Keeping the Momentum Post-Dreamforce 2013

Dreamforce 13 is now over and what a week it was! For many, especially first timers, it can be a bit overwhelming. Each day was jammed packed with keynotes, learning sessions, networking opportunities and after hours parties (I just got my voice back). The event occurred over three plus days and by the end there is not much fuel in the tank. After you come back to Earth and reenergize you are left with a laundry list of ideas, business cards, notes and memories. The question becomes, how do I take all of this and make something of it? How do I keep the momentum going? Here are some very basic things to do now to make sure everything you got out of this amazing week doesn’t go to waste.

Followups

The first and most simple thing to do is follow-up. If you are like me and have a stack of business cards with hopefully some notes to remember why you took their card, go through them and pick the ones worth reaching out to. Take an hour and send them an email to further the conversation you had. This is all it takes to make something happen but the key is to do it now. If you don’t you will forget and it could mean a lost opportunity for you or your company.

Take a Test Drive

The expo floor and keynotes were filled with new products to help you and your organization. There is no excuse for not looking into the ones that appeared interesting considering what Salesforce offers you as part of their ecosystem. Many, if not all are available to try and most are free to do so. Pick out the ones that looked useful, search for them on the AppExchange and take a test drive. Many of these apps were featured in breakout sessions and you can learn more about them and how customers are using them by watching them on YouTube. Salesforce does us a huge solid and offers these sessions free of charge to the community.

Salesforce1

We all saw Salesforce1 officially released in Marc’s keynote. This is a new and exciting way to experience Salesforce and your Salesforce apps on your mobile device. It is very impressive and again, there is no risk to try it out. Having the ability to do everything that Salesforce offers on your mobile device has huge potential to save you and your company a lot of time and increase the bottom line. Salesforce provided a developer guide which is located here that provides a nice introduction to what it can do. Download it, try it, and spread the word.

Personal Wellness

For the second year in a row Salesforce has dedicated a day to personal health and wellness. Last year we had Tony Robbins and this year Deepak and Friends. Opportunities to see and listen to brilliant minds like these can cost thousands of dollars and believe it or not, just one piece of advice from any of them can make your life go from unhappy to happy. This is an amazing gift Marc gives us all and we should not let it go to waste. Hopefully you took advantage of this time but even if you didn’t the message was clear that we need to become aware of our health and wellbeing. We need to make sure we get enough sleep, water, good food and exercise. If you don’t know where to start, how about reading Deepak’s new book we all were given at the keynote. If you didn’t get it, you can buy it here.

Lastly, I got a little inspired by all this and decided to create a group called “WELLforce” in the success community to continue this conversation. It is a public group where you can share thoughts, ideas, books to read or anything related to wellness. My hope is you might get one thing out of it that could help make your life a little happier!

If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to join the group or tweet at me at www.twitter.com/Salvatoriello.