IC Spotlight: Dan Leibowitz, piloting the humble path to Salesforce success
He jokes he has “no idea” what an account executive does, but the reality is Dan Leibowitz is great at his job. He may be too modest to admit it, but don’t worry, he’s got the chops to deliver.
“It’s about constantly staying in contact,” he says. “Checking in to see where my clients’ pain points are. Providing solutions and working with them to flesh out their goals for the future. Innovating with them. And doing what it takes to make success happen.”
That kind of “whatever the client needs” focus looks different from day-to-day, obviously. But a recent example is representative: Dan took the lead with Chad Meyer, Internet Creations’ CEO, on an Accounting Seed implementation for one of Dan’s top customers.
And now that the project has been passed on to the delivery team, Dan will work beside them, stepping in as needed to make sure his client’s needs are met throughout the entire project.
This gift for customer success—where does it come from?
It’s true he hasn’t been with Internet Creations for much more than two years, but that doesn’t mean Dan didn’t hone his skills in previous jobs. In fact, before Internet Creations he exercised the same client focus for a decade-and-a-half, albeit with an entirely different group of customers: at-risk youth.
It was his work with kids that started Dan on the road to what would become his current career.
“At Isles Youth Institute in Trenton, New Jersey we needed a database, so we reached out to consultants to implement Salesforce. At that time I thought, like maybe a lot of people, ‘We don’t do “sales.” This isn’t for us.’ But we started implementing it and I realized, ‘Wait a second, I like this. I think I could do this.'”
“I ended up becoming a Salesforce consultant, and two years later, I started the Salesforce division in another organization (Hopeworks in Camden, NJ), training young people in the inner cities to become Salesforce admins. We had our own practice and began implementing Salesforce for our customers.”
The rest, luckily for Internet Creations, is history. After all, it was a short leap from mentoring kids to advising clients.
Ask Dan and he can see the connection, too.
“I think I’ve always wanted to have some kind of impact,” Dan says. “I’m always asking myself how I can make something better for someone. When I worked with youth, it was about improving their lives and seeing them succeed.
“In a nutshell,” he smiles, “that’s exactly what I do now.”
