My vision was to make software
easier to
purchase, simpler to use, and more democratic without the
com-plexities of installation, maintenance, and constant upgrades.
(p.3)
“The number-one mistake
entrepreneurs make is that they
hold their ideas too closely to
their chest,” Bobby said. “Their
destiny is their destiny,
though. If they share their ideas, others
can help make it happen.”
(p.7)
My summers at Apple had taught me
that the secret to
encouraging creativity and producing the best
possible product
was to keep people fulfilled and happy. (p.11)
So focus on the 20 percent that
makes
80 percent of the difference. (p.13)
Creating an attractive user
interface that people enjoy
using is the key to building a truly
great product. (p.14)
What I learned from Larry:
Always have a vision.
Be passionate.
Act confident, even when you’re
not.
Think of it as you want it, not as
it is!
Don’t let others sway you from
your point of view.
See things in the present, even if
they are in the future.
Don’t give others your power.
Ever.
(p.16)
Position yourself either as the
leader or
against the leader in your industry. Every experience you
give
a journalist or potential customer must explain why you are
different and incorporate a clear call to action. (p.25)
I was confident that
salesforce.com
would be very profitable. In order to get there,
though, we
needed to build a powerful brand behind our great
service. (p.26)
Anyone can create a persona, but
it takes time and energy
to do it properly. Your ‘‘character’’
must fit with your company’s
story to bolster your brand. It must
be heartfelt and authentic to
who you are if it is to be
successful. It should not be mere artifice.(p.28)
Although I loved the NO SOFTWARE
logo immediately, almost
everyone else hated it. ...
Although
research and logic
were behind some of their concerns, I felt that
their arguments
were overruled by the most important rule in
marketing—the
necessity to differentiate your brand. (p.29)
What a company can own, however,
is a personality.
We own
NO SOFTWARE —not
because we are the
only one doing
it but because we were the first to think it was
important to
customers. (p.32)
Over time, as we grew, we required
that all customer-facing
employees become ‘‘certified’’ in
how to position the service and
how to deliver our messages. We
taught everyone how to defend
the messages against objections,
which made them feel more
prepared and confident. (p.34)
Salesforce.com only acknowledged
one
competitor—the market leader. (p.34)
Don’t ever let the competition
make you angry.
You must have clarity of mind to make your own
decisions—not
the ones that your competitors want you to make.
You must be
transparent to the competition. See, recognize, and
understand
what your competitor is doing. (p.40)
No doubt,
sending carefully
chosen members of the press well-crafted office
memos is one more
way to get your story told. (p.42)
It’s significantly cheaper to
encourage a journalist to write a story than
it is to buy an ad in
the Wall Street Journal,... (p.43)
... after seeing this unfold at
event after event, we began
to recognize what was happening: people
weren’t attending these
events to meet us. They were coming to
meet other people using
the product. (p.50)
Salesforce.com customers are
mostly sales, marketing, or customer support people, the people who
use traditional enterprise
software products. Yet traditional
enterprise software companies
had never marketed to these people.
Enterprise software companies target the executives who control the
budget. (p.52)
Selecting the right site is
important—the location
should be one that reflects what you want
to say about your
brand. (p.54)
We rely on the quality of
the
product and provide an opportunity for the product to
be discussed.
The most effective selling is done not by a sales
team but by
people you don’t even know who are talking about
your products
without your being aware of it. (p.58)
A market doesn’t exist until
there is a competitor, and
ideally two or three competitors.
(p.61)
Most of all, our smaller
competitor’s stunt didn’t work because we never forgot or
underestimated the lessons we’ve
learned. We’ve seen what
happens when bigger companies act
defensively and validate small
competitors. No one should ever
make that mistake. (p.65)
As we went against conventional
wisdom, we found the
secret to being successful in the technology
industry. Companies
must not only see innovation before it is
obvious to the market
but also have the courage to pursue that
innovation years before
it’s accepted, or even understood.
(p.106)
When it came to building
innovative technology, we took a bet
on a few existing things.
First, we took a big bet on the Internet, and on Java as the
programming language for the Internet.
Second, we relied on the
Oracle database. (p.109)
The site—located at
trust.salesforce.com—offers real-time
information on system
performance with up-to-the minute information on planned
maintenance, historical information on
transaction volume and
speed, reports on current and recent
phishing and malware attempts,
and information on new security technologies and the best security
practices. (p.113)
Today, if our servers are
down—even for twenty minutes—we
call our top customers. (p.114)
About thirty minutes after the
awful phone call, a battalion
of U.S. Marines swept into the
school. Our team was caught by
surprise when they said they were
there to install the computers.
Although there was relief in
knowing that this force would get
the job done, it didn’t give me
much solace. Oracle had its own
army of fifty thousand tech-savvy
employees, several thousand
of them just a few miles away; why did
we require the Marines’
assistance to set up computers in a
middle school? (p.139)
I began to consider how to make a
philanthropic program
part of a company’s DNA. I knew that if we
had been able to draw
on Oracle’s full assets—its employees,
customers, products,
money, and partners—we could have made a
much more
substantial contribution. This idea became a passion of
mine,
and it further ignited my interest in starting my own
company. (p.139)
We understood
that although we
would not immediately see the cash for
this commitment, we needed
to take a long-term approach.
This eventually led to a 1 percent
product initiative (whereby
we donate the salesforce.com service in
lieu of profits)—a
contribution that we’ve since realized can
have a much greater
impact on a nonprofit organization (by helping
it scale) than a
cash donation might have. (p.144)
One way to get your philanthropic
programs started easily is to begin
by providing your product or
service for free or at a dramatically
discounted rate to
nonprofits. Gather a team of people to think
creatively about how
your product or service might help answer a
social problem or move
a nonprofit’s mission forward. (p.158)
The foundation has made us a
better company. It has served as a
tool for collaboration with
other companies. It has made our
employees more fulfilled, more
productive, and more loyal. (p.167)
This idea stemmed from my work at
Oracle with
principal technologist Yoshi Oikawa; it demonstrated
that global
capabilities were not an add-on feature but an
intrinsic part of
our service. (p.170)
The market loved the David versus
Goliath strategy,
and we launched the business in Europe by using
the same
tactics that dictated our strategies in the United States:
free
trials, building relationships with members of the press, and
encouraging customer evangelism. (p.173)
I had loved working in Japan when
I was at Oracle and had always considered
salesforce.com’s
international focus on Japan a high priority. It
was the
second-largest IT market in the world, and I knew that
Japanese
businesses could benefit from our service. (p.179)
Whereas we were able to
start
with smaller companies in the United States and Europe,
the
top-down model is the way to succeed in Japan, where the
largest
companies provide the most powerful references. (p.186)
The end goal is
always for the
international business to be run by local leaders.
However, during
the earlier stages of international expansion,
tapping two leaders
with different experiences is an effective way
to lay the right
foundation for a company. (p.186)
Many U.S.
companies use Australia
as a gateway. The demographics are
similar to those in the United
States, the market is made up of
early adopters, and the similar
time zone and close proximity to
Asia make it easy to do business
with the rest of the region. (p.188)
Technology companies have
historically centered their Asia-Pacific operations in Singapore,
making the area rich with tech-savvy talent. Furthermore, the
city-state’s high standards of education and emphasis on bilingual
or trilingual skills meant that candidates were often fluent
in
three or more languages, making them valuable across various
geographies. (p.194)
In Asia,
business is conducted
face-to-face, and anyone with whom we
wanted to do business
expected to see us a lot more often than
we had first planned.
(p.199)
V2MOM enabled me to clarify what I
was doing and
communicate it to the entire company as well. The
vision helped
us define what we wanted to do. The values
established what
was most important about that vision; it set the
principles and
beliefs that guided it (in priority). The methods
illustrated how
we would get the job done by outlining the actions
and the
steps that everyone needed to take. The obstacles
identified the
challenges, problems, and issues we would have to
overcome
to achieve our vision. Finally, the measures specified the
actual
result we aimed to achieve; often this was defined as a
numerical
outcome. Combined, V2MOM gave us a detailed map of where
we were going as well as a compass to direct us there. (p.226)
We now collaborate on the
corporate V2MOM with all
salesforce.com employees through
IdeaExchange, a social networking tool that employees use to
contribute their ideas as
well as promote and comment on others’
ideas. Most recently,
when our V2MOM went live on IdeaExchange, we
received
feedback from more than half of the company’s employees
over
a two-week period. (p.231)
Although most start-ups don’t
hire a dedicated HR person right away, doing so made sense to me because acquiring the right
talent is the most important key
to growth. (p.233)
... the better the developers
you
have, the better the product you build. The more developers you
have, the more products you can build. (p.233)
Asking candidates to present
allows us to see
how they perform on the fly, and especially how
deftly they
can handle curve balls. It works on a more subtle
level, too.
Preparation demonstrates how badly candidates want to
be
with us. We note whether or not they have been to our Web
site.
Are they familiar with our products? Do they know our
customers?
(p.235)
If we move into a
new market or a
new product, I want the most knowledgeable
person—the guru—on
our side. Once the guru articulates the
strategy, he or she makes
the necessary hires and invests the
resources necessary to execute
it. (p.239)
Conventional wisdom says you
should hire people who are not like
you. That’s wrong. Hire
people who are like you, only better. (p.240)
It’s very important for hiring
to be consensus driven. To
that end, we use the ‘‘all yes’’
rule. If a candidate meets ten people
and nine say yes and one says
no, that candidate will not work
at our company (p.242)
Brands are built and sustained on
consistency. Whether employees realize it or not, everyone in a
company interfaces with customers in one way or another, and
their
attitude will affect the brand. A wrong message or attitude
from
one person has the potential to dilute our brand, so we try
to make
sure everyone is in alignment from the beginning. (p.244)
After several months, the
Ebersoles went back to
Atlanta. Everyone is doing great now, and
that’s what’s most
important, but as a result of helping his
family in a difficult
time, we earned the 100 percent loyalty of a
valued employee.
‘‘Salesforce.com has made this situation as
good as it could have
been,’’ Scott said. ‘‘I’ve always
felt that I have their support, and
it’s made me to want to work
even harder to give back.’’ (p.247)
Using education as a way to extend
our service and expand
our capabilities is our strategy for future
growth. It comes down
to simple mathematics: we can hire one
hundred developers to
develop new functionality, or we can hire ten
trainers who have
the capacity to train thousands of developers.
Leveraging the
power of trainers has allowed us to have thousands
of developers
creating new functionality, sharing it in our online
marketplace,
and enabling us to offer a more comprehensive service
to our
customers. (p.253)
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