7 Sales Tactics that Made Marc Benioff a Champion

7 Sales Tactics that Made Marc Benioff a Champion:from (title unknown) by Kyle Porter

Salesforce.com is a $3 billion dollar machine in one of the fastest growing markets in technology. The company is led by Marc Benioff, the 6-foot-5 executive who evangelizes with larger than life antics that have been insanely effective. A sales aficionado, Benioff has tried all sorts of ideas to get his company ahead. Here are 7 of our favorite themes he’s chosen:
#1 Handle Competitors with Wit and Flair

Benioff’s competitive campaigns are the stuff of legend. Not many of them can top his original coop of arch competitor Siebel. In 2000, shortly after launching the company, Benioff paid actors to ‘fake-protest’ the Siebel annual conference. These actors picketed the Moscone Center as the Siebel user base entered and excited. They held signs and chanted quirks like.

The Internet is really neat … Software is obsolete!

This antic won Hi-Tech Campaign of the Year by PR Week and gained SFDC hundreds of new clients.
The biggest risk is often to take no risks at all. Tactics such as this always get recognized…in the press, with competitor’s clients’ and future loyalists. It’s a hard game to play, but if you can master it like Benioff did, then you can improve your business’ standing.
#2 Throw Badass Parties

Over 90,000 people registered for last years Dreamforce. That makes it the largest software event in the world. But it’s not just business, when Benioff throws a party, he throws down hard. Benioff brings in musicians like Metallica, MC Hammer, and Red Hot Chilli Peppers and world leaders like General Colin Powell, Sir Richard Branson, and our personal favorite, Tony Robbins. Heck, before they even had clients, Marc invited The B-52′s to perform at his launch party.
Why?
Because he’s building a community of loyalists. And there is no better way than to get his prospects together, share in a common vision and ultimately encourage them to take part in his platform. It helped Salesforce break through the noise to become the company it is today.
#3 Deal Directly with the End User

Most companies sell to executives. Benioff launched salesforce.com by selling directly to the users. By focusing on the small workgroup and indidual, they were able to get easy penetration into accounts and stay close to the problems they were solving.
#4 Be One with the Press

All these antics have paid off wildy with the press. To make the biggest impact, Benioff is a great friend to journalists and writers. He treats them as allies and wins them over constantly with fantastic quotes and stories, always responding to their emails and buttering them up with T-shirts, goodies and loads of freebies with the ‘No Software’ logo. Most importantly, he had a great story for them…David vs. the software Goliaths. Journos love Benioff.
#5 Optimize the Inside Sales Channel

Mostly from the cash necessity, Marc implemented an inside sales team early on. It showed vision. They offered free trials online without even the need for sales rep contact. Many of these tactics have become the standards today, but were revolutionary when Salesforce first implemented. them.
#6 Have a Share a Huge Dream

Salesforce doesn’t hide it’s vision. It’s logo has a ghost-buster’s style “No Software” motto and its mission is literally, “the End of Software.” Marc uses anecdotes and metaphors to describe his big vision. According to Marc, Salesforce’s moving users to the cloud is like

Leading people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land

Benioff never sells features. He the cloud, social, mobile and customers success. He sells dreams.
#7 Get the customer to talk about you

Your best customers are the best salespeople.
Early in the company’s life, Benioff hired a person whose sole responsibility was managing customer testimonies. If you check out their site, their youtube channel and events, you’ll see hundreds of customer testimonys.
Mark makes great analogies for his offerings that anyone can not only remember, but regurgitate to their colleagues:

Salesforce.com is Amazon.com meets Siebel Systems

AppExchange is the eBay of enterprise software

Chatter is Facebook for business

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Take the queues above to sell like Benioff…and transform your business into an empire.