Behind the Cloud The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry

by Benioff, Marc; Adler, Carlye

• ISBN13: 9780470521168
• ISBN10: 0470521163
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-19
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The insider's view of how Salesforce.com grew from an idea to a billion-dollar company in less than a decade. How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company with a billion dollars in revenue? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, Chairman, and CEO of Salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how Salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $52 billion-dollar on-demand industry, this book helps business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Success On Demand, Benioff offers his team's winning playbook and shares the unconventional-yet-common-sense-strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

Author Biography

Marc R. Benioff is the chairman and CEO of salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), which he cofounded in 1999. Under Benioff's direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the market and technology leader in enterprise cloud computing. Salesforce.com has received a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, been lauded as one of BusinessWeek's Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, been named No. 7 on the Wired 40, was selected for the past two years as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes, and been voted one of the world's most ethical companies by Business Ethics Magazine. Benioff is the recipient of many awards for pioneering innovation, including the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2000, Benioff launched the Salesforce.com Foundation—now a multimillion-dollar global organization. He lives in San Francisco.

Carlye Adler is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in BusinessWeek, Departures, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, Portfolio, Wired, and Time. She cowrote, with Marc Benioff, The Business of Changing the World. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell	p. xi
Introduction	p. xvii
The Start-Up Playbook: How to Turn a Simple Idea into a High-Growth Company	p. 1
Allow Yourself Time to Recharge	p. 1
Have a Big Dream	p. 3
Believe in Yourself	p. 5
Trust a Select Few with Your Idea and Listen to Their Advice	p. 7
Pursue Top Talent as If Your Success Depended on It	p. 8
Sell Your Idea to Skeptics and Respond Calmly to Critics	p. 9
Define Your Values and Culture Up Front	p. 11
Work Only on What Is Important	p. 12
Listen to Your Prospective Customers	p. 13
Defy Convention	p. 14
Have-and Listen to-a Trusted Mentor	p. 14
Hire the Best Players You Know	p. 15
Be Willing to Take a Risk-No Hedging	p. 18
Think Bigger	p. 20
The Marketing Playbook: How to Cut Through the Noise and Pitch the Bigger Picture	p. 23
Position Yourself	p. 23
Party with a Purpose	p. 25
Create a Persona	p. 27
Differentiate, Differentiate, Differentiate	p. 28
Make Every Employee a Key Player on the Marketing Team, and Ensure Everyone Is On Message	p. 33
Always, Always Go After Goliath	p. 34
Tactics Dictate Strategy	p. 37
Engage the Market Leader	p. 39
Reporters Are Writers; Tell Them a Story	p. 40
Cultivate Relationships with Select Journalists	p. 41
Make Your Own Metaphors	p. 44
No Sacred Cows	p. 44
The Events Playbook: How to Use Events to Build Buzz and Drive Business	p. 47
Feed the Word-of-Mouth Phenomenon	p. 47
Build Street Teams and Leverage Testimony	p. 49
Sell to the End User	p. 52
The Event Is the Message	p. 54
Reduce Costs and Increase Impact	p. 57
Always Stay in the Forefront	p. 60
The Truth About Competition (It Is Good for Everyone)	p. 60
Be Prepared for Every Scenario...and Have Fun	p. 61
Seize Unlikely Opportunities to Stay Relevant	p. 63
Stay Scrappy...but Not Too Scrappy	p. 65
The Sales Playbook: How to Energize Your Customers into a Million-Member Sales Team	p. 67
Give It Away	p. 67
Win First Customers by Treating Them Like Partners	p. 69
Let Your Web Site Be a Sales Rep	p. 72
Make Every Customer a Member of Your Sales Team	p. 73
Telesales Works (Even Though Everyone Thinks It Doesn't)	p. 76
Don't Dis Your First Product with a Discount	p. 78
Sales Is a Numbers Game	p. 79
Segment the Markets	p. 80
Leverage Times of Change	p. 82
Your Seeds Are Sown, so Grow, Grow, Grow	p. 86
Land and Expand	p. 95
Abandon Strategies That No Longer Serve You	p. 96
Old Customers Need Love	p. 97
Add It On and Add It Up	p. 98
Success Is the Number One Selling Feature	p. 100
The Technology Playbook: How to Develop Products Users Love	p. 103
Have the Courage to Pursue Your Innovation-Before It Is Obvious to the Market	p. 103
Invest in the Long Term with a Prototype That Sets a Strong Foundation	p. 106
Follow the Lead of Companies That Are Loved by Their Customers	p. 107
Don't Do It All Yourself; Reuse, Don't Rebuild	p. 109
Embrace Transparency and Build Trust	p. 110
Let Your Customers Drive Innovation	p. 115
Make It Easy for Customers to Adopt	p. 119
Transcend Technical Paradigms	p. 120
Provide a Marketplace for Solutions	p. 125
Harness Customers' Ideas	p. 127
Develop Communities of Collaboration (aka Love Everybody)	p. 131
Evolve by Intelligent Reaction	p. 132
The Corporate Philanthropy Playbook: How to Make Your Company About More Than Just the Bottom Line	p. 135
The Business of Business Is More Than Business	p. 135
Integrate Philanthropy from the Beginning	p. 139
Make Your Foundation Part of Your Business Model	p. 140
Choose a Cause That Makes Sense and Get Experts on Board	p. 144
Share the Model	p. 146
Build a Great Program by Listening to the Constituents	p. 148
Create a Self-Sustaining Model	p. 153
Share Your Most Valuable Resources-Your Product and Your People	p. 156
Involve Your Partners, Your Vendors, Your Network	p. 159
Let Employees Inspire the Foundation	p. 161
Have Your Foundation Mimic Your Business	p. 166
The Global Playbook: How to Launch Your Product and Introduce Your Model to New Markets	p. 169
Build Global Capabilities into Your Product	p. 169
Inject Local Leaders with Your Corporate DNA	p. 170
Choose Your Headquarters and Territories Wisely	p. 172
Box Above Your Weight	p. 175
Scale Without Overspending	p. 176
Understand Sequential Growth	p. 177
Uphold a One-Company Attitude Across Borders	p. 178
Follow Strategy, Not Opportunity	p. 179
Going Far? Take a Partner. Going Fast? Go Alone	p. 180
Fine-Tune Your International Strategy	p. 182
Send Missionaries to Build New Markets	p. 186
Handle Global Disputes with Diplomacy (aka Light and Love)	p. 188
Edit an Overarching Outlook	p. 192
Bring Old Tricks to New Regions	p. 196
Don't Use a "Seagull Approach"; the Secret to Global Success Is Commitment	p. 198
The Finance Playbook: How to Raise Capital, Create a Return, and Never Sell Your Soul	p. 201
Don't Underestimate Your Financial Needs	p. 201
Consider Fundraising Strategies Other Than Venture Capital	p. 203
Use Internet Models to Reduce Start-Up Costs	p. 206
Set Yourself Up Properly from the Beginning, Then Allow Your Financial Model to Evolve	p. 207
Measure a Fast-Growing Company on Revenue, Not Profitability	p. 208
Build a First-Class Financial Team	p. 209
Be Innovative and Edgy in Everything You Do-Except When It Comes to Your Finances	p. 210
When It Comes to Compliance, Always Play by the Rules	p. 215
Focus on the Future	p. 218
Allow for Change as Your Company Grows	p. 220
The Leadership Playbook: How to Create Alignment-the Key to Organizational Success	p. 225
Use V2MOM to Focus Your Goals and Align Your Organization	p. 225
Use a Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach	p. 230
Build a Recruiting Culture	p. 233
Recruiting Is Sales	p. 236
Keep Your Standards High as You Grow	p. 239
How to Retain Top Talent	p. 242
The Importance of Mahalo	p. 244
Foster Loyalty by Doing the Right Thing	p. 246
Challenge Your Best People with New Opportunities	p. 247
Solicit Employee Feedback-and Act On It	p. 249
Leverage Everything	p. 252
The Final Play	p. 255
Make Everyone Successful	p. 255
Notes	p. 261
Acknowledgments	p. 265
About the Authors	p. 269
Index	p. 271
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