Dreamforce 2014: PageMutant’s Notes on Seven Sessions

Dreamforce continues to be a powerhouse conference. With 135,000 attendees and 1,200+ sessions across every function there is an abundance of opportunity to learn. We did our best racing between buildings to catch sessions on startups, development, marketing, and inside sales. I just wanted to share observations, notes and highlights from a few of the key sessions we attended.

Predictable Revenue: How To Crush Your Sales Goals

Aaron Ross provided a solid overview of his methodology from his book Predictable Revenue. Aaron kept the material approachable and personal, with solid references to his experience at Salesforce and work with clients like Acquia. He’ll be working with Carb.io to institutionalize some of his practices as a service.

Presenters:
Aaron Ross
Predictable Revenue
Author
@motoceo

Collin Stewart
Carburetor
CEO

A few of the key points:

• Improve your messaging today
• Be sure to answer the “So what?” question via your messaging
• Provide clarity on how you help customers
• Lead velocity rate. The rate at which you create qualified marketing pipeline. For more details on this one check out Jason Lemkin’s post on the topic. Jason and Aaron are co-authors of Triple Your Sales. Jason also had an excellent session for Saas businesses (see below).
• Simplify the buying cycle. He referenced Marketo’s phased approach of teach, evaluate and decide. Hubspot has similar phases with awareness, consideration, and decision.
• Don’t edit out personality
• Emails should be simple to understand and easy to answer
• Even if you are a solo marketer/entrepreneur, you can still specialize. You specialize based on time so you can focus on one type of sales activity at a time.

7 Essential Salesforce Dashboards For Predicting Inside Sales Success

This session focused on the metrics and practices that help inside sales drive success.

Presenters:
Howard Brown
RingDNA, Inc.
CEO
@ringdna

John Barrows
jbarrows LLC
Owner
@johnmbarrows

Aaron Ross
Predictable Revenue
Author
@motoceo

Peter Gracey
Quota Factory

A few of the key points:

• Barrows — Emphasized the need for automation and the importance of measuring and testing each step.
• Ross — Prospecting is a multi-step process
• Several panelists pointed out that Hubspot is aggressive with outbound sales, despite their emphasis on inbound marketing. They have one of the largest inside sales teams in Boston.
• Barrows — Bias toward using a process. Makes it an interview question to see if the candidate can break down the challenge. He wants to see if they can approach a solution in a systematic manner.
• Barrows — Can’t just base lead goals on quantity. Need to focus on meaningful conversations
• Reps won’t log phone calls. Perhaps they need a tool like Voxa.
• A few of the panelists commented how companies still have an amazing number of leads that don’t get a response.
• Barrows — Lead assignment based on fit not territory
• Barrows — Measuring approaches and getting better everyday
• Ross — Emails are for quick connects. “Are we a fit?” Art of email: short, sweet and specific. Be crystal clear about how they are getting value. Make it about them.

Scaling Culture: Ways to Attract, Hire, and Retain the Right People

Presenters:
Suresh Khanna
AdRoll
CRO
@skhanna

Ashley King
99designs
Customer Support Manager
@99designs

A few of the key points:

• King — Can’t teach them to have a heart
• King — Hire creative and holistic thinkers
• Khanna — Instill values from day one
• Khanna — Shared the visuals they created to be the “spirit animals” of the companies values.
• Khanna — On selecting candidates. It’s a hell yes or its a no
• Khanna — Looks for smart, collaborative, and humble
• Khanna — Importance of peer-to-peer training
• King — Sales is also about solving customer problems
• Water cooler drama kills culture

Here are the AdRoll spirit animals for their company values. This was an interesting way to make the values more than just words on a wall.

• Owl. Hire great people and help each other grow.
• Jellyfish. Be open and authentic. Talk about problems out in the open.
• Beaver. Do more with less.
• Monkey. Take work seriously but not yourself. Weekly hands on sessions reinforce values.
• Dog. Do right by community, customer and each other.

Democratizing Philanthropy: Technology, Innovation and Giving

This was one of the more inspiring sessions at the conference. The conversation was casual but lively and informative. Attendees also could pick up Arrillaga-Adreessen’s book Giving 2.0. For a few more details check out the WSJ article.

Presenters:
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
LAAF.org
@laaf

Suzanne Dibianca
Salesforce
@suzannedibianca

A few of the key points:

• Companies have more to give than just money. They have assets, stakeholders and other incentives that are valuable to social-driven organizations.
• Get corporations to contribute things other than money
• Corporate philanthropy as necessity for retaining millennials
• NationBuilder as an interesting tool for building community
• References to the impact of Mpesa in Kenya
• Zynga virtual goods contributing to social good.
• Philanthropy as necessity/privilege not a benefit
• Financial v human capital philanthropy
• Make philanthropy accessible so anyone can do it
• Help people walk their own journey
• Check out the Giving 2.0 online class on Coursera.
• The only thing you need to be a philanthropist is generosity. What we do for others defines who we are.

Tech Entrepreneurs Survival Guide — The Best of SaaStr

If you are running a Saas business, you needed to be at this session. Even though much of the content would have been familiar to readers of the Saastr blog it was a must see. Jason kept it action-packed with advice, commentary and guidance.

Presenter:
Jason Lemkin
Storm Ventures
Managing Director
@jasonlk

A few of the key points:

• O to 1 million feels impossible, but keep going if you get 10 paying customers
• 10 to 100 million is inevitable
• Saas compounds
• Need to get to million and a half in revenue
• “No one needs another x”. Not really. There are plenty of examples of multiple contenders in a category.
• References to Guidespark and TalkDesk
• Takes a long time to go up the curve. It’s not a linear process.
• Re-ignition phase
• If you have leads you can always do better
• Everyone has a year of hell
• Revenue per lead
• Focus on critical hires
• 20% of time on recruiting
• Get rid of bad VPs. You’ll know in one sales cycle if the VP Sales is any good
• Learn how be a better closer
• Run experiments to increase revenue per lead
• Extreme focus on model. Push the constraints
• The calvary comes at the $10 million mark
• Check out Saastr on Quora
• 5-year burn out phase
• Need someone else to carry the load. Typically a VP.
• Get magic attach rate from partner. Only if you are plugging a hole. Example Workday and Okta
• Over invest in 2nd order revenue
• Over invest in customer success even if have 4 people
• So much easier at 10 million. This is the self-replication phase
• What market can we lead in?
• Create a customer conference even with 100 customers
• Large accounts don’t churn till year 3.
• Enjoy the victories

Triple Your Revenue with a Dedicated Sales Development Team

Kyle Porter from SalesLoft moderated a solid session with insights on SDR team structure, hiring and tools. The discussion included good insights on what types of companies and sales models are a good fit for inside sales.

Presenters:
Kyle Porter
SalesLoft
CEO
@kyleporter

John Barrows
jbarrows LLC
Owner
@johnmbarrows

Craig Rosenberg
TOPO
Chief Analyst
@funnelholic

Trish Bertuzzi
The Bridge Group, Inc.
President and Chief Strategist
@bridgegroupinc

A few of the key points:

• Topo — SDRs can work even with products with a low average selling price. The trigger for SDR use is a multi-step sales process
• Barrows — Need to break through the noise.
• Barrows- If you are looking to grow, SDRs are a necessity.
• Bridge — SDR strategy is not one size fits all. HubSpot is a customer. Largest outbound team in Boston area.
• Topo — SDR is not just outbound.
• SDRs are a key conversion point
• Porter — Salesloft gets 1,400 inbound leads each month
• Barrows — Marketing automation will go upstream into SDRs.
• Sales development framework from TOPO
• How give visibility to SDR roles
• Allbound v. inbound or outbound
• Bridge — Look for coach-ability and curiosity
• Barrows — Get a candidate to explain their process and how they work within a structure
• Timetrade as a scheduling tool. [Perhaps they should checkout Calend.ly too]
• Bridge — Data and dialers
• Topo — Review of SDR technology stack
• Barrows — Announced the release of Sales From the Streets, an iOS app for crowdsourced sales training.

Digital Optimization: Changing the World One Test at a Time.

This was an interesting inside peek into how Salesforce has become more sophisticated in its use of testing. It was refreshing to see the evolution of their approach over the last few years. Even a company with the talent, size and resources of Salesforce can continue to improve it’s use of testing.

Presenters:
Dan Haroldsen
Salesforce

Sara Chen
Salesforce

A few of the key points:

• Importance of goals, communication, and continual progress
• They aim for 90% confidence in their tests with typically 300 conversions per experience
• Lower tier pages can take months to reach the point of test being statistically valid
• Continual optimization
• Alternative forms of testing — preference testing, ux testing
• Inline form error tools

What were your favorite sessions? If this wasn’t your first Dreamforce rodeo, how does it compare to previous versions?