The $100 Million Sales Process In 2003, Salesforce.com had a problem: it had hired a bunch of high-priced field salespeople to bring in and close new business, but they were starving for pipeline and leads. Their Rolodexes turned out to be, with very few exceptions, unhelpful. We had lots of expensive salespeople with thin pipelines. Although Salesforce.com’s marketing and PR machines were generating lots of leads, the leads were mostly from small businesses, not enterprises. Except for knocking on doors when I had a painting business in college, I’d never done sales or lead generation before joining Salesforce.com. Knowing nothing about lead generation and sales ended up helping me because I brought a fresh perspective to selling. After trying a few cold calls, I realized what a waste of time that kind of work was and immediately gave it up. Not only did I HATE cold calling (mostly because the people I called hated it), it was just totally ineffective. I knew there had to be a better way, something more enjoyable, interesting and productive. I also read a bunch of sales books about selling and prospecting, and then threw them away. Most said the same things, in different ways, and weren’t helpful at all. (Though they would have been great if we were in the 1980’s.) At first I felt really frustrated, because I felt like I had to start from scratch. I ended up creating a sales prospecting process and inside sales team that consistently generated new qualified sales opportunities for the quotacarrying salespeople. Nearly everything changed. The team no longer had to qualify website leads. The team didn’t handle sales order paperwork. The team didn’t close small deals. The team didn’t help out marketing. The team wasn’t distracted. Instead, the team had a single mission: to generate (but not by cold calling; see