Last week was the Dreamforce show. For those of you who don't use Salesforce, it's the annual user conference and this post may not appeal to you whatsoever. Worry not, I've got some cool posts coming up. Anyhoo, MarketingSherpa, an amazing site for all things online marketing-related, asked for a show wrap up, so here it is as published on their site:
SUMMARY
Do you know what marketing
ideas your sales reps are being exposed to? Last week, 4,250 sales
execs attended salesforce.com's annual user get-together, the
dreamforce expo, where they discussed far more about marketing than you
might expect.
Here's MarketingSherpa's behind-the-scenes show report from one of the
750 marketers who also attended:
By MarketingSherpa Reader Janine Popick, President & CEO VerticalResponse
Last week I attended (and spoke at) Dreamforce Expo, Salesforce.com's annual user conference in San Francisco.
It's
turning into one of the most influential shows in business-to-business
sales and marketing. Yet, only about 15% of attendees this year were
from the marketing department. Here are my show notes from a marketing
perspective for my fellow MarketingSherpa readers who couldn’t make it:
Quick Show Outline:
In
his keynote, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff asked how many attendees
were existing salesforce.com customers, and it seemed like 85% of the
5,000 people in the audience raised their hands.
Attendees broke into three groups:
- Sales managers wanting to learn how to better use CRM to convert leads
- Administrators of the salesforce.com platform
- Small business owners
- Marketers responsible for filling the lead pipeline
There were also about 160 partners exhibiting on the show floor.
Marketing Buzz Around the Show: 3 Points
#1. Marketing automation.
Although
a hot topic, marketers don’t want to pay big bucks for it. They want
drip campaigns and they want it integrated into their CRM system. Any
CRM system that doesn't integrate with email is on its way out.
#2. Landing page integration.
This
seemed to be hot when integrated with a CRM solution, so companies can
track exactly where visitors go from their campaigns. The data needs to
be is updated right into your CRM system. It solves problems because
SMBs don’t have the resources to hire creatives and enterprise
customers are fighting in-house for them.
#3. Marketers want to learn from marketers.
In
general, marketers attended the sessions! Somewhat of a surprise, since
at some other shows people aren’t so crazy about attending sessions
(instead, networking in hallways and on the floor). At dreamforce,
there seemed to be a general “want” to learn more about how to improve
CRM.
Note to other vendors -- use more client-presented case
studies at your user conference instead of endless pitches from your
own management and sales team.
The addition of the Appy Awards
(celebrating new salesforce applications) was a brilliant idea,
rewarding mostly customers who do some great implementations and great
customizations and a few partners doing some great things with the API.
Feeling on the Show Floor: Salesforce Community Feels Like Apple Users
At
first, I didn’t know how to feel about the layout of the show floor,
which broke partners out by “Sales,” “Marketing,” “Financial Services”
and “Business Productivity.” But in reality, it saved attendees a lot
of time. It was like a grocery store, with the aisles clearly marked.
People were checking off their partner grocery list.
The floor
setup also established the very middle as the salesforce “campground.”
The interesting thing was that immediately after demos if someone were
interested in a specific feature, they sent them directly to the
appropriate partner. (That's a clever layout other user conferences
should steal.)
Contrary to other shows we attend, people come to Dreamforce with a mission. They do their homework with questions to ask
partners to solve real problems. You can be three deep at your booth at
times instead of having to drag people in with hokey giveaways.
Some
said it was good that there were more salesforce customers than
prospects because customers understand the need to plug in more
functionality, while prospects don’t necessarily understand the need
until they have already deployed and used salesforce for a while.
Chris
Hoffman from Triple Tree told me that this was their fourth Dreamforce
(ours, too) and that while the early days had a lot of solutions
looking for a problem, now it’s real problems looking for great
solutions.
All in all, the show is a lovefest. It is extremely
energetic. You’re constantly moving and talking, whether your customer
is a salesforce user or a partner. There are many deals done among
partners as well. The zealotry of the Salesforce community feels like
that of Apple users.
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