As Salesforce’s fiscal year is a slightly off calendar (our fiscal ends January 31st), I always like to look back and forward a bit closer to our fiscal close, as opposed to the traditional December / January cycle. It allows me to take everything into consideration (especially stuff happening in busy Q4 season). Next to that the end of the fiscal (often) gives a bit of a breather, which gives me a bit more headspace. So here we go: my reflections on another crazy fulfilling and successful year at Salesforce*.
My plans for the year that’s now behind me
When I looked back at a similar post I wrote last year, I realised I set myself a couple of ambitious goals for the past year. I won’t list them all, but it came down to:
- Working at the cutting edge of marketing transformation, and maturation.
- Continue to grow and increase success of the customers I work for. Continue to grow and lead larger, and more complex (international) programs and deliver more and better outcomes;
- Increase sales influence and outputs by identifying, shaping and landing larger marketing transformation deals;
- Grow as a mentor to the people in the team, and the practice I am part of; And find me a (new) monitor to spar with about the next stages of career and life;
- Be ‘out there’ more. Working internationally, and working remotely is great but has also limited my f2f time with people. I want to bring that back;
- Explore opportunities outside Salesforce, either through advisory boards or volunteering.
And when I reflect I can to say that I have been largely successful on all of the above goals. Though fair to say, successes has been largely associated to my work. The outside Salesforce opportunities could use work (I’ll take that with me for next year :-)).
This years highlights – a crazy fulfilling and successful ride
What made my year so rewarding? Well I:
- Led the first successfully implementation and go live of a loyalty management implementation in the Netherlands;
- Led a strategic engagement for a global CPG brand prescribing how they can accelerate value realisation with our complete martech stack. This was both insanely challenging and fun as I could apply a lot of my agency / media history into the recommendations;
- Successfully led a proof of value implementation at a Dutch Health Insurer involving our full martech stack. I also led converting this initial project into a multi year partnership;
- Successfully led a Strategic project for one of the largest Finnish companies, laying out the foundations of their next platform for growth with our tech;
- Led a South African bank with their first steps in Marketing Automation;
- Initiated, drove and helped close close a couple of the largest commercial marketing services deals in Benelux and Nordics
Whilst landing at a util attainment of 108%, keeping up with my certs (Hello Data Cloud & AI Associate!) and be there for the team and colleagues I work with on a day to day basis.
Was everything shiny bells and whistles? Well not all. I could have been out there more. Tried to be in the office at least once a week, and had the ‘occasional’ on site customer visit. Though it still consumes a lot of time, face to face have been proven to be undisputed so I want to continue do more of that next year again. But I need to find piece with the idea that I do less on one day :-). Also I want to make steps in the outside Salesforce objectives, and really want to find me a mentor to continue to elevate my career at Salesforce.
Other than that I hope and plan for the coming year to be as exciting and rewarding as this year. To be it more of the same and better things than the previous year. I have experienced a lot of personal growth in the work that I do, and grown the confidence I can handle the Champions League that I am in (I already played it for a while, No I know it :).
But with Baby #3 on the way in just a couple of days / weeks, I am sure the year is already accomplished before it even started…
*ps I write this for my own. To spend time to reflect, document my journey, set goals and hold myself accountable.
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