If you haven't heard of Salesforce.com then you are missing out. Salesforce is an online CRM (customer relationship management) system that allows you to keep track of leads and work potential clients through the sales funnel. They were one of the companies that I mentioned invested in the Marketing Consulting firm HubSpot.
Salesforce has one of the top average salaries among Fortune 500 companies at well over $300,000. Salesforce has managed to buy out and integrate a separate program called Jigsaw into their Salesforce.com website. Jigsaw is basically a data collector that now has over 30 million contacts that seamlessly upload to Salesforce.
Imagine that you want to call the head of sales of XYZ company. You get on Salesforce.com and type his position in and BAM! You have his name, email, phone number, and other info that have been uploaded to Jigsaw. It makes finding and qualifying leads so much easier and more efficient for sales people. Since buying this program, Salesforce has renamed it data.com and has written it into the code of their existing CRM system. It is no wonder that companies like these succeed, they continue to push the envelope. The book 'The Leadership Challenge' talks about how when they ask for their best leadership stories, they always get a story about how someone changed and organization to move it forward. Salesforce.com is certainly leading the way in the rapidly expanding multi-billion dollar industry.
CRM systems are very interesting and a great tool for marketers. In Derry's class we actually had to market a certain CRM system to a marketing firm and I learned a lot about it. It is crazy how many company's use it and it surprises me that some chose not too use it. Though I have heard the salesforce.com commercial on the radio and it makes me want to pull my hair out.
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