Salesforce Career Conversations #5: Penny Townsend

Episode 5: Salesforce Career Conversation with Penny Townsend and ROD. Penny reflects on her journey from Salesforce Programme Manager to Chief Operating Officer of a growing Salesforce Consulting Partner. Lee: So joining me today, is Penny Townsend. Hi Penny, how are you doing mate? Penny: Hi Lee, I'm great thanks. Thanks very much for having me in for the chat. Lee: You're kidding aren't you? I'm very grateful that you said yes. I know how busy you are, and it's great to have you on the podcast. As you know, we're doing this because it's our ten year anniversary and we had this... Actually it wasn't me, our marketing department had this idea that it would be great for us to speak to people that have been around the Salesforce ecosystem for as long as we have, or even longer in some cases. Which I think might be you. So yeah, it's kind of like take ten years of being in this space, and great to speak to what we're calling Salesforce legends, but I what I like about your profile is you refer to yourself as a Salesforce veteran, which is nice. Penny: Yeah, and it frequently feels like that. Lee: Yeah I know. So yeah... So thanks for doing it, and I appreciate you're doing this kind of off the cuff as well, which is really exciting I think, because all we really want to chat about is your career, and how you got into it. We'll break it down, but how you got into it, what your first experience was in Salesforce, and then sort of the journey that's taken you from getting into it, to where you are today. And obviously, if you want to give us a little overview of you, and who you are, and what you're doing now, then we'll just sort of get going from the beginning if that's all right? Penny: Yeah, sure. Thanks Lee. Well I saw on LinkedIn, because you did a conversation like this with Gemma, and she shared it. And I saw that Frances wrote on there, "Oh, yeah I think Lee was the first ever recruiter I spoke to as well." And I was going to put a message on there saying, "Yeah, Lee was all our first." And I thought, "Lee won’t thank me for that." Lee: No you're right. As we say, you were the veteran, yeah you sort of feel like it don't you? When did you get into it though? When was your first experience of Salesforce? I've obviously gone through your LinkedIn profile trying to remember, but perhaps you can let us know? Penny: Like a lot of people, my first experience of Salesforce was by accident. So that must be about 12 or 13 years ago now when I was working at the Carbon Trust, who were an early not-for-profit customer of Salesforce. Lee: Yes. Penny: So back then, Salesforce really only had more than a handful, but certainly not hundreds of customers over in EMEA. And Carbon Trust were quite a good brand for them to win, and their not for profit space. And I was working for the Carbon Trust Standard, which was a subsidiary, and we were using an old database called ACT. So I'm showing my age here, it was a- Lee: Oh, yeah I've heard of that as well. So yeah, I'm with you on that one. Penny: Yeah and it was really... It's perfect for keeping track of people's names, and addresses, and birthdays, and stuff. But it didn't really provide much functionality. And the standard company was growing really fast, and given that core Carbon Trust had Salesforce, the decision was made to roll out an org for the standard company. So, my initial experience was, as kind of the product owner I suppose, the end user. So we got our consultant in, and I worked with him on defining the requirements, and I was initially incredibly sceptical about what Salesforce could deliver, and then was really blown away by seeing it in practice. You know, back then, having the stages, having the process flow, having the workflows, all of that was really radical, and fantastic to be able to see that. So, that was my first experience there, and we actually had a couple of really innovative things.