💃 Salesforce Professionals and AI🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerd! I spent the last 160 billable hours of a Salesforce implementation project using nothing but AI.

Why would I do something so reckless?

I’ll explain, but first if you’re not familiar with how AI can help you as a Salesforce professional, here’s the gist…👇

GAME CHANGER

From Zero to Hero

As a kid I was kiiinda chubby 🫃. Slow 🐢. I was decently coordinated but I was middle of the pack, at best, in basketball, baseball, and soccer.

But then it all changed.

I was introduced to hockey 🏒.

I had two left feet my whole life…until I put on the skates. It was so natural. Some people struggle on ice skates, but it was preternatural to me like how investing is to Warren Buffet. The kids who dribbled past me in basketball were comfortably in my rearview mirror on skates.

Something about this medium between me and earth brought out the athlete I always knew existed! I was able to leverage the edges of the blades onto the infinite slipperiness of the ice and be better than I was on my own two feet! I was fast. I was powerful.

Throw in a hockey stick to control the puck? I’m barely human at that point. A bag of flesh speeding on top of metal blades, wielding a long, curved scythe, scoring goals at will.

Fast forward to adulthood, and AI is feeling the same way.

I’m a bag of flesh. A mediocre Salesforce professional. But give me ChatGPT and I will run circles around the 8x certified, Big-4 credentialed, gold-hoodied smartypants all day.

Here’s how…

WHAT IS IT?

Multiplier

AI is not an extension of me. It’s not one of those trash-picker-uppers that custodians have at baseball games. It’s not my cellphone that I spend way too much time on.

It’s more than that.

AI is the skates I use to connect to the ice. It’s the ice I glide on top of. It’s the hockey stick and the puck I fling at the net. I am the most important piece of all that - the human element that conducts and orchestrates it all to make me better, faster, stronger.

AI is the strings, the horns, and the percussions of an orchestra. The most important element? The conductor. They orchestrate the melodies of the strings, the enrichment of the horns, and the driving percussion to entertain the audience.

In my role as a Salesforce professional, AI multiplies my effectiveness as a technologist, just like the skates, ice, hockey stick and puck made me a better athlete. Like the strings, horns and percussion allow a conductor to put on an inspired performance for an audience.

And the conductor is the better example. Here’s what we mean - a violinist can ask the conductor “perhaps we decrescendo here to create a more dramatic effect for the next bar, where the percussion is at peak tempo?”

The violinist is perceiving and planning, asking questions, and offering suggestions. This is agency. The violinist is not an extension of the orchestra conductor. They are an agent of the conductor - able to act independently, make decisions, and perform based on defined goals.

WHAT IS IT?

Best Case, Worst Case, Most Likely

But AI is not all sunshine 🌞 and rainbows 🌈.

There’s still some big questions, like is it going to take jobs? Or big concerns, like hallucinations - is it confidently telling me lies?

Let’s be clear, these are major frickin’ concerns -

💰 US public and private investment in AI is around half a trillion dollars. In comparison, the previous “trendy” investments (🪦 rest in peace…☠️) of China and Green Energy were a fraction of that investment. And for what? For $500,000,000,000 we get a digital girlfriend?

🤖 Salesforce, at least from a marketing perspective, has fully pivoted from the #1 SaaS CRM company in the world to an AI company in a sea of AI companies. The last few earnings calls have shown minimal traction in AI deals and still no compelling AI success stories. Will our beloved platform thrive? Will it even survive?

😢 Salesforce professionals are at the that bottom of the AI totem pole. Here’s what we mean - have you sat in a room with all of the Sales, Service, and Marketing teams in your company? See all that headcount? That’s Salesforce revenue 💵. You, on the other hand, are a cost-center. Who do you think is getting the prioritized in being delivered the best AI solutions?

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

The relationship with Salesforce professionals and AI is just getting started, and no one is sure where it will go. For now, you are in one of three categories-

🏄 You’re riding the wave. A small one, but you’ve caught it, and you intend to paddle back out and catch the next, bigger wave.

🌊 You’ve paddled out and are waiting for the perfect wave.

🏖️ You’re standing on the beach, looking at the other surfers who are riding waves, waiting for waves, or they’re standing next to you watching the waves with you.

This is still the very early days of AI. If you’re old enough, you remember dialup internet. AI is younger than that 😳. There is still the AI-version, yet to happen, of Steve Jobs envisioning everyone on the planet having an internet-connected phone in their pocket 🤯.

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