Thats right, 51,800 companies ranging from fortune 500 giants to small startup businesses, that show many customers Salesforce.com has according to their latest press release dated 5th January 2009. Thats not a customer base, that is a market!
The database management software company Ingres was their latest large addition to the impressive list of Salesforce customers which just seems to keep expanding rapidly. This base of 51,800 companies is a fantastic market segment for several technology companies who have products and offerings specifically built as solutions for existing Salesforce customers and keeping a tab on which is the latest company to turn to the Salesforce CRM is essential and spot early opportunities. A perfect example of this scenario is how Intacct was selected to integrate in this deal to help with financials, Vtrenz for the marketing automation needs and Xactly for sales compensation as add ons.
With such a wide market base for AppExchange and Force.com applications, building strong marketing data on Salesforce.com users and gathering account intelligence on them can effectively give you an edge while exploring opportunities and requirements in this market. Building this kind of a database is a long and painful process with the need to gather intelligence on each potential account as well as locating suitable decision makers. Over the course of the next year ActiveContacts will look at expanding the number of Salesforce using target accounts within the SFDC database and provide marketers updated data on this every expanding market. It may not be anywhere close to 51,800 for now but every lead counts!
The last year was a tough one on most companies starting with the banking crisis, the financial downturn and then the entire world economy falling to pieces. While B2C markets reached all time lows, B2B marketers were not spared either but towards the end of the year a lot of the conversations changed from “we are all doomed!” to “what do we have to do to pick up sales and how do we generate more leads?”. The goals were quite clear. Number of leads generated have to increase. Budgets wont be increased so the cost per lead has to come down.
ROI has become the keyword and investing in quality leads at a lower cost is what it’s all about. While inbound lead generation has become a very strong sustainable approach for a lot of B2B marketers to grow their lead databases, supplementing them with traditional lead sources such as conference lists, business contact lists and company database subscriptions will remain just as important to build the volume of leads in the lead generation funnel. Having access to a fresh supply of quality leads especially at the start of a selling cycle is extremely valuable in being able to qualify and engage more sales ready leads through the year. However high volumes and low costs are not worth much if means you are compromising on quality of data and leads. Eventually its the quality of your leads and business contact databses that will bring you the results so thats the key requirement to insist on when you source new leads.
As you kick off your customer acquisition this year, make sure you are working with a fresh lead database which is relevent, focussed and most importantly, high quality.
