Yes, There is a Huge Demand for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Experts: AiThority Interview With Susan Marshall, CEO of Torchlite

Hi Susan, please tell us about your role and the team/technology at Torchlite.

I am the founder and CEO of Torchlite. I started small and built a boutique marketplace of highly-skilled digital marketers in 2015 to service the growing martech demand in large scale enterprise organizations. We networked teams and independent contractors to compete with high-fee agencies and long wait times to get started.

Today, customers can find highly skilled Salesforce freelancers, build teams, manage communications, deliverables, and payment, and rate their experience with comments – all through our online marketplace. We filled a niche that is still going strong today. As a small business ourselves, we keep our team lean, relying on contract freelancers to support a growing number of Salesforce products. In fact, we recently launched a marketplace for Salesforce Essentials to help small businesses get the support they need.

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What is Torchlite’s role in the Freelance talent marketplace? 

Torchlite now provides access to Salesforce certified marketing and design experts. Our low overhead allows us to deploy Flexperts (or Flexible, Independent Experts) for short-term projects or long-term engagements at a lower overall cost while ensuring our freelancers are paid top dollar for their expertise. Our customized approach delivers the exact solutions your business needs without long term contracts, limits, or minimums.

What is the Future of Freelance marketplace? How can Small-sized businesses make better decisions with you?

What we did know before COVID-19 was that the marketplace is exploding. Before everyone was sent to w*************, more and more people were using their specialized skills to build their own small businesses as professional freelancers. I believe the massive job losses and rapid adoption of w************* will only accelerate the process.

The result is a wild west of choices for small businesses trying to keep up. If you don’t understand how to get started with something you’ve invested in and you know you need, more than likely you don’t necessarily know all the right questions to ask. Or more importantly, the right answer.

That is where Torchlite Playbooks can get SMBs going with a road map of what is the industry standard. We give them the tools and the experts they need to scale as much or as little as they want to with the Salesforce platform.

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Why only focus on Salesforce needs?

Salesforce is a phenomenal company. I’ve worked in tech for most of my adult life. I worked for small start-ups that became household names and stood next to Steve Jobs in the elevator a few times headed to my office in Cupertino. Salesforce is different. The platform is ever expanding and they provide high-quality training to people that want to learn. Our Flexperts have worked on thousands of projects and are constantly training to stay current in the ecosystem.

Tell us more about your Salesforce Essentials Advisors and what is their point of entry into the industry as far as getting a job or contract is concerned?

Salesforce Essentials Advisors are the best. They are the first cohort trained by Salesforce to specifically service SMBs. Essentials customers can connect and find immediate help with their Salesforce projects, and the new certified Advisors have the opportunity to provide their expertise.

Salesforce has undergone a massive transformation in the last 5 years, especially in bringing AI, Data Science and Commerce together in one Cloud. How did you change your Freelancer acquisition strategies around these transformations? 

We didn’t. We grew with the industry and Salesforce is the undeniable leader in cloud sales and services. We found that more and more of our freelancers were coming to us with their certifications and our customers were increasingly Salesforce users. It was a natural fit. We not only work with Salesforce, but we’ve worked on thousands of Salesforce projects. Many of our Flexperts have 10+ years of experience with Salesforce products.

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We are witnessing a seismic shift to low-code and no-code platforms. Tell us more about this exciting ecosystem for SaaS companies? 

It means access. There is no need to keep inventing the wheel. Salesforce has designed an interface that allows users to visually build-out workspaces that make sense for their needs rather than forcing us into cookie-cutter templates.

Hear it from the pro: Which Salesforce areas should young professionals focus to get easily hired?  

It really depends on what drives you. Salesforce offers guided learning paths through modules and projects, or Trails, to help users find what is right for them.  But if I were starting out, I’d focus on where there is the most demand. Currently, there is a huge need for Salesforce Marketing Cloud experts–people who can build personalized journeys that convert customers and prospects into loyal customers.

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Scott McCorkle. Seth Godin. Brian Solis

Thank you, Susan! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.