Salesforce's Secret Weapon: How VALUES Underpin Its AI Vision and Impact
Does selling values work, or is it a waste of time?
Many companies establish corporate and brand values and magnify them in company strategy and marketing, but few do it as substantially, as effectively, and for as long as Salesforce has - Salesforce even re-shaped corporate planning into V2MOM for Vision, VALUES, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures.
Salesforce has innovated in product, leading the cloud revolution, dominating applications share, and this year, positioning itself as “the best AI Agent platform in the world.” The unified architecture, unified data, security, and trust positioning were exceptional in their Dreamforce keynote. Benioff effectively de-positioned other AI/Agent vendors’s solutions as DIY (Do it Yourself) and untrustworthy data vampires.
And, the one-two punch of their long-track-record of values orientation made the product claims of trusted data and AI for social good even more believable. There have always been buying audiences who want to feel good about their vendors - and the AI world, with its deep and terrifying trust risks drive that need further.
Is he full of it?
Are all of Benioff’s promises here today? Probably not - it took several years for its Einstein predictive analytics to realize the vision. Did Benioff make a snafu here or there? Yes: the Saks customer feature and Saks adorned executives felt a bit privileged vs. inclusive. Is he the ultimate ringmaster, bragging about Salesforce’s dominance and track record? Yes, but despite his hyperbole, many of his claims have come to fruition, and he has meaningfully taken action on all of them over time.
Dreamforce Keynote Breakdown
Salesforce CEO Benioff welcomed 45,000 people to Dreamforce last week. Many of the elements were similar to the CEO Keynote Template I detailed from Snowflake’s Summit, but Benioff doubled down on his trademarks of vision, values, and customer examples. You can watch the whole keynote here. I detail his template on my blog at www.carilu.com
Why Should You Care What Benioff Does?
So few of us have the budgets or scale to do anything like Salesforce. But they are truly best-in-class. They pay top dollar for top business people. They have invested in a full stack developer, data and application and AI ecosystem with real promise. They have done amazing marketing focused on customer stories - and have built strong communities of evangelists. Could they be better, grow faster, have a more integrated stack that delivers even more? Yes. But they are still a marvel to watch and provide a helpful structure to follow.
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Salesforce Keynote Template: Vision, AI, and Giving Back
Benioff has followed a similar structure for years, and this year, it was again effective. It breaks down into the following categories (To see the full 3-page analysis with slide examples and commentary on these categories, go to www.carilu.com):
... see the screenshots, details on these categories and the rest of the article at www.carilu.com
Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.
Growth Company Executive | Interim and Fractional CMO | Go-to-Market Advisor
1 周Great post Carilu Dietrich. I missed Marc’s keynote this year, but in witnessing many in the past, I was always struck by how consistently he messaged a theme for the conference and the upcoming year and how effectively that carried through the entire company go to market that year. Truly remarkable leadership.
Great points! There is an urgent need for CMOs to become AI orchestrators. It's key to aligning these agents with your brand voice and CX goals!
Deeply researched product, growth, and career advice
2 周Keep the analysis coming!
CSO @ GNW: Providing more MarTech consulting value than anyone else. Recovering CMO.
2 周Couple of things... 1. I repeat. Never get a job and keep doing things like this. 2. The biggest issue I see with SF's approach is ... MOST things companies have are terrible. You're using PDFs? Which PDFs? An outdated one? You're using rep emails. UGH! WHICH ONES?! The agents are training in a black box (which SF specifically designed over the course of many years - tasks for example go into a mystical wasteland if you want to use AI) and it's going to be a nightmare. 3. They're making it seem SO HARD to create your own RAG. It's not that challenging. 4. Who is this guy? I want to know him IMMEDIATELY. He sat up all straight and started looking WAY MORE interested when he knew he was on camera which made me LOL
Social Media & Video Growth Marketer | B2B | Community-led Growth
2 周You know what they did so darn well? It's the best I've seen in a long time! Their GTM for Agentforce. Kudos to the Salesforce team. ?? maybe I should lay it out and analyze so we can all see a fresh perspective. Click-up was really good, too, daring, but got the attention they wanted.