A short oral anecdote describing how Randy Rodriguez (then at General Motors Auto Finance) discovered Salesforce via a magazine ad around 2001, called the company, and purchased 500 licenses—what became Salesforce's largest deal at the time—leading to a long-term customer relationship and eventual expansion into an $82 million account. The piece emphasizes seizing opportunities, personal initiative (cold calls), and the role of early Salesforce employees (Elizabeth Pinkham) in converting leads.
Questions this video answers
Circa 2001.
Elizabeth Pinkham, VP of Marketing at Salesforce.
500 licenses.
An $82 million deal.
General Motors Auto Finance (GMAC).
Chapters
Salespeople put themselves out there. Like, that's the greatest thing about the career of a seller. Like, you put yourself out there. I remember Larry Ellison once addressed the sales team I was a part of at Oracle. And someone asked him, like, what's his advice to be successful at Oracle? And you'd think he would have said like, well, understand, like relational database technology or. He said one thing. He said, you have to believe in the impossible. And it reminds me making a cold call on Blue Wolf, on Eric Barich in New York and just showing up, just show up. You know, we've had a relationship for 25, 30 years because of that. Can I tell you a story about a guy that you'll love this story. His name's Randy Rodriguez. He works for us at Coastal. He was one of my sales leaders at Blue Wolf back in the day. He built our whole Midwest business. And here's how he got involved in the Salesforce world. He was on a plane. This was probably in like 2001. He was on a plane flying somewhere. He was working for General Motors Auto Finance. And they were on act. They were trying to run their whole sales organization on act. And he was like a sales leader there. And he was on a plane and there was a magazine in the seat pocket in front of him. And he pulled it out and it was Selling Power magazine. And on the back cover of Selling Power was a. Was an ad for Salesforce. No one knew who Salesforce was in 2001. You. You did? I did. No one knew about it. He called the 800 number. Elizabeth Pinkham, who was the VP of marketing at Salesforce, picked up the phone and he said, I work for General Motors Auto finance. I have 500 salespeople. I gotta get off act. I just read this advertisement. Can you help me? Within a month, he bought 500 licenses, which was the biggest deal Salesforce had ever done at that time. And he launched Salesforce inside of gmac. And then Randy became a leader that understood CRM and learned how to deploy it and came into our world and is still to this day helping customers work through these challenges and finding solutions. But it's funny how, like make sure you pick up the phone because if Elizabeth Pinkin had not picked up that call. Yep. He probably would have moved on. And there was an 82 million dollar deal. I mean, it turned into a huge customer.
