“There’s a gap between customers and companies, and that’s why we’re all here — to fill that gap.” – Marc Benioff
The day started with lines out the door at our B2B Marketers Cafe at the Grove and Pardot’s fleet of Fiats zipping their way through the city (see the image below!). If you haven’t been to the Grove yet, don’t miss your chance to grab some free food and check out some informal sessions tomorrow — it’s the last day that the B2B Marketers Cafe will be open!
In fact, Jill Rowley led a session on Social Selling to a packed house at the Grove this morning. There was standing room only as Jill discussed the importance of sales training and evolving selling techniques, so be sure to show up early for tomorrow’s panel of industry experts featuring Shannon Duffy and Tricia Gellman of Salesforce, Lauren Vaccarrello from Box, and other marketing experts.
5 Key Takeaways from Marc Benioff’s DF15 Keynote
Of course, the big moment from today was Marc Benioff’s keynote, presented to an audience of thousands in person and more than ten million who tuned in online — and as always, Benioff’s shoes were present and accounted for. Today’s Dreamforce keynote focused on a number of big announcements (which came shortly after this year’s tribute to Hawaii and a surprise visit from Stevie Wonder):
- Themes from the keynote included key buzzwords like customer-centricity, smart, 1 to 1, and everywhere. For today’s marketers and sales reps to be successful in our rapidly changing marketplace, they need to be able to anticipate what their buyers and consumers want, personalize each and every interaction, and reach them no matter where they’re engaging. (Want to learn more about these key themes? Check out Pardot’s keynote tomorrow at 3PM.)
- A supporting theme of this year’s keynote was the idea of the “precision enterprise,” which applies the 1 to 1 principle to companies across every industry. Today, one of the focuses was on how the healthcare industry in particular can leverage these three key principles — smart, 1 to 1, and everywhere — to become a totally connected, precision enterprise that better understands the needs of every unique patient. Pretty interesting stuff!
- The Lightning platform — which Parker Harris stated is one of the “most important developments from Salesforce so far” — made its debut again this year with a shiny new user interface. With the click of a button, Salesforce users can now move to the new Lightning Experience, which takes a great interface and makes it even better by aligning it with the existing Salesforce1 UI. It also takes your analytics to the next level with multiple customizable columns and new visualizations.
- Marc Benioff and Parker Harris also touched on the newly rebranded SalesforceIQ (formerly RelateIQ). Check out our rundown of their small business CRM solution in our Tuesday roundup.
- The new IoT (Internet of Things) Cloud, powered by Thunder and officially announced yesterday, connects billions of events from devices, sensors, applications, and more to Salesforce, bringing the Internet of Things to the Internet of Customers. “The IoT Cloud will allow businesses to create real-time, 1 to 1, proactive actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process, delivering a new kind of customer success,” stated Benioff in the Salesforce press release.
A great keynote with plenty to celebrate, and we’re looking forward to more still to come!
Top Lessons from Sessions
This afternoon, James Kenler of CareerBuilder took the stage to talk about his company’s experiences with marketing automation — from implementation to their long-term goals. James had a number of quotable moments, but here are two of our favorites:
“You can’t automate something if there’s no process behind it.” (James on the importance of putting a process behind your marketing, sales, and lead flow structure.)
“Don’t get locked into the top-down approach to lead generation. You have to know your business and look for those unconventional use cases.“
We were excited to hear about James’ success with marketing automation, and you can learn more about Careerbuilder’s marketing team in the image below (in case you were wondering what slides look like when presented on a movie theater screen, there you have it!).
Wednesday’s Highlights, Told in Tweets
Enjoying a few shout outs during sessions (we always love to see friendly faces in the audience!):
it made my year seeing my name in a #DF15 session thanks @jehanington and @mchoffmeister you guys are awesome
@Pardot
— Ray Miller (@touchofray) September 16, 2015
Getting ready to take the stage in front of thousands of #DF15 attendees:
Getting our stretches in to strut our stuff! See you soon @Dreamforce!!
— Benioff's Shoes (@BenioffsShoes) September 16, 2015
Reflecting on how HUGE Dreamforce has become:
@AdamBlitzer of @Pardot just telling me about DF08, his first. 10k people and it seemed "impossibly large." 160k registered for DF15.
— Kim Davis (@KimDavis_) September 16, 2015
Jamming to Stevie Wonder before today’s keynote:
How to start a keynote: Stevie Wonder still rocks. #Handelsblatt #DF15 pic.twitter.com/6bZBkGF9XH
— Axel Postinett (@axelmobil) September 16, 2015
Extending real-time data in new and innovative ways:
#df15 "We have data for fantasy sports, why can't we have that data quality for healthcare?" #healthcare
— Virsys12 (@Virsys12) September 16, 2015
Parker Harris announcing the IoT Cloud, powered by Thunder:
Salesforce IoT Cloud powered by Thunder. ☁ ⚡ #DF15 #SalesforceLIVE http://t.co/8n53x7zrab pic.twitter.com/XWfrcXQiYd
— Salesforce (@salesforce) September 16, 2015
Swag for days!
Prizes are going like hot cakes at the @Pardot booth — Jacob Perry won a GoPro! Booth N229B in Moscone North #DF15 pic.twitter.com/VVxOPszUWq
— Emily Ard (@PardotEmily) September 16, 2015
See you tonight!
We’re ready for a big night tonight as we kick off our License to Sell party at The Grand Nightclub, featuring a guest appearance by cast members of HBO’s Silicon Valley. We hope to see you there, and stay tuned for pictures on the Pardot Facebook page!
