What does a still-young former BT chief do next?
After leaving the telecoms group, Gavin Patterson joined Silicon Valley’s Salesforce — and is ready to learn
Coronavirus has thrown up some unusual meetings. But few have been stranger than my experience of interviewing former BT boss turned Salesforce sales chief Gavin Patterson, on a video call as he sits in the back of his Audi A8 outside a west London restaurant.
When we speak, he says he has only been out of the house half a dozen times since the coronavirus lockdown. Crucially, this has delayed his arrival in the US, where the Surrey-based executive was due to fly for his new job as chief revenue officer for Salesforce in San Francisco.
Mr Patterson, who started the job on August 1, is unfazed. “In effect, it [the pandemic] has been a great leveller for the [executive] team because everybody is dialling in, everybody’s operating on Zoom. The fact that I can’t travel has not really limited our ability to do business.”
The CRO position is an unexpected next act at the $183bn tech group for Mr Patterson, who at 52 is one of the FTSE 100’s younger former chief executives. The promotions through the software-as-a-service provider have come quickly after he took a part-time role last year as Emea chair to help Salesforce bring together an advisory panel in the region.
This then became an executive role looking after the company’s non-US operations, making him part of the small band of senior bosses reporting directly to Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s founder.
Driving sales is an important role for a company that has registered a 20 per cent increase in compound annual growth every year since it was founded 20 years ago. “It’s a business that is designed for growth. The big challenge is how do you keep growing at 20 per cent a year?”
Coronavirus has caused disruption that has made companies look again at digital adoption, says Mr Patterson, who adds that his network of relationships in boardrooms around the world attracted the attention of Mr Benioff, whom he knew as a customer from his time at BT.
“If anything, digital transformation has become more important. If you don’t have a strong digital transformation strategy then you will get left behind,” he says. “Salesforce has the best products in each of these markets and the imperative has increased. If you are a market leader in CRM [customer relationship management], frankly this is an opportunity to accelerate growth. International has more scope to grow than the US but I expect the US to grow as well.”
Even on a small mobile screen, Mr Patterson still looks the same as he did at BT, where he favoured plunging open-neck tailored shirts and kept his hair long. During his initial years as BT’s CEO, the casual look helped position him as a new broom in the dowdy former public utility.
During his leadership, from 2013 to early 2019, he innovated with moves such as the blockbuster takeover of mobile operator EE, and committed BT to a costly but defining move into top-tier football broadcasting.
But the “old” BT proved hard to shake. Fraud was discovered in BT’s Italian operations — from before his time, he says, but discovered on his watch. Life was made difficult by demanding investors and pension holders and, as ever with the former state telecoms incumbent, the constant regulatory battles that almost led to the forced split of its network.
“The best of times and the worst of times,” is how Mr Patterson describes it now. “The first four years, everything seemed to go well, and business returned to growth [but] as with all these things the weather turns.” He was sacked in June 2018 but stayed on until his successor Philip Jansen was appointed.
His biggest challenge had become managing the business’s many stakeholders. “It is a brutal job in many ways. Very challenging trying to balance the expectations of government, pension holders, customers, shareholders, employees.”
Now, he realises, “there isn’t a point where you can meet all their needs at the same time”. But, looking back, he says: “We did the right thing at the right time and I stand by it,” pointing to lessons learnt about the need to quickly set a strategy not dependent on “externalities” such as government whims. “Communication is critical,” he adds, saying that he would carry this lesson into the new Salesforce role. In a “period of anxiety for everybody . . . providing clarity, direction and certainty where you can is a high priority”.
Talking about some of the criticism that came in later years at BT, he says: “Actually, I didn’t feel it. I knew that it was just part of the job and I had to get on with it.” It was, however, not possible to ignore it completely. “I can’t deny there are moments you feel extremely lonely and occasionally things are unfair,” he says.
“You need to make sure that you don’t take it all too personally, even though a lot of it is extremely personal. And recognise that it’s just the chapter in your life.”
Then came a different sort of challenge. “Having been a CEO of a listed company, relatively young, it is quite difficult to find something on the executive front you want to do afterwards that feels like progression,” says Mr Patterson.
“Because strangely doing another CEO job doesn’t necessarily meet that brief and certainly not doing one in a smaller company.”
After BT, he took some time out, watching his beloved Liverpool football club and bumping into the telecoms crowd at events such as the Glastonbury music festival. “You do think, ‘Well, what am I going to do? I’m only halfway through my life’.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted another executive role, instead thinking about a portfolio career, but then Mr Benioff came calling.
Mr Patterson is not coming cold to the sometimes idiosyncratic world of Silicon Valley. He has attended the 170,000-strong “Dreamforce” software conference held by Salesforce in San Francisco, which features the sort of enthusiastic cheerleading by “Trailblazers” — customers and partners using its platform — that could make a Briton blush.
“I've been visiting Silicon Valley for 20 years and every time I’ve come back feeling rejuvenated by the experience, there’s just a different mindset,” Mr Patterson says.
“Decisions are made real time with real time data, including AI components that you are effectively steering in the way you would steer a car down a motorway. I can’t remember reading a paper, a board paper or an exact paper yet. You have to be close to customers and know what they’re thinking.”
In comparison, BT was “built on board papers . . . honed and developed and then presented”.
He sees Salesforce as a “great experience . . . and I feel I can learn”, before adding, with a nod to the past, “I can’t deny it’s refreshing to be in growth markets again, because as you and I both know telcos are not known for growth.”
Salesforce’s agility is helping it deal with the current crisis, he adds. “I don’t think the company’s missed a beat in spite of not having any face to face events.”
A new home on the West Coast awaits when he returns to international travel, leaving behind his three children at various stages of education as well as regular trips to Anfield. He is confident he can keep watching Premier League matches, saying four games a day on Saturdays were now possible with a 4am start. “It’s going to be a bit of a challenge but, you know . . . ”