In the annals of technology, the latest phenomenon to get the
attention of the industry's powerful hype machine is cloud
computing. This is the idea that instead of people and companies
owning and managing the computers and marketing automation
software that perform many of their everyday tasks, much of that
technological scut work will be handled by others, out of sight,
in the mists. People can tap the power of the sales automation
cloud from any computer or gizmo that's attached to the
Internet.
This new style of computing is generating a new kind of tech
company. In his book Behind the Cloud, Salesforce.com Sales CRM
Chief Executive Marc Benioff explains how he built one of those
outfits—the world's most successful business-to-business sales
force automation cloud-computing company.
Salesforce.com sells an online sales force management service
that helps businesses manage sales, customer service, course,
workshop and marketing automation functions. The 10-year-old San
Francisco company topped $1 billion in revenues last fiscal year
and is growing at 20% this year in spite of the recession.
Benioff's reward for piloting this buster of the traditional
business model is an 11% stake worth more than $800 million.
Behind the Cloud is both a how-we-did-it account and a how-to
class for entrepreneurs. (It's also a fun read for anybody who
is fascinated with the world of startups.) In 111 "playbook"
lessons, co-authors Benioff and freelance writer Carlye Adler
take the reader through Salesforce.com's history and its ways of
doing business. To Silicon Valley cognoscenti, many of the
lessons will be familiar. But there's enough new here to make
the volume well worth reading. And even when the advice is
familiar, Benioff offers the same service his cloud sales
automation service provides: He makes it user-friendly.
Benioff and a handful of colleagues started Salesforce.com in a
tiny San Francisco apartment in 1999 with the idea of creating
corporate software and training courses and seminars that would
be as simple to use as Amazon.com. But while Salesforce.com was
born in the dot-com era and Benioff has a reputation as a gonzo
marketer, Salesforce.com was not built on overblown promises
like so many of its Internet brethren. That explains why it the
sales automation company survived the dot-com bust and is
thriving in spite of the Great Recession.
Salesforce.com has succeeded mainly because it assiduously
caters to its customers.
That's a requirement for cloud-computing companies: Since CRM
services customers are buying a service rather than a product,
they can walk away if they're not satisfied. Salesforce.com
courts its customers in a long list of ways, from offering
frequent seminar and classes to intimate dinners at tony
restaurants—including New York's tough-to-book Per Se.
In cloud computing, client feedback is vital. One of
Salesforce.com's most effective means of getting it is Play #61:
Harness Customers' Ideas. The company created a Web site,
IdeaExchange, where it introduces and solicits suggestions and
has received more than a quarter of a million comments. It even
invited customers to vote on a possible name change. Their vote:
Stick with Salesforce.com.
Benioff could have written an entire course about marketing.
This one is peppered with ideas that once seemed over the top
but turned out to work. Early on, for example, Benioff hired
actors to pose as protesters outside a user workshop held by
larger rival Siebel Systems. They chanted that traditional
software was "obsolete" while a fake TV crew interviewed
passersby. The stunt generated a lot of press—aka, free
advertising.
Benioff still faces plenty of challenges. The cloud competition
is just beginning. But Behind the Cloud paints a clear picture
of what it takes to succeed in a world where many of the old
rules no longer apply.
Source: Steve Hamm
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Related: Salesforce.com CRM
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