Marc Benioff Quotes

One idea alone is a tactic, but if it can be executed a number of different ways, it becomes a great strategy.

Realize that you won’t be able to bring the same focus to everything in the beginning. There won’t be enough people or enough hours in the day. So focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

Seize the opportunity in front of you. Imagine. Invent. Disrupt. Do good. I know that you must be passionate, unreasonable, and a little bit crazy to follow your own ideas and do things differently. But it’s worth it. Life grows relative to one’s investment in it.

There is a Japanese belief that business is temporal, whereas relationships are eternal. That’s true. One day you compete. The next day you partner. One day someone is your subordinate; the next day he or she may be your superior. At its finest, business is friendly competition, just like a game of tennis. As

you must always examine what’s working, evolve your ideas, and change the way you do things.

1) Out of clutter find simplicity; 2) From discord find harmony; 3) In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Life grows relative to one’s investment in it.

It’s about how to create a culture where doing well is synonymous with doing good in order to thrive in a world where a company is only as strong as the principles it adopts.

It’s amazing to consider that no matter what size customer we were pitching, or where in the world we were selling, a singular idea drove all our accomplishments: we never sold features. We sold the model and we sold the customer’s success.

Companies, and the people who lead them, can no longer afford to separate business objectives from the social issues surrounding them. They can no longer view their mission as a set of binary choices: growing vs. giving back, making a profit vs. promoting the public good, or innovating vs. making the world a better place.

like the culture developed by Coach Steve Kerr for my beloved Golden State Warriors. Even though he helms a team, Steve believes that having good people is more important that just having good basketball players; he understands that players come and go, but the ethos on the court gets passed down from one game and one season to another. The best teams play together like a family who trust one another to have their back.

As I write this, I know there are countless mysteries about the future of business that we’ve yet to unravel. That’s a process that will never end. When it comes to customer success, however, I have achieved absolute clarity on four points. First, technology will never stop evolving. In the years to come, machine learning and artificial intelligence will probably make or break your business. Success will involve using these tools to understand your customers like never before so that you can deliver more intelligent, personalized experiences. The second point is this: We’ve never had a better set of tools to help meet every possible standard of success, whether it’s finding a better way to match investment opportunities with interested clients, or making customers feel thrilled about the experience of renovating their home. The third point is that customer success depends on every stakeholder. By that I mean employees who feel engaged and responsible and are growing their careers in an environment that allows them to do their best work—and this applies to all employees, from the interns to the CEO. The same goes for partners working to design and implement customer solutions, as well as our communities, which provide the schools, hospitals, parks, and other facilities to support us all. The fourth and most important point is this: The gap between what customers really want from businesses and what’s actually possible is vanishing rapidly. And that’s going to change everything. The future isn’t about learning to be better at doing what we already do, it’s about how far we can stretch the boundaries of our imagination. The ability to produce success stories that weren’t possible a few years ago, to help customers thrive in dramatic new ways—that is going to become a driver of growth for any successful company. I believe we’re entering a new age in which customers will increasingly expect miracles from you. If you don’t value putting the customer at the center of everything you do, then you are going to fall behind. Whether you make cars, solar panels, television programs, or anything else, untold opportunities exist. Every company should invest in helping its customers find new destinations, and in blazing new trails to reach them. To do so, we have to resist the urge to make quick, marginal improvements and spend more time listening deeply to what customers really want, even if they’re not fully aware of it yet. In the end, it’s a matter of accepting that your success is inextricably linked to theirs.

Early in my career, during my first few years at Oracle, I defined my success by making money and achieving power. By my early thirties, however, I realized that these superficial achievements did not provide real meaning or true happiness. Despite a list of impressive titles and a pile of material possessions, I felt that something was missing, and began to consider my place in the world and how I could make a difference.

We began to get more exciting press activity, mostly online at first. I believe that the coverage opened Caryn’s eyes that we had something important to say, and OutCast Communications took us on as a client. Having the right agency would be pivotal to our image and success.

So focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

open communication, in tandem with quickly fixing the problem, is the only way to build and retain trust.

In order to remain relevant, you must establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Nine times out of ten, companies fail because they don’t set up a large enough sales force and thus have no way to collect enough revenue.

I was learning from the best.

Later, as we neared the $1 billion in revenue mark, we didn’t focus on $1 billion in revenue, but what we needed to do to get to $10 billion in revenue.

Our current battle: we have to save the customer from Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.

Do it fast, simple, and right the first time (and did we mention fast?).

guiding principles about the system: “Do it fast, simple, and right the first time (and did we mention fast?).” They wrote these “laws” on a white board, and they stuck. They forced us to create code that was simple and efficient, and this is what ultimately gave us the ability to scale.

Finally, The End of Software is here.

Trust has to be your highest value in your company. And if it's not, something bad is going to happen.

the V2MOM process. You might have more than one answer to each question; be sure to prioritize your answers: VISION (What do you want?): ________________________________________ VALUES (What’s important about it?): ________________________________________ METHODS (How do you get it?): ________________________________________ OBSTACLES (What might stand in the way?): ________________________________________ MEASURES (How will you know when you have it?): ________________________________________

In your quest to succeed and make money, don’t forget to do something for others.

Our differentiators were ease of use, a business model of shared risk, and low-risk commitment—everything that software was not.

the power of each customer exchange. If the exchange was executed as well as possible—if we made the customer truly successful—we had the opportunity to transform him or her into an Apple loyalist and evangelist. This opened my eyes to the importance of customer success.

build a new technology model (on-demand, or delivered over the Internet—now called cloud computing), a new sales model (subscription based), and a new philanthropic model (integrated into the corporation).

The total cost for 200 people to use a low-end product in the 1990s could exceed $1.8 million in the first year alone.2

intellectual challenge inasmuch as it had to be highly scalable, reliable, and

focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

Every experience you give a journalist or potential customer must explain why you are different and incorporate a clear call to action.

knowledge isn’t truly powerful until it’s shared.

Marc Benioff has been vocal about the responsibility of companies: “To my fellow business leaders and billionaires, I say that we can no longer wash our hands of our responsibility for what people do with our products. Yes, profits are important, but so is society.…It's time for a new capitalism—a more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don't just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact.

(If you want a successful event, you have to project success; your attitude will help make it a hit.) Although

Don’t ever let the competition make you angry. You must have clarity of mind to make your own decisions—not the ones that your competitors want you to make.

Keep in mind that the landscape is always changing; you must always examine what’s working, evolve your ideas, and change the way you do things.

Realize that you won’t be able to bring the same focus to everything in the beginning. There won’t be enough people or enough hours in the day. So focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference. Play

Reliability Is a Tech Problem, but the Way You Solve It Is Not with Technology Alone—It’s with Communication

Some of the most noted angel investors are Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit), Marc Benioff (founder of Salesforce) and Max Levchin (founder of Paypal, Slide and Affirm) who on occasion invest in early stage and growth rounds as well. If the core product of the business begins to gain market share, and it seems the company has a lasting opportunity to scale and become an emerging leader, investors like First Round Capital and 500 Startups step in at the seed or Series A round. Growth equity firms like Stripes Group, General Atlantic and Insight Venture Partners typically come in at the Series C or D stage when the business becomes the number one or two player in the industry and is ripe for an IPO or strategic acquisition.

Value of a corporation should be distributed not only to its leadership but also to the communities in which it operates and to the world

My summers at Apple had taught me that the secret to encouraging creativity and producing the best possible product was to keep people fulfilled and happy. I wanted the people who built salesforce.com to be inspired and to feel valued.

Albert Einstein: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend fifty-five minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.

Just as CEOs can’t look away when social issues clash with their values, employees can’t pretend that whatever its leadership decides to do is above their pay grade. If leadership won’t act on a company’s values, employees at every level need to hold them accountable.

Our public schools need people to show up and care more than they need the donations of benefactors. They need people who can contribute professional expertise mentoring students, assisting teachers, or even applying a fresh coat of paint.

Doing well by doing good is no longer just a competitive advantage. It’s becoming a business imperative.

Lots of businesses talk about values, but in turbulent times, when they matter most, executives often forget to operationalize them.

But let me be clear: What Indiana ultimately showed me is that no one person is in charge of the moral compass of a business. The phone calls and messages from my employees proved that if the leadership won’t act, they’ll have to face the bayonets poking up from below. Gone are the days when companies can recruit and retain top talent without upholding a commitment to values.

There’s no way to put a dollar value on values. And yes, there will be times when prioritizing values, especially trust, will come at the expense of profits. In the short term, that is. But the money your company makes in any given quarter will never be more valuable than the trust you stand to lose over time.

The great miscalculation of the age is the idea that businesses have to make a choice: to become profitable, or to become platforms for change. This is not the case.

Whether you’re starting a business, managing a team, or running an entire company, trusting your instincts can be essential in bringing a vision or idea to life. I now understand that trusting yourself is only half the story. To be effective as a leader, you need a reservoir of trust to draw from. And once you use it all up, it can take years and years to replenish.

Here’s the thing about values: You have to use words to identify them, but they won’t create true value for you unless they turn into consistent behaviors.

A genuine culture built on fundamentals like trust and aimed at the goal of business for good is more than enough, but only if it genuinely outweighs the traditional business motives of driving revenue, growth, and profit.

we’re at a crossroads, and the actions we take from this moment forward will have a defining impact on what kind of world we leave behind for future generations.

Ask Customers for suggestions on how best to serve them: Let me get Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce to weigh in on it. ‘In 2008, Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO, after being out of that role for eight years. The company had lost touch with consumers, and Schultz was determined to fix that. The first thing he did was create an app that asked customers how they thought the coffeehouses could be improved. The company consolidated the top ten responses and put them to a consumer vote. Then it implemented the top five fixes. The process engaged customers in the turnaround and helped restore revenue growth.’13

Because the guerilla tactic of directly leveraging the activities of our competition worked so well, we repeated it and made it one of our marketing strategies.

There won’t be enough people or enough hours in the day. So focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.

There is a Japanese belief that business is temporal, whereas relationships are eternal.

There’s a lot of controversy when it comes to theories about evolution, but when it comes to evolution in the software industry, there’s only one theory that makes sense: surviving by learning from experience and usage patterns.

After all, the better the developers you have, the better the product you build.

The more developers you have, the more products you can build. Essentially, recruiting is the engine that drives distribution

Marc Benioff: “Actualize yourself”—that was Yogananda’s message. And if you look back at the history of Steve—that early trip where he went to India to the ashram of his maharishi. He had this incredible realization that his intuition was his greatest gift and he needed to look at the world from the inside out. Larry Brilliant: You just wouldn’t get a conversation with anybody else the way you would get it with Steve Jobs. You could be talking about politics, you could be talking about space travel, you could be talking about movies or music, technology, spiritual life. He was so smart, and his mind was so agile, and what he could do was he could take the experiences that he had with computers or the experiences that he had with a mystical quest and he could apply them to analyzing today’s news or to political events, or geopolitical events even more so. I never had a conversation with him where I didn’t learn something. Marc Benioff: And here his last message to us was: “Look inside yourself, realize yourself, look to The Autobiography of a Yogi, which is a story of self-realization.” I think that is so powerful. It gives a tremendous insight into who he was but also why he was successful. He was not afraid to take that key journey. Ron Johnson: Steve was clearly a spiritual being. Marc Benioff: He was the guru.

Working out of Marc Benioff’s rented one-bedroom apartment, we knew we wanted to build a new kind of user experience, one that would feel as seamless and intuitive as buying a book on Amazon. But as we got into it, we realized this required us to change our whole way of thinking. We had to reevaluate the whole purpose of a software company, changing the fundamental question from “How many products can I sell?” to “What does my customer want, and how can I deliver that as an intuitive service?

Recruiting Is Sales

Hiring the best requires diligence.

You must always be able to predict what's next and then have the flexibility to evolve.