Salesforce’s Leandro Perez on Model Voice within the AI Age

Sidharth Yadav: You began as an engineer and transitioned right into a advertising and marketing position. May you’re taking us by way of your skilled journey? What had been the numerous milestones, and the way did they form you as a marketer?

Leandro Perez: My first position as an engineer taught me how expertise can handle a enterprise downside. In that firm, each enhancement was requested by the enterprise. The truth is, they paid for the enhancement upon its supply. 

Subsequent, it was answer engineering or pre-sales. I’d been an engineer for 5 years. Folks instructed me that I needed to search for different roles if I wished to spend extra time with prospects. Then, this chance got here up. I used my technical expertise to showcase discoverability options to enterprise search applied sciences within the early 2000s. I used to be working with enterprise search applied sciences then. 

Then got here my product advertising and marketing position, which took me to the US. I received this chance as a result of I received to know a few of our merchandise very well whereas positioning them to our prospects. It was about understanding what the product does, the client’s ache factors, and creating messaging property. 

That have was an eye-opener for me. Product advertising and marketing allowed me to be on the forefront of expertise. 

“I spotted the way you promote expertise is simply as necessary as the way you place it. It’s not nearly what it could actually do however what individuals suppose it could actually do.”

Leandro Perez
CMO, Salesforce, Asia-Pacific

I continued in that position for a number of years earlier than touchdown in Salesforce. 

At Salesforce, I helped launch the analytics cloud, rebranded as Einstein at present. At the moment, the corporate was pioneering the cloud shift. Later, I used to be requested to hitch the company messaging group, which I finally led. It was about figuring out find out how to symbolize Salesforce as a collective—not only one product however every thing that Salesforce does. 

At Dreamforce, our largest occasion in San Francisco, I used to be answerable for the group that constructed the keynote. We might later take that keynote all over the world.

After experiencing these roles, I might mix them as CMO for Asia-Pacific, which introduced me again to my homeland, Australia. 

The Asia Pacific is a various market. How do you create synergy throughout your groups and tailor your methods to go well with the area’s cultural uniqueness? 

Salesforce has many working models. APAC is split into Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, and Better China. Unbiased groups are answerable for these models. 

I do not wish to create the identical asset in India as I’m in Australia from scratch. So, I’ll create it as soon as and localize the final 10% to fifteen% with the native buyer story or nuance. This mannequin empowers native groups, they usually implement options based mostly on how they see match.

That then connects to my management stage, which additionally consists of some pan-APAC roles akin to content material and area operations. This ensures I get the most effective of each worlds. 

After which, after all, we’re all linked to our headquarters, which creates and disseminates model pointers and content material items segmented by product and trade. 

This creates a fairly good steadiness. Native empowerment brings us nearer to the client and is advantageous to us as a result of it ensures we’re respectful of all cultures. We additionally guarantee our groups symbolize the communities we serve. So, the Indian group has members from India. 

You’ve led many transformational advertising and marketing tasks the world over. However might you recall the one you’re most pleased with? What did you study from it? 

We’ve been speaking about AI for a while now. At Salesforce, we’ve been working with AI for 10 years now. 

Previously 12-15 months, generative AI has exploded. I had the problem of making certain the native market is aware of that Salesforce is a significant participant on this house and beginning the dialog. 

Many individuals are defaulting to publicly obtainable generative AI options, which aren’t protected or trusted as a result of they’re open to the net. So, we launched a world marketing campaign known as “Ask Extra of AI.”

To drive the dialog in Sydney, our greatest market in Australia, we made up a saloon in the course of the Darling Harbour. It was known as the WAILD West Saloon. Anybody might cease by. It was the sort of bar you’d see in cowboy movies. 

However there was a twist. The entire bar had been generated by AI.  It seemed like a daily bar from the skin, however the title was misspelled, and one of many doorways was misplaced. If you walked in, you noticed a barman with three arms. The drinks on the menu, designed by AI, had one thing off about them. We had been making an attempt to point out in these early levels of AI, you’ve received to ask extra questions as a result of AI continues to be in its infancy. It is nonetheless studying.

WAILD West Saloon marketing campaign of Salesforce. Supply: Salesforce 

You’ll be able to’t belief AI completely with out taking the best steps. These embrace making certain the info shared will not be leaked on the web and that you realize the place AI received its information from and what it is leveraging. 

The marketing campaign was an enormous success. Hundreds of individuals visited the saloon, and the media coated it, beginning a dialog.  

You’ve got confused the position of CMOs because the buyer’s single supply of fact. What does this imply for the advertising and marketing operate? What challenges include this strategy, and the way do you overcome them? 

Entrepreneurs are development drivers and creators, however we are the closest to the client. We push campaigns to the market day by day and get real-time alerts a couple of piece of content material being checked out, the feedback made, and the suggestions given. So, we have got the heartbeat on the client. 

Traditionally, advertising and marketing has stayed in its swim lane. Entrepreneurs use the info captured to launch additional campaigns, phase audiences, and so forth. 

The change now’s about entrepreneurs bringing collectively the entire view of the client. We’ve performed this internally at Salesforce. You observe advertising and marketing campaigns,  evaluate gross sales made, service circumstances raised, and collect product telemetry. This fashion, entrepreneurs can create a single view of the client. 

That is necessary as a result of, at present, you don’t wish to attain out to a buyer to promote them one thing in the event that they’ve already received an lively service case with you. That is a horrible situation. However as we transfer right into a world the place AI will contact prospects on behalf of the advertising and marketing operate, if you do not have the entire view, AI doesn’t have it both. Your buyer will get annoyed about not coping with a human as AI doesn’t perceive in the event that they positioned an order or requested a service. 

So, I’m bullish that the CMO is the most effective position for this past possibly the CEO. Nonetheless, CMOs should companion with IT, the CIO, and the heads of gross sales and customer support. The problem is that they’ve all received completely different aspirations. I do not see any of them desirous to place the client on the heart of every thing they do in the way in which I described. 

A current G2 survey revealed that AI integration into MarTech is hovering, with 75% of companies reporting adoption. As a CMO, what’s on the highest of your thoughts in terms of AI? What units aside companies that efficiently implement AI in advertising and marketing?

AI has been round for a while. Many entrepreneurs use predictive AI even with out realizing about it. For instance, our advertising and marketing cloud’s ship time optimization function helps you to ship emails at the most effective time. For some, you’d ship them at 10 a.m., for others at 1 p.m. 

To reply the query of who’s having probably the most success, I will provide you with an instance of our group the place we carried out AI within the workflow. AI will not be a separate instrument searching for a separate enterprise situation. You inject AI into one thing already being performed to make it higher, quicker, extra environment friendly, or ship a greater ROI. 

Once I led the company messaging group, our CEO wished to make sure that our 70,000 staff, after Dreamforce, knew about our newest improvements and will speak by way of the most recent narrative we’ve simply launched. 

So, I arrange a course of known as company certification. My group skilled 10 useful leaders on the newest messaging. They skilled one other 10, who in flip taught others. Finally, we coated the 70,000 individuals. As you’ll be able to think about, this isn’t a quick course of. 

With the rising use of AI, how will you retain the human contact? How do you steadiness AI’s progressive potential whereas sustaining an genuine model voice and personalization?

We do not desire a world the place each model sounds the identical. In case your model feels like everybody else’s, you would possibly as properly be promoting the identical merchandise off the identical shelf.  So, it is advisable differentiate your self. 

One in all our prospects in Australia, Mecca, a cosmetics model, wished to reinforce its on-line shopping for expertise past the established shops. In order that they launched a chatbot known as “Miss Mecca.” 

Salesforce skilled the chatbot to have the model tone of Mecca utilizing customer support transcripts of human conversations. You wish to name it an AI agent as a result of the previous chatbot wasn’t good sufficient. This reinvented AI agent feels like a consultant of Mecca. The model might deflect 75% of chats to the agent, which meant people now had extra time to spend with prospects. 

Additional, there’s all the time a component of getting human customer support brokers within the loop. One other model, Turtle Bay Resorts in Hawaii, wished a concierge-like expertise for purchasers. The AI concierge might deal with virtually half the circumstances shortly, with people within the loop. They might evaluate what the AI had advisable.

Storytelling has acquired a strategic significance for organizations at present. What are the important thing components of storytelling in advertising and marketing? How can leaders use it to advertise their manufacturers or improve buyer expertise?

Storytelling is near my coronary heart. Traditionally, B2B entrepreneurs have been poor on this area. Merely rattling options to your prospects or prospects received’t excite them. 

Within the age of AI, it is advisable differentiate your self. And story can do this. At Salesforce, we do that by sharing examples of how our prospects have succeeded, which is one among our core values. So, belief is our primary worth as a result of, with out it, you’ll be able to’t do a lot with cloud computing or have a terrific relationship with the client. Nonetheless, the second worth is about buyer success. 

 We have performed that by creating movies of buyer tales. We function prospects in our occasions and like to have them communicate and showcase their merchandise. We seize these tales; we have a good time them. Lately, we have gone from not simply celebrating tales about manufacturers but in addition in regards to the people who assist ship buyer success. We name them trailblazers. We felicitate them on a keynote stage.

A current G2 survey has pointed to elevated advertising and marketing expertise utilization worldwide. Nonetheless, sure challenges persist, akin to an absence of expert expertise to function the instruments. How can organizations cope with them? 

What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for advertising and marketing, and the way do you see your position evolving within the coming years?

I hope CMOs have a everlasting seat on the C-suite desk. In lots of organizations, they nonetheless don’t. 

Additionally, AI presents an thrilling alternative. 

“When a company implements AI at scale, prospects find yourself speaking to AI. Quickly, prospects may have their very own AI, so AI might be speaking to AI.”

Leandro Perez
CMO, Salesforce, Asia-Pacific

With this phenomenon, I feel the operate greatest geared up to grasp the client’s wants is advertising and marketing.

So, I implore all entrepreneurs to make sure this expertise will not be left to different departments and groups alone. Entrepreneurs should take up this problem.

Lastly, I don’t see any change in CEOs asking for ROI for every thing from software program to investments. It’s important to brush up in your information evaluation expertise so you’ll be able to speak to a CFO and defend the place your cash goes. 

At Salesforce, we have now the privilege of working with some wonderful manufacturers, and I get the chance to share their tales. APAC is amongst our fastest-growing areas, and main groups right here presents a giant alternative. 

I’ve not come the standard manner into advertising and marketing. I am excited to be at a rising firm like Salesforce, the place we have now many new merchandise.