Dan Rogers was recently appointed as VP EMEA marketing at Salesforce. He’s currently preparing for the brand’s London stop on its Salesforce1 World Tour on 22 May. Here he answers our quick-fire questions
What was your first B2B-related job?
I started out as a strategy consultant for Accenture; it was like being on a four-year boot camp. The job taught me how to listen to customers and understand their needs, and how to translate the technical and nuanced into something simple.
Which B2B brand do you most admire?
I greatly admire Nest who makes products with B2B and B2C applications. It has reimagined the smoke alarm and thermostat for a digital world. This is an area that has seen very little innovation and Nest has
broken the mould. In this world of connected devices I think we’ll see more and more companies connecting to their customers through technology.
What is your favourite B2B ad campaign?
It has to be the ‘Box billboard’ campaign, which announced in the first line that: ‘Box is like Sharepoint.’ Immediately you’re caught off-guard, thinking: ‘Why on earth would Box say it is the same as the leading player in the market?’ But all becomes clear in the small print underneath, which reads: ‘but without the servers, set-up costs, manuals, downtime, etc.’ You get the idea: Box offers the same performance but with far less hassle. Job done for the Box marketing department.
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Get your tone right when you’re talking to customers. Whether it’s through email, website, any channel; imagine you’re in a bar and having a drink with a friend. Now, what would you say?
What is your proudest achievement?
Up until the moment my five year-old son got 21/21 for a spelling test the other week, I would have said graduating as a Fulbright & Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School. But now it’s the spelling test for sure; good spelling is a cornerstone of business. (And I can’t help but take some credit).
To succeed, a B2B marketer must…
Understand marketing is a translation exercise between what customers want and need, and the value a company delivers. B2B marketers must be good translators; they must tell the relevant story, they must be able to hold every customer’s attention as if they’re having a one-to-one conversation, but also be able to deliver that at scale.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
We’re entering the third wave of computing. There will be 50 billion connected devices by 2017, including five billion smartphones. Behind every app and device is a customer. For us at Salesforce that means when dealing with customers it is important to communicate with them in a tailored manner.
What was your last marketing epiphany?
I was on a business trip, launching an awareness programme in Germany. One evening we were in a bar and I realised that our discussion – literally just talking to friends in a bar – formed a model for customer relationships. Those friends in a bar are different in every country and they each want different data points, but they still want that friendliness. It doesn’t come overnight, but the ‘friend in a bar’ tone is where you want to end up.
