For the second virtual meetup of our Women In Salesforce series, we were once again joined by the wonderful Karen Lee, Salesforce Practice Director at Saberpoint, alongside Salesforce Administrator, Jennifer Kleinfeld.
Both speakers gave engaging talks around their topics; the power of growing your network in the Salesforce ecosystem, and thoughtful lightning page design.
You can watch Karen’s previous talk at our Women In Tech New York event, where she speaks about how to be an advocate for women in the industry here.
The Power of Growing Your Network in the Salesforce Ecosystem
Karen began the event by discussing the benefits growing your network within the Salesforce ecosystem can have, relating this to her own experience within the ecosystem.
At the beginning of her career, Karen mentions that she was an introvert, yet having been invited to many networking events by her mentors, Karen realises that networking has shaped her as a person, particularly in her career. Not only has her management style evolved as a result of networking, but she has become more confident in herself.
Wanting to give back to the network, Karen’s original intention was to share what her mentors had taught her over time. This led her to co-found a women in tech initiative at her previous company. At her current position in Saberpoint, Karen realised that in order to effectively do her job, she needed a broader reach of people, this included mentors, access to people with different skillsets and backgrounds as well as a support group; to achieve this she needed to network. From networking within the ecosystem, Karen highlights that she has been able to refer opportunities to others, share knowledge, establish connections with clients and personally develop herself.
Throughout her experience Karen has discovered 4 core values to networking: getting new ideas, making it as easy as possible for people to recommend you, improving your creativity and developing long lasting relationships.
To emphasise the power of networking, Karen shared some interesting statistics:
- 85% of positions are filled through networking
- 95% of professionals consider face-to-face communication vital for long-term business
- 70% of people found a job through a connection at a company
- The close rate for face-to-face meetings is 40%
Opening the discussion to the floor, Karen provided advice for following-up with connections in your network.
Thoughtful – Lightning Page Design: Who are those records for anyway?
The second talk of the event was given by Salesforce Administrator, Jennifer Kleinfeld, and focused on maximising your lightning page design.
A reoccurring point during Jennifer’s talk, were the aspects of good design. Good design is:
- Aesthetic – effects who is using it when they are interacting with your design
- Understandable – it clarifies the structure of work
- Purposeful – fulfils a purpose with success in mind
- Designs as little as possible – don’t burden with non-essential items
In order to create effective lighting page design, you need to consider the different needs and viewpoints of the lightning page; the customer, the businesses and the user. Make sure to ask the right questions; who is it for? How will it be used? What are your challenges? Mapping users by persona helps to understand what their needs are when making changes to the design.
Jennifer highlights three design areas to consider:
- Surface – colours, fonts, branding, visualisation
- Structure – scope, layout, flow and discovery
- Purpose – user’s intentions, goals and desired actions
Referencing a person that Jennifer learns from – Gary Vaynerchuk – Jennifer emphasises that your design has the possibility of being imperfect, and there will be a point where you have to adjust. Eventually business needs change and your design should reflect that. The important thing is to write good documentation so that people can build on your design.
Before finishing her talk, Jennifer provided a few tools and ideas to help build lightning pages (these are just a few):
- Reduce clicks and scrolls
- Consider mobile view vs desktop view
- Custom paths
- Utility item pop-up notes
- Kanban
Thank you to both Karen and Jennifer for their insightful talks, and all the attendees for making the event interactive and engaging.
We’re always looking for more speakers, if you are interested in speaking at our next Women In Salesforce event, please get in touch!
