Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

Walking away from a week at Moscone Center with the theme of “Cloud Computing” firmly planted in my subconscience, what struck me as truly inspirational was the enthusiasm salesforce.com customers had for the future of their businesses. Not to diminish Benioff’s keynote, but the real story was the attendees and how many were planning to use new tools to cope with tougher economic times and fewer resources vs. just retrenching and weathering the storm.

Given the audience, I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise with over 60% of SMBs attributing “lower expense rates” and “increases in productivity” as the driving factors for embracing Software-as-a-Service.  Automating and working smarter is a company’s best defense.

Ultimately, the many conversations I had with attendees highlighted three key points that were top-of-mind:

• Companies are trying to do more with less
  Across the board, we are all under pressure to increase sales despite fewer resources.
• Sales and Marketing Automation is a priority
  Generating more qualified leads is a top priority, and providing information to sales in real-time is a must have.
• Turning economic challenges into an opportunity is high on the list
  The changing economic climate is altering company strategies to focus on sales effectiveness.

It was clear that companies attending the event were thinking ahead. And given the predisposition Saleforce.com users have to embracing solutions based on SaaS and Cloud Computing to automate their businesses, it’s my bet they will fare far better than most.