Trailblazer by Marc Benioff & Monica Langley

Author:Marc Benioff & Monica Langley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

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At the 2018 World Economic Forum, my co-CEO Keith Block met with Carolyn Tastad, Procter & Gamble’s group president for North America. A trailblazer if there ever was one, Carolyn is a fierce advocate for women in business, and Keith left their meeting armed with a better understanding of the issues holding women back in the workplace, on display at P&G’s special Davos exhibit. In return, Keith invited her to visit Salesforce’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Carolyn’s chief focus at the time was reigniting revenue growth in the consumer giant’s $30 billion North America business, and naturally, we wanted to be the ones to help her do it. Keith tapped Salesforce’s Eric Eyken-Sluyters, our senior executive for retail and consumer packaged goods, to come up with an innovative solution that could help P&G sell more through its channels—everywhere from Walmart to neighborhood convenience stores. When Keith met with Eric and his team the night before the big meeting with Carolyn, however, Keith discovered a serious problem.

There were once again no women on the sales team.

“Eric, seriously?” Keith recalls asking. That’s when Eric broke the unfortunate news that the women on Eric’s team who were slated to participate had experienced flight delays to San Francisco.

Before P&G and Salesforce executives gathered the next day, Keith asked our head of trailblazer marketing, Cristina Jones, to join the meeting. His goal wasn’t to change the gender ratio simply for the sake of appearances, but to bring in a smart, experienced female voice who could add value to the meeting with the P&G president.

Eric made a compelling pitch for how we could leverage data to improve in-store retail execution. But Keith knew we weren’t going to win Carolyn’s business by sticking to the practical matters at hand. We also needed to show that our companies were aligned around values. He began telling her about Salesforce’s values-based culture, then threw it to Cristina to describe the Salesforce trailblazer community and the efforts we’d undertaken to prioritize equality inside our own company. By the time the presentation wrapped up, it was clear to everyone in the room that the discussion had made an impression on Carolyn. “Our brand was elevated in her eyes,” Eric told me later.

Shortly thereafter, P&G signed up with us for a major data-analytics project. It was, once again, a valuable piece of business obtained largely, if not primarily, by the force of our four core values.

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