By: Carmine Gallo

Software-as-a-service pioneer and salesforce.com (CRM) co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff credits storytelling as one of the primary reasons for his company’s rapid success. “Communication is probably the most essential part of my job,” Benioff told me in an recent interview about his new book, Behind the Cloud. The book describes how salesforce went from idea to $1 billion company in less than a decade. Whether you own a small business, run a large company, or have a great idea for The Next Big Thing, consider these seven tips from Benioff about how to shape and articulate your vision.

Commit to transparent communication. Customer relationships take work, and a big part of that work is dedicating yourself to constant communication with customers and prospects, says Benioff. “We invited them to come in and see what we were working on. We asked them to test it, and we made changes based on what they said. Having this kind of inclusive communication—sharing and listening— from the beginning set the tone for our entire company.” According to Benioff, salesforce used this feedback to make fast changes—”intelligent reaction.”

Make friends with reporters and bloggers. Despite a very busy schedule, Benioff responded to my interview request immediately and met my deadline. “I never treat members of the media as adversaries; they are friends of the company,” says Benioff. His relationships with reporters and bloggers have been a “pivotal part” of his marketing strategy. “Journalists immediately think of me as a resource for a quote or comment because they know that I will be available to offer fresh insight and meet their deadlines.” Benioff says that social media has also turned customers into content creators. “The future of communicating with customers rests in engaging with them through every possible channel: phone, e-mail, chat, Web, and social networks. Customers are discussing a company’s products and brand in real time. Companies need to join the conversation.”

Tell classic stories. Most reporters don’t care about a tiny startup, and that’s why Benioff never positioned himself as such. He told a classic David-vs.-Goliath story. “We gave the media something different. We gave them something new. We always positioned ourselves as revolutionaries. We went after the largest competitor in the industry or the industry itself. We made our story about change. We were about something new and different that was good for customers, and good for the community. We talked about the future.” Although the media landscape is changing, Benioff believes there will always be a need for content. The delivery model might be changing, but exchanging and sharing stories and information remains as important as ever.

Make your own metaphors. According to Benioff, simple metaphors are a terrific way to communicate your message. “I spend a lot of time creating metaphors to explain what we do. For example, early on I explained what we did with the metaphor “salesforce.com is Amazon.com (AMZN) meets Siebel Systems.” Later when we launched AppExchange we called it “the eBay (EBAY) of enterprise software.” Anyone can create their own metaphors, says Benioff. “Just remember to test them before you put them out there. Try a few and run them by customers, analysts, and people in your network to make sure they work.”

Keep everyone aligned. It’s not enough for one person to be on message. Everyone has to speak from the same playbook. At salesforce, Benioff made sure staffers could effectively convey what they did and what they stood for in one sentence. They created a laminated “cheat sheet,” with one sentence on the front and benefits of the service on the back. Salesforce employees and partners were even provided training so they could all deliver the message effectively and consistently.

Encourage presentation skill development. Want a job at Salesforce? You’d better be a good presenter. Some candidates are required to give a presentation in addition to answering tough questions. “Presentation skills are key,” says Benioff. “People who work for you represent your brand. You want them to present themselves—and represent you—in a certain way. Whether employees realize it or not, everyone in a company interfaces with customers in one way or another, and their attitude will affect the brand. That’s why we work so hard to make sure we have the right people representing our brand, and that everyone is in alignment once they get here.”

Display confidence. Benioff believes in dreaming big. “I believed that all software would eventually be delivered in the cloud. I had to believe in it passionately and be ready to constantly defend it.” Inspiring communicators are passionate about their mission—they believe it to their core and speak with conviction.

According to Benioff, you must be passionate “and a little bit crazy” to follow your own ideas and do things differently. But in the end, he says, it’s worth it.

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By: Business Week/ Carmine Gallo

Fifteen ways to make a bad impression

By Carmine Gallo

Giving truly great presentations requires skill, work, and practice. Giving catastrophic presentations is far easier. So if you want to take the easy way out and look like a rank amateur, here are 15 surefire tips to guarantee that you leave a really, really bad impression.

1. Misspell words. Failing to check the spelling on your slides shows a complete lack of care. If you don’t care enough to proof your presentation, your audience will care less about you and your message. It’s the easiest way to look unprofessional.

2. Create distracting color combinations. Blue on green is especially hard to read.

3. Use inconsistent fonts. Professional PowerPoint designers will use no more than two, perhaps three, font styles in an entire presentation. But why stop there? There are thousands of typefaces available. See how many you can incorporate into your slide show.

4. Use a really small font size. If you really want to drive people crazy, say something like this: “I know you can’t read this, but if you could, here is what it would say…”

5. Insert improperly sized photos that are stretched to fit the slide. Images used in PowerPoint slides should be at least 900 pixels wide by 720 high. Designers start with larger images and shrink them to fit the slide. If you really want to look bad, however, find much smaller thumbnail images, say 200 x 300 pixels, and simply stretch them to fit the slide. They will look blurry, cheap, and bush-league.

6. Look completely and totally disinterested. I attended a conference in which the keynote speaker hadn’t even bothered to create a presentation and had a few handwritten notes in front of him. That’s fine, if you can pull it off. This speaker could not. He shuffled through his notes, lost his place several times, and twice asked the organizer, “How much time do I have?” The people in the audience—influential venture capitalists—found this so appalling that they started looking at each other and laughing.

7. Look disheveled. If you really want to leave a bad impression, wear faded blue jeans, worn, dirty shoes, and a stained shirt.

8. Read every word of each slide. Better yet, turn your back to the audience and read your slides word for word.

9. Don’t bother with a backup plan. If you need a live Internet connection to demo a site, don’t bother making a screen shot of the site in case the connection doesn’t work. That way, you’ll be at a complete loss for words when the connection fails.

10. Don’t practice. At all. Practicing a presentation out loud takes work and will make you look far too polished. Just wing it.

11. Call attention to your mistakes. If you want to show a complete lack of preparation, say something like “Oops, I have no idea how that slide got in there.”

12. Open with an offensive or off-color joke. Half your audience will walk out immediately and you’ll have succeeded in making a really bad impression right out of the gate.

13. Use wild animations. Letting text simply fade into a slide is way too straightforward. Especially when PowerPoint offers you the bounce, the boomerang, and the dreaded “neutron,” which makes letters circle wildly. All are effective at giving your audience a headache.

14. Use cartoon clip art. Why spend $3 on high-resolution photos from a stock photography service such as iStockphoto when there are plenty of cheap-looking and free cartoons that will make your presentation look like a sixth-grade project?

15. Use ancient presentation software. PowerPoint 2003 served its purpose (I used it for years). But there’s no comparison with PowerPoint 2007, which is simply a better, more robust tool. Says Darla Wigginton, an expert PowerPoint designer and creative director at eVision Design in San Francisco, “When [PowerPoint] 2007 came out, it scared the design world because the average user could now create some impressive-looking work.” Why scare professional designers? Stick to older versions of the software and leave the slicker presentations to others.

I hope you find some of these tips memorable enough to avoid them at all costs. But make no mistake, these presentation “techniques” are alive, well, and thriving. Just when I think I’ve seen or heard it all, someone has one more observation to add to the list. Feel free to use the comments section below to add your own experiences. We look forward to hearing from you.

Carmine Gallo is the communication skills coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! His upcoming title, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, will be published by McGraw-Hill in October. More of Gallo’s columns are available in his ongoing series.

Carmine Gallo is the communication skills coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! His upcoming title, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, will be published by McGraw-Hill in October. More of Gallo’s columns are available in his ongoing series.

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