Salesforce Canada

Even when they’re trying to be their most proactive and thoughtful, the best sales professionals have often had to guess or use their instincts about when their most loyal customers might want (or need) to hear from them again. Along with many other ripple effects it will cause in our daily lives, the Internet of Things could eliminate such guesswork for good.

First there was competitive intelligence—data that helped organizations understand what their rivals were doing to grow their business. Then came market intelligence, which looked more broadly at the economic forces and buying patterns across a sector.

Discussions about technology are often factual, sometimes forward-looking, but rarely philosophical. But Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and Uber Co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick are not typical technology leaders. In a fireside chat during Dreamforce last week, Benioff revealed that he’s a frequent Uber user, and engaged Kalanick in a conversation that went beyond Uber’s features, even going so far to say that “Life is like an Uber journey. You get on and you get off.”

If he could go back in time and change one thing, Marc Benioff says he would have placed a focus on diversity and women in leadership when founding Salesforce.

Social media is just one piece of the pie. If you don't measure your efforts, it's nearly impossible to learn and grow. Here are best practices to choose the best metrics and define ROI.

When the other side scores in a hockey game, the TV cameras quickly pan over to the home team coach’s face. And usually, apart from looking a little unhappy, that coach wears an expression that shows he or she is already thinking of how they can help turn things around.

While Thursday at Dreamforce officially marks the Women’s Leadership Summit, Tuesday kicked off with some powerful programming around women in technology. Though each of the speakers came from a different angle, the message of carving out your own path came through loud and clear. Here are five takeaways from these sessions.

The Canadian economy has been built on the backs of driven, savvy and determined entrepreneurs. Industry Canada indicates that small and medium-sized enterprises (fewer than 500 employees) make up 99 per cent of business in Canada and employ 64 per cent of workers in the private sector.

Over the next few days, 160,000 registered attendees and media from around the world will be learning about Salesforce’s customers, solutions and vision at Dreamforce. But for 70 international journalists, the event started a day early with an exclusive tour of some of San Francisco’s most innovative and revered companies.

Some people count the days to the start of hockey season. Others count down the shopping days before the holidays hit. But for the more than 150,000 people who make the trek to San Francisco from 78 countries around the world—and another 10 million who join via live streaming—the countdown is on for Salesforce’s Dreamforce, the largest software conference on Earth.