Dreamforce Interview with Julie Bregen, Head of Global Sales Enablement and Associate Development at ValueSelling Associates

Tell us about your role in the company and the team you handle.

I’m in a newly developed role at ValueSelling Associates, leading growth and success initiatives for the company. Our team of associates — all sophisticated, tenured sales experts — trains leading enterprise companies with the ValueSelling Framework sales methodology. Therefore, staying on top of the technology map is incredibly important for each associate.

What’s the biggest attraction for you at Dreamforce 2018?

I’m attending Dreamforce to focus specifically on content management technology and Salesforce Lightning. As part of my focus to grow the company, I need to source software that makes life easier for new associates and will be adopted by my tenured team. I plan to spend time learning more about Einstein Analytics and cruising the Expo floor.

Which sections of the event particularly interest you?

The hands-on training is particularly interesting to me as I come up to speed on Lightning. I’ll be spending time in Trailhead to ask questions and get some hands-on experience.

Do you see Salesforce changing the tech-equation with diverse acquisitions and new product launches?

I think the Apple partnership is very exciting. Being able to speak to Siri to update notes and tasks could drive higher adoption for all users.

How do Salesforce trends and technology impact your business?

Internally, Salesforce is a central focus because it’s becoming easier to create data with their new integrations. I believe the Winter ’19 Outlook integration is going to be very exciting for my team. No one wants to input data. They want data to automagically appear. On the client side, we offer a ValueSelling solution that integrates with Salesforce, giving clarity to opportunity pipelines for sales teams and sales managers. We must stay on par with market demand to play a significant role in our customers’ sales success.

How do you plan to extend the benefits of Dreamforce to your employees, customers and technology partners?

Glad you asked! I will be presenting my findings from Dreamforce at our annual company meeting in Nashville next week. While there, I’ll seek our associates’ advice for leveraging these tools and ideas within our internal business as well as our customers’.

What are your thoughts on Adobe buying Marketo for $4.75 billion?

Adobe has enormous foresight. The trend I started to see, as I researched a new content management solution, was the tie-in to prospecting. This cross section of content, data, prospecting and a B2B sales experience is an exciting one.

How do you see marketing and sales operations evolving with the availability and maturity of better intelligence and reporting tools?

I’m happy to say that my VP of Marketing and I are working closely together to ensure that our efforts are aligned. The new insights into our marketing efforts allow us to spend time more efficiently. I look forward to incorporating more metrics into our 2019 strategies and initiatives.

How much of that impacts your own work at your company?

It has numerous impacts: from ramping new associates to launching new lead generation initiatives to understanding the ROI on our technology stack.

Would you provide us your take on turning AI-driven and enabled by 2020?

My first experience with AI was while I was at Rosetta Stone. AI was very new, and I was given a project to build an AI persona and teach it a new language. I taught it German vocabulary; although our conversations were short as it only learned about 200 words. “Gut Gemacht!” (“Well done!”) When I was at ChatLingual, we used Natural Language Processing. I was able to work with the IBM Watson team and learned a lot about the setup required. My prediction is that we will not hit it in 2020, but perhaps by 2022.

An inspiring quote from past editions of Dreamforce that you have ever heard.

I like what Jessica Alba said, “I don’t know is no longer an acceptable answer.”

Thank you, Julie! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.