The Talking Leadership interview. How communication and presentation skills helped salesforce.com go from an idea to a $1 billion company.
Marc Benioff started a software revolution and told great stories along the way. “Communication is probably the most essential part of my job,” Benioff recently told me in an interview to promote his new book, Behind the Cloud. Benioff started salesforce.com in a San Francisco apartment in 1999. Today, it generates $1 billion a year in revenue and pioneered the software as a service (SaaS) industry. Whether you own a small business, run a large company, or have the next great idea, this interview offers some great advice on communicating the vision behind your brand.
TL (Talking Leadership): What role did communication skills play in building salesforce.com from a startup in a San Francisco apartment to one of the fastest growing software companies?
MB (Marc Benioff): Communication skills play a huge role. I often say communication is probably the most essential part of my job. That’s always been the case. We chose to communicate openly—to really discuss what was working and what wasn’t. It has never been about communicating with just a few employees. Since the beginning, we’ve also communicated with potential customers. We invited them to come in and see what we were working on. We asked them to test it and we made changes based on what they said. For example, we found out the “create an account” button was in the wrong place. Having this kind of inclusive communication (sharing and listening) from the beginning set the tone for our entire company. It allowed us to grow fast. Because we were so clued in, we were able to make changes along the way and evolve by intelligent reaction.
TL: Sounds like you have to work at it. Communication doesn’t just happen.
MB: You can’t just say, “I want to have a company built on transparency and trust.” You actually have to set up ways to do that. The foundation of communication at salesforce.com is something I created called V2MOM, an acronym that stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures. We used this structure to write our business plan in the very beginning and we use it now to map out strategy and stay aligned as a company while we change. I re-write a V2MOM every six months and it enables me to clarify what I’m doing and communicate it to the entire company.
After I write the V2MOM, I share it with our top officers at our weekly meetings and ask for their feedback. Sometimes they love it. Sometimes they hate it. But no matter how they respond, it gets us communicating. We bring the V2MOM to our top thirty officers, and we then incorporate their insights and then bring that to our global managers, about 250 people. Through this process, our entire management team becomes involved in setting the company’s direction. They have a sense of ownership and they bring the plan back to their departments and communicate it to them.
TL: How important are presentation and communication skills in building a brand?
MB: Pivotal. What you communicate is how the world sees your company. Everyone has to be aligned on how they communicate the brand. Everyone has to stay positive. If you want to be successful, you have to present your company like a success. Having the right attitude is critical. We’re known for our events. We like to make a big splash. But the most important aspect is the live feedback we get. When I see customers nodding in agreement or reporters live blogging from our keynotes, I know that we are connecting with the market. Time after time though, it’s the customers who are the real stars of our events and all of our communication. Nothing matches the persuasive power of their authenticity and enthusiasm. In essence, our customers are our brand.
TL: Let’s talk about the media. You see them as friends of the company. How do approach the media, how did you generate so much media coverage even as a startup, how did you get heard above the noise and what advice do you have for other startups starving for attention?
MB: We gave the media something different. We gave them something new. We always positioned ourselves as revolutionaries. We went after the largest competitor in the industry, or we went after the industry itself. We made our story about change. We were about something new and different that was good for customers, and good for the community. We talked about the future. We predicted what would happen next. Although reporters might not care about a tiny start up with little revenue and few customers, they do care about a small start-up that pledges to upend the industry leader. In our case, journalists welcomed hearing from a challenger that was a harbinger of anindustry-wide transformation. The David-vs-Goliath is a story that reporters are always looking for. In our case, it certainly helped that no love was lost among customers for Goliath.
TL: You say reporters are writers so tell them a story. Any advice on how to tell a story?
MB: Give them a villain and a protagonist. Make sure you are the protagonist! They like drama, so that works too. But even the best storyteller has to have the customers to back them up. So make your customers successful and the story will practically write itself.
TL: You also recommend “making your own metaphors.” What do you mean?
MB: Simple metaphors are a terrific way to help explain what you are doing and communicate your message. I spend a lot of time creating metaphors to explain what we do. For example, early on I explained what we did with the metaphor ‘‘salesforce.com is Amazon.com meets Siebel Systems.’’ Later when we launched AppExchange we called it “the eBay of enterprise software,’’ and later when we launched our platform we said, ‘‘Force.com is the Windows Internet operating system.’’ The metaphors helped people understand what we did. And the press reiterated the metaphors. That furthered our effort to remain consistent and on point with our messaging. Anyone can create their own metaphors; just remember to test them before you put them out there. Try a few and run them by customers, analysts, and people in your network to make sure they work.
TL: Speaking of reporters, you cultivated relationships with influential publications. With newspapers declining and fewer and fewer magazines, who do you suggest business owners cultivate relationships with?
MB: There’s no question the media landscape is changing and the world is bit upside down right now, but there will always be a need for content. Exchanging and sharing information is as important as ever, but the delivery model has changed. I think it’s important to have relationships with journalists and I think it’s important to have relationships with bloggers. Most important, though, it’s important to have a relationship with customers. Customers have increasing influence in the public arena. They have a voice on the web and it’s powerful. We know that customers search the Web for answers, or reach out to friends on Facebook and Twitter. Right now companies aren’t participating in this dialogue. Typical client server call center solutions aren’t even aware of those community-generated answers. That has to change.
The future of communicating with customers rests in engaging with them through every possible channel: phone, email, chat, Web, and social networks. Customers are discussing a company’s products and brand now, in real time. Companies need to join the conversation.
TL: Tell me about this two-sided card you developed to get your team aligned on your vision.
MB: It’s essential to keep everyone aligned, to keep everyone on the same page. So, that’s what we did. Literally. We wanted everyone at our company to understand who we were and what we did. They needed to be able to effectively relay it in one simple sentence. We found that that didn’t happen naturally, so decided we could do it through education. Our PR firm produced a marketing cheat sheet that stated in one sentence what we did. It also provided information about the benefits of our service, our newest customers and partners, and our most recent awards. With this card, we leveraged everyone—from developers to engineers to quality assurance people—as integral parts of our marketing organization. We actually include the card in the book. Other people can use it to transform every employee into a marketing representative.
TL: Finally, Marc, tell me more about this tactic of asking job candidates to give a presentation.
MB: This just seems like common sense. 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 work with us. We note whether or not they have been to our Website. Are they familiar with our products? Do they know our customers?
Presentation skills are key. The people who work for you represent your brand. You want them to present themselves—and represent you—in a certain way. 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. That’s why we work so hard to make sure we have the right people representing our brand, and that everyone is in alignment once they get here.
TL: Great stuff, Marc. Thank you!
MB: Mahalo!