Selling the Cloud: A Playbook for Success in Cloud Software and Enterprise Sales, captures lessons learned from 25+ year veterans of enterprise-level software sales. The book brims with advice from technology sales titans from companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Zoom, SAP, and DocuSign. Each chapter highlights key characteristics that help modern salespeople thrive, including: empathy, authenticity, creativity, and resilience in sales. The fusion of enterprise software product sales, services sales, and executive leadership expertise in this book delivers a unique distillation of proven strategies to grow your career in sales and into executive business leadership. Its insight is a solid reference for anyone involved in growth at a B2B company.
How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Behind the Cloud, Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.
Mark Petruzzi, an innovator in enterprise and cloud software product and services sales, channel/alliances strategy, and M&A deal advisory, and Paul Melchiorre, a vanguard leader in enterprise software product sales, pioneered the innovative strategies that have made enterprise-level cloud software sales a holy grail of B2B selling. In Selling the Cloud, the pair share the key methods they developed, refined, and applied for the past twenty-five years to become enterprise cloud software sales leaders. These concepts are designed for enterprise cloud software sales leaders and reps, but they are a solid reference for anyone involved in any type of B2B sales. Mark and Paul both came from modest means, attended college as first-generation college graduates, and went on to forge unique paths in software sales leadership. Over 25 years later, the two have been on every side of enterprise software sales and have learned the fundamental principles that set top performers apart. In Selling the Cloud, Mark and Paul share practical lessons and key characteristics needed to succeed in the sales climate of tomorrow: passion, velocity, grit, empathy, authenticity, creativity, resilience, trust, strategic thinking, and technology leverage. Throughout the book you will hear not only from Mark and Paul, but also from well-known titans of software sales from companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Zoom, SAP, and DocuSign. The book brims with strategies individuals and organizations can apply to boost sales performance, help customers succeed, and grow careers and businesses. The fusion of enterprise software service sales, product sales, and executive leadership expertise in this book delivers a unique distillation of proven strategies to thrive in not only software sales but in sales at large. Former #1 Amazon New Release in Sales and Sales Management.
"Product-Led Growth is about helping your customers experience the ongoing value your product provides. It is a critical step in successful product design and this book shows you how it's done." - Nir Eyal, Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of "Hooked"
How do you start? How should you build a plan for cloud migration for your entire portfolio? How will your organization be affected by these changes? This book, based on real-world cloud experiences by enterprise IT teams, seeks to provide the answers to these questions. Here, you’ll see what makes the cloud so compelling to enterprises; with which applications you should start your cloud journey; how your organization will change, and how skill sets will evolve; how to measure progress; how to think about security, compliance, and business buy-in; and how to exploit the ever-growing feature set that the cloud offers to gain strategic and competitive advantage.
This indispensable sales tool shows you the ropes of lead qualification, the RFP process, and needs analysis and discovery, and explains how your technical know-how can add invaluable leverage to sales efforts at every step. You learn how to plan and present the perfect pitch, demonstrate products effectively, build customer relationship skills, handle objections and competitors, negotiate prices and contracts, close the sale, and so much more.
Technology-as-a-Service Playbook defines the tactical and strategic plays technology companies must run to build a profitable subscription business. Whether you are a pure-play cloud company or a traditional technology provider making the pivot to the cloud, this book will help guide your decision-making and execution around the "as-a-service" model to put your company on a path to profitable growth. This cloud-driven journey will affect every part of the organization. How offers are designed, built, marketed, sold, and serviced will all need to change. And these transformations are not limited to OEMs--they will also directly impact the vast network of channel partners. After all, it's not just about building recurring revenue, it's about building PROFITABLE recurring revenue. Technology-as-a-Service Playbook is the road map to the next-generation tech business model.
Your business success is now forever linked to the success of your customers Customer Success is the groundbreaking guide to the exciting new model of customer management. Business relationships are fundamentally changing. In the world B.C. (Before Cloud), companies could focus totally on sales and marketing because customers were often 'stuck' after purchasing. Therefore, all of the 'post-sale' experience was a cost center in most companies. In the world A.B. (After Benioff), with granular per-year, per-month or per-use pricing models, cloud deployments and many competitive options, customers now have the power. As such, B2B vendors must deliver success for their clients to achieve success for their own businesses. Customer success teams are being created in companies to quarterback the customer lifecycle and drive adoption, renewals, up-sell and advocacy. The Customer Success philosophy is invading the boardroom and impacting the way CEOs think about their business. Today, Customer Success is the hottest B2B movement since the advent of the subscription business model, and this book is the one-of-a-kind guide that shows you how to make it work in your company. From the initial planning stages through execution, you'll have expert guidance to help you: Understand the context that led to the start of the Customer Success movement Build a Customer Success strategy proven by the most competitive companies in the world Implement an action plan for structuring the Customer Success organization, tiering your customers, and developing the right cross-functional playbooks Customers want products that help them achieve their own business outcomes. By enabling your customers to realize value in your products, you're protecting recurring revenue and creating a customer for life. Customer Success shows you how to kick start your customer-centric revolution, and make it stick for the long term.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The founder and co-CEO of Salesforce delivers an inspiring vision for successful companies of the future—in which changing the world is everyone’s business. “The gold standard on how to use business as a platform for change at this urgent time.”—Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and author of Principles: Life and Work What’s the secret to business growth and innovation and a purpose-driven career in a world that is becoming vastly more complicated by the day? According to Marc Benioff, the answer is embracing a culture in which your values permeate everything you do. In Trailblazer, Benioff gives readers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of one of the world’s most admired companies. He reveals how Salesforce’s core values—trust, customer success, innovation, and equality—and commitment to giving back have become the company’s greatest competitive advantage and the most powerful engine of its success. Because no matter what business you’re in, Benioff says, values are the bedrock of a resilient company culture that inspires all employees, at every level, to do the best work of their lives. Along the way, he shares insights and best practices for anyone who wants to cultivate a company culture positioned to thrive in the face of the inevitable disruption ahead. None of us in the business world can afford to sit on the sidelines and ignore what’s going on outside the walls of our workplaces. In the future, profits and progress will no longer be sustainable unless they serve the greater good. Whether you run a company, lead a small team, or have just draped an ID badge around your neck for the first time, Trailblazer reveals how anyone can become an agent of change. Praise for Trailblazer “A guide for what every business and organization must do to thrive in this period of profound political and economic change.”—Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase “In Trailblazer, Benioff explores how companies can nurture a values-based culture to become powerful platforms for change.”—Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube
Most companies today realize the imperative to connect with their customers, employees, and partners through social technologies -Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and elsewhere. But a huge challenge is still in the way: how to build programs and teams for accomplishing all that. While organizations have been fixated on how to use the latest social tool, they've lost sight of how to create a talent pool capable of adjusting to the next wave of technology around the corner. For corporations to successfully transform into social business enterprises they must shift the focus from computers and tools to developing skills and attitudes around technology. Socialized! represents a "playbook" on how to create such a high-performing social enterprise. Filled with clear strategies and real-life stories from visionaries and change makers, the book is designed to help leaders motivate employees throughout the organization to adopt a "social" mindset, ensuring success against the competition.
