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If you were with me last week I shared some thoughts and pictures on my first week at Salesforce.com New Hire Boot Camp in San Francisco. I was away for almost 2 full weeks and if you liked last week’s post, below is part 2.
Day 6 – Wife’s Birthday/Weed/BoomBoom After an incredible week one of boot camp I have to admit I woke up a little depressed Saturday morning. My gorgeous wife Staci was turning 29 again and I was thousands of miles away. As you can see below she was distraught???
I was also exhausted….six presentations a day, evening social events, early 7am calls 5 days in a row I needed the day to recharge the battery. I love music so I threw on the Beats by Dre headphones and headed down to the beach. There are two major food groups in San Francisco, bread bowls and weed. I’m convinced I was the only one out of hundreds of people not smoking a little mary jane right on the beach.
It was an overcast day about 60 degrees and maybe it was my inner hippie coming out but something about the acoustic version of the Eagles “Hotel California”, staring off at the golden gate bridge, thinking about my family, my new dream job, so many happy smiling people around, everything seemed to be ‘just right’ in that moment in time.
With my wife celebrating in Detroit I wasn’t going to let her have all the fun. So I picked one of San Francisco’s many fabulous restaurants, 1300 Fillmore and checked out the local live music scene and met up with my new crew of international friends for some blues at John Lee Hooker’s famous Boom Boom Room.
Day 7 – Golf. I didn’t have clubs or shoes or balls or tees or even a golf shirt but when you have the opportunity to play Presidio, the second oldest golf course west of the Mississippi built in 1895 you can’t pass it up. As you can see from these views, I wasn’t disappointed, even if the fog, mist and cold did roll in on the back 9.
Day 8 – V2MOM. Enough of hanging out at the beach with my tree hugger friends, jamming on my air guitar and playing golf. Monday morning it was back to boot camp.
My most memorable moment from day 8 was the overview of the Salesforce.com career planning tool called V2MOM which stands for Vision Values Methods Obstacles and Metrics. I received an email from CEO Marc Benioff with his V2MOM attached and a note about the importance to our culture and performance, it was clear this is a religion for Salesforce.
In case you were wondering, my areas of focus this year are going to include;
Day 9 – Happy Hour. Salesforce.com has a remarkable culture and two things specifically stood out. First, they love to celebrate success, and because they have so much, let’s just say its a fun place to work. Second, even though Salesforce is a three billion dollar company with almost 11,000 employees their most senior executives are extremely accessible, visible, approachable and engaging.
So Tuesday night to celebrate 2012 success under the stars at an ocean side lounge by the bay bridge Maria Martinez, one of the top executives in the company, personally thanked the remarkable customer’s for life team for their contribution.
By the way is there a better team name then Customers For Life? Love it!
Day 10 – Test Day. One of the key unique differentiators no one can replicate is the Salesforce.com ‘Customer Success Journey’. It’s a staggering list of resources, people and process invested in our customer’s success all AFTER becoming a client. It’s impressive to say the least.
After 10 days, well over 50 presentations, team building activities, social events and a fun weekend prior to getting on a plane for home each person had to successfully deliver in person a 20 minute presentation demonstrating our knowledge of the customer success journey. And yes I passed.
Finally, thank you to the incredible staff including Monica, Daryl and Nicole for your tireless work and effort to manage a 10 day event for 250 people.
Thank you to all the inspiring speakers who shared their time with all the newbies, everyone is fired up and ready to rock’n’roll.
Final thoughts on Salesforce.com boot camp.
55 employees went to Nicaragua to build bridges so kids can go to school during flood season.
Salesforce had 30,000 internal job referrals last year. Happy people want to share with their friends.
If you think vision, mission statements and culture are just foo foo. Don’t waste your time applying.
Salesforce has a lot of women in management, I bet that is why they have such high employee and client satisfaction. Generally, I’ve found women to be better listeners and more relationship focused. Needless to say I’ve worked with almost all dudes throughout my career and I love the diversity.
Salesforce is laser focused on social media and mobile. And they get it. Look out. $3B today…first cloud company to $10B sooner than you think.
If you aren’t using an internal social tool for employee collaboration you are going to get your ass kicked.
It’s hard to imagine another company having this much fun.
You don’t own your brand. Your customers do! So what is more important than trust?
The bottom line…… Fortune 500 companies partnering with Salesforce are growing 48% faster than fortune 500 companies not partnering with Salesforce.
Actually, here is the real bottom line. 1+1+1. Salesforce donates 1% of employee time, revenue and software to charities and the highlight of the trip was making a little girl’s day at the Boys & Girls Club.
Chad - Rappin' On Social Customer Service 