Best Dreamforce Speakers

There is a massive line-up of celebrity speakers who are going to share innovative ideas this year at Dreamforce, so we really hope you don’t miss it.

Here’s a few of our favorite speakers at Dreamforce this year:

Best Parties at Dreamforce

Dreamforce is not just a dull SaaS conference, and we know this by the huge line-up of artists ready to put on a spectacular show!

The party starts Monday at 6PM, with the Welcome Jamboree. On Tuesday, between 7PM and 11PM, you can attend a benefit for UCSF Children’s Hospitals at AT&T Park featuring Alicia Keys, Lenny Kravitz and Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real.

The party goes on for the full week of the conference, with the Dream Valley music festival. The festival boasts 15+ bands which will play in the middle of the Dreamforce campus, on Howard Street.

They’ve got Chum, LT Smooth, Boca Mundial and Katie Cash among others. See the full line-up here.

Dreamforce Sales Training/Education

Dreamforce is  traditionally an event where you walk away with new ideas. This year, there are dozens of hands-on training sessions and workshops. Using the Dreamforce conference scheduling tool, you can choose the right training session to attend based on your industry and your interest.

Can’t Make it to Dreamforce? Join our LIVE Webinar

XANT will be at booth #1501, where our sales experts will be ready to tell you how data and science can be used to boosts your sales results.

We’re also launching the #Playmakers Facebook community. Playmakers use data, science and smart technologies to win at the sales game and boost their revenue. We’re creating a special community for Playmakers:  you tell us how you win at sales, we tell the world how great you are.

We’re looking forward to seeing you at Dreamforce!

And remember, if you can’t be there, you can RSVP for our Facebook live session!

I’ll the there to let you in on everything that happens on the show floor!

All of this incredible economic growth began with the simple idea that sales teams could achieve greater results with less cost by hosting their technology in the cloud.

Salesforce has fueled a revolution in selling by championing the innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. They were the first to outsource the headaches and hassles of supporting the technology needs of the sales department so companies could spend more time selling.

Salesforce plowed the deep snow by being the primary pioneer of this compelling business model, opening the door for companies like XANT to deliver exciting new sales acceleration technologies.

A new era of customer success

Through its partnership with Salesforce, XANT became the first company in the world to develop a cloud-based dialer that worked seamlessly inside a cloud-based CRM. This innovation allowed sales leaders to leverage the quantitative data from call center technology with the qualitative data of customer relationship management software.

It also allowed XANT to develop a first-of-its-kind predictive analytics and machine-learning engine that has taken the science of selling to a whole new level. XANT customers can tap into the power of more than 100 billion sales interactions to instantly make their sales teams smarter and more effective.

For example, Apttus CEO Kirk Krappe reported that his company’s sales teams have used the predictive power of the XANT self-learning engine, Neuralytics, to achieve the following results:

• 80 percent more conversations
• 55 percent more appointments
• 200 percent increase in sales

That’s just one prominent example of the transformative power of data + science in the world of sales.

None of this would be possible without Salesforce and its unrivaled ecosystem of sales acceleration apps and world-class systems integrators, like Accenture, Bluewolf, Appirio, CRM Manager, Vertical Relevance and Astadia.

Here’s to another five years of amazing growth and opportunity.

Much like Apple built the iTunes Store and app ecosystem for the iPhone and iPad, Salesforce has built a vibrant ecosystem for business apps around its CRM. The AppExchange is the marketplace for business apps that leverage the capabilities of Salesforce. Companies looking for additional solutions to enhance their Salesforce experience search the AppExchange for answers.

Here at XANT, we have grown our business thanks in part to the high-quality leads we get from the AppExchange.

“Leads from the AppExchange are more qualified and close at a much higher rate than most lead sources,” says Thomas Oldroyd, senior director of marketing. “The AppExchange generates hundreds of high-quality leads every week.”

PowerDialer for Salesforce is the No. 1 communications platform on the AppExchange for over five years, and we look to repeat that success with the new Vision email tracking product.

Customers are encouraged to write app reviews to give real-world information and experience. Here are a few examples of our reviews:

“With roughly the same allocation of time, dials, contacts, and appointments are all roughly up a third. Click-to-Call is a huge time saver. I recommend for anyone doing sales development or inside sales.” – Mike Kelly

 “We are in the process of full implementation and have already gained productivity 15 percent just with the Click-to-Call features. We had ring central in the past with all of its problems and most of those concerns have gone away. The callers are happier and our prospects are happier with much clearer communication from us.” – Tim Hunter

Thank you, Salesforce, for continuing to build a robust ecosystem and support third-party applications. Here’s to another 3 million installs.

As the sales profession changes at lightning speed, it is fueling equally rapid growth in the high-tech industry.

All of this activity is generating exciting breakthroughs in sales acceleration technology, including innovations in predictive sales communications, gamification, hiring, electronic quotes and signatures, social selling and more.

All of the leading providers in this space have built applications on Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM and Customer Success Platform.

That’s why XANT is so excited to announce that Salesforce is participating in IS Accelerate ’15, the sales acceleration event of the year, as a titanium sponsor.

Salesforce will share best practices for creating amazing customer experiences using its powerful technologies, such as Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud and more.

Brian Millham, President of Global Commercial Sales at Salesforce, will deliver a keynote at IS Accelerate and share insights into the company’s remarkable growth.

Salesforce also will host a breakout session titled, “Salesforce – Real Customer Success [Live Interviews],” featuring real-world lessons from top-performing companies that leverage Salesforce, XANT and other Salesforce AppExchange applications to fuel sales growth and generate revenue.

This session will highlight success stories from:

• Gavin Harris, Director of Global Sales Enablement and Operations at AirWatch
• Anderson Dinga, Sales Operations Specialist at LogMeIn
• And others who use apps to run their businesses.

More IS Accelerate ’15 Sponsors

Apttus offers SaaS applications that provide complete visibility and end-to-end management of business functions. From Quote-to-Cash to Apttus Launchpad, its applications streamline quote and deal negotiations, ensure consistency across channels, and expand services from the initial sale through the customer lifecycle.

LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator helps you identify the right prospects and find opportunities for warm introductions from people in your network. Get lead recommendations, connect your CRM, and receive real-time sales updates and insights.

Domo gives you all of your business information in one place. Its powerful platform quickly connects you to any source of data and helps you align your business around the metrics that matter most.

DocuSign enables you to close deals faster. It eliminates the need for paper by powering digital transactions.

Other awesome sponsors include:

AA-ISP
Bluewolf
Connectwise/Quosal
Deloitte Digital
DemoChimp
DoubleDutch
EventBoard
Gainsight
HireVue
InsightSquared
MarketStar
SalesHood
SpringCM
Women Sales Pros

Learn more about these technologies at IS Accelerate ’15, March 18-19, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Find event details and register here.

Free eBook: Make Email Your New Favorite Sales Tool

Get a sneak peek into the future of Vision, XANT’s new email product with predictive analytics, email tracking technology and the world’s best email to CRM sync.

Get the free eBook

A July 2014 XANT study ranked email as the preferred communication method of business professionals, with 96 percent saying they use it every day. That even beats office phones, selected by 80 percent.

If you use Salesforce, it’s pretty easy to load custom email templates that will save you a ton of time. Just copy and paste the text right into Salesforce, or use this handy cheat sheet.

Use these six Salesforce email templates to connect with busy decision-makers and close more deals:

1. Quick inbound lead follow-up

While data continues to prove that following up with an inbound lead is critical to conversion, most organizations and reps are still too slow on the draw. A Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,” reports that the average response time of companies that responded to inbound web-generated leads within a month was 42 hours.

Imagine the missed opportunities, especially considering that our research suggests that if you follow up with an inbound lead within five minutes, you are 9 times more likely to convert them.

The following template is a quick, general follow-up email that still has the ability to feel personal to the recipients, making them more likely to set an appointment.

Best Practices

• Carefully consider your subject line. You want to aim for something inviting that doesn’t scream “spam” or “pitch.”
•  The links provided to your helpful resources should utilize pre-populated fields to make it even easier for your prospect to register in your system in order to access this additional content. 

2. Leverage the thought leaders in your organization

Jeff Ernst, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, has said, “Business buyers don’t ‘buy’ your product or service, they ‘buy into’ your perspective and approach to solving their problems.”

Ernst’s point is at the heart of what makes this second sales email template so effective. Occasional messages that leverage the influence of the thought leaders in your organization build brand exposure for your organization and ultimately drive more revenue.

This email template might invite recipients to read your CEO’s latest ebook, published research, or offer a personal invitation to attend a live event.

Best Practices

• Don’t rely on this template too often. You do not want to overuse the personal brand of your leaders. Save this email template for timely industry events and leads that share a direct connection to the thought leaders in your organization or the subject matter of your thought leader’s expertise.  

3. Text-based drip

While most Salesforce emails work best as HTML emails for tracking purposes, research indicates that drip email campaigns are more effective when they are executed in a text-only format. This format allows the email to appear as a one-to-one communication between a sales rep and a prospect.

Best Practices

• Emails should be kept short, conversational and include a personalized signature attributed directly to the sales rep responsible for the lead.
• Conversation should be informal while still including a value proposition.
• Track opens, link clicks, downloads, etc. Pairing Salesforce with XANT’s patented Vision technology allows you to track buying signals in real time.   

4. Outreach through an internal connection

When it comes to sales, it is a universal truth that you should always put your network to work for you.

It can be useful to have a ready-made email template for reaching out to an internal connection to request a referral to the right person within the company.

Best Practices

• Keep the referral email short.
• “Chunk” paragraphs together in two or three sentences so they are more manageable to read.
• When asking a colleague to introduce you to a prospect, it may be a good idea to prewrite the email introduction. This way, all your connection has to do is copy and paste or forward your message. 

5. Share a helpful resource

Every decision-maker wants to make the most informed decisions. Emails that educate or entertain your sales prospects with information relevant to their industry are more likely to be valued and, therefore, opened.

Emails that share helpful resources provide a proven method to stay in contact with prospects as you nurture leads through the sales funnel.

Best Practices

• Content is king when it comes to email. Make sure the body content of your message provides value.
• Research reports, case studies, helpful articles, informational videos, webinars and podcasts are all compelling forms of content. 

6. Pitch and miss

Too often reps write off sales prospects that they have lost contact with. These may be people you have had one or more conversations with, but you haven’t been able to connect with them for a while.

They may have even said “no” or “not right now,” but your gut (and better yet, your data) tells you that there might still be a chance to win their business. Email can provide the perfect Hail Mary to spark renewed interest for these prospects.

You may be surprised how frequently these emails re-engage your prospects. Very often your prospects raise their hands and say, “Wait! We are still interested! We just haven’t had time to review your offerings!”

Best Practices

• These types of emails are an excellent opportunity to incentivize with an offer.
• This template should be the perfect balance of aggressive and concise.

Email can be one of your most valuable selling tools, and having solid email templates will help you identify your most engaged prospects and close deals faster. Add some of these templates to your Salesforce account to improve your sales team’s productivity.

Free eBook: Make Email Your New Favorite Sales Tool

Get a sneak peek into the future of Vision, XANT’s new email product with predictive analytics, email tracking technology and the world’s best email to CRM sync.

Get the free eBook

The Dreamforce 2013 YouTube channel showcases a series of amazing customer success stories. We’ve embedded a few here, with key takeaways from each.

Watch them to see how some of the nation’s most progressive companies use Salesforce to sell smarter — and pick up a few tricks you can use to make your own messages more compelling.

Alignment is key

In this four-minute video, CareerBuilder.com’s executives reveal how they use Salesforce and ExactTarget to deliver relevant information to job seekers faster than ever before. CEO Matt Ferguson explains that his company realized it could use its data to make the job search more efficient.

CareerBuilder says it uses the ExactTarget marketing cloud to run hundreds, if not thousands, of hyper-targeted email marketing programs at any given time.

See what Salesforce has done here?

CareerBuilder is more than happy to help Salesforce tell its story because the two companies’ stories are so tightly aligned. CareerBuilder is improving its customers’ lives with real-time access to relevant data, and so is Salesforce. Bada boom, bada bing.

Small details matter

ADP’s Dan Page recalls on camera how the reps in one of the company’s business units used to drive around with printed lists and a bunch of brochures in the trunk. ADP decided to use the Salesforce1 mobile platform to revolutionize the way its reps sell.

ADP has built an entire suite of custom mobile applications on Salesforce1. It has reduced paperwork and accelerated the sales process. Now reps can do a quick demo with a client and get that client’s signature in the same meeting — all on their iPads.

As you watch this video, pay special attention to the small details, including the music, scenery and crisp hand movements people use as they interact with their mobile devices. Everything about it screams “mobile sales force” and “speed to market.” The woman you see riding the subway with her smartphone is NOT playing Candy Crush, people. She’s taking care of customers.

Diversity is good

Salesforce could probably produce hundreds of highly compelling case studies about how its groundbreaking solutions have helped digital companies like CareerBuilder. But the Salesforce story is so much bigger than that.

That’s why I was delighted to see Stanley Black and Decker’s JoAnna Sohovich spotlighted among the Dreamforce success stories. Her company sells hand tools that significantly predate the Internet.

And yet, Stanley Black and Decker is still investing in innovative technologies to serve its customers faster and more efficiently, including the Salesforce Service Cloud. This video illustrates how all companies — regardless of industry — can transform the way they do business.

See how XANT accelerates sales through science.

Image credit: Ben Fredericson

When you find a formula that works, milk it. That’s what I learned from watching Wilford Brimley’s oatmeal commercials.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post called 11 Insanely Useful Dreamforce Links, which has been viewed so many times it made my brain explode.

I’ve learned to give the people what they want. Even if you want to dip your gummy bears in honey mustard sauce. Who am I to judge?

Below you will find six drop-dead sexy Dreamforce links. I hope you click on every single one. If you don’t, the walrus will be sad. Or is it a sea lion? Mammals with fins and flippers confuse me.

1. How to Survive Dreamforce on a Budget [Infographic]

Marketo does Dreamforce right. They can point you toward the best parties and the coolest swag. Marketo also uses XANT software to accelerate its sales process, for those of you keeping score at home. Check out this lovely infographic. You’ll be glad you did.

See the sexy infographic before it’s too late.

2. The Top New Companies That Will Dominate Dreamforce

Mark Fidelman has his pulse on what’s hot in high-tech. In this Forbes article, he highlights some up-and-coming apps, like the promising social selling tool Kitedesk. Review his recommendations and decide for yourself.

See what’s hot on Forbes.

3. A Guide to Getting Around San Francisco

San Francisco is a wonderful city with so much to see and do. That’s why I’ll always be grateful to the salesforce.com blog for giving us these tips for getting around. Public transit, ridesharing and bike rental options abound. So, no need to take a leisurely stroll through The Tenderloin — unless you’re into that sort of thing. Bonus points if you happen to spot Wilford Brimley wandering around with a bowlful of oatmeal.

Enjoy your stay in San Francisco.

4. The 50 Most Influential People at Dreamforce 2013

Matt Heinz messed around with Little Bird last week and got a triple-double. He also created an insanely useful resource that shows who has the most influence at Dreamforce, based on social media connections.

Find out who you should hobnob with.

5. 5 Ways to Be at Dreamforce Without Being There

Lori Richardson serves up some gems about how to get the most out of Dreamforce without actually being there. After all, this is the age of virtual events, as XANT proved with its well-attended Inside Sales Virtual Summit.

Richardson’s article tells you how you can watch Dreamforce live and keep up with all of the sessions on social media.

Get Richardson’s Dreamforce tips.

6. Epic Food and Drink Infographic

The word epic may be overused, but food and drinks are not. That’s the great thing about going to Dreamforce — you will work up a powerful hunger and an unquenchable thirst. Introhive went the extra mile and produced an exceedingly fine infographic on food and beverage options. Observe.

See how XANT accelerates sales through science.

Image credit: ankakay

The pandemonium isn’t limited to the Moscone Convention Center and surrounding area in San Francisco. The #df13 Twitter hashtag delivers a steady stream of tips and tidbits from the popular salesforce.com conference.

XANT is having a blast swimming in the stream. We’ve been sharing useful resources like the Dreamforce Discount Guide and offering a high-performance athletic shirt to those who see a demo of the XANT sales acceleration platform.

Find out how to get a high-performance athletic shirt here. 

Here are 23 fascinating tweets that brought tears to our eyes and a song to our hearts …

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Find out how to get a high-performance athletic shirt here. 

See how XANT accelerates sales through science.

You can learn about the tools and processes that successful inside sales teams are using at Dreamforce 2013 during the session titled “Optimize Inside Sales: Introducing the Console For Sales.”

You’ll hear from the following thought leaders:

• Benjamin Doyle, VP Sales Enablement, Extreme Networks

• Scott Keane, VP Sales Development, Salesforce.com

• Cari Aves, Sr. Product Manager, Salesforce.com

XANT caught up with Cari Aves to give you a preview of some of the key points she will discuss in her presentation. You’ll find a brief summary below.

Console for Sales

Aves will guide you through the new Salesforce Console for Sales, which allows reps to find, update and create records quickly and efficiently. The console is designed for inside sales teams that must manage a high volume of records.

It offers a whole new level of customization within your Salesforce platform. You can set up your console so that it serves up the information that is most relevant and actionable for your team.

See important data, like the following examples, on a single screen:

• Marketing automation data

• CTI and chat tools

• Gamification and notifications

The console gives you a customizable framework that you can use to build a framework that works for you.

Catch this session at Dreamforce 2013

Wednesday, November 20: 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Yerba Buena – Salon 9

Find out more about this session.

See how XANT is accelerating sales through science.

XANT teamed up with the Bay City Guide to save you some money on your trip. We’re pleased to bring you this special San Francisco Discount Guide.

Snag savings on food and fun activities at awesome local businesses like these:

Restaurants: Cafe Mason, Johnny Rockets, Ben & Jerry’s

Attractions: Aquarium of the Bay, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum, Winery Collective

Tours: Alcatraz, Tastebud Tours: Food Walking Tour, Bay Voyager Cruise

Transportation: American Airporter Shuttle, Midnight Limousine

Click here to get your discount guide now!

See how XANT accelerates sales through science.