Low Ego, High Grit: How Salesforce Lands MASSIVE AI Partnerships | Nick Johnston

How Salesforce Builds Customer-Driven AI Partnerships at Scale

Recorded during Dreamforce 2025, this episode features Nick Johnston, SVP of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Salesforce, on how the company structures and executes high-impact technology partnerships with firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google, IBM, and Workday.

Nick explains how Salesforce closed 12,500 Agentforce deals and what it takes to announce complex, multi-party integrations—such as the expanded OpenAI collaboration that brings Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 directly into ChatGPT—without losing focus on customer outcomes.

The conversation also covers leadership and team-building in partnership organizations, from hiring for low ego, high curiosity, and grit to embracing difficult conversations that strengthen trust across product, marketing, operations, and sales.

Key Topics Covered:

• Building partnerships based on customer demand rather than competitive positioning
• How Salesforce approaches strategic relationships with major technology companies
• Hiring for high-performing partnership teams: low ego, high curiosity, and grit
• Why uncomfortable conversations are necessary to create trust and durable collaboration
• Using AI tools to shape partnership narratives and draft joint press releases
• Dreamforce partnership execution and how compelling events drive deal momentum
• Lessons from coaching varsity football and emphasizing team achievement over individual wins
• The value of full cultural immersion (including six months in Buenos Aires) for partnership work
• Why early customer-facing experience is foundational for long-term career growth
• Identifying “hero culture” versus true team players during partnership interviews
• Coordinating partnership work across product, marketing, operations, and sales
• How human experience becomes a competitive moat as AI automates routine work

Episode Timestamps:

03:07 - From college football to coaching varsity wide receivers at Torrey Pines High School in 2006
05:47 - The vibes and trust mentality: lessons from undersized teams that outperform expectations
07:26 - Three core hiring values: low ego, high curiosity, and grit in partnership teams
09:15 - Six months in Buenos Aires learning Spanish through full immersion with Spencer Stuart
12:49 - Customer-driven partnership strategy: building frameworks from market demand to product integration
16:15 - The customer-centric approach at Dreamforce and delivering the Agentforce agenda with partners
18:04 - Using AI to write joint press releases, position partnerships, and create mutually beneficial proposals
21:27 - Career advice for new graduates: get as close to the customer as possible in sales or customer success roles
24:56 - Why human experience and the arts will be the ultimate differentiator as AI automates work
28:02 - Parenting lessons and the "be great" daily motto for building confidence and pushing through challenges
29:06 - Why do you do what you do: achieving hard things in team settings and making family proud

About the Guest:

Nick Johnston is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Salesforce. Over more than 12 years at the company, he advanced from Customer Success Director to leading strategic technology partnerships, helping establish relationships with OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google, IBM, Workday, and other major partners supporting Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 platform.

He holds an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and a BA with honors in International Relations from UC Davis, where he also played college football.

About the Company:

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform company that provides cloud-based software for sales, service, marketing, commerce, and data. In this episode, Salesforce’s partnership strategy is discussed in the context of Agentforce 360 and its integrations with leading AI and cloud technology providers.