Two years ago I joined Actum as a Salesforce Division Director and why my „tongue-in-a-cheek“ plan was pretty simple, the reality was obviously much more complex.
My not that funny goals:
- Goal for first 30 days – present at as many conferences as possible
- Goal for first 100 days – survive
- Goal for first 180 days – do the best and do not create a reason to get fired
The real tasks:
- establish a new division
- hire the right people
- get clients
- revenue target 1,5mio in first (whole) year
The reality after two years
- I grow the delivery team 5 times while keeping the sales team the same size;
- the revenue grew 1600% (2023 vs 2024) and we brough additional 20% of our revenue into other divisions – a huge kudos to Christoph Wiederle, whom joined 2 days after me, the BEST Salesman I’ve EVER met (don’t even thinking about stealing him) for that. While my name, lovely face and some knowledge might attracted some clients, he did all the ground work to finally convince them and sign the deals.
- we added a nice 16 new logos into our collection and most of them are cross-clouds implementations;
- speaking about cross cloud we obviously do the standard Sales/Service/Marketing/Experience, but we are super strong in Field Service, have experience with Tableau, Education and NonProfit;
- we grew in partner tiers as well, reached the Ridge status in 6 months and moved to Crest in another 12 months;
- great hires, good hires and bad hires – I have (had?) all of them, hopefully I’m getting better over time. And while I hired most of them myself, Zuzana Šajarová was fantastic in finding great candidates as well and Josh Ramsay helped with great people also.
- not everything is shiny obviously, we still have been burning money last year, plan to reach profitability this year and so far on a good trajectory, in-line with budgeted numbers, which are 50% higher than last year. Growth is our nickname.
Ahoj Actum
Not bad I would say, but I understand when some people don’t agree. Anyway, those two years have been more intense than I expected. I also realized that we don’t plan another kid (so cannot go for parental leave again) and that I’ve been working for the longest stretch in my life – a whole 9 years.
It is time to say ahoj summer and enjoy some downtime.
As of end of June I’m stepping down from the Division Director role and Chris is replacing me as I’m taking the whole summer off.
After summer?
Who knows, I never plan much. The small little plan I have is to be on the market as a freelancer, not looking for job but for projects as I plan to have multiple of them at the same time. I still should be around Actum in advisory role, at the same time free to take my own projects.
And I also know what would interest me:
- advisory role, as one of a few (ok, 500 isn’t a few anymore) CTAs in a world I should know a bit or two and have a high-level view while being able to go deep at the same time;
- do my own implementation projects – from experience I’m able to manage a normal complexity project up to roughly 100 licenses;
- do my own support projects – I love quick deep dives and get out (meaning spending as little as possible) as well as taking a proper look and recommend the way forward. Existing clients are with me for years, showing a good collaboration;
- mentoring – hope to finally have time for it, will see what people would love to talk about;
- CTA coaching – definitelly one on the agenda, I really enjoy speaking with people about their goals, showing different perspectives, judging their mocks;
- and much more as long as it is Salesforce related. Actually maybe the Salesforce is not crucial part of the equation, after almost 30 years on the (not only) CRM market I gained a lot of experience from different industries and companies of all sizes.
Will we have a coffee together?
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