Small Business News

I spent this week at Dreamforce. Salesforce created this as its huge annual event in San Francisco.  And, as usual, the event featured non-stop activity. Attendees discover so many things to see. They also find so many people to meet. I found it impossible to get to everything and everyone.  But the event offered a chance to speak with a number of folks. That included the chance to speak with Vala Afshar. Afshar serves as Salesforce’s Chief Digital Evangelist.

I guess more than a few of the people who read this are one of Vala’s 400,000 plus followers on Twitter. As a result, you know he shares a lot of great content and insights.  But I spent a few minutes with him. So went beyond the 280 character limit. And we learned more about his role at Salesforce. We asked him why so many people follow him. But we also asked him about the things he shares with tens of thousands of followers. Some tweets get hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.

Check below for an edited transcript of our conversation.  Or listen to the full convo. Watch the video, or click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

SBT: What exactly do you do as a chief digital evangelist for Salesforce?

Vala Afshar: I’ve got to give credit to Alex Dayon who was the president of products in 2015 when I joined, it was Alex who said, “I think you should be the chief digital evangelist. Because as a customer, my company and I used the platform across sales services, marketing, even engineering. We had integrated our R&D database to our CRM platform so that when engineers updated our defect tracking in real time, that insight would go to our front line service staff.

And so we removed a ton of friction and heavy process and created almost an autonomous enterprise in terms of how we would leverage insights from different parts of department. So b

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This article, "An Acronym in Search of a Business Model" was first published on Small Business Trends

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Selling online is not easy, it’s hard work. However, thousands of businesses, every day are finding success in selling online. One of the leaders in helping businesses sell online is Yahoo Small Business and I just had a powerful discussion with Maria Melo, of Yahoo Small Business about how to increase holiday sales, this holiday season.

Listen to our interview or check out her quick tips for success with holiday sales below.

Leverage the power of s

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Your holiday business gifts can send a message to your clients, employees, and partners. As a result, it’s important to carefully consider what that message is. If you want to run an eco friendly or socially conscious organization, you might consider eco friendly gift ideas. Or consider gifts for a cause that give back in some way.

There are so many different ways you can go about this. For example, choose sustainable materials or make donations in someone’s name. You can even opt for eco friendly gift wrapping.

These holiday charitable, green, and gifts for a cause will brighten the day of their recipients and make you feel good, too.

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