From College Football to Coaching

Nick Johnston is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Salesforce, where he leads strategic relationships with major technology companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google, IBM, and Workday. In this conversation recorded during Dreamforce 2025, Nick shares how Salesforce closed 12,500 Agentforce deals and navigated the complexities of announcing major partnerships like the expanded OpenAI integration that brings Salesforce's Agentforce 360 directly into ChatGPT. He reveals his unique approach to building win-win partnerships grounded in customer demand rather than competitive positioning.

Key Topics Covered:

• How Salesforce builds customer-driven partnerships with tech giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, and Google
• The three core hiring values that create high-performing partnership teams: low ego, high curiosity, and grit
• Why uncomfortable conversations are essential for building trust and creating impactful partnerships
• Using AI tools to position partnership proposals and draft joint press releases with strategic clarity
• The Dreamforce partnership strategy and how compelling events drive deal execution
• Career lessons from coaching varsity football wide receivers and celebrating team achievement over personal wins
• Living in Buenos Aires for six months and the value of full cultural immersion for partnership work
• Why getting customer-facing experience early in your career is the best foundation for any role
• The interview question that reveals hero culture versus team players in partnership roles
• Balancing partnership work across multiple departments including product, marketing, operations, and sales
• How human experience will become the ultimate competitive moat as AI automates routine tasks
• The "be great" daily philosophy and applying the same standards to yourself that you set for your team

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 Nick Johnston

Nick Johnston is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Salesforce, where he has spent over 12 years advancing from Customer Success Director to leading strategic technology partnerships. 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. Nick has been instrumental in establishing major partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google, IBM, Workday, and other leading technology companies to deliver integrated customer experiences through Salesforce's Agentforce 360 platform.

ransformation and agentic AI.

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