How We Created Sales Machine Alignment Through Salesforce.com’s V2MOM Planning Process One of Marc Benioff ’s key business practices that helped Salesforce.com grow to more than $1 billion in revenue in less than 10 years was the V2MOM planning process. Marc Benioff came up with a plan to set the company’s vision and align all of its people and teams in the execution of the vision. V2MOM stands for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Metrics. The V2MOM process helped the company (and the teams and people in it) lay out a vision, prioritize the most effective methods to achieve that vision, anticipate problems ahead of time, and understand how they would measure success. This was done at every level in the company: by the company as a whole, by teams, and also by each individual (i.e., I created a personal Aaron Ross V2MOM). This creates alignment up and down the organization, from the CEO down to individual salespeople and support organizations. We took the V2MOM process very seriously. The executive team alone spent 80-100 hours just in creating it at the CEO level. When I led my sales team, it took about 10-15 hours as a group to create the team version and then about 2-4 hours per individual for their personal versions. It was well worth the investment. Below are examples of the five principles of the V2MOM process at each level, so that you can learn from this to try it on your own: 1. VISION: What’s The Big Picture? What is your vision for the next 12 months? Corporate: “Double our enthusiastic and wildly successful global customer and partner community through flawless execution of our proven model.” Team (my sales team):“Make a difference in the success of our team and