POV: Customer-First: The Simple Recipe for Salesforce's Early Enterprise Success

Over 20 years ago, in 2003, I embarked on a journey with a startup called Salesforce.com. Located in San Francisco with a few floors on One Market, the timing was uncertain, given the aftermath of the Dot.Com bust. Many discouraged me from joining another .Com as it wasn't evident that Salesforce could win over enterprises with its free trial and single-user plans, which we now know as #plg.

Fast forward to today, and I feel incredibly grateful for my 5.5 years at Salesforce. It was a period of constant challenges. We had to onboard enterprise customers (then the biggest deployments of SaaS) even before "enterprise" features existed (👋 Joe Williams, Michael Roth, Lindsay Lanning, + many more). Later on, I had the opportunity to contribute to the incubation of Marc's vision: building the "iTunes of Business Applications” with the AppExchange (👋 Mike Kreaden, Rob Lamb, Matt Holleran, Judy Loehr, Sati Hillyer, + many more)

I often get asked, "How did Salesforce succeed in the enterprise in the very early days of the company after so much success in the SMB space?" 

My POV: 

• Vision? Not yet. Enterprises weren't receptive to the idea of "No Software."
• Marketing? Although the marketing and PR engine was impressive, it didn't generate enterprise leads.
• Product? No. In those days, CRM lacked essential enterprise features despite love from end users.
• Sales? It was hard. Lots of early rejection. But the team persevered.

So, what was Salesforce's simple recipe for Enterprise success?

1. Engaging executives early on and often; building trust with customers.
2. Listening to customers and understanding their pain points.
3. Developing features that addressed enterprise needs.
4. Facilitating a migration from legacy tools through value-added services. 
5. Placing utmost emphasis on customer success.
6. Investing in training and developing "Salesforce" as a valuable job skill.
7. Leveraging partners to build extensions/integrations (later the AppExchange).

I still vividly recall regular CBRs with my enterprise customers at Salesforce HQ. Marc Benioff, CTO and Co-Founder Parker Harris, along with sales, product, and engineering execs like Tien Tzuo, Jim Steele, David Rudnitsky, Todd McKinnon, Jim Cavalieri, Steve Fisher, and many others would join. IMO, today's CBRs have become an engagement for upselling and have the lost the importance of engaging customers to gather feedback on how they use your product to discover areas of improvement and product hardening, getting feedback on new features and the product roadmap, and building long-term trust.

To founders, CEOs, and executives of startups today, I have a message: Never underestimate the significance of your customers. Listen attentively to their needs. Build solutions that address those needs (while prioritizing wisely). Don't settle for mediocrity, and don't believe that "marketing messaging or PR” (while super important) will lure enterprise customers. Don't think you can expand or upsell customers without first making them successful on their first use case.

Think #customersforlife.

In conclusion, I'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Salesforce. Thank you for including me (and my wife) as guests at various Salesforce events. As a former employee and a forever customer and advocate, cheers to another 20!

Rob Lamb @ BottleRock 2023.

Tony Kays Scot Blocker @ Golden State Warriors Chase Center.