Job Title: Director of Financial Services Sales Architecture
Start Date: June 2018
Tell us a fun fact or something interesting about yourself?:
I average about 3,000 miles of running each year. I’ve run 23 marathons including 4 Boston Marathons in 2010, 2013, 2014, and 2019. The photo is me with LaShawn Merritt. I’m wearing his gold medal in the 4×400 relay from the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and he also had his gold medal in the 400m from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Fun fact – he told me that he used to keep it in his glove compartment.
What is your position at Silverline?
I work with our clients (and a cross-functional team at Silverline) to identify their short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals for the Salesforce platform. I focus mainly on our banking/credit union and lending clients. I work across Salesforce clouds to construct all-encompassing solutions for customer-facing sales teams, customer engagement/ marketing teams, and back-office IT/administrative teams.
What does your average day look like?
My alarm usually goes off at 4:30AM. I’m out the door for my morning 8mi run by 5:20. I’m back, showered, eating breakfast, and doing the NYT crossword by 7:10AM. By 8:00AM I’m getting a cup of coffee and sitting down in front of my computer to catch up on Slacks and email from afterhours the previous day. Then I usually spend the morning in internal meetings with our delivery and sales teams, as well as with Salesforce, understanding where our current engagements are and where we are in-process for potential engagements in the sales cycle. After lunch, my afternoon usually consists of scoping meetings with clients, drafting approach decks and statements of work, estimating these engagements, and internal processes for estimate approval. I like to close out the day by prepping for the next day and ensuring that I have done my homework for early morning meetings as well as logging my pre-sales time in Salesforce.
How did you find out about Silverline and your current position?
I followed an amazingly capable Salesforce consultant (and, generally, an awesome person) Danielle Laffey to Silverline. We had worked together in a consulting capacity previously. She is a fantastic Salesforce resource and I wanted to be working with whomever she was working with. And it could not have turned out any better!
What motivates you at work?
I love learning from and working with people smarter than myself that I consider coworkers and friends. I also love seeing a solution and architecture that I’ve scoped and estimated come to fruition. Our professional services teams are churning out amazing solutions for our clients and seeing them deploy these solutions motivates me to do a better job scoping engagements to keep them churning out those solutions. It’s an awesome cycle!
What are some interesting challenges you face?
Most banks and credit unions are currently starting or in the process of their digital transformation. Many realize the value in a variety of ways (whether that’s sales and pipeline throughput, customer/member engagement and service, digital marketing channel management, etc.) so it’s always a fun challenge to uncover how Silverline can help facilitate and be a driver of value through their digital transformation effort.
What new things have you learned since you began working at Silverline?
Prior to joining Silverline I lived my life solely in delivery and focused almost exclusively on Sales Cloud based solutions. Since joining Silverline I have been immersed in all facets of Financial Services Cloud that include both the Sales and Service features. My banking knowledge was also limited to knowing that I had a checking and savings account. Since then I’ve learned about the ins and outs of banking organizations, as well as the various tech stacks that banks utilize. Additionally, I have worked diligently to improve my presentation and public speaking skills – maybe not so much as “newly” learned as much as more highly honed.
What do you think makes Silverline successful?
We live at the perfect intersection of people, industry, and technology. Our main asset is our amazing team. From Gireesh down to our Academy teams, our resources are customer- focused, highly intelligent, and motivated to just build cool stuff. We are well-positioned in the banking and lending industry with great clients and are continuing to grow that client base. Finally, what else can I say about Salesforce? It’s a company that is continually pushing out great functionality that we help our clients leverage on a daily basis.
What is your favorite perk?
The ability to take paternity leave coupled with working remotely. It was so nice after the recent birth of my daughter to spend those early weeks of her life with her and my wife. Knowing I have the flexibility to be there with her makes me happy beyond belief.
What is your favorite memory from working at Silverline?
The all company 2019 Silverline Summit in Santa Fe. I had not met most of the SL team face-to-face (not counting virtual meetings) since I had joined the previous year. It was a LOT of fun getting to know the team in a professional (and non-professional) setting. I got some early morning miles in with a couple SLers – seeing the sunrise over the high desert and mountains was beautiful.
What do you hope for your future at Silverline?
I hope to continue to see growth in the type, number, and scale of the clients that we engage with as well as continuing to grow our professional services team in terms of people and skills. I hope to continue to grow my skill set to meet the needs of our teams and clients, as well!
What advice would you give someone considering a job at Silverline?
Do you like working with intelligent and driven teammates? Can you build cool stuff on the Salesforce platform? Are you driven by client success and developing/configuring cool stuff for our clients? Why don’t you just hit that little “Apply Now” button? Let’s build some cool stuff together!
