/dq/media/agency_attachments/UPxQAOdkwhCk8EYzqyvs.png)
Follow Us/dq/media/media_files/2025/03/11/LM5mYjT0Tx3uF6wfEjrB.jpeg)
Patrick joined Salesforce in 2012 through the acquisition of Buddy Media where he served as CPO and quickly partnered with the Radian6 team to deliver Social Studio, the first product in what eventually became Salesforce Marketing Cloud
How excited are you about Agentforce2dx and what were the challenges that you faced while building it?
According to Patrick, he is super excited about it. At the Dreamforce event, they announced Agentforce and showed everybody that they could create these agents. At TDX25, they went a layer deeper and said not only people can just create these agents, but they started to build this ecosystem of tools and capabilities around it so that people can use it professionally. He is excited about how someone takes that prototype; gets it pushed into their organization and puts it into production. Also, he spoke about how fast his team has been able to move because nobody else is doing demos and showing this layer of technology.
How do you align Salesforce product marketing strategy with the industry trends and customer needs?
They are looking at the industry trends every single day, ingesting all of the new trends and information and then immediately thinking about, how do they apply that or do they need to worry about it or need to apply it. It is every single day ongoing conversation.
How do you position Salesforce industry solutions against the competitors?
They have a core Salesforce platform and then on top of the platform they have a line of business solutions, these are functions like sales and marketing and commerce. On top of that they have industry solutions. Every industry is going to need sales and service and commerce and marketing but every industry is going to use them a little bit differently. They have built this whole industry layer, things like data models, processes and workflows that are specific to that industry. They have been building this layer for the last 15 years now. Hence, they can just take all the innovation and instruct the AI how to go out and do those processes. They don't have to learn new things. So, it's been a huge edge for them.
How do you leverage customer insights to refine your messaging and product positioning?
They have always been a customer company, customer storytelling and learning from customers is really baked into its DNA. They go to customers, community, trailblazers, bring them into a room and do these things called road shows, where they're listening and showing them what they are thinking and getting their feedback. They're at customer advisory boards and constantly tuning the message every single minute, every single word, carefully selected based on the feedback that they get from customers.
What do you think are the biggest challenges industries face when they adopt Salesforce solutions and how do you address them?
Some customers have been on Salesforce products already and then they move to industry solutions which is usually not very tough. Other customers were not on a Salesforce solution before and they're coming in from scratch. So, there's an implementation that has to take place, but it’s not any harder than any other enterprise implementation as customers are relatively surprised and pleased with the specific industry capabilities that they have in the platform. Salesforce customers for 25 years have been very successful with their industry solutions. They listen to their customers and run customer advisory boards for every single industry. They bring them to a location, spend time with them and get their feedback. Then bring that feedback into the roadmap and finally fix the problems.
How do you educate businesses on the impact of AI on their operations?
Largely through physical events, virtual events, demonstrations and also very much through their community. The community are their trailblazers and now becoming agent blazers. They focus hard on helping them understand what it is that they're doing and has a pretty big impact.
What's your approach to launching a new industry-focused Salesforce solution?
They have a very aggressive approach. As soon as they are excited about something they want to put it out. They want the world to see their work and be very transparent about where they are on that journey. This has an interesting impact on how quickly they will deliver things. Over 25 years, their customers have looked to them to inspire them for where the technology and the business world is going. So, they are going to push the envelope often.
How do you see Gen AI and automation shaping the future of product marketing in CRM industry?
The impact of AI is that it is dramatically improving the throughput of iteration. It's not necessarily product marketing specific, or even CRM specific, but it's the throughput of the work that they do is now dramatically different and the team is also held accountable for.
How do you foresee India adapting to AI and what's the future there?
Patrick is really impressed with India, and especially the progress there in the last 20 years, seeing the skill set and the energy from India. The community there is much bigger and he can't wait to see the impact that they have.