Over my vacation a week or so ago, I read Behind The Cloud The untold story of salesforce.com by Marc Benioff & Carlye Adler.
(published by Josey-Bass - ISBN978-0-470-52116-8)
It was an interesting read following at a high level how Mr. Benioff and team formed Salesforce.com, got it started, and how it exploded into the poster child for Software as a Service (Saas) or a piece of what we call ‘cloud computing’.
Each chapter describes the issues, decisions and actions that were taken along their road to growth. Call it a road map of what worked for them.
There are two really key points in the text that we all should be thinking about.
First, in selling the product, Salesforce.com did not sell the features 0f what their product could do, they evangelized the concept of Saas, selling the experience & advantage, not the product. In fact in their book The Power Of Pull, Hagell, Seely Brown & Davisson state that 80% of Marc Benioff’s communication was educating – not selling the product.
There was also a huge second recurring theme threaded throughout the text;
People People People
‘Nuff Said