#73 Revolutionizing Customer Acquisition with AI SDRs | Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer, Qualified

Summary

Podcast Summary: Always Be Testing #73 – Revolutionizing Customer Acquisition with AI SDRs

Title: Always Be Testing
Host: Ty DeGrange
Guest: Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer, Qualified
Release Date: February 24, 2025
Episode: #73
Description: A deep dive into growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, and the integration of AI in modern marketing strategies.

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1. Introduction

In episode #73 of the Always Be Testing podcast, host Ty DeGrange welcomes Dan Darcy, the Chief Customer Officer at Qualified. Dan brings a wealth of experience from his 13-year tenure at Salesforce and his current role at Qualified, where he is at the forefront of integrating AI into customer acquisition strategies.

2. Dan Darcy and Qualified: An Overview

Dan Darcy begins by outlining his journey from Salesforce to Qualified. At Salesforce, Dan held various roles over 13 years, eventually transitioning to Qualified about four years ago. Qualified, under CEO Craig Swensrude (formerly Salesforce's CMO), aims to solve critical pipeline challenges by leveraging AI to understand website visitors and enhance lead conversion.

Dan Darcy [01:42]:
"Qualified is like an inbound pipeline generation platform, driving automation with AI. Initially, we were the number one live chat platform for sales teams, allowing real-time engagement with target accounts. With AI integration, especially our AI SDR, Piper, we've significantly augmented sales teams to drive pipeline growth."

3. Revolutionizing Customer Acquisition with AI SDRs

Qualified's standout feature is Piper, their AI Sales Development Representative (AISDR). Piper utilizes natural language processing and machine learning to interact with website visitors, qualify leads, and book meetings, effectively bridging the gap between marketing and sales.

Dan Darcy [07:08]:
"With Piper, the AISDR, companies can now have a natural language interface on their websites. Prospective buyers can interact with Piper to find information, self-qualify, and accelerate their journey through the sales funnel. This speed to lead is a game changer."

4. The Role of AI in Marketing and B2B SaaS

Dan discusses the broader implications of AI in marketing, emphasizing that AI should be viewed as a tool to enhance existing processes rather than a disruptive force. He advocates for leveraging AI to automate mundane tasks, thereby increasing productivity and ROI.

Dan Darcy [10:03]:
"AI is another step in our ongoing journey to automate processes and drive efficiency. It's about maximizing ROI by making tasks easier and more productive, just as we've done with SaaS over the years."

5. Scaling Challenges and Experiments

With the recent downturn, scaling Qualified has become a significant focus. Dan shares insights into managing rapid growth, including optimizing resource allocation and expanding the reach of Piper. He highlights the importance of experimentation, referencing successes like out-of-home billboards in the Bay Area that successfully increased website traffic and lead generation.

Dan Darcy [14:49]:
"Scaling is our biggest challenge right now. We're rapidly growing interest in Piper and need to ensure we can onboard more clients efficiently. Experimentation, like our billboard campaigns, has been crucial in driving growth and learning what works best."

6. Category Creation and Leadership Learnings

Drawing parallels from his time at Salesforce, Dan emphasizes the importance of category creation through education. By defining AISDR as a distinct category, Qualified simplifies the concept for buyers, making it easier to understand and adopt.

Dan Darcy [17:49]:
"Category creation starts with education. By defining AISDR, we're helping buyers easily grasp our offering. It's about making complex concepts simple and accessible, ensuring that our customers understand the value we bring."

He also shares a pivotal moment in his career when he collaborated directly with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to create an innovative demo for Toyota executives, which significantly impacted his career trajectory.

Dan Darcy [28:03]:
"My sliding door moment was when Marc called me to build a demo for Toyota executives during a crisis. This experience not only showcased my capabilities but also set the course for my future leadership roles."

7. Personal Insights and Team Appreciation

Dan passionately speaks about the importance of customer-centricity and the role of his team in fostering customer success. He highlights the commitment of Qualified's customer success architects and the value of maintaining strong feedback loops with clients.

Dan Darcy [35:00]:
"Our customer success team, the Qualified Success Architects, are the backbone of our success. They treat our customers like an extension of their own team, which is why we have over a thousand five-star reviews praising their efforts."

8. Conclusion

The episode concludes with personal anecdotes, reinforcing the significance of genuine connections and continuous learning. Dan emphasizes the enduring value of face-to-face interactions despite the rise of AI, asserting that human connection remains irreplaceable.

Dan Darcy [34:33]:
"AI can't replace the customer face-to-face interaction. Building genuine connections and understanding customer needs is essential, and that's something technology should augment, not replace."

Ty DeGrange [42:10]:
"Connecting people is crucial, and Dan embodies that spirit. His approach to integrating AI while maintaining human connections offers valuable lessons for marketers and business leaders alike."

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Key Takeaways

• AI Integration: Leveraging AI, specifically through tools like AISDRs, can significantly enhance customer acquisition and lead conversion processes.

• Category Creation: Defining and educating the market about new categories simplifies buyer understanding and drives adoption.

• Scaling Strategically: Effective scaling requires prioritization, resource optimization, and continuous experimentation to identify successful strategies.

• Customer-Centric Leadership: Maintaining strong, data-driven feedback loops and a dedicated customer success team is vital for sustained growth and customer satisfaction.

• Human Connection: Despite technological advancements, genuine human interactions remain essential in building and maintaining customer relationships.

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Notable Quotes

• Dan Darcy [01:42]:
  "Qualified is like an inbound pipeline generation platform, driving automation with AI."

• Dan Darcy [07:08]:
  "With Piper, the AISDR, companies can now have a natural language interface on their websites."

• Dan Darcy [10:03]:
  "AI is another step in our ongoing journey to automate processes and drive efficiency."

• Dan Darcy [14:49]:
  "Scaling is our biggest challenge right now. We're rapidly growing interest in Piper and need to ensure we can onboard more clients efficiently."

• Dan Darcy [17:49]:
  "Category creation starts with education. By defining AISDR, we're helping buyers easily grasp our offering."

• Dan Darcy [28:03]:
  "My sliding door moment was when Marc called me to build a demo for Toyota executives during a crisis."

• Dan Darcy [35:00]:
  "Our customer success team, the Qualified Success Architects, are the backbone of our success."

• Dan Darcy [34:33]:
  "AI can't replace the customer face-to-face interaction."

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Connecting with Dan Darcy

Dan Darcy is active on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). To engage with him, you can find him under the handle Dan Darcy on LinkedIn or @DanDarcy on X.

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This episode of Always Be Testing offers valuable insights into the integration of AI in customer acquisition, the importance of category creation, and the enduring value of human connections in business. Dan Darcy's experiences and leadership provide actionable strategies for marketers and business leaders aiming to leverage technology while maintaining a customer-centric approach.

Transcript

[Ty De Grange]

Foreign. Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your host, Ty degrange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance, marketing, customer acquisition, paid media and affiliate marketing. We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings and growth markets, marketing and life. Time to nerd out, Check your biases at the door and have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.

[Dan Darcy]

Hello.

[Ty De Grange]

Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host, Ty De Grange, and I am really very excited to have Dan Darcy today. Dan, how you doing, man?

[Dan Darcy]

I'm doing great. Honored to be on your podcast, Ty, and it's always great to obviously just see you and be with you.

[Ty De Grange]

Absolutely, man. We've known each other for a long time and you as in friends and social circles, a little bit in the business world. And it's been a pleasure to get to know you over the years. And you've had an amazing career trajectory and successes that I think the audience will learn from and appreciate.

[Dan Darcy]

Well, thank you. And I mean, obviously the sentiment is the same. I just love watching you and your career take off. And like I said, I'm really honored to be on this podcast. So.

[Ty De Grange]

Heck yeah, man. Heck yeah. I appreciate that, Dan. Maybe to kick off, let's jump into your. So those of you don't know Dan, he's had an amazing career executive at Salesforce, just done some amazing things there. He's currently the chief customer officer at Qualified. I'd love for you to jump in to kind of give folks a little primer on what is Qualified.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah. So look, I'm really excited. I was. Spent 13 years at Salesforce in a variety of roles. And, you know, I know we'll. We'll talk a little bit more about that, but what got me excited around four years ago was this company called Qualified. And Craig Swensrude, who's the CEO, was the former CMO at Salesforce. I used to work with him and he told me about Qualified and he's like, look, one of the biggest problems that I had when I was a CMO at Salesforce was around Pipeline. And he said I was blind to the visitors that were coming to my website. And so what he wanted to do was create a company that helped basically help marketers and CMOs understand what visitors were coming to their website and really providing a personalized buying experience to provide, you know, I mean, to help them convert into leads and meetings booked. So the way I talk about it, Qualified is like, we're an inbound Pipeline generation platform obviously driving a lot of automation in AI. We first started off with being the number one live chat platform for sales teams because sales teams would be able to see what visitors were on the site and then engage with their target accounts at that moment in time. But obviously with the introduction of AI, you know, and, and ChatGPT, we obviously started taking advantage of that and we introduced this past April Piper, which is our AI sdr and she has taken off like we have had hundreds of customers hire Piper to help augment their sales teams to drive pipeline and that's really brought our marketing and sales teams closer together. So you know, in that we help, I mean in a very simple way, like we just help marketers with the last mile problem and converting more leads and meetings booked.

[Ty De Grange]

It's, it's amazing. And so many comments I'll share and then kind of jump back into questions. But yeah, you know, as a service based business who's has a pipeline that's courting clients, it's such a compelling value proposition to say okay, how can I get those leads to be more personalized experience better, better messaging, get them through the funnel more efficiently, help sales kind of sift through and identify. Right. Who doesn't want that if they're in the business of managing a pipeline in a salesforce and a team that's trying to close deals.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, I mean I think of it this way, like a lot of companies spend a lot of marketing to drive traffic to their website. And in the old days I would say that all you had was a form complete, someone had to fill out a form, you had to convince those visitors to fill out the form if they wanted to find out more information. And that led into gating of everything. But now it's like, why wouldn't you want to know if your target accounts are on your site? Why wouldn't you want to provide them a more personalized and concierge experience? And I feel like we've helped make the website really now core to a lot of strategies for marketers out there. And that is actually a huge key is like making the website come alive. And I think that's been awesome in kind of our journey about how we've been driving qualified.

[Ty De Grange]

The Always Be Testing podcast is sponsored by Round Barn Labs. RBL is the growth agency. They are a leader in efficient customer acquisition and pound for pound, the most experienced team in affiliate marketing. For the last nine years they've worked with brands like Oculus, Amazon, Grammarly, Ebay, Atlassian, Scotch Quarter, Live Nation, Hatch Puma Hoppin, Stubbub, Recess, PacSun, SunBasket and more. They've generated over 100 million in media, spend over 250 million in traffic generated, 500 million in revenue generated. They go beyond the data to give you the why and the revenue generating recommendations to grow and create a paid marketing flywheel for your brand. So if you're a consumer E comm brand looking to go from 8 to 9 figure revenue per year, or an enterprise brand looking for a higher quality of data, rigor and growth, check them out@roundbarn labs.com.

It sounds like there is a way. Using your technology, you're not necessarily reliant on things, the old school ways of submitting forms, gathering lead information. You can derive other important signals from the lead to say hey, this is high intent, high quality lead. You need to pounce on this one. This might be not maybe less priority or maybe you don't have as much insight. Is that accurate?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, 1,000% accurate. So I mean it's, it's like there's a variety of visitors that come. You either we either really know them well through cookies, prior or reverse IP information, you know, or other ways that we've gathered kind of their personal identifiable information. And then there are like unknown and so you know, for those unknown folks, we still want to give them a great experience but we need to know about them first and they need to qualify themselves first. And so how do we provide the different tools on the site to help them qualify themselves and then basically either like if we go, this is a target account, roll out the red carpet, let's have them book a meeting right on the sales reps calendar. Let's go. And so that, that's, that kind of speed to lead is really exciting for our customers out there and helping drive a lot more uplift in, in their leads and meetings.

[Ty De Grange]

It's a big need. You guys are getting the validation in the market and as we know, time kills deals. And so if you're able to truncate that speed to lead, as you said, it's, it's extremely valuable.

[Dan Darcy]

What I think is also really exciting of this world now is obviously the AI aspect and Piper. So our AI sdr, I think every company is going to need a natural language interface on their website. I mean you see it now with ChatGPT, with OpenAI and Gemini. Everyone is finding information through a prompt, right? Why wouldn't you have that same type of user experience on your website? And with us we just say it's Piper. So you need to find Information about the. About that specific company, you go to Piper. Ask Piper the question, Piper will tell you the answers, and you can help self qualify yourself. And I just think that that type of speed to access of information for prospective buyers has been a game changer.

[Ty De Grange]

I love that you nailed it. It's so funny here in Austin. We've got this Austin Tech Week thing happening. And I was fortunate to kind of take the pod to a moderator experience interviewing Alexis Contos and some other great marketers who've been involved in AI. And you're also could have easily been on stage and then some, given you're at the epicenter of AI, something that everyone is kind of trying to make sense of and invest in and adapt and bring into their organization. It's something that's a big priority for leadership at Round Barn Labs, our agency. So it's really cool to hear you're tapping into it, you're building it, you're improving it, and you're giving it. You're making that a value add for your customers. I do want to take a moment to apologize to you and the audience because of Austin Tech Week. Our friend Jason Calcanis came in with his big tech money and kicked me out of my pod studio. So here I am on the 15th floor in a closet with poor lighting. But here we are. We're making do. We're on stage anyway. In the arena.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, that's. That's in the arena. That's the life of, of. I mean, being in there. And I mean, obviously, what an honor to be kicked out of a studio by jcal. Right? Like, I think that's pretty awesome.

[Ty De Grange]

I'll put it on my, you know, wannabe claims to fame. You know, I love that you guys are tackling this with AI and who better to. To do it? And it's. I'm so excited about this space and I know people have a lot of questions on it. So let's keep. Yeah, let's keep rolling along. You're clearly a B2B SaaS Pro by every stretch of the imagination. What is kind of your maybe learning or takeaway from kind of where we are when it comes to tackling, like marketing, as a leader, as a customer advocate. When you think about B2B SaaS, where's it going and what can you kind of give people a takeaway from? Like how to kind of address that. That market?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, I think, you know, people ask me this all the time and obviously AI is kind of like, we are in the middle of the hype for AI right now, right. That's obviously everyone talks about. But I also think we're in this weird transition phase trying to understand the world of AI. And so I think this is, I mean you're spot on in terms of like education. You know, many companies are just trying to figure out what their strategy is. How do I take advantage of it? I think some of our success has been we've really defined a use case that people can understand. But like where I think things are going, this is really no different than what we've been doing for years past. And I think people kind of need to get past that. We've been trying to drive automation into our lives to make our lives easier for companies around. Like how can they maximize, you know, the ROI on like if I can just eek a better 2 percentage points, it's going to save us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. That has been going on since the beginning of software, since SaaS. Right. And I just think with AI it's no different. We just have now more capabilities that are helping make things even more easier and driving more human productivity. And so that's, that's the lens I've been taking it at. And just as new capabilities come forth, we'll take advantage of that, if that makes sense. But yeah, that's kind of where I think we have been really good. It's like as opposed to just saying, oh hey, AI is this call API call that we make out to OpenAI to drive some natural language thing back? No, it's about encompassing this entire process of how can we help really drive more automation and AI into a process to drive more ROI for our customers. And that's, that's kind of what I think if people take a look at it from that point of view, I feel like that makes it a lot more consumable versus like AI is this big unknown. And there is still a lot to be learned and unknown from that aspect. But that's kind of where I think for me, take away of like how I explain this and work with our customers around.

[Ty De Grange]

No, I like that it takes some of the mystery out of it. I think it's a lot of the conversation that they've had on this pod with great AI technologists and AI folks that are implementing AI and marketing and then in the conversation and prep, yes, for yesterday's talk, which was well received, it was the principles. A lot of this AI movement has been happening for actually decades if you think about it. And then obviously we had this kind of semi eureka moment with what was it November 2022 when, you know, ChatGPT and LLM started kind of exploding and you kind of had the prompt user interface and it doesn't feel like we're quite, maybe at hype of the life cycle yet. It's definitely quite high and maybe almost peak. But I think more importantly, my takeaway from your comment is like, there's still this, like, blocking and tackling that has to be done, where you're always trying to be more efficient, you're always trying to do what's right by the customer. You're always trying to up your. Up your marketing game and your pipeline game and your sales game. And I think you nailed that. I think that doesn't necessarily change drastically how you approach growth or effective, successful B2B SaaS, businesses, which you're intimately knowledgeable of? Yeah, that's, that's. I think that's a good takeaway for people. And we, this came up a lot in our, in just a lot of different conversations and it takes a little bit of the, like, oh, man, I'm FOMO out. I'm fomoing here. Like, you can build these things, you can add them.

[Dan Darcy]

There's definitely a lot of anxiety out there with AI. And I just think about it as like, how can I just. What I'm currently focused on today in my current workload, in my current life, what are the processes that I can improve with better technology? Yeah, right. Call it, call it AI, call it whatever the next trend is going to be. Before it was mobile. Right. And then, you know, like. And so, you know, I'm obviously old enough to, like, be at the forefront of SaaS, you know, with, with Salesforce early back in the day and we had to convince people to move to the cloud. Right. And I feel like everyone's pretty much there. Right. And so now it's like, how do we make folks move into this new world of AI? And what does that actually really mean? Because it's a pretty nebulous term.

[Ty De Grange]

It's nice to simplify for, for humans and for people. And it allows a clear message and it takes some of the mystery out of it, which I think you, you communicated well here. It's. I think it's a nice way to think about it. We talked a little bit about, like, the blocking and tackling of B2B SaaS. Kind of a segue into. You guys are doing super well. There's some really exciting things happening. Every great business has its challenges. What are some of the things that you, you and the team are trying to solve for and improve right now?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. In terms of, like, I mean, there's obviously, this is startup, the life of a startup. Like, it's obviously, there's always a lot of burning fires and things, but it's, It's a crisis of prioritization. And for us, I think right now, scale is obviously our biggest factor. We're just coming out of the downturn. Right. And we're seeing a lot of interest in Piper. So it's like, how do we bring more people on board to qualify? We're growing, obviously, fast. So it's like, how do we get more Piper out there into the world? And that also takes on. When I think about it from my perspective, my team's responsible for the implementation and success of pip. So it's really getting a lot more enablement to my team, you know, and I think that's a lot of the things. There's a lot of customers that ask questions, as you know, obviously you're talking about it too, at your conference at Tech Week, and like, that's it. It's like, scale. How do we. How do we do more with less? Because we're still, like, we want to grow. We can't just, like, open up the floodgates and start growing again. And like, it's. We're not at that state. It's like, how do we methodically grow and scale? So I'm definitely, even on my own AI journey, if you will, I'm trying to learn what are other effective tools and capabilities that are out there to help my team grow and scale through AI and drive a lot more productivity and just tackle those processes as well. So it's funny, as I'm helping marketers with their AI journey, I'm trying to go on my own and trying to heed my own advice by learning. And I'm taking a lot of calls. And so I'm probably, if some customer service or customer success companies out there are listening to this, they'll probably bang on my door on LinkedIn to, like, hear a pitch. But I'm open and I'm like, open to this learning and trying to see what's out there. But that. That's kind of one of the biggest things for me is really that. That scale factor, that's amazing.

[Ty De Grange]

Yeah, I'm excited to help qualify, grow any way I can and through our networks. And I know you guys are already on a road that's quite exciting and successful. And it's. It's always, you know, there's a blessing and a curse to that having, having startup challenges and just having startup. It's not an unlimited resource and it's never, it's never unlimited. Even in a large company and especially in this climate, you know, it kind of forces that a little bit of the, you know, paradox of choice, scarcity mindset where it's like, it almost helps you. Cause it's like you can't do it all, but you have to prioritize what's gonna be most effective for your success and your customer success and your growth. I imagine that's not easy, but one that I know you're up for and working on with your team.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ty De Grange]

We talk a little bit about kind of the challenge of category creation and how that's so critical for B2B SaaS. You obviously lived through it intimately with Salesforce. How are you kind of thinking about that in the current role?

[Dan Darcy]

And generally speaking, Yeah, I mean, the way I think about like category creation, it's obviously a very hard thing to do, but I really think of it as the baseline is just education. There's so many categories out there, right? Every, every company has a different use case they're trying to solve and they, they become, you know, everyone's a special snowflake, which we all understand, but there's just so many categories out there. I think we're just trying to make it simple for our buyers and customers to understand kind of what we're talking about. And so obviously you hear right now with the world of AI, especially Salesforce Launching Agent Force, which is really exciting because there's a lot more. It's helping create more of the market for agents. We call ours a worker, right? And we named her Piper, the aisdr. And somehow AISDR is just taking off. And I think it's because it's like people can understand and see what role an SDR does and plays in a lot of companies. And everyone defines it differently. It's like at Salesforce, we define an SDR as being an inbound person. And then business development REMs or BDRs were outbound reps kind of trying to drive more pipeline. And so in our, in our term, our AISDR is really around inbound pipeline generation. And so, so we're just. Once we found that we, you know, like, like we even took a chance on experimenting with billboards in the Bay Area and that. That out of home has taken off for us as well too. We. We decided we're not going to go to the, that's working for you? Yes, it's amazing. It's honestly incredible because we decided to not go to certain events to then put money into out of home billboards. And we've gotten, you know, the way we were able to do that too is say we're in the Bay Area. Like, let's look at the traffic that's coming to our website in the Bay Area, you know, for the previous month, make that our benchmark. And then once we put the out of home things like, how does our Bay Area traffic increase? And so, and we saw that increase quite a bit. We saw a lot of prospects come to us saying, I saw your billboard, I want to learn more. And so, you know, obviously it's hard to put an ROI to that, but it's, it's still one of those things that we were like, this has been generally good for us, so that's why we're continuing to do that. So in terms of that category creation, you know, I don't know if there's an AISTR category out there yet, but we're continuing to invest in that kind of term, if you will, because with content into this category, just to continue to educate our buyers, it's like, well, what do you mean by AI sdr? And it's like, you know, look, do we think it's going to get rid of the STRs out there? No, of course not. We're helping augment and drive productivity as I was talking about earlier. And like, how do we continue to build that category out for us? And so that's how I think about category creation because it's like, it's helping give like the buyer because there's just so many terms out there, a way to easily grasp a concept. And, you know, I mean, like, there's been like, we were in the conversational marketing space, which was just basically called live chat. Right. So I mean, it's, it's just interesting to kind of see that. But now we've evolved into kind of this bigger inbound pipeline generation platform and it's kind of hard. Yeah. So we just got to figure out what that is. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

[Ty De Grange]

Didn't mean to cut you off. But Slack had a similar journey too. Right. And what were they gaming? Pseudo gaming use case. And then they turned into this massive professional enterprise.

[Dan Darcy]

Enterprise juggernaut.

[Ty De Grange]

Exactly.

[Dan Darcy]

It's awesome.

[Ty De Grange]

I'm excited for you guys to nail that vertical. And I think it makes a lot of sense and it's obvious, it's exciting. I'VE heard Kieran Flanagan, SVP at HubSpot. Just a monster. He's gotten so deep into the AI game, into the growth game and he's talked a lot about the obvious opportunity with AI around the SDR kind of flow and the pipeline and, and the marketing content and kind of connecting those more effectively, making that user experience better and all the automated things you can do, which you guys are certainly at the forefront of. So I think about him as a, a great like framing of the opportunity and then you guys being kind of a key player to take that market. It's. It's really, really cool.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah. Again, I go back to the first principle, which is we're just trying to automate a use case that's been mundane for a lot of folks out there and try to make it better. That's all. So there you go.

[Ty De Grange]

That simplicity is really important. I think that testament to your leadership and I think people need to be reminded of that moving along here. So in the spirit of always be testing, we love to talk experiments and the learnings from them. What are some of those examples that you want to share from your great experience at Salesforce and now with qualified.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah. Experiments. I feel like I hope everyone continues to experiment with everything and try new things. I think that is like the most exciting part of what business is about. So from a Salesforce perspective, I think one of my favorite experiments with Salesforce was personally was for me was around interactive demos and bringing the demo to life and you know, just a little background for your listeners. I ran our demo team at Salesforce which were responsible for all the demos you would see at Dreamforce or on stage at all of our events. And what I really wanted to do was beyond just seeing a point and click feature demo on the, you know, when you come to a conference it's like, look, here's what it does. You click here and it does this great. And everyone claps. I wanted to be more of a storyteller and then really bring people into a day in the life of those specific demos and like what. What we were really trying to achieve and drive. And so, you know, I feel very fortunate Salesforce was. Was able to provide obviously the budget, if you will, to make more interactive demos. It's like if we were profiling a Burberry on stage, why wouldn't we want to bring everyone to the Burberry store on stage as well as seeing then how that software and the demo would work in the cloud and then how that's connected to a real life Physical store. And so we would be able to do things like that of like bringing a retail store onto stage, showcasing how, you know, a use case a day in the life of like a sales rep at a Burberry store, how they would interact with that, you know, the Salesforce software on their iPad, how it would be connected because, you know, that person who came in the store had an abandoned shopping cart online earlier. And just making that personalization happen was really exciting. And so that. That's one of my favorite, favorite ones.

[Ty De Grange]

That's awesome.

[Dan Darcy]

And then from. Yeah. And then from a. From a small business qualified way. Like, we're. We're constantly, obviously experimenting all the time. Like, I just talked about the out of home billboards, right. With Piper, the aisdr. That's one exciting one. But actually I want to bring up one that you were a part of, which I was really excited about was. Well, we tried this executive dinner, like from a field marketing perspective in New York City. Salesforce was having a conference and we wanted to be like, let's grab our customers and prospects that are in that area in New York at the time and let's do a hosted dinner in the West Village and get people to come. And this, this was a couple years ago, but, you know, we didn't get the turnout we wanted because, I don't know, it was just a little too early for us. So it really was all about timing. And I mean, a lot of fun things happened. I was like, okay, there's no one coming to this dinner. I just ran. I mean, I wouldn't say no one. I mean, it was half full, but, like, I ran into you randomly. You happen to be out celebrating life with your wife, which it was great to see her.

[Ty De Grange]

Baby moon.

[Dan Darcy]

Yes. You were on your baby moon. We were at the same hotel. I was like, oh, my God, Ty. And then I said, hey, random thing. I'm hosting a dinner tonight. We have extra spots. Do you want to come? And so you did. And so it was awesome to see you. And like, it was great to interact and. But yes, I mean, like, I wouldn't say that was a very successful executive dinner, but, you know, again, I just think about timing and. And you got to keep constantly doing that again. And like, fast forward two years now. We just hosted our first ever again executive dinner. And that was actually more successful because I think we were more of a bigger draw too. So, you know, back in the day, we were like, qualified. Who knows about qualified? And now it's kind of a different story. So again, it's timing and experimentation. And, you know, I love failing. I love failing because then you learn from it and you keep going forward.

[Ty De Grange]

So, yeah, you don't, you don't fail. You learn. And if it, you know, I think that's a good primer and obviously fun example, but, but a great reminder. It reminds me of the. I don't know if the tech bros are going to slap my wrist for quoting naval or. Or not, but I think he has one where it's like, basically people get an how do I network? How do I network? What's the secret of networking? I feel like there's an analogy to your timing of your dinner. It's like if you're building something really cool, if you're launching Piper AI, people are going to come to your dinner. You're killing it and you're seeing that trend and that, that improvement, you know, so that's where the timing comes in. And I think it's applicable to networking. It's maybe a little bit of a stretch analogy, but I just think that's such a good point. You saw it firsthand, right?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, I mean, experience it firsthand. It's like, okay, maybe we were just a little too early on that dinner. I mean, we thought we were bigger than we were. It was a very humbling experience. But, you know, we will come back, we learn from it and we do it again, you know, so that's it.

[Ty De Grange]

It's a great, it's a great ethos of your, your testing thinking and how. I think a lot of good marketers and just business people can think about rolling with the punches and the learnings and getting better for the next time. I have a hunch on what your sliding door moment in your career would be, but I would, I want to ask you, what is it?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, I would say the sliding moment, sliding door moment in my career is there was a. I'll be brief on this. So, you know, when I first started at Salesforce, I was in the technical product marketing team and I was driving again, a lot of demos and showcasing stories to our customers on stage around driving that specific product marketing. One day I got a phone call on a Sunday that I put to voicemail like three times. And the fourth time I answered it, it was Benioff asking me to help him build a demo. A customer that was coming to his house in Hawaii to see a demo of Salesforce, and it was the CEO of Toyota, all of these Toyota executives. And at the time, for folks that were there, Toyota had gone through a major Recall and the CEO of Toyota on their brakes, and the CEO of Toyota had to go before Congress and apologize for all these brake failures. And that was a lot of embarrassment. So they were looking for ways to revamp their brand new, use more software to transform them into a new world. And so they naturally thought of Salesforce. So Mark called me and said, dan, I need you to build a demo. And at the time, Chatter was a very big product that we just launched, which was basically like Slack embedded into Salesforce right now. Obviously, Slack is the much better product, but like, Mark was like, dan, I need you to build me a demo. Cars are chatting on the network. The car is chatting to me, telling me my tire is low or I need more gas or this. So it was like basically the Internet of things and the car kind of talking to you and communicating to you on a private network and let's call it Toyota Friend. And so I was like, what the hell does that mean? But obviously, again, what I love is learning, you know, leveraging new technology and thinking about this new world of, like, back then in 2010, it was around IoT, it was around social, being within business, apps, et cetera. And we called it Toyota Friend. And so my team and I, we built that demo, went and presented it to the CEO of Toyota. Mark loved it so much. He goes, I need you to build that again and come with me. We're going to go to BMW next week. And so. And then that kind of basically started my career with Mark, just traveling with him around the world. And it was an. It was. I was very honored to be part of that. And I can't tell you enough how much I have so much gratitude to Mark for that. Pretty much that moment right there changed my life. And I don't say that lightly because it really changed the trajectory of my career.

[Ty De Grange]

It's a great call out. It's an amazing experience and learning and it's something that you stepped into and delivered, and that's commendable. It's not many. And you teamed yourself up with the work you did to get that call, and it's just amazing, man. It's awesome.

[Dan Darcy]

I appreciate it. And it was a lot of fun. I mean, I had a lot of great people and mentors along the way that helped drive that, too.

[Ty De Grange]

That's awesome. I love it. Maybe jumping to the thought of Mark for a second, what was maybe like a learning or story that you recall that you want to share that's maybe specific to your learnings with Mark.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I Think one of the things that I take from Mark, from a learning perspective and kind of what I bring to my job today as a Chief Customer Officer is how much he was so customer centric, he would go on the road quite a bit, learning from customers, explaining kind of new things that were happening in the world. And so again, like I said with that Toyota friend, he goes, I want you to come with me to BMW. That started off a world tour of actually going on the road, talking about social, being in your business applications and how can you get your records and your information coming to you and streaming to you through signals to help you do a better job. And I mean, people thought of it as like, oh, why would I have Twitter inside my business apps? So we would go around to a lot of the CIOs, a lot. A lot of the top enterprise companies around the world, A lot of them thought we were awesome and loved it, but a lot of them also thought we were crazy and was like, you know what? What are you talking about? That's so weird. Why would I have a Twitter inside my business application? Right. Obviously we slack today. We. We saw Chatter. We had yammer back in the days as well too. But what I love about that was just like, he got out there, he was feet on the ground, you know, like out there with the customers in the trenches, in the arena, which is why I love that term that you used. And he was talking to customers and, and getting their feedback and then. And then he was then going back into the company and changing things as he. As he learned from customers. But what I loved about that even more was that five years later, we go back to those same CIOs, and they're like, I thought you were crazy with that Twitter thing, but, like, you guys were awesome and genius and I love Salesforce for that reason. You guys are continuing to pull us into the future. And so I took that as a huge learning from Mark of, like, how do we help our customers and pull them into the future and think about that. And that's no different right now with Piper AISDR and like, how are we bringing our customers, our CMOs out there and marketers into the future? Of like, how do we leverage AI? And so that's kind of like how I think about it. And that's what I get so passionate and worked up about. That's what I love about what I learned.

[Ty De Grange]

Both Mark, I am literally writing that down because it's that powerful and the audience should too. I genuinely think you've seen some Amazing things on the front lines. I've been really lucky and fortunate, you know, kind of being in parts of the epicenter of tech and certainly like you but what an awesome learning and what an amazing experience and just had to jot that concept down. You've got this category creation thing. You've got this literally watching people be pulled into the future, which is a great, great comment, Great line. It's phenomenal. This is.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah. I mean and it's, it's no, there's no secret sauce to this. It's literally just getting out there with the customers, hearing the feedback and depending like who is your ICP of the customer? Right. Like if you go to an SMB, they'll say different things than an enterprise. So you just gotta think through that and like who's the audience you're talking to and like how are you helping them? So again, I just think that has been. So you can't replace that at all. AI is not gonna replace that customer face to face interaction ever.

[Ty De Grange]

What a. That's another one liner. That's gonna stick. That's spot on. A little bit of a bonus question just for my curiosity. What are you finding when you, when you're, you're so, you know, customer development so important for you, so important for qualified. Like, is there something maybe you're doing now? Like, are you trying to say, hey, I want to talk to so many customers ever so often. Are you getting certain feedback loops from them now? I guess I'm curious to tie it back to kind of your exciting vision for qualified.

[Dan Darcy]

It's a great question because I think about this quite a bit. Like I, you know, from a process perspective, I try to hold myself accountable to being a part of. We have QBRs that happen and I try to be with. If there's an exec on it, I'm going to be there. And so I try to hold myself to being in front of the customer a certain percentage of the time. That's one aspect I've instrumented every single part of our customer journey to drive signals to me personally and our executive team and we call it the not being blind sheet. So we don't want to be blind with our customers. If I see that, it's almost like a, you know how when you take your car in for a tune up and they give you this sheet that says here are all the red, yellow, green things across your car of like what you got to do. That's how I think about our companies, our customers that we talk with. I'm always running diagnostic checks on our customers. And I have a score that comes to me going, are these customers good or bad? And like what's happening? Or did something change in the last week that is like, I need to know about? So it's like all of these signals, like, did a, did a new management team come in play? And so how can I get in front of them to talk to them about the value of qualified? I'm just always thinking about constantly like how do I get in front of talking to people and helping them understand our capabilities and meshing it with their values and their goals that they're trying to achieve. And so that to me has been really important. So I do both. It's like I do the manual side of things of like just joining these customer calls. And then I do the, and, and, and then I do the, like the, you know, the digital thing which is really around the data that's streaming to me. So because I'm extremely data driven in that respect. And so I feel like between those two, like, and then I have a great leadership team. That's the other thing I've, and I have an incredible customer success team. Like I would say they are the number one customer success team in the industry. I'll stand by it a thousand percent. And you know, we call them qualified success architects. I have an incredible support team as well. These success architects care so much about our customers that they feel like an extension of their team. And that's what makes me so proud. If you go to our G2.com review, we'll have over a thousand five star reviews where they're calling out the names of my team in their, in their reviews. And I couldn't be more proud. Like, so that's, that's what I'm like, yes, like you can talk about my leadership, but I'm, I want to just give the, the I bow down to my team because they are the, the best. Like, and I can't, hands down, we'll, we'll fight anyone who say different, you know, and so that's, that's one of those things. So thank you for helping letting me monologue on that a little bit because I just, I really want people to know that my team is what makes our customers amazing.

[Ty De Grange]

I'm glad I asked the question because it hits near and dear to my heart and it's kind of what I'm striving for, for what we're striving for. In a similar way, we're really only as good as our team and our leadership Team, our CEO, our directors, our account managers are the lifeblood of it in so many ways. And, you know, and not to be cheesy, but like, hearing you speak in those terms, it's like firing me up to be like, all right, how do I. Where do I sign? Like, I'm on a. I want to get involved in, like, literally user product, which is, you know, I don't even know if we're in your icp, but we'll talk offline about that later. You've kind of dropped so many knowledge bombs today, Dan. This has been phenomenal. Let's bring it down the home stretch with some fun personal questions.

[Dan Darcy]

Awesome.

[Ty De Grange]

What's an item you've bought that you want to just rave about and tell the audience that you just can't live without or you want to tout right now?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I'm a pretty simple man, but actually, I will tell you right now, I have an Ola water bottle and I think it goes under the $200. But like, for them to get me to buy a water bottle for this expensive, it's pretty awesome. And I carry with me everywhere. Got a straw. Like, it's. I mean, it's not. It's not even like that, like, revolutionary. It's just something that I. I care about. And then the other thing too, I'll just. I just was thinking about this. I'm going to swap this now, and this is going to go a little more sentimental. Is as simple as it is. I just bought a football for my son Leo, and he cannot. He's a 49er fan. Go Niners and know they're having a tough season.

[Ty De Grange]

Like, Amen.

[Dan Darcy]

He love wants to throw the football around and that's. It's. It's prized possession. So, like, again, I go back to the simplicity of. Of like water and football.

[Ty De Grange]

So, Mike, drop, mic drop. My. My boy is a year and a half and he like Leo, he's throwing stuff on the regular. I'm like, my daughter, bless her heart, was talking, talking, talking and reading, reading, reading, and gray's like, I'm throwing a tennis ball at your face. It's pretty funny.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, that's awesome.

[Ty De Grange]

Sounds like Leo's on the same track.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, it's great. Well, we got to get them together. Let's do it.

[Ty De Grange]

Yes. Let's make it happen. Let's definitely do that. I love it. Okay. Software that you. You really dig, but you can't say slack salesforce or qualified.

[Dan Darcy]

Okay, good question. I mean, obviously beyond Piper. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Social media is. Is definitely a huge connecting piece for me. I. You know, I still leverage x. Formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, they all have different audiences. I'm, as you know, I'm very much a people person. I love staying connected to my folks and to people that I care for. And what I. What I find that I love about social media. And I know there's dangers to social media as well, but I feel like I've. I'm trying to, like, overcome that as well by, like, not being so addicted, is that you have all these audiences at your fingertips to learn from and communicate with. So. X. I do a lot of learning. LinkedIn, I do a lot of learning, but I also post a lot there, too. Instagram is really around just, like, for me, it's personally for me, a way to. To chronicle my life. I'll be like, you know, we're always constantly going, and then all of a sudden I look back at a picture, I'm like, oh, my God, we did that. That's right. That's so awesome. I'm so glad I posted it on Instagram. Otherwise I wouldn't remember, you know, and it's kind of that. That digital photo album, Facebook, that's how I communicate with my mom at times. Like, I just post there because she's still on there all the time. So, you know, it's just. It's just that's what I love, is being connected to people. Because I love people.

[Ty De Grange]

Yeah. So that's amazing. That's amazing. I would have to say I'm. I am very much similar, especially from an information junkie perspective, and then to an extent, a connection perspective. And I do feel like I'm more reasonably good connector and. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. I love the people aspect, but for the audience that doesn't know Dan, he might be one of the best connectors that exists. And I think it comes from a place of genuineness and care and. And awesomeness. I'll use that term. So just to put a. Put a exclamation on that.

[Dan Darcy]

I love connecting people. Remember, I used to throw parties a lot in the city, so it was just all about bringing fun people together and providing amazing experiences. So it's like. And I feel like that's a missing art these days of, like, it's. Everything is so divisive. We got to bring people together.

[Ty De Grange]

So another amazing mic drop from Dan. Let's bring people together right now. It's what we need. We need more of that the world needs more elf parties.

[Dan Darcy]

There you go.

[Ty De Grange]

Speaking of party, random fun little tidbit. Fun fact that maybe people don't know about. Dan.

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, I'm a little embarrassed by this one. I'm. I'm obsessed with Bravo and all those reality shows, and I just can't keep up with. I know that's kind of Real Housewives. I mean, I can't get into that show as much. I mean, when it's on with my wife, she'll fill me in on the drama. And I think that's kind of why I like it is, like, what's the situational drama that's happening at this point? And like, what's going to happen? And so sometimes I think the Real Housewives is way too dramatic and kind of unrealistic at times. But, like, you know, you got other shows like Below Deck who, like, you know, where you going on a sailing yacht and there's a lot of drama that's there or obviously the Vanderpump rules, like all that fun stuff. So. So, yeah, that's great.

[Ty De Grange]

Your stock just went up in Blaine's eyes, that's for sure.

[Dan Darcy]

You can find me in the Bravo channel at. On our. In our Slack team. Kind of in it with the best of them. So. So we.

[Ty De Grange]

We need to do a better job of subsetting our Slack channels. Now that you've said that. We need to be way more specific. That's. Well done.

[Dan Darcy]

Well done.

[Ty De Grange]

That's. That's really funny. And appreciate you leaning in and sharing that with us. Dan, you've absolutely kicked butt on this. This has been a pleasure. I can't. Can't say how much fun it was for folks that want to connect with you. Where. Where's the best place to do that?

[Dan Darcy]

Yeah, LinkedIn. Right? That's the. I mean, I'm also on X dot com. You can find me at Dan Darcy, but LinkedIn is the easiest spot. Dan Darcy. I'm. I'm really communicative on there. And for the. I mean, like, I'm open usually to conversations with folks. It just depends on kind of my timing of things. But I would love to connect and have great conversations with people there. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. And I mean, what an honor. And obviously I love you as a friend, so thank you so much for having me.

[Ty De Grange]

Thanks, man. It was a pleasure. A blast. Talk soon. Thanks, everybody.