This semester I decided to take a Sloan course on business-2-business marketing and for the final project, my team decided to investigate the up and coming salesforce.com and their groundbreaking Sales as a Service (SaaS) offerings. With a little research, we found out that when sf started this offering in 2009, they were going full speed against the current sales funnel optimization market. Other players in the field offered a set of hardware and software that each of their clients would have installed throughout their office and would then their sales force would spend weeks in training (and re-training when upgrades were installed) to understand how to best use the system. For the years this was happening, it was working great but the founders of salesforce.com sensed a shift in the needs of the market. Many of the DMU's at companies were looking for faster, cheaper, and less invasive ways to optimize how their sales went down. So with salesforce.com, small and medium sized companies could manage every segment of their sales chain at an affordable monthly rate, with very little training, and via an online interface that didn't require the bulky office hardware as before.
Salesforce.com soon became the leader in this field but others in the CRM space began creating SaaS offerings of their own. Now with so many very comparable competitors out there, what makes sf worth the extra dollars?
As a very busy undergrad, I am trying to build a personal brand in the digital entertainment market. I do photography and amateur design work for now but I'm trying to break into the film industry in the near future. But with school on my plate, I couldn't imagine having to devote the equivalent of a part time job to generating leads and following through to make sales. In an ideal world, where I would be able to devote at least a few hours a week to developing my craft, knowing where I could get help would be amazing aid. Having a SaaS that is simple and affordable would greatly benefit my brand and portfolio growth. So what would I do IF I did use this kind of service?? Who would i go with?
From our research for the project, we couldn't figure out what made sf the leader in the field given that the products and prices we could see had almost negligible differences with other companies. So I did what any information hungry tech savvy youngster would do, I tweeted the companies!
Long story short, whenever I get to the point in my personal ventures where I will need help with my sales funnel, salesforce.com is the first place I will turn to.
welp...that's enough for now.
hearts, turtle doves, and hair grease!
Salesforce.com soon became the leader in this field but others in the CRM space began creating SaaS offerings of their own. Now with so many very comparable competitors out there, what makes sf worth the extra dollars?
As a very busy undergrad, I am trying to build a personal brand in the digital entertainment market. I do photography and amateur design work for now but I'm trying to break into the film industry in the near future. But with school on my plate, I couldn't imagine having to devote the equivalent of a part time job to generating leads and following through to make sales. In an ideal world, where I would be able to devote at least a few hours a week to developing my craft, knowing where I could get help would be amazing aid. Having a SaaS that is simple and affordable would greatly benefit my brand and portfolio growth. So what would I do IF I did use this kind of service?? Who would i go with?
From our research for the project, we couldn't figure out what made sf the leader in the field given that the products and prices we could see had almost negligible differences with other companies. So I did what any information hungry tech savvy youngster would do, I tweeted the companies!
Low and behold, I soon got a reply from the apparent leader in this field, Salesforce.com! And now I have a little insight into why they are so preferred among B2B companies, they have great customer service! Without even the slightest hint to the size (and potential profit) of my inquiry, a member of their sales team spoke with me the next day about why salesforce.com is great and even gave a few extra helpers for the project! Not surprisingly, these are the take-aways from our conversation on the value proposition of salesforce.com compared to their competitors:
I may not have any sales right now to need a sales force but these guys really do know a thing or two about making a customer, or potential customer... or even Sloan student without a real business, happy.· LEVERAGE SALESFORCE EXPERTISEo First moverso >1,000,000,000 application data points to leverageo >2000 consulting and education data pointso internal and customer shared best practices· Ease of useo intuitive and common user interface across all componentso ease of integrationo standardized error reportingo ease of training and learningo third part app store for rapid “time to value”· MINIMIZE RISKo All inclusive subscription,o No hidden infrastructure or upgrade feeso No long term time commitment· REDUCE TOTAL COST OF OWNWERSHIPo NO hardware costso No IT maintenance costo Reduced lost opportunity costs due to downtime (salesforce promises 99% uptime)· Continual Business Developmento Frequent and free upgradeso Increased ROIo Responsive to market changeso Always State of the Art
Long story short, whenever I get to the point in my personal ventures where I will need help with my sales funnel, salesforce.com is the first place I will turn to.
welp...that's enough for now.
hearts, turtle doves, and hair grease!
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