Thank you from the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful you share a few minutes of your time reading my blog. It’s a privilege to blog for you, enjoy this week’s post.
Starting my new job at Salesforce.com has been a whirlwind. Radian6 training in Canada, Buddy Media training in NYC, a quick vacation to Dominican Republic but the grand daddy of all trips is the famous 10 day Salesforce.com boot camp at headquarters.
It’s a shame I had to go all the way to San Francisco, poor me! Is there a more picturesque city in the world than San Francisco? Check out my view from the hotel (Alcatraz).
Boot camp was an unbelievable experience. If your interested in what its like to work for one of the most innovative, respected and fastest growing companies in the world, keep reading!
Day 1 – 250. That’s the number of sales and professional services consultants starting within the last month at Salesforce.com. The first thing I noticed, everyone was wearing a smile. Already it was different. The room was bursting at the seams with energy.
Salesforce.com could have chosen to focus on a number of areas the first day. Sales, growth, technology, company history, honestly I was expecting customer success.
Instead, the day’s focus was TRUST. Earning and keeping our client’s trust. Wow! Pretty strong first impression.
I would love to share details about the amazing speakers but I honestly can’t wait to tell you about my favorite part of the day.
This little girl!
One core value of Salesforce.com is their philanthropy program called 1-1-1. 1% of time, revenue and products donated to charity every year.
The expectation is every employee spends 6 days a year volunteering. Upon completion, Salesforce will write a check for $1,000 to a charity of your choice. If you give out of your own pocket, they match dollar for dollar up to $5,000 for every single employee. All 10,000!
Salesforce gave us the opportunity on our very first day to give back to the San Francisco community and I chose to spend a few hours at the Boys & Girls Club.
I have to admit a tear crawled down my cheek when my new little friend gave me a hug goodbye and asked if I was coming back to play with her again tomorrow.
Day 2 – Chatter. The highlight of day 2 was the incredible collaboration on our internal social media tool called Chatter. Think of it as a professional Facebook. You can follow people, like and comment on posts. The participation, knowledge sharing, learning, teamwork and networking going on among the 250 new hires was astounding.
Day 3 – Video. After a full 9 hour day, we had 3 hours to create and film a 5 minute video illustrating our knowledge of the products we have been learning about. Divided into teams of 7, we were given a business case of a struggling company and our mission was to ‘fix’ the fake company by aligning our solutions to their business challenges. Although nobody was confused for Robert Deniro, how cool of a project is that?
I titled this day ‘Video’ for one other reason. If its one thing the world needs, it’s another ‘Harlem Shake’ video and our boot camp delivered with almost 2,700 views in less than a week.
Day 4 – Mr. Twitter. Content wise day 4 was my favorite. We learned about Customer Service and Social Media products.
Prior to boot camp I created and shared a Twitter #hashtag (#feb13bc). Surprisingly it was not a very social group on Twitter so I held a few ‘Getting Started on Twitter’ classes after the boot camp sessions.
I thoroughly enjoy helping people create an account, follow a few people and send their first tweets. It was icing on the cake to be recognized as the social media star by a marketing executive and the nickname Mr. Twitter.
Afterwards, it was a thrill to get up in front of everyone and talk about the value of social media.
(If you are reading this and you aren’t on Twitter but want to be, email me at chadmschaeffer@gmail.com. In 20 minutes you will be tweeting like a teenager.)
Day 5- Hate/Love. This petite pregnant innocent looking women literally jumps on stage and says, “Everybody raise your right hand and repeat after me. I want to beat our competition. I will not lose to them. I’m here so I can make a shitload of money, retire early and dig my toes in the sand somewhere warm.”
That from the head of our competitive analysis team. She dropped a swear word, getting rich and the beach. If I wasn’t married and she wasn’t pregnant I think it would have been love at first sight. Needless to say after 29 training sessions, right before lunch on a Friday, I was reminded that great content with powerful charisma is an unstoppable combination for any presenter.
At one point I literally wanted to jump in a UFC ring with someone from Oracle she had me so fired up.
Ironically when we came back to lunch the 31st session of the week was about showing gratitude and appreciation for your teammates. We did a neat exercise where you had to tape a sheet of paper on your back and then go right something kind on other people’s sheets.
The moral of the story, it feels better to give then receive and give even if you don’t know if you’ll get.
That’s a wrap on week 1. Stay tuned for part II next week when I share how I spent the weekend and week two of boot camp. Below is the title for Day 6 so you won’t want to miss it!
Day 6 – Wife’s Birthday/BoomBoom.
Chad - Rappin' On Social Customer Service 