In today’s episode of Talent Hub Talk, we’re joined by Matt Chambers. Matt is a Managing Director, leading the ANZ Salesforce Business Unit for a global professional services organisation. During the chat we discuss Matt’s journey from Salesforce Consultant in the UK to Managing Director for the ANZ region following a relocation to Australia, and everything in between. We delve into the world of services, sales, specialisms, selling to Senior Executives, plus the differences between product and services sales. We also look at the importance of having Salesforce product knowledge in a sales role.
Finally, Matt gives his view on the Salesforce market in Australia at present and where he sees opportunity, and shares more about what is exciting him professionally for the future.
You can find Matt’s LinkedIn page here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-chambers-79837723/
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We hope you enjoy the episode!
Ben (00:00.638)
Matt Chambers. I never thought I’d see the day that you would be on the podcast.
Matt (00:06.828)
Me neither.
Ben (00:09.314)
Well, it’s good to have you. It’s good to chat and it’s really good to have you on the show. And I’m really interested in hearing more about your journey because I’ve known you for about eight years, but I don’t know how you got into Salesforce. I don’t know the kind of path you’ve taken to get to this point. So I’m going to unpick that with you and find out a bit more about your background. Firstly, how did you find your way into the Salesforce space and what were you doing when you first got in this lovely ecosystem?
Matt (00:37.28)
I will start from the beginning and likewise. I never thought I’d be here either, but thanks for having me. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I’ve been following your podcast, I think I’ve probably worked with a good half of the people you’ve had on or been in the ecosystem such a long time. So really happy to be here. Soo how did I start? Well, I’ve been in the sales ecosystem now 15, 16 years, it’s quite a long time probably in the scheme of things, particularly in the Australian market. I’ve drank the Salesforce Kool-Aid many a times and sort of spat it out. I’ve got a pretty good understanding of Salesforce, what it can do and what the market’s like and the realities, the intricacies of sort of how things work. But back in the day, I graduated in 2008 from Nottingham University in England. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I studied Management Studies, just quite a generic degree, and I finished and I just knew I wanted to do something in business and even sales back then. I didn’t have really a career path lined up and I don’t think many people do, and I basically just stumbled across a small business at the time based in Reading through a friend or a family friend working there and this small business was probably about two or three years old at the time back in 2009. They had literally just started off the back of Salesforce. The CEO, experienced CEO, ex- IBM, just decided to start a Salesforce business because he’d seen in the early days what Salesforce could be and how much potential Salesforce had even back in 2008, 2009, which is still relatively early in Salesforce’s journey. It had about 10 people at the time. And the office was actually connected to the side of his house. And so literally, my first company was a small Salesforce consultancy. And about 10 people, only four worked in this office. And it was like a little semi detached, plug into it to his house, like a kitchen and stuff, in Reading.
Ben (03:08.978)
In Reading? I didn’t know you lived in Reading. My wife’s from Reading, The Oracle, that’s the most famous part of Reading, right?
Matt (03:16.276)
That’s it. The Oracle. So I was there for about nine months to a year. On day one, I didn’t know what Salesforce was. Right. So I remember I was Googling Salesforce before the job interview and even before I started, I was going on the Salesforce website and then back then it was like a very ugly website. It was the old, no software logo and I was trying to figure out what Salesforce did. I think it had just like three things, like sales, I don’t even know if I had service, it was just a Salesforce automation. And then what was great about that, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity was, because it was a small company, I was on client side like after a week, with no formal training or anything. It was like sink or swim, we’re just going to get going like a lot of these small companies do. And I was advising a client on Salesforce after like a week or two with a little bit of training and just thrown into the deep end straight away, like working with clients and having discussions around technology, which I knew a little bit about. And I just loved it. And so I just was thrown into Salesforce ecosystem like that. And then I’ve never stepped out of it really. It’s been quite a journey, is probably how I’d describe it.
Ben (04:31.182)
But did you see yourself as an IT person then at that point, when you got that job, did you understand that, you obviously knew you were working with technology, but were you hired because of your business, like what you wanted to do from an education standpoint or were you hired as an IT person?
Matt (04:44.621)
No, I was, I was hired because I had the right attitude, motivation and confidence. That’s why I was hired. I had a little bit of tech experience from my degree, but no, I wasn’t hired as an IT expert, nor would I ever position myself as an IT expert. Maybe even now, right? I’m more of a business expert, but no, I just stumbled into it. It’s never what I wanted to do, but I mean, as we’ll maybe get on to it, Salesforce consulting is a little bit of this technology, but I think more of it is actually around how you talk to clients, how you understand their business, how you transform their business using technology. So I think if it was just a pure techie environment, like just being a maybe Developer my whole life, that wouldn’t be for me. But as I progressed through the journey, I sort of broadened my skillset. But that being said, I did learn Apex Code. I was never a techie, S controls were around at the time. Some of you guys that listen to this might be aware, it’s before Visualforce. I did teach myself all that and did all the training. I think I got my Dev 401 cert and I found it really interesting. Although I’d never still class myself as a techie even then, I did find it so interesting to actually learn to an extent. I think that’s what’s great about Salesforce, right? Anyone can kind of learn different elements of it fairly easily. This is before Trailhead, now with Trailhead it’s even easier, which is interesting.
Ben (06:16.054)
Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, to think that you would have written a bit of Apex code back then, like if you look at the path your career’s gone on. Did you see, like obviously you didn’t know what Salesforce was when you applied for the job, when you interviewed and stuff, but did you immediately see, you know, this is a bit of a game changer for companies if they use this platform? There’s a lot of opportunity here for me.
Matt (06:35.504)
Yeah, I did. That’s why I stayed in the ecosystem. And that’s how I sort of planned my career from that. Like even then I thought, you know, staying aligned to Salesforce, following the expected trajectory that me and others thought it would have, was kind of my strategy. Like you could see how powerful the platform was back then. I think, you know, again, I think they’d just launched the AppExchange, I think 2008, 2009, and you could see all this cool stuff was happening not long after they started launching all the chatter, I think it wasn’t too far off. So you can see they were doing all these cool things that as I was learning quite quickly, these are some of these are more legacy, like Oracle and SAP just weren’t doing. And you know, you could see the market and you could see just by talking to clients, how interesting it was. And I think the big thing that stood out and still does is how easy it is to build on Salesforce, how easy it is to do stuff. That is still what differentiates it. Like even now, I think sometimes people forget, but it’s how easy it is as a platform to build, scale, install apps, integrate, it’s still the number one thing it has, and that’s lasted ever since. So, I did sort of see it pretty early and that’s kind of why I’ve sort of just wedded myself to Salesforce ever since really, and joined companies ever since that have either had a mature practice or been looking to build a practice since, since then really.
Ben (08:05.766)
And I believe your next move was to Australia. And a lot of our listeners might not have been around at that time. Might be kind of newer to the market. And over the last few years, what was the Salesforce market like in Australia when you moved here and when was that?
Matt (08:22.968)
Yes, I joined a large UK consulting house for a little bit. And then I came to Australia in May 2012, so early in 2012 is when I came to Australia. And the reason I was brought out at the time was because the company I joined were trying to build a Salesforce practice and there wasn’t capability. There was a lack of skills in Australia. That wouldn’t happen now, but we’re talking 10 years ago, right? There was a scheme back then called living away from home allowance, and there was more of an open push to get overseas folks that landed in Australia, so that helped and it was definitely easier to jump over. I did a job interview on Skype and then just came to Australia on a whim really. I have never been here before for the opportunity of a lifetime really to join Australian Salesforce consultancy and help them grow the practice. And the market was very different to what London was at the time. I could probably count on my two hands how many clients were really using Salesforce at scale. I think some of the telecoms clients were starting to use it, and to look at it or have pockets of it. But no one was really using it on an enterprise-wide scale like most clients are doing now. And that’s why really the resources didn’t exist in Australia at the time. And that’s why I got the opportunity to come. But it was really exciting because obviously I knew from in London, the power of Salesforce and Australia’s a bit further behind some of those countries, the UK and the USA, you could see it was going to come. So it was almost like starting again, joining another, not a startup, seeing that the market’s going to scale and that opportunity in Australia was too hard to turn down. I’ve not looked back, I’ve been in Australia 10 years now.
Ben (10:35.442)
And at this point you’re still in delivery, right? So you’re still hands-on, still building, still writing your test classes and stuff. So what back then was a typical project, if you think like your first couple of engagements in, was it really just like Sales Cloud, kind of someone buying the platform through their credit card in a sales division, kind of bypassing IT still?
Matt (11:00.925)
It was very much that. Governments were starting to use it actually quite early on. There were small government departments. And also resources clients, utilities clients were weirdly a first take up of it. I think they really needed just any form of CRM that wasn’t SAP. But they were very much just Salesforce automation, implementations, a little bit of Service, Marketing wasn’t a thing, and it was very much short, sharp engagements like come in for six weeks, build it, deploy it, write a training manual, do a little bit of training, change management, leave, go to the next one. So very, very much still single cloud, barely any integration. quite simple, really. I think that’s why I could do it back then. I probably couldn’t implement Salesforce on a six month project anymore.
Ben (12:04.79)
So then, sales, right? So I know you for the work you’ve done in the sales space, but was that an intentional move?
Matt (12:14.44)
Yeah, it was. I always wanted to move more into a client facing, a business leadership role. Because that’s what consulting teaches you anyway. I mean, I always tell our team that to be a good consultant, even a technology consultant, you need to be able to talk to clients and sell essentially. You want to sell yourself, you want to sell change requests, you want to sell your continuity on the engagement. And the best way to learn that is just through spending time in front of clients, presenting and running workshops, playing back maybe something you’ve built and gaining that confidence. And then if you enjoy it to a certain extent, then look to move to a career in sales. As you learn those things and you get more confident, you really enjoy that side of things. I knew that eventually I wanted to move out of day to day delivery more into a client facing sales role. I mean, we use the term sales, it’s a bit of a broad term. You know, it’s not like cold calling, “do you want to buy some Salesforce” type thing. It’s more long-term, strategic building, how to transform the business. So sales is probably a bit of a broad brush, but yeah, I always knew I wanted to do it and then moved formally into a sales role at the company I’m at now in 2015, 2016. I had the opportunity to move formally into a role that came up and then I’ve been doing a sales leadership role for the past seven or eight years now.
Ben (13:58.35)
Do you think you can be a good salesperson without having that appreciation and understanding of Salesforce? Obviously you came through the Salesforce path, right? So you, you understood the platform and it’s got more complex, bigger and more challenging to implement. But nowadays, do you think having that product knowledge is vital to be a good salesperson?
Matt (14:20.704)
I might insult a few people, but yeah, I think you do. And I kind of always thought and said that, I think, yeah, you need to absolutely appreciate like, I mean, particularly, so, we’re selling delivery, right? We’re selling project delivery, not selling the software. So you’re selling almost like an intangible outcome. And if you haven’t been in the weeds and understood what it takes to deliver that intangible outcome, then you’re not really best placed to talk about it to a client and explain actually how things are going to work, why it needs to take six months, what are the risks, challenges, why you need four testers and two change management resources and two trainers. You need to really understand. And I’ve been there to have a trusted conversation, I think, otherwise, you know, you haven’t really walked the walk really, and you can’t really talk deeply about what you’re selling. I mean, it’s different if you’re selling a product which is more tangible, and you can see it, and this is what you’re buying. If you’re buying something like a six month delivery, you know, it’s not like in front of you, you have to be able to build a trusted relationship and know really interestingly what you’re selling in order to deliver it. So, yeah, I do believe it. The best salespeople I’ve ever met have come from that background as well. I guess, being from experience, in this space I have always thought of, they used to be Developers, they used to be techies 20 years ago, and now they’re the best people that can speak about sales that are on a global large scale. So yeah, it’s a good question, and I think so.
Ben (15:55.762)
And that’s that trust, right? You go in and you’ve been there, you’ve walked in their shoes. It gives you instant credibility, I think, rather than trying to build that credibility. If you’ve done it already, you know, you’ve been on that side. It’s an easier conversation to have and an easier trust to build.
Matt (16:10.548)
Yeah, exactly. And you can still be successful, having not, you know, sales is an art in itself, the ability to build trust and understand what clients are trying to achieve and then solution it. But it definitely helps. And if I was a client, I’d probably want to buy a service from someone or people that have delivered it before.
Ben (16:34.018)
What about industries? So I know for a period of time you were specialising in the financial services space. Were you leading a vertical to target, do you feel that’s beneficial? To be really targeted and if it is beneficial, why is it, because you have to go deep and actually understand the pain points of that industry?
Matt (17:02.388)
Yeah, I think, again, I think it is. I think, you know, again, you can be successful, widely spread, but I do believe that the second part, for software consulting sales to be successful, and I think to be really, really good at it is knowing the technology and what a delivery looks like, and then being able to articulate that through experience. But the second part to it is absolutely applying it to a client, but then essentially an industry problem, right? Like, and that’s kind of what we do at our company at the moment is we go to market via industry and we look at the industry challenges and the client challenges we’re trying to solve, and then bring the technology in to solve those challenges. So I do think it definitely helps to get known industry. I actually think it helps to get to know an industry at any level in the Salesforce ecosystem you’re working on, even as a Developer or a consultant or an Architect. Again, the best ones I’ve seen in my experience have been essentially industry aligned. I can, I’ve spent four or five years working in banking, complex environments. The nuances between institutional and corporate banking and retail banking and the differences merge them together, the security issues of the data model. Like that stuff’s invaluable. You can’t study that on Trailhead. You’ve got to study that through real life. And again, if I was a client, I’d want to, if I ran a bank and I was doing a big sales process program, I’d be looking for people in every role with deep industry experience. I think that’s critical. It’s a good question. I think it’s really important.
Ben (18:44.727)
And you had a stint in product sales. Now I know, when I’m recruiting for some clients that are on the services side, some of them aren’t interested in people that have, sold product and sold licenses and some are. Some people don’t think you can do both, like you’re one or the other, you sell services or you sell licenses. What would you say to that? How did you find the differences?
Matt (19:11.54)
Yeah, I think you definitely can do both. And again, I’ve seen a lot of successful and strong software sales leaders and software sales executives that have had a long stint in consulting and services sales and I’ve taken and leveraged that experience in a strong way. I think for me, I’m a long-term services guy and I did a short stint in product and software. And I’m glad I did it because it gives you a fresh lens and you and things from the other side. And there’s a lot of similarities, ultimately you’re selling something which is going to really, really help transform a business. And you want to tailor it to the client’s goals. So you’re solving the same problem. Ultimately, it’s like a client wants to take out X amount of revenue or, you know, so increase revenue or take X amount of cost, and you can even, you can do that through this platform. So once you’ve got this platform, it’s going to allow you to streamline processes, et cetera, or, and to support that, you need to deliver it. It’s the same end goal, but the differences, and I touched on it before, is when you’re selling software like Salesforce, you’re selling a product and it’s real, and it’s like, it’s in front of you. You can see it, you can demo it, you can proof of concept it. But with services, again, you can’t see it. And in a competitive services market, it’s like there’s so many firms now that can deliver Salesforce. You’ve got to be selling something which is different and where we sell now is all around business value. We will sell you a commitment to lower X amount of cost and we’ll actually commit to that. That’s what we’re selling you. We’re not just selling you people, we’re actually making it more tangible. So I think in a way services is harder as a seller, I think, because, no, I probably believe that because as I said, I think you can see a product, it’s a bit more shiny, it’s sexy, you certainly can make it sexy but services is a bit more of an ugly sell. Way more important, because if you don’t do that, then the product’s not going to work. But yeah, definitely a harder sell. But again, there’s similarities. And we work really closely with Salesforce and other products. And we go in together and we sell together. That’s how similar the sales cycle is and what you’re doing. So you can definitely do both.
Ben (21:47.702)
What about then, if you were to give advice to you earlier in your career or another salesperson that’s just starting out in their Salesforce sales journey, do you have any kind of golden nuggets and tips that you, or someone maybe you’re hiring, like what would you say to someone that’s starting out to set them up for success?
Matt (22:08.392)
Yeah, I think we touched on quite a few of them. It would be, you know, get intricate with the product and learn the product, learn Salesforce, learn what it can now do. It’s developing so much. This thing’s released every couple of weeks. I can’t keep up myself, but you really get to know the product and the value that the product’s gonna bring to the client, get to know the industries, and get to know, in anticipation of the client who you’re selling to, what problems, even before you spoke to them, they might be foreseen based on the industry. And I understand that it’s a really competitive space, whether you’re working as a software sales guy or a services sales guy, it’s not an easy space at the moment, particularly in the Australian markets. There’s a lot of firms, there’s a lot of contractors, as you know, like it’s highly competitive. So key is, I guess, understanding how hard it is and knowing your niche and knowing your secret source and knowing your pitch and really understanding the market, I think, as well. You know, you can’t just come in and be confident and be a, you know, a shiny sales leader who’s good at presenting. You really have to know the market, know the client, know the tech landscape. Just make sure you’ve got that all in your locker. And then all the soft sales skills kind of come with that, right, ability to present, ability to, you know, do stakeholder mappings and things like that. That kind of, I’d say that’s almost like a given, but it’s all around just knowing the market and the context you’re operating. And I think it’s really important to be successful in this market at the moment,
Ben (23:51.374)
Do you find like the obviously sales cycles and things will be different for different size opportunities, but for you as like, do you get the anxious, the bigger the deal now, like is you’ve obviously been in the same kind of world for quite a while now, like big consulting firms, but have you got more comfortable as you’ve got older and, you know, more experienced pitching at that C level or were you always quite comfortable doing?
Matt (24:18.656)
I think you’ve always got to be quite comfortable pitching in front of anyone, I guess. It’s kind of a skill and I think the smaller deals are as hard sometimes or more challenging than the big deals. Sometimes you get more nervous around those ones because with the bigger deals and engaging with C-level, they know more what they want. So when you’re engaging with them, they tend to ask more questions that you know the answer to, because you clearly know, really what they’re trying to do as a business leader. But on the smaller deals sometimes, I mean, not engaging with the C level because maybe the C level’s not involved or it’s got over priorities. Probably harder to work with those guys because you go into more like a lower level, like if you’re engaging with like an Engineering Manager or a Technology Delivery Manager, and they almost like expect more from you and they challenge you a bit more because they’ll be the ones delivering it, if you know what I mean. So like it’s different levels, who you’re pitching to, but they both have their challenges. And I don’t think a CIO of a bank is more intimidating or challenging than a Engineering Manager at like a small consumer goods company, for example, because everyone kind of knows what they’re doing. That’s why they’ve all got a job, right? And everyone’s going to be asking similar questions. If you’re more in the weeds and you’re going to be responsible for delivering it, you’re probably going to challenge that person a bit more. Some of the toughest pitches we’ve been in were more mid-level manager folks, really challenging you and saying, well, how are you going to deliver this and who’s going to deliver this? Whereas the C-level are more just like, “yeah, it looks good. It looks like it’s going to deliver what I want. I trust you type stuff. Yeah, show me the cheque book.” So yeah, I think there’s definitely differences in it, but also, you’re confident presenting, I guess, you’re confident in front of anyone, but a Developer or a CIO, you’re still presenting in front of someone, right? Still a face.
Ben (26:39.542)
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It’s funny because in recruitment, I think people, when they’re learning to recruit, they see like a candidate and a client as different. It’s like they’re scared of clients, but candidates they’re happy to engage with. So I just wondered as, as you’re going up the ranks in sales, like once you start getting to that C level, is it like you do, do you kind of have that fear of, “oh, this is a, you know, this is someone that’s really important compared to the person I was dealing with that, that might not quite be at that level.”
Matt (27:05.416)
No, to me, it just comes down to just people are people. And quite a lot of the more senior you get in an organization, quite often they’re very normal people. And so it’s just how you engage as a person. And I think that’s an important way to look at things in sales and in consulting is you’ve got to treat everyone the same, no matter what level they’re at and you might get a really hard, challenging stakeholder who’s a very junior person and a client. That might be the biggest issue for you, whereas the C-level might love what you guys are doing, but it’s still going to cause you a problem. So, no, I think treat everyone the same. And I think that’s actually a really important way to look at things as you’re working in recruiting or sales or people. We’re all just doing a job to get paid at the end of the day.
Ben (27:52.215)
Yeah, for sure. So any regrets or anything you’d have done differently through your career?
Matt (28:00.724)
You know, that’s a tough question. I don’t know if there is, I don’t know if I would have done anything different. To be honest, I’ve got a bit lucky in certain moves, like moving probably to Australia at the right time. So I probably wouldn’t have changed that, joining the startup when I did, I didn’t know about that. So I’ve definitely got lucky and that’s maybe why I probably wouldn’t, wouldn’t change anything.
Ben (28:28.766)
It’s interesting that you say lucky because at that time, the opportunity to move to Australia was probably there for 90% of Salesforce professionals your age in the UK. So it’s not luck because you took it. It was a big move. You’d never been to Australia before, you’re moving away from family. You kind of make your own luck in that instance, right?
Matt (28:40.74)
True. I agree. I think the ultimate luck for me is probably finding Salesforce, 15 or 16 years ago and just investing. Probably luck wasn’t then choosing to invest in it. Luck was just finding it and then choosing to invest in the platform to really specialise in is kind of what’s, you know, made me pretty successful over the past 15 years. So I think luck was just finding Salesforce, but then, you know, choosing to invest in following that path, which has been an incredible journey, is my decision, but I probably wouldn’t change anything, mate. That sounds quite arrogant, but I don’t know to be honest.
Ben (29:33.514)
Well, I mean, it’s led to massive achievements, right? So you’re Managing Director at the moment of a business unit within a big consulting firm. So what does that actually mean? What do you do?
Matt (29:51.62)
It means it’s just a title at the end of the day. But I mean, in a big consulting firm, it’s a level of responsibility and accountability that you’ve really got to adhere to. So in the company I’m at now, I’m a leader in that team. We’re a leader in the Australian market. So me and the other Managing Directors and leadership team and leadership across the firm are really responsible for driving the growth of that part of our firm, delivering to our clients, making sure our clients are happy, making sure our shareholders are happy. So it’s, you know, as a Managing Director, it’s just all around being responsible for your job in a way that you probably may not have been formally expected to before and many different levels of responsibility. And, you know, but ultimately it comes down to just delivering to our clients and making sure that our clients are happy. And when we’ve got 27 projects on the go at the moment, just making sure that we are delivering them accordingly, all the right services when it comes to Salesforce and other technologies and just making sure that our business is also driving growth and revenue for our shareholders as well. But yeah, in my day-to-day job, every day is different. You know, it’s just, we’re such a big, big organization and there’s so much going on in the Salesforce space. Some days it’s speaking to Salesforce for many hours a day. Some days it’s speaking to clients for many hours a day, you know, working within our own business to strategize and work out where the next opportunity could be for a particular client or Salesforce. And I think that’s why I sort of love what I do now in this space because every day is different now. It’s really strategising and just how do you build a business? How do you deliver to that client? What does that client want? Like it’s almost like a strategy role. You’re thinking every day and you wake up and every day is different. I think that’s what I love about what I do at the moment.
Ben (32:02.178)
So it sounds like the role that you were striving for when you got into the ecosystem ultimately, when you studied what you’d studied and wanted to be in that kind of self strategic role.
Matt (32:12.676)
I think so, I’ve got a long way to go. I’d love to continue learning and even expanding my knowledge still of Salesforce. I’ve been in the ecosystem 15 years, there’s still products I don’t know about. And I think again, that’s why I love it. There’s so much to learn and do. And there’s obviously so many client problems to be solved and client problems change every single year. The way that the market’s developing with the speed of technology and the fintechs and the startups coming in is really changing the landscape yet again, right? The market’s going through a shift again. So I think the journey’s been good today and I’m happy. I’ve had the experiences I’ve had through delivery to sales now to sort of strategy and leadership. And yeah, I’m excited for the next 15 or 16 years, maybe five, maybe I’ll retire in five years, you know.
Ben (33:11.338)
Yeah, nice. Well, my next question was going to be, you do have a fairly unique view of the market because you know, you’re dealing at the true enterprise level of the biggest engagements in the region, right? You’ll be involved in so many conversations with customers. How do you feel about the future of the ecosystem here? Like we’ve gone through, obviously the market’s been challenging over the last six to 12 months, and we went through a massive boom through COVID. Everyone was hiring, there was opportunity everywhere. Like your lens on the future, is it positive or do you have any kind of worries?
Matt (33:50.288)
I think what Salesforce showed and the market showed through COVID is that it’s pretty robust, right? Everyone’s still trying to be close to their customers. Everyone needs technology to do that. Everyone needs services to help them do that. So I think COVID was an interesting time, but it showed how resilient the technology space and market really is, and some elements of our business actually grew in COVID because clients needed more of certain products and technologies. And then since COVID and the sort of recovery from COVID, the market was a little bit slow, I think. And I think that was more just nervousness that something was going to happen again. But now things are moving again, pretty normal. And I think you’ll have seen from Salesforce latest results, the growth in this space is growing pretty aggressively again. It’s going to continue to do so at pace. I think because of Gen AI and these types of things that are now happening at scale, not just to do a Salesforce, obviously Salesforce generated a forefront or some of that stuff. Like this is like the next wave, right? And like cloud computing, mobile, and now, Gen AI and you know, all that magic that comes with it. A million use cases that are sort of in people’s minds at the moment. It’s kind of the next big bubble. I think the market’s going to go gang busters. People need help with that. People need services with that. People need help figuring it out. So I think the market’s in a pretty good state. And also, you know, Australia is always a little bit further behind the US and the UK, so you can kind of take a trajectory from that. And I’m pretty close to the UK market. It’s still like that, still growing at quite a rapid rate. And I think now in the Salesforce market in Australia, they all have it. Everyone has Salesforce. Everyone knows about Salesforce. It’s now about like, what can you do more with the platform? How can you improve your existing stack, whether it’s through integration, data cloud, MuleSoft, whether it’s through leveraging Slack, as I said, Gen.AI, Einstein, maybe plugging on Commerce Cloud, bit more of Marketing Cloud and Slack. It’s all around how you do more with the existing side. Everyone’s got it for CRM and probably basic servicing, but that’s what I think is a really exciting space and exciting space for the services firms like our own is It’s all around advising how you can get more from the platform and that’s an easy value conversation So you’ve already got the tech, you already know about Salesforce. You can do way more with it. And if you just do this or if you just alter your process slightly, so I mean, that’s what it’s that’s so exciting for me. And that’s what the next couple years is going to be all around, how you can get more from your investment and I still think the most powerful thing is how easy it is to do things. I still don’t think clients are fully leveraging that side of things. You can change your business by maybe just spending three weeks playing around with this part of Salesforce and you can see huge results. And that’s a big focus for me when I’m talking to clients.
Ben (37:00.018)
Yeah, amazing. Well, we’ll have to lock in another recording in five years time.
Matt (37:06.628)
Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. It’s been awesome.
Ben (37:13.128)
No, no, my pleasure. Thanks for being on the show. And if anyone wants to pick your brains or ask any questions, where’s the best place to find you?
Matt (37:19.724)
Just ping me on LinkedIn. Yeah, go through LinkedIn. And I’d be happy to chat.
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