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Jan 20

SalesForce.Com’s New Tagline – How to Build Benefits, Big Promises and Complex Ideas into Three Words

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I just got an email from Salesforce.com for a seminar/webinar even and was delighted by the tagline that was burried beneath the graphics on the page. It was actually an image tag that doesn’t even show on the graphical version of the email. It says, “Salesforce.com – Success. Not Software.”

I’ve been writing taglines for companies lately, so I know how difficult it is to come up with good ones (especially good ones that big, “too many cooks” corporate marketing teams can agree on).

I’ll repeat it again. Salesforce.com – Success. Not Software. So pure, yet so complex. Heck, I don’t even know it it’s new. It just jumped out at me this morning.

If you don’t know what Salesforce does, here’s a quick run-down. They offer sales pipeline and CRM/contact management software in the “cloud.” What does that mean? Basically, you don’t have to buy boxed software and install it on client machines as a stand-alone program like Microsoft Office or ACT! You log in to your Web account and have a ton of software functionality available due to the latest Web software/services technologies like AJAX, Javascript, .NET, Silverlight and so forth.

So Salesforce does still sell software, but they’ve made it much easier. You log in to the site and do everything in the cloud, so back-up, losing contacts and maintenance/management tasks are effectively outsourced. You don’t have any software on client machines to mess with, which means no IT staff, no helpdesk calls, no hassles.

The tagline captures the benefits of CRM and sales/prospect/customer management — essentially “success.” That’s the bottom line for sales people. You need software to stay out of the way so you can continue to develop relationships with people and solve their problems. “Not software” captures the cloud computing angle and this desire to have things work without hassles.

So simple. So elegant. So all-encompasing. I love it. Good job to whoever Salesforce’s ad agency is.

  • I have to agree, Phil. I signed up with SalesForce.com yesterday, after a 1-week trial. It's going to save a lot of time. And the cloud concept is sure good with me. All my stuff is out there, mostly in Google. I'm machine- and OS-independent. Freedom.
  • I love the cloud, too. Just dipped a toe into Evernote today, in fact. They get so much press.
  • Hi Phil

    I would be a big fan of the cloud of course, and recognise the leadership Salesforce.com has brought to software of all descriptions, particularly in reducing enterprise software costs.

    However, I'd also like to suggest they missed a word in the tag line - it would more appropriately read Success - Not Simple Software.
  • Overly-complex? Too much for the small biz-man?

    I like the FOB site, tagline and graphics. Good testimonials, too.

    My glitch with Salesforce, Batchbook and the like is the conversion from Gmail contacts to their platforms. Mapping correctly is a bitch.
  • Yep I know all about contacts. How do they do with your stuff from Twitter, Facebook, Linked In etc?

    Far be it from me to support competitors but the truth is this contacts stuff is very difficult, not because of technology, although that's bad enough.

    Google and Outlook seem to do OK but Google to Apple Mail and vice versa is just awful. Guess this is a technology issue with the difference between .csv and vCard.

    I'm sure this doesn't apply in your case but the main problem actually comes from the way people use their email address book - not as an information resource but a fast way of filling in the address in an email message. Half of its out of date, most of it's incomplete and inconsistent through the file. On top of that there's a bunch of stuff not needed, or wanted in a business application.

    That makes proper transfer of relevant and accurate data across to a business app really tough. But it gets much worse when trying to consolidate several people's address books into a single business database. The problem grows exponentially with every additional address book.

    We used to have a very sensible approach, using a .cvs template users could copy/paste to from Excel files. It only took a few minutes and guaranteed consistent data across the app. The problem was users didn't want to spend the time cleaning their own data.

    Email has just about no concept of context or process, so users can be as sloppy as they like - but that's not the case with a proper business app where you link data in context, so users don't have to go looking for it.
  • Yes - and the smallest little differences can hose up the whole enchilada. e.g. gmail has one field for name while other platforms have two (first, last). If there's one area that's screaming for a "standard" it's contact fields.

    True - not enough time in the day to get into the grids and clean up data.
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