Making the Most of Dreamforce 2024 for Marketing, Sales, and Alliance Teams
Dreamforce 2024 (Sep 17 – Sep 19) is officially one month away. For those in the Salesforce ecosystem, this is crunch time. Whether you’re in sales, marketing, alliances or a Salesforce admin, Dreamforce is your Superbowl (and the Moscone Center, like a sports stadium). Salesforce’s main annual conference is the closing and learning event of the year – and much like the Superbowl, just showing up isn’t going to win you any accolades. Even if you haven’t focused fully on how you plan to use your week in San Francisco (every marketer just laughed at that), it’s not too late.
Below are a few tips and tricks to get yourself set up for success at Salesforce’s largest conference of the year.
Dreamforce tips for marketing
If you have a conference booth, your marketing team is probably in the final stages of planning. You’re in the home stretch, which means details are everything.
- Document and communicate goals: you’ve spent a pretty penny on the booth and everything that goes into it (T&E, designs, giveaways, etc). Make sure that you and your entire organization know what success looks like. Success could be scans, meetings, pipeline and much more. Whatever you plan to track, document it, communicate it and follow through on updating the entire organization on your results.
- Create a solid schedule with plenty of breaks so you ensure your booth is covered at all times.
- Communicate rules for engagement for your team – set the expectations of how people will engage at the booth, schedules, and how to best capture leads.
- Document your follow up plan NOW. Who will follow up with each type of person you will see at the booth (Salesforce employees, partners, customers, prospects, press)?
- Put your BDRs and social media teams on standby. Let them know how they can support you while you’re onsite.
If your team did not invest in a booth, there are still plenty of opportunities to drive leads, revenue and brand awareness.
- Consider meeting space outside of Moscone. DocuSign used to rent the W, FinancialForce (now Certinia) always rents out Fogo de Chao, and Conga used to rent out Thirsty Bear before they shut down in 2021. As you walk around Moscone, you see store fronts turned into branded meeting spaces for companies looking for a more personal experience off the campground floor.
These outside spaces give you room to create your own environment with meeting space, demo stations and elevated food options. They are also pricey and we’re getting a little late for something good and close, so an alternative is to sponsor within one of these spaces for a fraction of the price. Ask your SI (system integrator) partners and tech partners if they are sponsoring an offsite space and if they are looking for sponsors. They may be willing to “sublet” a table or two in exchange for you paying down their investment on the space. For a few thousand dollars, you can up-level your meeting presence from “meet me at the front of the campground near the big tree” to “meet me at this address and I can provide food, drinks and somewhere to charge your phone”. This is not only a great opportunity to show up as a more serious company, but an opportunity to partner with an SI, tech partner or complimentary company that might bring joint prospects.
- Dinners, breakfasts, walks and happy hours. There is no shortage of before and after hour events that you can host or co-host with other ISVs, tech partners and SIs. Take advantage of these lower cost options as stand alone or additive events.
Dreamforce for Sales & alliance teams
Whether you have a booth, meeting space or you’re going to gorilla sales Dreamforce, it’s important to have a plan and to set that plan in motion today.
Similar to marketing – document and communicate goals: your company has either spent a pretty penny on the booth and everything that goes into it (T&E, designs, giveaways, etc) or the investment of you being onsite (and off the phones) in San Francisco for the week, where one night in a hotel can cost upwards of $1K a day. Make sure that you and your entire organization know what success looks like for business -e.g., How many meetings you plan to have, pipeline you anticipate it will drive, renewals it will secure. Whatever you plan to track, document it, communicate it and follow through on updating the entire organization on your results.
Identify who you want to meet with at Dreamforce – and get creative about how
It might seem like basic advice but listing who you want to meet with in the Salesforce ecosystem as part of your goals can be helpful in identifying what you want to get out of Dreamforce. Just showing up and hoping to run into people is hard in a city like San Francisco, which will be taken over by 50K people and what feels like a thousand outside events.
- Identify which prospects / customers are speaking at Dreamforce. Comb through the Dreamforce Scheduler. This is a great opportunity to show up to their session, listen, introduce yourself after. Consider sending a social media post tagging them and calling out something brilliant they said. Bonus – in going to their session and introducing yourself after, you have access to the person at Salesforce that cares about that individual’s use case, cloud or industry. Getting an introduction to that Salesforce rep, SE or RVP could give you access to similar use case / industry / cloud customers.
- Know what parties they are hosting and attending. Your customers and prospects are most likely investing in Dreamforce as well. Know where they plan to be and add those parties to your schedule so you can have a better chance of running into them.
- Understand if they have offsite meeting space. If so, see if you can set time up there with your contact. This gives you a better one on one experience and might just help them hit their meeting goals.
- Get creative – everyone’s evenings are going to be full so consider a breakfast, a walk or bringing them coffee to the booth during their scheduled booth time.
- Don’t forget about the importance of partners. Although prospects and customers might be top of mind, spend time to understand who from your partner teams you should try and connect with. Are there industry leads at Salesforce, complimentary partners who you can co-plan a sales cycle with? Add them to your list of meeting requests for the week.
Create a solid pre and post Dreamforce plan
- Write down what you want to accomplish in each meeting, including your ask and your give.
- Take copious amounts of notes during the meeting so you don’t forget key details.
- Start your Dreamforce follow-up emails as soon as possible. If you have a break after your meeting, start that note right away before you meet a hundred more people and forget critical details of your meeting.
- Make sure you communicate up your success, highlights and anticipated pipeline once you’re back in the “office”.
How Invisory is preparing for Dreamforce
The Invisory team is full of Salesforce experts that have been to more Dreamforces than we can all remember. Anyone else count their Dreamforce attendance numbers by which bands they’ve seen or missed at Dreamfest (goodbye Foo Fighters and hello P!nk and Imagine Dragons)?
Tip 1 (for Dreamforce 2025 and beyond)
Start planning for 2025 shortly after 2024 Dreamforce ends.
The best way to start your 2025 preparation is to take time in the weeks after Dreamforce to reflect. Talk with your team and your executives and document:
What worked, what didn’t and document ways to improve
- Did you have the right people on site
- Did you see the results you expected / how did you perform based on KPIs
- What would you keep and / or change next year
Tip 2 (for Dreamforce 2024)
“I have already started my outreach early & booking meetings ahead of time! I will also be breaking in my shoes from now until then #noblisters!” — Rachel Konforti, Head of Partnership Strategy
Tip 3 (for someone’s first Dreamforce)
“Don’t forget to plan a little rest in your agenda – whether its a solo coffee date, a walk, or a workout. It’s a long week so you’ll want to plan accordingly!” — Rachel Konforti, Head of Partnership Strategy
Tip 4 (for setting your Dreamforce goals)
Think about what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to learn about Salesforce? Products? Services? Are you looking to connect with partners (ISV and SI)? There is a lot going on, and it’s easy to get distracted. — Doug Rosenbaum, Invisory COO (formerly Salesforce Ventures and AppExchange)
Tip 5 (for what to bring to Dreamforce events)
Keep your hands free – lots of moving around and bags/computers are a pain. — Doug Rosenbaum, Invisory COO (formerly Salesforce Ventures and AppExchange
Tip 6 (for after Dreamforce)
Follow up on leads!! It’s amazing how much folks pay to meet interested parties and then fail to follow up effectively. — Doug Rosenbaum, Invisory COO (formerly Salesforce Ventures and AppExchange
Invisory
- I heard Dreamforce is leaving San Francisco. Is that true?
Nope! Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that Dreamforce will continue to be hosted in San Francisco.
- How much does it cost to go to Dreamforce?According to Ssalesforce's website, attending Dreamforce costs between $1,999 and save $2,499, depending on when you purchased your Full Conference pass.
- Who attends Dreamforce?
Everyone in the Salesforce ecosystem is encouraged to attend Dreamforce. You'll see folks from Salesforce's many internal teams, as well as others from various ISVs, SIs, and other technology partners.
- What is the difference between Dreamforce and Connections?
Dreamforce is Salesforce's annual event aimed at just about everyone in the ecosystem, Connections is for ISVs and other partners actively marketing or merchandising with the Salesforce platform.
