Behind the Cloud : The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry

In less than a decade, salesforce.com has grown from a simple idea to a company with a billion dollars in revenue and the market leader of a new $52 billion industry that it created. How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the worlds fastest growing software company? Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, and his team have created and employed new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Through compelling, candid, and unlikely first person stories, Benioff shows how salesforce.com pioneered a simple idea (delivering business applications as a service over the Internet) to change the way all businesses use software applications, and ultimately, change the way the software industry works. With Benioffs unconventional advice and unusual call-out lessons from the Salesforce.com Playbook, any business can go against the grain, rapidly change the game, and learn how to achieve success on demand. This book will help you: Align your organization through Benioffs proprietary management tool, V2MOM, which until now, only a limited number of people had access. Those who do useV2MOMincluding all salesforce.com employees and prominent business leaders who are Benioffs friendshave found significant benefits. Evolve a product or service from adoption to addiction by using Benioffs Feedback Loop, which allows you to give customers what they ask for (not what you think theyll ask for). Legendary company founders Michael Dell and Howard Schultz both turned to Benioff when they reclaimed the CEO reigns of their companies to learn how to use this process, as well as salesforce.coms Ideas technology, because they work. Build Street Teams (an idea Benioff borrowed from hip-hop personality MC Hammer) and develop customer testimony (learned from the Reverend Billy Graham) to turn customers into evangelists for your brand. Scale your company by using Benioffs process of intelligent reaction, not grand design, which allows you to best respond to the changing marketplace and reap the rewards of constant innovation. Establish an international presence quickly by thinking globally from the very beginning, and raise significant start-up money through unconventional means. Integrate philanthropy into your business model with the unique model Benioff invented for salesforce.com and that has since been copied by myriad companies, including Google for its new foundation.