Salesforce.com: The Big Benioff
He's perhaps the most charming, cocky, pr-blitzing, eastern-religion touting, pushy showman in tech. but is Marc Benioff possibly also right?
from the Dec. 13, 2004 issue
By Daniel Roth
"I'm glad you're here," Vivek Ranadivé, the CEO of Tibco Software, says to me as he bounds up the stairs of his Palo Alto headquarters. "You're going to watch me sell to Marc." Marc is Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, a five-year-old company, half the size of Tibco, that offers a web-based program companies use to track and analyze all of their sales and support functions. Ranadivé ushers us into a conference room, where he has a team ready with a presentation on why Salesforce.com needs to rewrite itself using Tibco's recently acquired application development software. Almost as soon as the demonstration starts, though, it's clear that Ranadivé wishes I weren't there. He's not selling; he's getting sold.
"This is much bigger than you think it is," says Benioff, cutting off the presentation. "This is a tremendous opportunity for Tibco. But you need to build a five- to ten-year plan to really take this seriously." Benioff leans forward. "If you do that, you'll take your company to another level. This is your greatest opportunity to go from doing $500 million worth of revenue to getting into the $1 billion to $2 billion club. Vivek, this is your opportunity. And we will help you."
Benioff leaps to a whiteboard, grabs a marker, and sketches the details of Salesforce.com: how the system works, how an "ecosystem" of companies selling add-ons to his software is growing around it. Tibco shouldn't try to hawk a product to him, Benioff says; it should transform itself into a Salesforce.com partner, selling to the 12,500 companies using Salesforce.com. He talks about Tibco's joining a worldwide Salesforce.com road show, about creating "webinars" together, about how Tibco can thrive by grabbing onto the Salesforce.com rocket. Then he slyly suggests that Tibco could pilot its new tool in-house—all it would need to do would be to expand its use of Salesforce.com.
"Okay, we'll do that," says Ranadivé quietly. His bravado gone, he sinks into his chair, holding his head up with his hand. Benioff beams. He has just laid the groundwork to add another 100 users to the 400 at Tibco who are currently subscribed—and he wasn't even trying.
