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PayPal Views Its Sales Team as Artists, And That’s Driving Great Results

Dan Torunian of PayPal

Reusable APIs allow teams to move beyond mechanical responses.

A staggering 346 million consumers use the PayPal platform to buy everything from chairs to chocolate. The global technology firm manages personal and business transactions across 200 countries and 100 different currencies. Chief Marketing Officer for MuleSoft, Lindsey Irvine, spoke with PayPal Vice President, Employee Technology and Experiences and Data Centers, Dan Torunian about how the company’s 60 offices around the world have dealt with the events of 2020. Their conversation covered a lot of ground, including a shift to local leadership, Sales Cloud, and how reusable APIs transform employees from mechanics to artists. See the full video below.

In addition, you’ll see MuleSoft show off its Anypoint Platform. And you should not miss the music of Flor De Toloache.

Quotes from Dan Torunian, Vice President, Employee Technology and Experiences and Data Centers for PayPal

How did you reshape leadership when the pandemic hit?

What the employee wants to do hasn’t really changed that dramatically. They want to get their job done, they want to know what’s going on with their organization, and they want to continue to advance in their career. We learned not to let leadership hierarchy interfere. Let the leaders on the ground make the decisions that are the best for them. What makes sense in Dublin might not make sense in India. What makes sense in Omaha might not work in our New York office. Every office has a different persona made of different individuals with different skill sets. The question was, “How do we tailor our offerings and our response to what’s required in that location?”

How has going digital impacted your sales team?

With the deployment of Sales Cloud, we are now able to fully digitize the end-to-end sales cycle – inclusive of pricing, underwriting, legal, and all the traditional selling activities. This then allows us to shorten that sales cycle, recognize revenue sooner, and deliver a much better experience to the merchant. Our sales team is working with a high level of confidence. They’re not thinking about the various systems they need to navigate. They’re not being mechanics. They’re really artists in the process.

What wishes do you hope to fulfill for PayPal moving forward?

We never want to be constrained by scale and reach. We want to position our employees to create value. We want a healthy workforce – meaning output, velocity, learning, wellness, engagement, etc. – because we believe a healthy workforce will deliver a healthy customer experience. Lastly, we need to challenge ourselves to insulate our workforce from any future black swan event. This pandemic was a wakeup call for many of us; it’s a significant call to action for all tech leaders. 

Watch the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform demo

Jimil Patel, Senior Product Marketing Manager for MuleSoft, shows us the capabilities of Anypoint Exchange, Workday Connector, and Anypoint Studio for building connections with clicks and no code.

Hear the music

At the 47-minute mark, Mireya Ramos and Shae Fiol of Flor De Toloache speak about being an all-female mariachi band, then play a recorded musical set.

Watch the whole conversation

This was the latest edition of Leading Through Change, our live video conversation series exploring how leaders use software to drive impactful change in industry. For more interviews: Salesforce.com/Live.

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Karen Solomon Senior Blog Editor

Karen Solomon is the senior editor for the Salesforce Blog, where she brings a wealth of experience as a writer, content strategist, and storyteller. In addition to writing four cookbooks and a travel book, she’s worked for Bank of America, Autodesk, Williams-Sonoma, Donnelly Marketing, and Under Armour. She’s also authored numerous feature stories for national press.

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