Why the hate for Salesforce.com CRM?

I love Salesforce.com, that’s no secret. Fellow employees meeting me for the first time often ask if I’m a Salesforce.com employee. That’s because I tend to evangelize it’s use in every aspect of our business, and am vested in ways of extending its functionality throughout our organization – even beyond CRM. I’ve made it my job to know everything I possibly can about the Force.com platform and how it might benefit our business. I know I’m not the only one like me; I had an opportunity to meet plenty of Customer Evangelists at Dreamforce this past year, and of course there are the folks I regularly interact with on Twitter, the community forums, and now the Dreamforce Chatter app. But I always wonder if there are product evangelists who love competing CRM products as much as I love Salesforce.com.

Meet Leon Tribe (@Leontribe on Twitter), a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant based out of Sydney, Austrailia. He has a blog, Leon’s CRM Musings, which he has been writing since 2008 (at about the same frequency and volume that I’ve been writing my Force Monkey blog). It’s a good blog, and worth reading. It is a Dynamics CRM blog, “focusing on a functional perspective and from the perspective of making codeless changes”. While reading his blog, I was amused at how frequently (and damningly) he talks about Salesforce.com (less so in 2010, but much more so in ’08-’09). Why is that, I wonder? I never talk damningly (or frequently) about Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Where does all the hate come from?

I came to be aware of Leon after browsing the latest #Salesforce Daily Paper.li newsletter.

SIDEBAR: If you don’t already know about Paper.li, you should check into it: http://paper.li/introduction.html. Paper.li is a news aggregator, similar to Flipboard. When you sign up for the service, you specify a Twitter hashtag (like #Salesforce). Thereafter, you will receive daily news updates from Twitter mentions that include the #Salesforce hashtag and a news article. I’ve subscribed to Paper.li feeds on: #Salesforce, #Privacy, #Security, #Lego and #Robotics.

Anyway, back to Leon … I discovered him and his blog after he started adding the #Salesforce and #df10 hashtags to Microsoft Dynamics CRM related news articles, like these:



These tweets cause the related Dynamics CRM news articles to populate the #Salesforce Daily newsfeed. That reminded me of the silly marketing tactics employed by competing CRM vendors at Dreamforce: the SugarCRM carolers and the Microsoft Dynamics “I Didn’t Get Forced” Sequay Brute Squad. At his Day 2 keynote, Marc Benioff said, “Not everyone wants us to have this fun. There are forces out there that are trying to stop us. They don’t want us dancing to Stevie Wonder. They don’t want us dancing to will.i.am, and singing to his “I Want to Own It” song.”



It's true. And while I spend very little thought on their CRM world, they seem to spend a lot of attention on ours.

But I’m still left to wonder – do the Dynamics CRM product evangelists have as much fun as we do? Is TechEd, the annual Microsoft User Conference, as much fun, energetic, and informative as Dreamforce (it should be: at $2100 for just the conference, it’s double the cost)? At TechEd, do Microsoft customers get to hang around the pub with Microsoft Developers, as I had a chance to do this past week at Dreamforce?  Does TechEd have as much music, energy, and fun as the Dreamforce Global Gala?  Is their community as connected, invested and friendly as ours is?

I have to believe it isn’t, because you can’t be having a lot of good, clean, wholesome fun if you’re spending so much of your time damning and lashing out at the competitor’s CRM product.

Salesforce Schools Oracle in Ad Sign Campaign

This past week was the annual Salesforce.com User Conference, Dreamforce 2010. In advance of the user conference, CRM rival Oracle purchased advertising space across from the Moscone Center, where the convention was being held.

Picture courtesy of Woodsin Martin, SVP at Salesforce.com, who quips, "Not sure who does the ad copy at Oracle, but they might need a fact-checker."


Salesforce.com put their own ad up across from the Moscone Center soon afterwards, letting their customers know who they thought the REAL #1 was:

Yes, the Customer is #1, according to Salesforce. Oracle, you've just been schooled.

Salesforce Updates - Sept 10, 2010

#Dreamforce



Count Down: @RatherGeeky reminded me that there are only 83 days until Dreamforce 2010. Have you registered and booked your reservations? This will be the biggest Dreamforce yet, with more than 20,000 attendees! Register here…

Community Conference: One of the things I love most about Salesforce.com is the overwhelming strong support I get from the user community. There are thousands of active community users who are writing Salesforce blogs, creating or promoting new feature enhancements on the IdeaExchange, participating in local user groups, asking and answering questions on the Answers forum, and collaborating on the community forums. This year, at Dreamforce 2010, we’ll have a chance to all meet each other. Dreamforce 2010 will have a community meet and greet! Read more…


#Administrators

150 (or rather, 32) Steps to Salesforce Greatness: AvideonCRM published an article titled “150 Steps to Salesforce Greatness”. The article actually only lists the first 32 steps (which is fair: the consulting company needs to keep some trade secrets!). Trying to figure out where to start with your new Salesforce.com setup? Check out this article! It has some great starting tips. Read more…

Mass Emails with Salesforce.com: What is the best way to do mass emails with Salesforce.com? Check out this article by @TFrankfurt; in the article, he talks about the current limitations of mass emails through Salesforce, and shares some popular AppExchange Email solutions to help break past these barriers – very helpful blog! Read more…
 200+ Free Salesforce Apps from Force.com Labs: Force.com Labs has been crazy busy the past few months, churning out new apps on the AppExchange – all free. The best thing about these apps (aside from being free) is that they are open source. Sometimes I’ll take these apps and use them just as ideas for other apps that my org needs; sometimes the apps give me ideas for optimizing code that for other apps that already exist within our org. Either way, if you’re not familiar with these apps, you should probably spend some time to get acquainted with them. Check them out here…


#Developer


Force.com Developer Meetup in Chicago: Salesforce.com is hosting a Developer Meetup at the Summit Executive Center in Chicago, IL this Wednesday (9/15) from 6:00 PM – 9:30 PM. There are two tracks planned: Intro to Force.com Workshop and a session on developing Chatter Apps. Quinton Wall and Reid Carlberg will be guest speakers at the event. If you are local to the Chicago area, and have wanted to learn more about developing applications on the Force.com platform, this meet-up will be a great intro! Read more…

Learning How to Code: “I want to learn Apex and Visualforce and all that other stuff, but I don’t know where to begin.” Apex is a structured programming language, very similar to Java. Visualforce is a structured mark-up language, very similar to HTML. If you don’t already know the basics of these topics, jumping in to Apex / Visualforce programming can be a challenge. Google can help! Check out these tutorials on learning HTML, CSS and Javascript from Google. (Thanks, @CRMFYI for the link!) Read more…

Use Visualforce to Add Inline Google Maps to Account / Contact Page Layouts: This is an oldie, but a goodie (that I rediscovered this past weekend). @phollo wrote a blog showing how to add Inline Google Maps to your Salesforce.com page layouts. It’s a great article, complete with sample code. Read more…

Cloud Computing for Java Developers Webinar (VMforce): Jeff Douglas wrote a great review of the recent Force.com webinar, “Cloud Computing for Java Developers”. I’m really looking forward to the REST API that will be piloted in the upcoming Winter’11 release! Read more…

Marc ... is that you?

I used to have a little counter on the side of my blog, which tracked the number of unique vistors on my site.  I'm sure you've seen these gadgets before -- almost every newbie website designer puts them on their first website, and every professional web developer cringes at the sight of them.

I replaced the visitor counter with a widget from Clustr Maps (I suspect this gadget makes professional web developers cringe, too). Clustr Maps gives both a visitor counter, and it also tags the location of visitors on a world map..  Every now and then I'll go take a peek at the world map, looking for answers: who are you? Where do you come from? What brought you here?  Most importantly, how can I help?

Tonight, I discovered a new red blip in Hawaii.  Hey, that's where Marc Benioff lives!

Several years ago, after my first Dreamforce event, I sent a personal note to the Salesforce.com CEO.  I told him that I was blown away, that Dreamforce had changed my whole aura. Within an hour, Marc replied simply, "Mahalo."  It's Hawaiin, I had to look it up.

I wasn't exagerating in that note.  Dreamforce had changed something inside me.  When I returned home, I started doing more volunteer and local community service work.  I started approaching problems with a very different mindset.  I started sharing more.  I started blogging.  My career path changed.  Everything changed.

Dreamforce is now 4 months away.  If you are a Salesforce.com Administrator or Developer, Dreamforce is the most valuable event you can attend.  There is so much energy, learning opportunities, and networking opportunities at this annual conference.  It gets bigger, better and more festive each year.  Friendships that you make at Dreamforce will last long afterwards, and you will be able to tap them all year long.  I was "between jobs", and missed last year's Dreamforce event ... I can't wait to go back this year!

Will you be there?  Let's connect!

Register here: http://www.dreamforce.com/.  Register today!

Training Tips for Your Administrator

Our administrator has spent considerable time developing her skills in SF. I would like to provide her with some additional training but I believe after reviewing the course syllabus that the content provided by SF is too basic. Does anyone have any suggstions regarding training that might be helpful? We are located in the NYC area and are using the Professional edition. -- Connie Ducaine

Here are some ideas:

1.) Have your Administrator connect and get involved with the local Salesforce.com User Group. There are many User Groups around the world, you can find your local chapter here: http://www.salesforce.com/community/community/ On the right sidebar, in the section labeled Local User Groups click your region of interest, and register to join.

Salesforce.com User Groups are organized and run by volunteers within the Salesforce user community -- not by Salesforce. They're a great way to connect with other administrators, developers, partners, or even Salesforce employees. User group members share personal experiences, learn how others are using the platform, and have a unique opportunity to bring some of those ideas back into their own organization's instance of Salesforce.com.

2.) Even if you opt to not send your Administrator to training, consider sending them to get their certification. For more information, click here. While the training courses are designed to specifically help students with the certification exams, an experienced administrator will probably have no difficulty with the them. There are also plenty of online resources that will help students prepare for the exams. This is a great opportunity to show recognition for your hard-working employee!

3.) Have your Administrator get her own Salesforce.com Developer account. She can get one here: http://developer.force.com/

That site also provides a great deal of information on how to get started with some of the more advanced features of the tool. The Developer edition is a bit more "full-featured" than the Professional edition, so she can really spread her wings -- digging into more advanced features like writing triggers, designing Visualforce pages, and experimenting with AppExchange packages.

4.) Have your Administrator spend some time on in the Salesforce Community website. There is so much information here: Best Practices, Training & Recordings, Developer Blogs, etc. If she's really hot stuff, she might be interested in helping other users with their questions in the discussion forums.

5.) Want to really get her excited about learning more about the platform? Send your adminstrator to the annual Salesforce.com user conference: Dreamforce. This is a 3-day conference in San Francisco CA, designed for users, developers, and partners. The event is highly engaging, full of break-out sessions for users of all skill levels. I guarantee that when she leaves Dreamforce, her head will be swimming in ideas for how she can do more for your organization with the Force.com platform.

I think it's great that you're keeping her focused on advancement and improvement on her Salesforce skills. There are lots of resources out there, even if you're not interested in the actual training classes.