I can create a great customer experience. So that's typically what I'm hearing from our customers right now. And there's 2 other themes I would say that sort of underpin those conversations. There are both challenges and opportunities. One is the skills. So in order for these companies to transform their business, they digitize, connect to their customers digitally or to drive efficiencies, they need people, partners, vendors with digital skills. And certainly, in Australia, we've had several challenges and a shortage around digital skills. So organizations really investing in the people capability is a huge part of that. And the second thing they're dealing with at the same time is this new digital headquarters, working from anywhere. And how do they culturally use the technology to embrace more flexible work environment? And what's the -- what are the tools and the things they need to be having at the tip of their hands that they can have their people work from anywhere and they have a digital HQ but also allow their people to connect with their customers from anywhere. So those are things I'm hearing a top of mind for our customers.

Thank you so much, Pip. And again, very similar to Jen there, it's about the customers and about really unpacking what can we be doing to best serve them. And -- so to me, as I think about the challenges that we're facing, one point that I go back to is that history, [indiscernible], doesn't necessarily repeat. And so I'd love to lean into the cumulative users [indiscernible] experience and Pip, I'd love to start with you by asking when previously in your career, most resemble the economic headwinds that we're now seeing? So what did you learn then? And what will you use now in terms of that insight now?

Well, first of all, I don't think I was that old until you raised that. I am going to defend, Jen and Tiffani and I were sort of pretty cool tech people here.

Seasoned.

Seasoned, yes, we definitely have some...

You are probably responding to RFPs in preschool, right. Like I feel like that was a small...

I will declare that I do find it interesting around the office that I have one of our younger employees come up to me and go, oh, you know my mom and dad. And I'm like going, that's the reality of life now, but it's fun. Look, I mean, the thing that I think is a little bit -- the question you said, what's most resemble the economic headwinds we're facing right now? I think one thing for us to be really aware is most people in business, both leaders and people earlier in their career have actually not faced into this type of economic headwinds. So what we're seeing right now is a very inflationary led economic headwinds. Our last few shocks the GFC actually were not inflationary. In fact, the cost of money has been really cheap. Interest rates have been really low. But what we have seen over the last few years is government is hunting a lot of money, spending a lot of money, people cashing those checks. And that is driving more demand than actually there is supply. That's pushing prices up whilst wage growth isn't necessarily keeping track with that. So it's quite a different economic headwinds. So some of the tactics that we might be used to leading with or addressing it in a different type of economic shock and not the ones that we probably need to be pulling in this. So that would be my first point. So think about more, what are the attributes in any type of uncertainty or shock should we be thinking about? But I probably have 3. First, there's never a more important time to collaborate because we just don't have all the answers and bringing people together both physically or in a digital environment will be key to work shopping and brand solving and pulling in diverse perspective to deal with those challenges. So that would be #1. The second thing I think is really key to time like this is what I could just deep listening. You've got to find a way to use both analytics and people to actually look for those early signals to actually say, right, how do I start to see what is happening and learn through listening mechanisms in order for me to adapt and adjust my strategy better than I have as I'm facing into these changes. And then resilience. And that's physical, emotional being for you as individuals, for your team, for your organization and helping both individuals be resilient, but investing in the technology as well, it allows your company to be resilient and withstand sort of the changing environment. So those are the sort of 3 things I think about in times like this.

Thank you so much, Pip. That's very helpful because honestly I have never lived through an inflationary kind of expansion of the money supply like this. I think there are some staff that look at the U.S. money supply printing, it was like 25% of all U.S. dollar bills credited in 2020, which is an outstanding figure. And if you look, Jen, I love to pass here because you spent a lot of your career in America. And so what have you learned throughout this time? And I'd love to hear that.

Yes, absolutely. So I agree, I mean, while the pressures are definitely different. And I think I do kind of reflect back on our time back in 2008 and how we really thought, again, how do we put our customers front and center and what is the best thing that we can do at this moment to establish long-term relationships. And so that's really where I think it's important for our sales teams to focus right now is that now is not the time for short-term wins. Now is really time to invest in the long term, giving our customers as much flexibility as possible when they need it, really demonstrating that we are their partners and that we are in it with them to help them weather the storms that they may be weathering in their own industries with their own customer bases. It's also really important right now to really focus on the value that we bring rather than simply just kind of describing it. So helping customers understand the ROI that they're getting from the tools, helping them understand the data analytics and analytics that we can provide. I think those things are really important. So they can continue to make sure they're making the right decisions for their business. They can have more confidence in the platforms that they're investing in and that they have the right partners to carry them forward. The other thing I've actually been thinking a lot about because as you mentioned, I spent the bulk of my career in media, and this is my first chapter of operating in SaaS. And so when I look back at even kind of like the economy and things that were happening in 2018 and over the last couple of years, I have to give huge kudos to Salesforce, an excellent example of a company that was able to weather the storm and uphold your long-term growth because of the investments that you made within your own customer set. And I think you've proven that SaaS is the perfect answer during a downturn because of the flexibility it provides, because of the efficiencies that it can bring and the ROI delivers. And so I've learned a lot from watching the Salesforce story as well.

Thank you so much, Jen. And I'm obviously going to agree with you. I think Salesforce has done a really great job of getting prepared for these challenges. And look, I think just the time, Tiffani, I won't have the chance to ask for your feedback around this. So I'm going to have to move to our next chapter. And Jen, you touched on there in your response there around the fact that we are going to have to justify a lot of costs and be thinking about that idea of productivity and how do we think about the tools and the stack that we have. So that is something that I'm definitely saying, when I'm talking to customers just around our productivity in this new economy, is way more important than it was before. And so when we think about sales teams, standardization and scaling best practice to improve our productivity per head is an imperative thinking about that productivity piece. So thinking about the leaders, how do they achieve that in this economic climate. Pip, I'd love to start with you, if that's okay.

Yes. And in fact, driving productivity is a key lever for offsetting this type of economic shot. You have to increase productivity to sort of offset some of the inflationary pressures. So it's going to become a really important conversation at the [ sales fate ] of customers that you're talking to. So understanding that's important. I think productivity in this era is going to be driven by digital, not just automation and workflow but things like a digital headquarters because actually still you need to work with teams to solve customers' problems. I think about how we're working with the companies right now who are leveraging Slack out of their digital HQ. They are creating workflow, they're doing complaint management, resolving customer issues or swarming around a customer opportunity to bring in the intelligence and the knowledge from people across the business to help close an opportunity or solve the customer's problem faster. So I think we'll see things like Slack and digital headquarters, bringing people together to work faster, work at a hybrid world to drive a bit of velocity into sales. And I think what these teams like Slack create that a team experience to drive productivity. We're working with an airline who automatically opens up a Slack channel, a couple of hours before a flight takes off causing all the information from the core systems could signal into that Slack channel, who need to understand what's happening with their flight. Baggage handlers, staff on the plane. And then the all the information they need, they can track with their app in boarding whether the luggage is there, on time, safety is checked. And then at the end, it archives that channel automatically for governance purposes. That is going to drive productivity on the [indiscernible], getting planes off on time. So be it in sales environment or customer service environment, credit the digital headquarter model to create better customer experiences and better productivity, I think, is where there's been some amazing innovation.

What a great [indiscernible] Pip. I think anyone that's got a flight in the past month would have loved them to be using a tool like that informational and is probably on time, right? Before I pass to Jen to your response to this question, I'd love to just to call out to the audience that we do have time at the end of the webinar for Q&A. So we'd love to hear your questions in the Q&A panel, and we've got some team behind the screens just curating and prioritizing that for us. So give us your best questions, and we'll get to them later on in the webinar. So Jen, I would love to hear what does Canva do to be able to increase the productivity and specifically what tools are you using to make that happen?

Yes. So when I think about productivity for our sales teams, I'd like to break it down to kind of 3 sections, which is people, product and processes. So in case you needed another 3Ps in your life, there you have it. But we can -- we start with the people, and this may be the obvious one, but if you want to know what's going to make the reps more productive, we just have to ask them. They will tell us what's working in the field and what's not. So we've recently been doing the sessions that we're calling creativity jams, where we just let everybody get together, share their ideas, share creatively what's working. We have changed our sales motion and our pitch decks and things. And so just really finding out what's landing in the field, what new ideas to the teams have. So that way, we can scale the best practices as quickly as possible. And this really just does give us an opportunity as leaders to hear all their opinions and understand how we can enable them to do their best work, which I think is really, really important. The second one is really about product. And so we are super users of our own Canva product. So it is an incredible collaboration tool. And we have branded templates and demos that our team members can rapidly tailor to our own customers' needs. We have other features like comment real-time collaboration to allow us to speed up our approvals and ensure inefficient processes don't bog us down. So using our own tools is really important. And automation is key. So we've recently automated some of our billing processes more than they used to be. So that way, our customer conversations are really focused on our customers' needs and not on things like administration. And then, of course, the last one is processes. And so because we have changed our motion to a very product-led growth strategy, it allows us to have quality conversations with our prospects. And really change the cadence of how our formal conversations go. And so most companies already use Canva and it gives us an opportunity to have really meaningful conversations with them. So using the data, streamlining our processes about -- before we go into market really helps us with that as well.

Thank you for [ starting ] that, Jen. And I think some of that Canva does which is -- there are saying I'm calling your trial basis here around that [indiscernible] a product-led sales strategy, where the product team always overlays over -- that the sales team overlays over what the product team is creating and putting out to market. I think that's a really unique insight there around how sales teams can leverage that product data in their conversations and become this cost of advisers for them. And so thank you for sharing the way that Canva does sales in the creative business and that is something that a lot of people can be inspired by when they're thinking about how to improve their sales cycles there. And so thinking of that sense of improvement and knowing that we are still in this virtual selling from anywhere world, how can leaders deploy effective sales coaching and performance? Tiffani, I'd love to ask you first, just to get a global perspective first on this topic.

Sure. Well, listen, there's no question that the way in which companies sell is different. Our recent sales force, sales transformation survey found that while half of sales professionals expect to primarily sell virtually moving forward, the majority say it's harder than selling from an office. So yes, doing it but harder. Some of that is just the nature of being remote and not sitting in front of a customer face-to-face and all the benefit that, that brings obviously. But there's another key point we learned from the research is that despite these challenges, only 29% of reps are actually receiving training on selling virtually. So with the explosive growth of online selling tools since the pandemic, quality over quantity will be key. So in fact, most sales leaders are saying that too many virtual selling tools have negatively impacted their team. So training sales reps well on fewer, more effective tools could help drive impact. And there was a stat out of a [ Bain ] study. I think it was now 2 years ago that said that it was like 54% of sales reps would not spend $1 for 1 hour of their manager's time for coaching. So we've got a lot of work to do as leaders to make sure we are setting our people up for success, while they are dealing with all these new demands and expectations from customers, but also new demands and expectations around productivity from leaders. So we've got to balance the sort of autonomy and productivity to give more ability for sales to show up and delight customers. But it always lands in making sure that your people have what they need, both from a tools perspective and has been mentioned, right, process, but also from training and coaching.

Yes. And I just -- quickly just to add on to that, Tiffani, I think you raised a really good point and it goes to what Jen said as well. Like for us, change management is important and enablement. We spend a lot of time working with our salespeople to work on enablement. They're constantly getting the new skills. But Jen also talked about being super users for self, like for us, we live in our products so that when we're selling our products, our people can actually -- you don't have to do just a course on it, you are actually living it and breathing it, which allows you to demo it and show it. And I think for all our salespeople, you need to invest in those skills, but the more you can live in what you do and what you sell, I think that makes a big difference as you're engaging your customers.

100%. I believe in drinking our own [indiscernible] ideally, if you could make up your own tool, that's even better. Jen, I'd love to hear from you in terms of how Canva makes [indiscernible].

Yes. So I think kind of really just kind of building on all of that. So again, we use our own tools as a lot of the communication tools that we use when talking to our customers and we're prospecting into new opportunities because we really believe that there's this huge opportunity for visual communication now that we're doing everything very virtually. So, one example could be our talking presentations. Another example is we've developed what we call a design capsule, where we really show a customer, all the different use cases that their particular brand could have if they were thinking about expanding through Canva. All of this is built in Canva and it is tailored to the customer, which, in my view, does require a fair amount of prep and even maybe in some cases, more prep that reps would have been doing in the past as they were going into live customer meetings when they had kind of like their prepared presentations and things like this in order to become engaging, it does have to be quite customized. And so I think that the customized prep, the personalization where that -- comes from using the product, really thinking about the customer is really giving us a tremendous amount of opportunity for pre-call coaching, for pre-call preparation, which is really, really how we're going to win and have -- make it the most effective meeting that we can. And so that's been another way that we've really been thinking about it in terms of our opportunity to coach and to enhance the skills of the team.

I love it, Jen. And it's one of these things where not only -- but you're making the customer experience even better and it shows that every time that rep has that goal, they're having a better pitch and experience with that customer every time. And then so thinking about the sales cycle, and we've had a great experience coaching them. And next up from there is that deal execution and the win rate specifically. So that in this environment is more important than ever before. So how do you meet changing customer needs when cost seems to be the main factor going back to your point earlier around the cost of money. Tiffani, let's start with you with the global perspective, and then I'd love to hear the rest of the group.

Sure. Well, the fact remains that in average, unfortunately, a 52% of sellers will miss quota sort of day 1, week 1, month 1, quarter 1. So what will help that reality? I believe that the sellers who will win in the future will be those who use technology better than their competition, full stop. And those high-performing sellers teams are all in with technology to do all the things, Pip was just mentioning. It's technology to automate, remove redundant tasks, streamline customer note logging, best next action determination. It's about giving people time back. So what people have done to optimize the sales stack and focus in and reduce the friction in the sales process, then how do you get better transparency and visibility into the pipeline and forecast because at the end of the day, that's really what it's all about. So customers, you are selling to are going through their own dynamic changes. So while we push for greater deal velocity, right? We want to close that business faster and with more efficiency. We have to balance that with what customers actually want and need from us. And that's something that is tricky. Not all sales teams can hit numbers while optimizing and training and transforming at the same time, it takes very unique leadership skills, but it also takes trust, which right now we're going to talk about it a little bit for leaders to create that relationship with their teams that they know that really it's about making the seller successful as well as the customer successful.

Thank you, Tiffani. In the interest of time, Jen, I'll pass it to you, and then we'll be -- we'll close out this chapter in a bit.

Okay. Great. So as I mentioned previously, we're much more focused right now on long-term wins and kind of gradual scaling rather than pitching large agreements upfront. We think in today's environment, customers really need that flexibility. And by building strong relationships over time, we're really confident that our customers will continue to see that value. So by focusing again on our product-led growth strategy, this gives the customers the opportunity to use the product and really buy the appropriate amount of seats. So that way, rather than signing a contract that they may not be confident in that they actually have the opportunity to scale as they grow. One of the changes we recently implemented, which will be announced very, very soon, which will be a graduated pay model, which only charges our customers on the basis of usage rather than the number of licenses that they bought. So this means they can be very certain of their ROI, could remove any fears that they may have of making the wrong decision or locking themselves into a contract that might be over our deployment sizes that they need. And so I think really having our teams focus on the needs of the customer and giving everybody the flexibility to grow as we go together, I think, is really addressing some of these things about the win rate overall because it's really kind of a long-term bet.

That's very helpful, Jen and what's still happy for me to hear because I remember back still my earlier days of sales, when we needed to get more -- I was getting more on the phones, probably up more deals, but what I'm hearing from all of you is that a start listening to your customers and making sure that we're reducing the ambiguity, reducing the friction and making sure they're having a great buying experience. And so with that in mind, it's something that I'm really proud of the work with Salesforce is that we've recently enhanced the sales cart of unlimited edition products. So that AI and automation now can stand it. And so Jen, I'd love to hear from you in terms of how does Canva use AI and automation in your current sales cadence? And what benefits have you seen?

Yes. So for us it's very exciting when more features like AI are introduced into Salesforce as one of your partners. And it really just helps decrease our dependence on other external tools and allows us to really challenge what's possible. So one of the primary features we currently use is the sales box import, Salesforce inbox. And our education team and many of our other teams use e-mails as their primary form of communication with our customers right now. So that's been a huge productivity driver. And then also having the Salesforce browser extension builds right in how to get a full view of the customer information right within their inbox. So it takes a lot of guess work and the time spent tracking down related information and really allows our teams to spend their time helping our customers instead of again, focusing on the administration. So those types of tools we find are really helping our effectiveness and the more we automate is the faster role of our teams to go.

Thank you, Jen. And again, I love the fact that you're not getting your reps to be loving all these activities daily. That was my life for a bit of time. So it's fantastic to have the automation taking over that mundane kind of very necessary activities, but they need to be captured, right? And so what I particularly love about the unlimited additional launch that we've done is that Salesforce is actually bundled products like inbox, Sales Cloud Einstein, sales engagement and more into this license site for no additional cost. And so, Pip, we heard from Canva they're an outstanding customer leveraging the power of the sales part portfolio. Are you able to share with us another customer that is using the technology to power their sales function?

Yes. I do have a good story on that. And I think what you've heard from Tiffani, Jen is keeping that focus on the customer is very important. But actually, everybody also wants to grow their business. So sales is an important part of actually recognizing you listen to the customer need and then actually been able to solve that customer, which means the more prospects you can deal with, the better that it's going to be as you manage your funnel. So somebody who I think has done a really great job on that. And I know I talked about the airline before, I'm staying in the travel space is Flight Centre corporate traveler. They are an amazing customer and they've always been very innovative in how they're thinking about connecting with their customers and obviously working with their sales team. And the headline for them is through using this technology, they have done an 80% reduction in the sales cycle time. And it's removing the mundane, as you said, which we know, by the way, sales reps don't really love to do. So how they automate that, how they've taken away a number of those elements is great. But it's also about using the sales cadence functionality in there for able to reduce their onboarding time from 5 weeks to 2 weeks makes a real difference when you start to think about productivity, which has been a bit of a theme as today conversation they're doing. Einstein Activity tracker in there. So they've really automated a large chunk of that, logging e-mail, call center data capture work. So they've done a really, really smart job with that. And the business development leads. But they've actually been able to handle a 200% increase in prospects through using that technology. So that speaks to productivity, fixed employee satisfaction on that level of automation. It gives them more time to talk to their customers. And these days, I think AI is built in so many of our products. And for the sales leaders out there, 1 of the things I always like to do is we us Einstein Analytics. So when my sales leaders are doing a forecast, I have a quick look at what Einstein says my sales leader is going to do. So it's like an extra pair of hands at the table for me is we're in a forecasting discussion. So it's always interesting to see who's closest to the pin, Einstein or my sales leaders.

I wish we all have Einstein [indiscernible] as that just like everything is fantastic. So what can we have Einstein when go to country that would be great. So in the interest of time, I'm going to have to keep rolling on and move into our last chapter for today, and that is on leading sales teams with values. Now Tiffani, I'd love to get your perspective on this first piece around trust. So when business environments are getting tough and margins are shrinking, how do you ensure that trust remains a priority for sales as they retain customers and find new prospects?

Well, I'll start by saying that trust is our #1 value here at Salesforce. And so I'm going to unpack this in kind of 3 ways. One, trust is becoming more important in the recent Edelman Trust Barometer report that came out a few months ago. People are looking to businesses to lead in this new environment. So how are you leading with trust in your customer interactions and your values is really important to the customer market; two, customers want sales reps to do what they say and say what they do in Salesforce is state of Connected Customer report, 87% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as their trusted advisers. And so this is beyond just showing up with right information and trying to uncover and unpack opportunity. This is about showing up with a level of trust that your clients will lean into you for advice. That is a very different kind of relationship that you have to build over time. And next, how to balance trust in a hybrid arrangement where you can't establish trust face to face, how do you establish it virtually if you don't have the capacity to meet in person. And I think that sort of layers in a little different complexity to establishing trust at those moments that matter when you're in front of a customer, when you're sitting with a teammate, when you're sitting with your greater shareholders, partner -- your partners, whatever the ecosystem may be. But it absolutely is #1 to everything you should be doing.

Thank you, Tiffani. And I think it very much is about upleveling trust and making sure that from a sales perspective, we're not being very tactical about it. How do we act as a trusted adviser, as Jen has been mentioned previously in our conversation today? So Pip, how are you thinking about trust?

Yes. So I stole this thing, and I love it. So I should attribute it in the spirit of trust. Trust comes into town on totes and leads on a galloping horse. And what it really means is it takes a while to build trust. You build credibility, you audit your commitments, when things go wrong, you stand up and you're right there with your customers. But when you break trust, it happens pretty quickly. And so it's going to take even longer to rebuild. And to me, Tiffani has already said, trust is our #1 value. So we really try to operate on that. But that doesn't mean everything always goes perfectly. Challenges can happen, systems can have outages, people can make mistakes. And so yes, building trust and taking time to invest in that and Tiffani touched on it a little bit difficult or different to do in a digital world versus face-to-face if you think about skills for that. I also really thinking about trust when things go wrong. And I think that's a really important moment. It shows you how strong that trust value is for you. How much do you lean and how much do you stop doing other things, you can really make things right? And people see that, that trust is -- the trust they put in you is actually worthy of that. So I really think about it's easy to have trust and things that just going all beautifully. It's much harder and things are challenging. And that's the time we're all in right now, a lot of uncertainty and things might not go the way you think they're going to go to how live that value in the time of challenge is to be really important. And I'm super grateful for customers like Jen put a lot of trust in us as an organization and we are just listing today.

Thanks, Pip. I'm also a greatful to Jen. I think she is amazingly that in Canva, just an incredible company. And so Jen, keeping beside you trust, how is Canva thinking about that? And how are you thinking about that in terms of leading a thing through this time?

Yes. So I 100% agree with everything that Tiffani and Pip have already said. Tiffani even mentioned like you have to be a trusted adviser, and we've gone so far as to recently change the titles of our account executives and our CSMs to become consultants and advisers. And while it may seem like semantics words matter, and so I think really kind of changing the way that they think about the relationship with the customer, we talked a lot about already today, really building for the long term, but really showing up invested in our customers' goals and really, really listening to what our customers are telling us that they need. So for 1 example, we're kind of early days in our product that is Canva for teams. And so lots of room for product development and future requests and things like that. And earlier this year, we got some of our key customers together to really understand what types of features they would need. And we developed a Canva administration dashboard that shows them engagement levels across the design and the templates and the usage. And while this may same basic, it is something that many of the customers were wanting, we were able to build that feature. We were able to go back to the customers and say, we're hearing you, we've listened, your feedback is now impacting our product. So I think as we are in our early days with a lot of our customers, to really demonstrate that we're listening. They have impact to what we're doing and that we're investing in their success. I think is really how we kind of establish the early days of trust. We try to leave very, very transparently. I mentioned our pricing changes. Those will be completely transparent and published on our website over the next kind of 7 to 10 days is when we'll have the new pages live. And so just really, really trying to lead with all of our values. We're very values-driven company as well and make sure that we're showing up is transparently as possible.

Thanks, Jen. And I think the idea of transparency and how that equates to the way that we at both internally, but also in the interest of our stakeholders, whether it's our customers or our shareholders, whether that is transparency is absolutely key because to your point, Tiffani around the decline of trusting government, that's probably where things are starting to fall apart as well we just don't know what's actually going on. And so Jen, you did touch on in terms of how Canva is a sales lead -- sorry, is a values-led company. And so with that, my final question before we go to audience Q&A and just to call out for everyone that we have started to say some questions, but if you would like to ask something about analysts, we did have some time before we close out for today. I would love to ask starting with you Pip is how does the company in sales team stays true to its values in this time?

Yes. And I always think it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because if you ask most people, do they have a value or an integrity, they would say yes, or whether on trust, they would yes. I think the thing that is required beyond just a label is the standard. The level of behaviors that support the standard of integrity, the standard of quality, the standard of sustainability. What are your values? And what are the standards that you have of those. So I think it's very important for organizations to articulate the behaviors and the examples and the standards that they expect around those particular -- the values that mean something to them. We have 5 values as an organization, as you know, and we're really clear on those standards. Then certainly, I think you needs to be role model from the top. 80% of culture really comes from how your leaders behave. And so if you have pretty websites for those values on there, but executives act in a different way. It will be due as I do, not what I say, and that time will be set within the organization. That's why you've seen massive failures of trust and value from large organizations around the world who you said these things are their values and enacted in a different way. And I think how that comes through is you must be prepared to sacrifice things for your values. They must be prepared to either pay money and invest money to help us -- our values flourish. That's why we do work around LGBTIQ equity, it's one of ours. That's why we constantly look at our pay that we're paying people to make sure there is a gender pay equity in our organization. We spent over $15 million, closing the gender pay gap. So you have to be able to do that. And we've walked away from business and customers who are doing things that actually are not aligned to our values, and we make a sense. So be clear on those standards live them and ask yourself, what are you prepared to walk away from to hold to standards that value where you need it. And I think that -- and when you're an employee, you're going to want to work for companies to you feel aligned to their values, customers will want to do business companies that are aligned to their values, and that can become a competitive advantage for you as part of who you are.

Thank you, Pip. Absolutely, the importance the value of Salesforce is part of the reason why I joined. And so it's great to see that you continue to uphold that. Jen, I'd love to just pass it to you before we close out for audience Q&A, if that's okay.

Yes, that's great. So Canva is a very value-driven company. And this is really true, no matter whatever the external conditions. And I think I really agree also with what people was saying is that it really does meet permeate all parts of the business. It has to come from the top down. It needs to be built from bumps up. It needs to impact our product strategy. It has to impact the way we deliver feedback conversations, our hungering processes, how we do our work each day and it absolutely needs to impact the way that we represent ourselves as a sales organization within our customers. And so 2 of our values, for example, is be a good human and be a force for good. And both of those things are integral into the way that we thought about our new sales processes, and I mentioned a few of them already in terms of the process, and the pricing, the transparency and things like that to really just show up the way that we want to be as a company. And so I do think that it's 1 of the -- in order to live the values, I think everyone needs to understand them. I think everybody obviously needs to live them. But I think they just need to be talked about, and we need to be used as kind of a guiding like when we're saying if we're going to set a new policy, if we're going to develop a new product, a new process, whatever it might be, say, like, does this really fit into the values that we want to be and just constantly be reminding ourselves that this is how we want to show up and that's really the only way to keep it alive and part of the culture, particularly as organizations grow, more people get hired in, it really needs to be kind of part of the culture and not just kind of some signs that we put on the wall.

Thanks, Jen, and that is here very much around higher values can grow with your behaviors because if that is the case, then dissent that not only are customers will feel good, your employees as well, which doesn't help anyone. So as I promised throughout this whole conversation, this is time for audience Q&A. So we have started to get some questions from the audience. And so to kick us off, I have 1 from Sebastian [indiscernible]. The first question is, how have your sales teams tackled the challenge through COVID of people not wanting to meet because they have a virtual meeting to take? How do your sales people succeed when they can't meet face-to-face? Who would you like to tackle that 1 first?

I can jump in here a little bit. So I talked a little bit about just kind of varying the ways that we're trying to get in front of the customers. I mentioned some like talking presentations and sending new kind of engaging ways to get their attention. So we have had a lot of success with that. But for the meetings themselves, we have also been really focusing on how do we make the meetings very, very interactive. So for example, putting together a workshop, get all invite the customers in and say, we have a new feature that we think will be really useful to your marketing team, let's get them together. We'll do a bespoke workshop. We'll get everybody into the Canva tool. We will help you leave with a deliverable or kind of a piece of collateral that will be really useful in your day to day. So making the meetings as interactive and as immediately valuable to the customer as possible or finding our ways to engage them and it also just creates a little bit of fun in a world where people are feeling a bit of virtual meeting fatigue.

Yes. I love this point. Jen, I'd add -- I think certainly at the start of the pandemic, we sent really strong messages to our people and our customers that their health and safety is number one, okay? And we have to live and breathe that. And so I think people have come through this at different paces and different stages. So we continue to think about choice, helping meet customers where they are. And more and more of our events are hybrid. So we weren't all digital. We don't want to go back to being just all in-person because actually, some people are still dealing with a number of challenges, and they feel more comfortable in that. So creating choices for your customers and even one of the things we created to this experience Salesforces+. That location, their content, report the story with videos and ways for our customers to engage so that didn't always require us to have the meeting set up because let's face it, my customers' calendar, my calendar aren't always aligned. We want to give people choices and ways to connect. And I think continuing to build omnichannel approaches and creative places to meet customers where they're at, I think it's going to be important part of this next phase.

Thanks, Pip. And again, going back to being able to make the customer where they are. I think that was something that when I reflected on the companies that did really well up the back October, it was [indiscernible] is listening. And whether you want to point this out or not, I just think you tested incredible female leaders in some of the governments that have really led into listening and making sure that they are helping their citizens because they are the government's customers there. So it's been fantastic to see a lot of those principles and actions being applied to really now in this next challenge. And so that kind of leads me nicely into our next question around -- and this comes from Nicky Cousins. And so she says and ask, regarding the second wave, would you say it's a writable swell or a tidal wave? And how do we ride successfully? And so you made a comment around the second wave. I'd love to get your response to that.

Definitely, this surfing theme, welcome to Sydney. So a lot of optimistic, okay, a -- so I absolutely think yes. But actually, some of the techniques you use to ride that first wave and not the techniques you'll need to use throughout the second wave. And so do you, are you looking for new ways to learn and manage that next well -- that next wave. So absolutely, I think it is. I think we entered this first wave with COVID like almost overnight, yes. I mean it was like rapid. I think we have seen -- over the last couple of months, we've seen the price rises. We've seen inflation going out, seen interest rates rising. It has been more of a slower entry. So we might not see the erratic up and down that we saw open close, et cetera, we got at. I think it's going to be a sort of slower down and a potentially slower rap-up world. So how do we keep our people engaged through what could be quite a fatiguing next period of time? How do we keep our customers top of mind through all of that? And how do we adapt to make sure we're getting the skills to be able to be productive in that world. So I think it's going to take a learning mindset, a little bit of resilience, probably a little bit of good humor. We believe it like laugh of some the mistakes that we're going to make through this. And I think the thing is we're not going to be doing it live. You be doing it with your community, your workmates, your partners, and I think that's going to be an important element of this.

100%, Pip. And to your surfing analogy, I am an ocean swimmer, and I know that sometimes depending on the wave, you need to apply different technique, whether you're coming into storm, out of storm, they all -- these tactics definitely have to be taken up depending on the storm you're facing. So thanks for your question, Nicky. Our next question comes from [indiscernible]. They ask, how are you managing information overload to your reps. So whether that's new marketing content, new messaging, new products, new tools and training. This 1 is a very interesting one. And I would love to ask this 1 to Tiffani [ Bova ], just to actually see what global trends you're seeing around this in terms of how reps are managing on that pace.

Yes, this is a great question because the volume of materials have been handed to sales in order to navigate all this is just completely overwhelm them, right? If it's -- we want to reach out, we want to touch the customers, find out how they're doing, how can we help? What are the things you need from us? There was that whole wave of communication back to the surfing theme. And then as we've started to come in and out of this, depending on where you were in the world, right, Melbourne was locked down for a tremendous amount of time, Sydney has gone in and out. In the U.S., same thing. You get into Asiana and LATAM. It's just changing significantly. But as sales leaders, it's also our role to make the lives of our sellers easier so that it doesn't add more complexity to the sales process. And more importantly, you're not turning off the customer when you're trying to be that trusted adviser, right? You want to show up with value. So I think it's important to use the technology to help you what is the next best action to make sure you're not overwhelming with too much content pushing out, the human can only remember so many things. So this is where you could really lean into technology and make sure that you're not doing things that aren't necessarily necessary or even asked for by your clients just because you're trying to make sure that you're always touching the client in some way.

Thank you so much, Tiffani. Very important advice for all of us to be considering because we help ourselves to be effective in this environment. So we are running out of time. And so I just want to finish on 1 question and to ask you all is 1 thing that I was taught very early on my sales trade from 1 of the first sales we ever had was control the controllables. And so looking at the months ahead, what are the 3 things in your sphere of influence that you're going to prioritize controlling? Jen, can we start with you?

Yes. So all right. So my controllable. So I would say the first thing is how we show up. We have control over that. So everything from things we've talked about like our motion, our processes, and how we are bringing ourselves to the customers, we can control, and so we should continue to do that as we focus on their long-term value. I think -- internally, I think it's really about we can be the voice of our customers. And so again, if we want to build long-term relationships, we want to make sure that our products respond in a way that is appropriate, if we want to make sure we're the right data and insights to our customers, we need to listen to them. And so I think really understanding their challenges, understanding what their business objectives are and being the voice of the customer is kind of the second one. And then I guess the third one is like I think it's about our attitude and our resilience and our optimism really and how we really work together to overcome any challenges that might come our way. That is very, very much in our control. It might not always go the way we want it to, and there may be a lot of things that are unexpected, but I think it's how we react to it and how we work together and stick together as a team. So we come through these moments in time much stronger.

Thank you, Jen. Absolutely, it's about, you can't [indiscernible] to respond to that. Good starting principle there. Tiffani, can I pass to you, and then we'll close out with it.

Sure. I would agree on the first one, so I'm going to say that as well, that how we show up. That's the one thing actually a salesperson can control is how they show up. The second thing I would say is our willingness to be curious and learn. I think that is in our control. Some of the stats out there that 50% of us are going to have to learn new skills, yet only percentage of us are reskilling on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. So I'd say, staying curious and pushing yourself to learn and do things that you might not be comfortable doing so that you can either get better at them or decide that it's not something you want to continue doing. I think learning is one of them. And then the -- the third one is building and nurturing your network. That is something that is also very controllable around your customer network, but also your peer and mentor network. Those relationships go a long way. Everyone is in this -- everyone is in a boat, yet not in the same storm. So I would say that we always want to make sure that we stay close to our network.

Thanks, Tiffani. And Pip?

Yes. I'll try and the added to go ahead and someone joy and going laugh to take all the good staff, what it led for me. So I always think I say people show me your calendar and show me your wallet and I'll tell you what you really care about. And that's where you spend your time and when you spend your money. So you do control that. Where you spend your time? How much of that is the customers or how much of that is like internal navel-gazing You have some control of it. So think about where you're investing your time and money because that will make a real difference. And so what's most important to your customers, not to other things. So that's number one. The second none is I do think it is, you do control invest in your own skills and development. Yes, I have a career coaches. You have people who help me. But ultimately, my career plan and my skills development is my job, okay? I do control that. And I think the world is changing and the skills and capabilities that got us here will need to be augmented with some other things. And I think we control, looking at what those could be and building on that. And the third, I think, in times like this actually wellbeing. I do think making sure as individuals and as sales leaders, we're conscious of our wellbeing, our teams wellbeing, our ecosystems wellbeing and making sure we spend time to look after ourselves and each other right now is really important.

Thank you, Pip. And I think that's a really beautiful place for us to finish in terms of making sure that we prioritize our wellbeing because there's going to be a lot of challenges. You don't know what comes next. We're making sure that we look at for ourselves and put our [indiscernible] first is definitely something we see getting a couple of time. And so Pip did mention to make sure that you're prioritizing your learning. And so something that I will look to this to make sure everyone in the audience knows is that we have a lot of options to be able to consider here [indiscernible] but I recommend to you. So to learn more about the Salescloud on the limited-edition launch, check out the recent webinar where we unpack the latest inclusions, feature a demo and [indiscernible] AI and one of announce ended. And next is we have Presales tips webinar, where you can learn from local sales experts to be able to understand how they are building their blueprint to the modern sales team. And finally, if you're looking for short and snackable insights, check out at 21 Presales tips [indiscernible] from contributors all across ANZ. And so I wanted to say a massive thank you to Jen, Pip and Tiffani for your time today. We love hearing your insights as we all prepare for the new economy. So thank you all. And to those that are tuning in, thank you again for your time. We hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and we look forward to seeing you again next time.

Thank you, for your time.

Thank you, everyone.

Bye bye.