The Biggest Takeaways from Smartsheet ENGAGE

David Nicholson: Welcome to Smartsheet ENGAGE here in Seattle, Washington where I have taken a hostage. His name is Cicero and he’s director of Product Marketing. How are you doing?

Cicero: I am doing amazing.

David Nicholson: First, I want to appreciate the fact that being near you, I will likely not get hit by any cars while I’m here at the event.

Cicero: Yeah.

David Nicholson: So tell me about ENGAGE and why do you do this ENGAGE event at Smartsheet? What’s the purpose?

Cicero: The exciting part about ENGAGE is that all these people are users of Smartsheet and their main goal is to come out with even so much as a nugget of something that’s going to change their life, change the way they do things. And I’ve had people that go away with just learning a formula and they say, “This will change everything I do.” And that’s what this is about is every session we do is designed to say what are they going to walk out doing? How is this going to change their life? And that’s why we do this because each of these people is changing the world in their own way and we want to expand those ripples worldwide and this is how we do it.

David Nicholson: What do you think the ratio of sizzle to meet is at ENGAGE in terms of the difference between we’re going to tell you about all this cool stuff versus we’re going to teach you about stuff for an ENGAGE conference, for people thinking about coming?

Cicero: If we take in everything from keynote on, I would say probably about 20 to 25% sizzle because they sizzle just with learning Smartsheet.

David Nicholson: Yeah.

Cicero: But the rest of it, they don’t sit in those seats to be told how wonderful Smartsheet is because they know. They sit in those seats to say, “How can I do more?” And so we want that to happen and that’s why we designed all of the sessions that way so that we do have that 20 to 80 ratio.

David Nicholson: Yeah. I’m a veteran of many, many, many keynotes. And I have to tell you, first of all, I was surprised, honestly, by how many people were there, huge room. And then I thought it was awesome how efficient the whole keynote experience was, in a good way. It wasn’t two and a half hours of we are going to talk at you with all of our marketing messaging, it was, here’s cool stuff we’re doing. All right. Let’s go off to-

Cicero: To learn.

David Nicholson: … learn.

Cicero: Yeah.

David Nicholson: And to learning sessions. But on the announcement side of things, what are some of the things that… If you were to interview people on the street leaving the convention center and you were to ask them, what did you learn about that was new and announced? What would you want them to say? What are those important things?

Cicero: So I think the big ones that were coming out in the keynote and then some of the sessions are Collections, a way to bring information to the people who need it and not too much, not too little, but just right. The new views. New views are going to change everything by making things faster, quicker, more intuitive. And I think those two combined are just going to change people’s lives. And I know just on the escalator listening to them, they were all just, “I can’t wait till this comes out.” And I think both of those are just going to explode for people.

David Nicholson: I mean, your users tend to be more passionate than the average customer of an enterprise software company, at least in my assessment, because these are people who are using the tools to make themselves personally more productive in their jobs and their teams.
It’s one thing if you’re an IT administrator administrating some infrastructure software. It’s another thing where, to your point, you have a new view or a new capability to organize things that’s going to make your day better. They take it personally, don’t they?

Cicero: Oh, absolutely. It’s totally personal. And one of our ENGAGEs, I was talking to a customer and another customer came up to me and they said, “Cicero, I’m struggling because this is saving me so much time. What do I tell my boss?” Because they go, “All right. What do you do with all this time you’re saving?” And the customer that I had standing next to me said, “I’m actually doing my job and I’m able to think about how to do my job better.” Where these people can’t. They’re struggling to just get things done. And now because we’re saving time with different things, whether it’s a formula or a sheet or a dashboard, now they can use that time to actually do their jobs better. And that’s so exciting.

David Nicholson: Yeah. Yeah. Now the correct answer of course to that question is pickleball. Take up pickleball.

Cicero: There you go.

David Nicholson: Use the extra time you save-

Cicero: I like that.

David Nicholson: … to start playing pickleball and you’ll have a more fulfilled, wonderful-

Cicero: And exactly.

David Nicholson: Shout out to my pickleballers.

Cicero: I like that. I like that.

David Nicholson: So what are some other things that are coming down the line that have been announced that you are particularly excited about? Of course, AI is in the air with everything.

Cicero: Oh, yeah. I think AI, especially in the areas of answering questions in formula writing, because with Smartsheet, it’s so powerful the formulas you can do, but that’s something that people hear formula and it’s like a flashback to algebra. And they’re like, “Ugh.” And they freeze. And any way that we can help them make those formulas that change things and the AI is going to do it.

David Nicholson: Can you give me an example of a formula though, and what that would look like? And the first thing I think of is classic spreadsheet.

Cicero: Oh, sure.

David Nicholson: I want you to add up everything in this column and give the result in this cell.

Cicero: It actually can be even easier than that, but harder than that. Let’s say that you are tracking status and your status is based on say percent complete and maybe something else. Well, in a formula, you would use what’s called an if statement. Well, if statement formulas are hard. And that’s one of the things that people actually… It is one of the most used formulas in Smartsheet, but people struggle with it because if you do it just different, it doesn’t work. And with the AI, you just say, “I want to do this if this happens.” And now it gives you that. And so all that struggle now became something productive. And that’s where the AI is really going to help. And then taking it next to say, “I want to see this information from this sheet, how do I do it?” And having that help is like having me sit on their shoulder and helping them with a formula.

David Nicholson: Do you think the average customer will take the position that they would rather have you give them a fish instead of teach them how to fish in that regard? I can imagine a scenario where I might be curious to know how to create a formula that I used to struggle with, and I would want AI to be there as an assistant to help show me how to do it. On the other hand, I can imagine getting to a point where I trust that enough to say, “No. No. Just do it for me.

Cicero: Sure.

David Nicholson: I don’t care how you do it, just get it done.” Do you think people are ready to hand over control, to trust these things?

Cicero: I don’t think they’re necessarily ready, nor should they, because when we’re teaching everybody, we’re teaching them how it happens, what’s going on. And so the AI is a super helper, but you always have to understand what the helper’s doing. And so having that base understanding of those formulas still reinforces that because it validates what they’re doing.

It helps them do it, but they’re always able to troubleshoot to say, “Am I getting really the number that I want?” And so I think it’s that kind of thing. And so these people out here want their hands in it anyways. And so now they’ve got the AI hands wrapped around theirs to help them, and that’s what we want.

David Nicholson: Okay. So you’re at a party and somebody says, “What do you do?” And you say, “Oh, have you ever heard a Smartsheet before?” It’s like, “I’ve heard of Smartsheet before, but no, tell me more.” And you tell them a little about Smartsheet and shockingly, they’re absolutely enthralled even though they’re not in the business of any of this. What are the things that you point out to them that are your favorite features or that are particularly exciting about Smartsheet, in particular, and how it helps for work collaboration?

Cicero: Well, first I’d have to decide what they’re doing because I picked the features that would. But I think overall, if I looked at Smartsheet, I would say it’s the automations, and because the automations take a flat sheet and they make it a living process because you only talk and work with that sheet when it tells you it needs you, or it goes out and gets information from somebody else when it’s needed, you don’t have to. And so taking automations takes that to the whole next level. And when there’s a session that I give that I show them this whole intake, and in the whole session I say, “Not once did I tell you, you had to go to the sheet because it told you when it needed. It asked for what it needed. It told people they had things.” If you do this right, it’s a living process and the automations do that.

David Nicholson: Give us more on that session that you’re talking about. So what’s the elevator pitch on what you show in that session?

Cicero: So that session I call the intake to archive. And I’ve done it for a number of years because the power of Smartsheet also means that when people get in, like you said, they see a sheet. Well, they don’t see the possibility. And it’s very similar to like you tell people, “Oh, Smartsheet’s so easy.” But then you say, “Go do something.” Well, they go, “I don’t know where to start.” And it’s like saying, “Here’s a bunch of bricks, build me a castle.” You go, “Well, I don’t know where to go.” But what I do is I say, “All right. We have an intake solution, now let’s walk that solution.” And how does information come in? Now, who has to hear about it? And so part of that is helping people see what they’re trying to solve because then they can build that solution and their castle the way they want it.

David Nicholson: So it sounds like AI is going to basically amp up all of that that you’re talking about, which is something that I think it’s hard for all of us to completely appreciate how much that’s going to change the nature of work moving forward. But back to ENGAGE as an event. I think there were 4,000 people in the keynote, so thousands of people have come from all over the place to come here. A lot of passionate actual users of the software. What do you think they’re largely looking for moving forward? If you had to characterize what the voice of the customer is in 2024 going into 2025, from a Smartsheet perspective, what are you hearing?

Cicero: Well, all of these people are trying to do their job better. They’re trying to do it faster so they can do more because many of these companies that are out here, they’re being told, “I need to do more with less.” Well, that’s what Smartsheet helps with because it now can drive that so that they’re not overstressed and they have that time to have a life because it takes that away. And that’s really with the AI, with the new way sheets are going to be, with collaboration and the collections. Those are ways that we’re making people’s jobs easier, faster, and they can get things done and go home and have a life. And that’s what I think they’re all looking forward.

David Nicholson: And I would call that life the pickleball life.

Cicero: I like it.

David Nicholson: And I know it sounds like, I know I’m being silly, but sincerely, I like to hear about a company philosophy that says we’re going to make the lives of the users of our software better, not just more productive.

Cicero: Yeah.

David Nicholson: I can make people more productive with a big stick.

Cicero: Oh, yeah.

David Nicholson: But when it comes to balancing work and life, it’s critically important. And that’s something that I think has been very interesting hearing the conversations here. This idea of workplace productivity isn’t just about squeezing more blood out of every rock.

Cicero: No. It’s about giving people the time they need to be them.

David Nicholson: Yeah. Well, Cicero, thank you so much for being here.

Cicero: Thank you. I appreciate it.

David Nicholson: It’s been a pleasure. And again, I’ve got to give a shout out to the Smartsheet.

Cicero: Sure.

David Nicholson: And folks at home can’t see, he has actually matching shoes on, which is I am a fan of fashion. So Cicero, Smartsheet-

Cicero: Thank you.

David Nicholson: … thanks again from Smartsheet ENGAGE in Seattle. Lovely, beautiful Seattle. I love the rain. Dave Nicholson here from Six Five Media On the Road.