The Untold Benefits of B2B Brand Communities – And Salesforce’s Partner Ecosystem Shows Us How It’s Done
The idea of a brand community is typically associated with B2C brands. But loyalty to a brand is not confined to consumers; business customers have just as much to offer their fellow community members as individual consumers who rally together – and B2B brands have just as much to gain from creating the forum for this to happen.
Introduction
This is the tale of how a software company cultivated one of the most vibrant, dynamic and successful communities in the world. As if you didn’t know already, Salesforce is huge – the #1 CRM provider worldwide and, as of 2022, the world’s largest enterprise applications firm.
But what you may not be aware of is that their partner network – the expansive collection of businesses whose sole focus is helping people make the most of the Salesforce suite of applications – is one of the biggest, and friendliest, brand communities out there.
Recently, FSC talked to Sarah Kelleher, CEO of Nebula Consulting, who gave us a peek into the surprising world of the Salesforce Community, and what it is that makes them such a striking example of a B2B brand community. We wanted to know how and where they meet (the online platforms and the physical places), what they do as a group (from ski trips to Salesforce Supermums), and what the individuals, their companies and Salesforce itself gets out of it.
“I honestly can't think of another B2B brand where there's that much organic, genuine passion for a piece of software,” Sarah told us. It seems that it really is true that “People like to find their people, no matter where they are.”
A brief history of B2B brand communities
Communities that assemble around a B2B product or service have their roots in the forums and portals of the 1990s and early 2000s, with software companies being the first to adopt these sorts of online spaces. Usually they focused on customer support, such as the SAP Community Network that launched in 2003, in which developers and IT professionals shared code, solved problems, and exchanged best practices.
In the mid 2000s to the 2010s, communities became strategic assets, shifting from pure support to engagement hubs. At this point, brands began investing in moderated platforms, events, content and influencer engagement.
From the 2010s to now, the meaning and significance shifted again, to community-led growth (a topic explored in depth in our Finding Your Tribe white paper). B2B companies now integrate communities with product roadmaps, customer success and marketing strategies, with high uptake in sectors like fintech and SaaS (software-as-a-service). The rise of platforms like Higher Logic and Discourse has made it easier than ever to create the online spaces needed to connect people around a product, service or mission. But of course it takes more than just a place to meet – successful communities must have shared values that permeate the membership, and these, in a B2B community, emerge from the culture of the brand itself.
How Salesforce put the right ingredients together
“I think it was actually someone at the white paper event that you guys ran,” referring to our Thriving Together event earlier this year, “When one of the speakers said ‘rather than thinking “build it and they will come”, think “let them build it”...’ and that is exactly what has happened with Salesforce,” Sarah explains.
“They laid this foundation, they created the environment in which people could become passionate about something. They didn't go ‘No-one's going care about software on their days off’ …there's a group called Salesforce Saturdays where they do just that. People do care about this stuff when they're not at work.”
Salesforce had, as Sarah puts it, “The openness to create community,” and though the shape of that has evolved and been dictated by the people in the community, “The ingredients were there.”
“Though the shape of the community has evolved and been dictated by the people in it, Salesforce had the openness to create the forum for it to happen.”
Providing an alternative to the somewhat staid workplace culture of most tech companies of the time (the early 2000s when Salesforce was first establishing itself), Salesforce was smart in its approach. “At the time when they started up,” Sarah tells us, “The obvious comparisons were to companies like Microsoft, and they wanted to be something different. So Marc Benioff, the co-founder and CEO, has always used the word ‘ohana’ to describe Salesforce, and has always talked very proudly about the culture. They lead with their values.”
‘Ohana’ is a Hawaiian word meaning ‘family’, but its meaning encompasses a broader group of people than just blood relatives. It refers to a group who support and are supported by each other.
As with many success stories in business, it is those who are compelling storytellers that garner the most ardent support of their brand. “They’re very good at storytelling,” Sarah explains. “We know it's still a business, they live to generate revenue – it's well-known that Salesforce is a sales machine itself. But the story they tell means Salesforce is seen to operate differently (whether it does or not) to the others in its space.”
The people
The community wrapped around Salesforce is millions strong. When we spoke to Sarah, whose London-based company Nebula helps organisations get the most out of their Salesforce investment through strategic architecture design, technical solutions, training and ongoing support, we were able to peel back the layers of this eclectic group.
“I’ve been quite an active member in the Salesforce community for the last 10 years. In a nutshell, it refers to anyone who works with, or adjacent to, Salesforce and its technology.” Employees of Salesforce itself aren’t generally included, “...but there are definitely some grey areas,” she tells us. “Ultimately it's a very close community, and a work environment that personally is unlike anything I've worked in before.”
The community is made up of three layers, which can be thought of as concentric circles around Salesforce itself, which forms the first layer. Then you have partners, made up of services and technology. “Services include agencies, consultancies, freelancers… anyone who's offering people services around Salesforce,” Sarah explains. “And then you have your technology partners – these are companies that have built products or apps that either complement or augment Salesforce in some way.” The partner layer of the ecosystem is broad and varied: “You've got everything from boutiques – agencies with under 10 people – right up to the big consulting houses like IBM, PWC and Accenture: they are all part of the partner ecosystem.”
The final layer is customers and end users. “They’re the people who use Salesforce to conduct their business, from those whose roles are focused on Salesforce – such as in-house admins and developers – to the sales and marketing people who just use the tool to do their day job.”
When we look at the number of individuals who make up these layers, the numbers are, as Sarah puts it, “staggering”. By their own reckoning, Sarah tells us, “Salesforce estimates that there are over 15 million people in that ecosystem.”
The platforms…
“There’s definitely some truth to that number,” Sarah tells us, referring to the 15 million that make up the Salesforce community, “Because there are over 6 million people who've used Trailhead.” Trailhead is Salesforce’s online learning platform, launched in 2014, offering free courses and certification. Its gamified approach to upskilling people that work with the technology has a significant following all its own, and is an important part of the community puzzle.
“Communities of every size, demographic and purpose imaginable now gather on and offline, in spaces both ‘official’ and informal, planned and organic.”
One of the key questions for any brand looking to set up a community is: where do we meet? For some brand communities, spaces owned by the brand themselves (like Sephora’s Beauty Insider platform, renowned as a leader in customer loyalty programmes) are the best option; for others, online forums that are not brand-owned, such as subreddits, messageboards, or customer-created social media groups, are sometimes trusted more by the community members. As you’d expect, the right formula will be slightly different for each brand.
We asked Sarah how it all works – how do people get together?
“There is the online community for a start: there are a lot of Slack channels, and they're very active – they've got thousands of users and people ask questions, share job boards etc. And most of these are not directly affiliated with Salesforce. They may have a couple of people from Salesforce who happen to be in them, but they are not managed by Salesforce in any way.”
So there are channels that exist outwith of any oversight. But are there spaces that are owned or managed by Salesforce? Sarah confirms “I think there are a couple. People go through waves with social platforms. Twitter used to be quite a big hub for people communicating, and gradually that has shifted – now a lot of people are moving over to Bluesky. There's quite a few developer-specific forums, and there are Salesforce channels as part of that. In terms of Salesforce-owned, there’s the Trailblazer [Trailhead] community – their forum for learning and asking questions – and that's where people are a lot. I would say the Slack channels are starting to gain more engagement than some of the Salesforce-owned things. But Slack itself is a Salesforce owned product! So in some ways we are still part of the mothership.”
It’s the people in the community that organise and regulate these channels though – and that reap the biggest rewards. “Salesforce doesn't have jurisdiction on what is shared or done in these channels – that is very much owned by the channel managers. It varies from space to space, but some of these groups – there are thousands of people in them, and they are active. People help each other out, answer technical questions, all sorts of things get shared. And there are online events, webinars, things like that. Some of those are things that partners do as part of their marketing, so Nebula might run webinars on certain Salesforce topics, and part of that is marketing for us – but it is also about connecting with the community.”
“At these events, our technical people share some of the work we’ve been doing. And then gradually, as people come to think ‘Oh I have this problem, I know Nebula talked about that’ it just fulfils itself. I think that’s a much nicer way to do business – working on actually giving people some value, not just just buying your connection.”
…And the places
It’s very much in the real world, and not just in the digital space, that the community meets. “One of the biggest ways that people connect is through events. Every week, every day, there will be something going on.” How does that work locally, we wondered?
“At the most grassroots level, you have local community groups who meet regularly, usually monthly, anything from around 20 to 100 people. So London, for example, is a really active community – you could go to a different community group every week if you wanted to. And there's monthly groups for Salesforce admins, developers, marketers, architects… There's a great Women in Tech group. And whilst a lot of these groups are focused on discussing features or approaches to projects, there are groups that are completely social.
“There’s a group called Rambleforce, and they organise an annual event where they go walking in the Peak District. There's Skiforce, there's coffee groups, there's Salesforce Saturdays – and this is really just people gathering locally. And the only thing that really ties them together is that they're interested in Salesforce.
Global get-togethers
When it comes to the large-scale events, those requiring sponsorship and full event programming, these too – with the exception of the actual Salesforce-run events (such as the annual Dreamforce conferences) which we’ll touch on later – are organised by volunteers in the Salesforce Community.
“Community conferences are bigger day events,” Sarah tells us, “with a lot of speakers, a lot of content, break-out sessions.. and these take place all over the world.” The people organising these are doing so quite outside of their day jobs: “They’re not getting paid for doing this. The funding for these mostly comes from ecosystem sponsors – i.e. other partners. Occasionally Salesforce will sponsor some of these, but they'll be a sponsor, not the organiser. And I think that’s key: Salesforce may sometimes have a couple of speaking slots, but they won't be in control of the content.”
These events typically have a few hundred attendees, and there’s around 40 of these conferences globally every year, by Sarah’s estimation based on what’s on the community calendar. “Which is quite a lot when you think about it in terms of self-funding and volunteering,” she reflects. They are by design quite low cost, in terms of ticket prices, as the intent is to “Just get people in the room, get people learning.”
And these are the goldmines in terms of building professional – and sometimes personal – relationships and networks. “You get the real view of the technology,” we’re told, “And I think that's what people really appreciate about them – it's not the polished marketing version of Salesforce: it's actual users’ experience.”
Dreamers and friends
Each year, there are also the major events such as Dreamforce, a four-day conference usually held in San Francisco, which has grown into an international phenomenon attended by more than 180,000 people.
“The last category of in-person events I wanted to talk about was the actual Salesforce events – tens of thousands of attendees,” Sarah shares, “With several big ones in America, plus key regional ones, London, Sydney… And although those are run by Salesforce there's often a lot of community events – social meet-ups – that go alongside, from having some coffees or cocktails to fun runs.”
The scale is huge of course, and the sheer diversity of events (both professional and social) is dizzying. And people do this not because they have to, for continuing development or such like, but because they want to. “The numbers I talked about earlier,” Sarah says, “The business revenue, the number of people involved, the certifications, they speak for themselves – but it’s almost impossible to put a number on the value of free time. And sometimes travel costs are not paid for by their work, so it’s personal money too. And it's all because they found a community where they belong.”
“It's being around others that have the same interests, the same values, the same thought processes. Yes it’s generating buzz for what is essentially a B2B SaaS vendor, but people build really strong relationships through this community. I’ve met people at these events who are now some of my closest friends.”
Trailblazing
With a nod to the name of the L&D platform, Salesforce refers to the community who uses Trailhead – users, admins, architects or even customers – as ‘Trailblazers’.
Considering it is in essence a forum for technical discussion and problem-solving, it has an almost cult-like appeal, helped along enormously by the playful way the company has always presented itself.
“On Trailhead you earn badges – it's very gamified. With the Trailblazer community, there's different topics and threads, more like a standard forum.” Sarah goes on to explain how the Trailblazers are used in their marketing: “If you look at Salesforce's website, one of the key images is people in Trailblazer hoodies, and they're all actual people from the community – they're not Salesforce, not models or actors. I know some of them! I think that inspires people a bit as well, because it’s relatable.”
The playfulness can take a bit of getting used to, if you are used to a more buttoned-up business environment. “One of the ways they set themselves apart is that their storytelling uses characters. When our new marketing manager started,” Sarah recalls, “Having come from the world of insurance, he was like ‘We're a company of grown-ups, I'm not putting cartoons on everything!’ – because Salesforce is covered in animated bears and cats on computers. I said that's just the way it works, and Salesforce uses cartoons to talk about things. There's an animated elephant who's architecting your system, get used to it!
“People have whole wardrobes of Salesforce hoodies, t-shirts – there's a whole organisation that creates slogan t-shirts with Salesforce puns on them. That's actually a not-for-profit which supports some really great charities. And it's not what you expect from a B2B software company, right?
“The whole process for becoming a certified partner is very much gamified, and their learning platform is about collecting badges, collecting statuses – it's a really good move because people in the technology space like that kind of thing, it taps into what we like doing – solving problems, winning things.
“They really provided that foundation for brand affinity and community growth.”
“So it's done very well, and maybe they didn't say ‘we are going to have this type of community, this type of user group, this is what we want the people out there to be creating’, but they really provided that foundation for brand affinity and community growth. It's very easy to align yourself with Salesforce, because there's some tangible things that you can hold in your hand – the plushies that they have, they’re almost collectors items, to have certain limited edition sequin-covered plushies.”
Benefits for the community
Personally, and commercially for the partner businesses in the Salesforce ecosystem, the community offers a plethora of advantages. Sarah took us through the most significant benefits she’s seen looking back over the last 10 years.
Professional network
“For me personally, the thing I have seen not just myself but others succeed in is building a network. In a lot of technology jobs, you're working quite independently a lot of the time, and if you’re also remote it can be really hard to find the resources and the support you need,” Sarah explains. “Also career progression: some of the programmes are about bringing people back to work, like Salesforce Supermums which focuses on mentoring women who are coming back into work after extended leave. And there's mentoring programmes, learning programmes, and hiring programmes to get them into work. So there are loads of really great things that come out of this.”
Talent
A challenge every business can empathise with is access to talent. “This is a really specific and niche space, so the talent market for Salesforce is in high demand. Having a community where you can show what your organisation does and meet other people makes it really easy to find talent.”
And then of course there is learning and development: “The opportunities to upskill are high, because it's easy to find support, easy to find learning… so it means this talent gap can be filled.”
Social experiences
“As I’ve said I've met great people – through events, or through projects, or just being in the same space. I get to travel as well: I've got to go to some really cool places. People build really strong relationships through this community. We don't talk about Salesforce all day every day! We are friends outside of work. I genuinely consider the people I’ve met to be friends and mentors.”
A platform for growth
“For Nebula as a business and for the other partners you get a platform – at events, on social media – and you can build a reputation for being thought leaders, technically excellent, all of those kinds of things, without having to be a corporate sponsor. You don't have to buy your way in. Granted, we sponsor some of the user groups, which means we give them a venue to use, provide them with some beer and pizza, but it's not a corporate sponsorship where we've paid £20,000 to get a speaking slot. It’s done to support the community. Our technical people may share some of the work we've been doing, and then gradually, as people come to think ‘Oh I have this problem, I know Nebula talked about that’ it just fulfils itself. I think that's a much nicer way to do business – working on actually giving people some value, not just just buying your connection.”
Benefits for the brand
A community that’s grown and evolved like Salesforce’s, as you would expect, has enormous benefits for the company itself. B2B brand communities like these really do serve everyone.
As Sarah puts it, “For Salesforce, there are only benefits!”, going on to explain that the complexity of the product, far from being a drawback, actually sustains the community in part: “What works really well is that Salesforce is a very complicated product – it’s not an out-of-the-box, set-it-and-forget-it piece of technology – and so there are some really niche talent requirements. Having this self-sustaining talent network that supports itself in terms of learning and development, it helps to create demand for talent.
“And a supply of talent as well. Because it's such a complicated product, Salesforce can make it even more complicated – which makes it a sticky product, which means they have good [customer] retention. So as a business model, it works really well – but they wouldn't be able to do that if there wasn't the talent to support it. So, as it's grown, Salesforce has been quite shrewd in the way that they've used the community.”
Building your own community
So what can we learn from the success and organic growth of the Salesforce Partner Community? Is it replicable?
“What draws people together about your brand, and what power could that have?”
“I think what other brands can take away,” Sarah proposes, “Is asking the questions: what draws people together about your brand, and what power could that have? What are the challenges you have in your environment? So for Salesforce, the challenge is a complex product, and there is a talent gap. The community helps with that, it serves a purpose.”
If a brand is looking to establish a community that truly offers advantage and value to all its members, including the brand itself, then they must ask: what purpose can the community serve to help with the challenges we’re facing?
Because, as Sarah underlines, one should “never underestimate the power of community.” In the rapidly changing world of B2B business, the move toward humanness is palpable – and profitable. “There’s a blurring of what’s personal and professional, especially in terms of channels of communication,” Sarah shares. “I work mostly with B2B organisations, and one of the trends I've seen hugely in the last 5 years is the expectations of their customers – of B2B customers – to be treated like consumers. They expect that same level of personal experience, of things to be live, to have a connected experience.”
This is different to the B2B world many of us are used to, as Sarah explains further. “Historically that's been the conversation that you have around retail, and around consumer brands – it's not the conversation you have around B2B. But that's what customers are expecting now. It’s human nature to find an in-group, and it doesn't matter what that in-group is. It’s about finding like-minded individuals. And in a world where trying to explain what you do can be quite challenging, even explaining your job to your family – it’s a common thread in Salesforce – finding other people who get you, who talk your language, is such a relief.
“And Salesforce opened up the possibility: they embraced the idea that people might love this type of community. I think whatever you do, there is power in an in-group.”
Sarah Kelleher is the CEO of Nebula Consulting, a Salesforce Consulting Partner based in London. From a background in marketing, Sarah joined the Salesforce consulting world in 2014. Since then, she has helped hundreds of companies implement and optimise their use of Salesforce and is an active member of the Salesforce community, speaking at events across the world. In her spare time, Sarah is a mum to two young children and enjoys netball, running and spicy margaritas.
