This year at Dreamforce, we announced the launch of our Sales Surfboard Awards program. These awards recognized 18 customers — the ones with the most eye-popping stories of innovation and sales success in Sales Cloud, Data.com or Work.com to accelerate performance. Salesforce received over 120+ nominations, so the judges had a tough time selecting the winners to join us at Dreamforce 2013. Here's a snapshot of the Data.com award winners.

Best Overall Commercial Business Award: Standard Register

Standard Register needed to identify new buyers, deploy a more consistent sales process, and create a true 360 degree view of the customer. Five months after launching Data.com, Standard Register doubled the number of contacts and gained improved visibility to achieve their business goals.

Prospect Like a Pro Award: T-Mobile

T-Mobile was expanding into new segments, so sales needed more (and more accurate) business contacts. Within the first year, 60% of their reps reported closing deals with Data.com and, in recent quarters, discovered that opportunities sourced from Data.com averaged more revenue than those not sourced from Data.com.

The Mr. Clean Award: Bombardier

Data quality is Bombardier’s number one goal. If your technology is there, but you don’t have the right data – you’ll fail. Salesforce and Data.com provide visibility into their customers, which allows them to react better than before.

The Productivity Machine Award: Tableau

Tableau was experiencing rapid growth, complete customer visibility and demand generation. Sales was spending significant time researching customers, since records lacked firmographic details. Salesforce helps them better align with territory planning, targeted accounts, contacts and marketing campaigns with a global view of hierarchies, pipeline, support cases and more.

See the complete list of winners and learn more about the Sales Surfboard Awards: Salesforce Honors 18 Award-Winning Customers. Learn more about growing faster with the right data with the free ebook below.

Athough Dreamforce is all about the human, face-to-face experience, there was still plenty of news on the data front, especially for marketers. Here are three insights.

1. It's still all about the data

Data.com's Andy MacMillan discussed increasing data quality during the Data.com keynote. The concept of a CRM system automatically updating and correcting data was the most important thing to come out of last year's Dreamforce, and today, it's about clean data.

The memorable quotes:

• "If it's clean, everyone wins." -- Andy MacMillan
• "Bad data is the #1 cause of CRM failure." -- Gartner 

2. Huge influx of APIs changes lead scoring forever

APIs for devices and sensors changes the game for everyone. Being able to create the "Managed Customer Voyage" and add checkpoints for lead nuturing adds a new layer of relevance for marketing automation.

3. Arrival of the SuperPod 

Marc Benioff and HP President and CEO Meg Whitman announced dedicated HP hardware to allow Healthcare, Financial Services, and Government entities to have dedicated instances of Salesforce.com's multi-tenant cloud, powered by HP’s technology. This taps into trends like cloud, mobility and big data.

If you learned anything interesting on the data management side please send it over. I'll share anything interesting in a future post. Ping me at @johnjwall.

John J. Wall is co-founder of Marketing Over Coffee and author of B2B Marketing Confessions. He will be commenting daily about marketing and technology developments at Dreamforce 2013. He has his own Safe Harbor statement: I am not an employee of Salesforce so if anything in my posts causes trouble, please don't let it reflect on them. He is not the basketball player, but doesn't mind the jokes that arise from comparing a young NBA player to a middle-aged white guy in Tech. 

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2014 is approaching and no matter what else makes it onto your agenda, make sure these six initiatives sit front and center next year.

1. New Client Acquisition

A sales manager has many responsibilities. Your company is going to make great demands of you, especially when it comes to your time. But there is no greater initiative for you, and nothing that deserves more of your attention, than new client acquisition. When you look at your sales goals, the gap between where you are and where you need to be is made up of opportunities. Acquiring new clients provides you with much of the new opportunities you need to close that gap. 

2. New Opportunity Acquisition

You already have clients. Many of these clients could provide you with new opportunities, but you have to focus your sales forces efforts on acquiring new opportunities within these existing accounts. Wallet share matters. And in some ways, acquiring new opportunities from existing clients can be easier than acquiring new clients. You already have the relationships. You already know what they need—or what they should need. You already have a contract. And you’re already sending them a bill. 

3. Increased Profitability

Growing the top line is important, but so is growing the bottom line. Increased profitability helps you produce the profit that allows your company to do greater work. It’s what allows you to execute. And in some ways, it can help you sell better. A higher price is a heuristic, a shortcut, that indicates a higher quality product or service. Your sales force may complain to you that they are losing opportunities because of a higher price, but they’re losing those opportunities because they aren’t creating enough value. Value creation is the key to winning new clients, to opening new opportunities within existing clients, and improving your profitability. 

Those are the only three initiatives that grow a business. And they should be front and center in 2014. But how do you make these things happen? I’m glad you asked. Pull these three levers.

4. Individual Coaching

Even though your company is going to make great demands of you and try to steal your time, you will create the greatest impact on your results by spending time coaching the individual salespeople that make up your team. This is where you need to spend your time. The more time you spend helping each individual producer turn in their best ever performance, the better your results.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: the less time you spend with the individual producers, helping them turn in their best performance, the less likely they are to do so. Individual coaching needs to be embedded in your calendar daily. Every communication with the performer is an opportunity to coach them to have a better performance.

5. Team Coaching

There are some organizations that do a brilliant job of team coaching. They get the team together to discuss what happened in a particular situation, what worked, what didn’t work, why it worked or didn’t work, and what to do next time they encounter the situation. By coaching the entire team, the lesson from one interaction can be shared across the entire team.  Instead of only one person being able to recognize a situation and make a determination as to how best to achieve a certain outcome, the entire team is being given this insight and understanding. This is the fastest way to notch up the whole team when it is combined with individual coaching. It belongs on your calendar each and every week in 2014.

6. Opportunity Reviews

Too many sales managers focus on reviewing opportunities late in the sales process. This is a mistake. Opportunity reviews are critical to ensuring that you successfully navigate the stormy waters between target and close. Opportunities are too valuable and they can’t be left to chance. Choose to review opportunities that demonstrate best practices and common challenges at every stage of your sales process, beginning with qualification and discovery. Don’t wait to review these opportunities and be told the mistakes have been made and you’re deep into the sales process, post-presentation. Also choose to review high value opportunities as a matter of course. One way to ensure you make your number in 2014 is to make sure that you do what is necessary to win the opportunities your sales force creates.

That’s it, six huge initiatives for a successful 2014.

Anthony Iannarino is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has been named one of the top 25 most influential people in sales by both OpenView Partners and Top Sales World. Anthony writes for the magazines SUCCESS and ThinkSales, as well as daily at The Sales Blog.

Learn more initiatives for a strong sales team in 2014 with the free Salesforce ebook below.

When the legendary radio brand, National Public Radio (NPR), decided to pull in more listeners, they needed a low-cost/high-visibility strategy that could generate results. Creating content that delivered real value to potential listeners was the perfect solution, but it required NPR to really understand their target audience. How did they bridge such an information gap? They listened.

As Youtility author, Jay Baer notes, the most helpful companies will be top-of-mind when their prospect is ready to buy, and that means understanding your customers. Building that understanding involves a fair amount of listening, or at least it should. You want to know what your customers care about, and what topics they are discussing. 

We all say that we listen to our customers, but when was the last time you eavesdropped or seriously asked for some no-holds-barred feedback? That’s why social media is so powerful, and so frightening to some. You get the real skinny if you listen. 

1. Social Listening

Dig down into different parts of your tweetstream. You can look just for a keyword, but also for links, images, videos, and for specific influencers. Keep track of who is talking about topics you care about. Follow influencers in your industry or your clients' industries to understand the latest topics and trends likely impacting their world.

2. Understand Conversations

Once you search keywords, analyze how people are using language, as in the conversation’s context. This can help you identify an interested prospect or a disgrunteled competitor's client, allowing you to find and pursue prospects in the context of an ongoing conversation.

3. Uncover Influencers

Look for the true influencers around a topic. Being able to identify influencers in your industry can allow you to create powerful brand advocates and better understand the topics and concerns of a given industry.

4. Social Sharing

Knowing who is linking to your website affords you a limited glimpse into the connections in your industry. Track who links to your favorite sites or to a competitor’s site. This gives you a better understanding of the landscape.

Technology is pushing marketing and sales disciplines closer than ever, and taking a page out of the content marketing book could give sales reps a leg up on their next deal.

Here is a long list of content marketing posts on salesforce.com that I refer to often.

TJ consults on content strategy for technology companies and produce web content for entrepreneurs and business owners. He currently writes for Small Business Trends, Forbes, and Yahoo! SMB. In the past, he has put pen to paper for the Wall Street Journal, Make, Sports Afield, the Pittsburgh Business Times and many others. He is passionate about technology and works to serve small and mid-sized tech businesses. You can reach him at Q4Sales at Gmail and put Forbes in the subject line. You can circle him on Google+ or follow him on Twitter.

We are operating in a new environment with respect to interacting with customers and prospects. And this environment will be different tomorrow than it is today—literally. That's how fast things are changing; as new technology is created at accelerated rates, the only thing moving faster is consumer adoption of the "latest and greatest" app or gadget.

As a result, companies must adjust their approach. And while focusing on improving a customer's experience is important, broadening the scope to include opportunities to facilitate improvement of customer lifestyles when possible offers the potential to build longer, more intimate relationships. Most likely it will take a different approach to deliver the experiences customers expect.

Here are a few key tenets companies are taking to heart to create organizations that can keep up with customer behaviors and expectations.

Fast and Flexible (F)

Every second counts when it comes to meeting customer expectations. A study by Kissmetrics found that 47 percent of consumers expect a Web page to load in two seconds or less, and just a one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by 16 percent. According to a recent University of Massachusetts study, if a video hasn't started streaming in five seconds, about 25 percent of potential viewers will bail before viewing, and if it doesn't start in 10 seconds, that jumps to almost 50 percent.

Speed thrills and lack of it kills. We've never liked waiting for things we want, and technology enables us to wait less and less. Book buyers are used to getting e-books downloaded in less than 60 seconds, where just a few years ago they didn't mind waiting days for a book to be delivered—or even going to a bookstore to get it.

With less time to make a connection and convert it into a meaningful relationship, companies have to act quickly—and react even quicker, which means taking a hard look at their current capabilities to make fast moves.

Agile and Analytical (A)

There has never been more information about consumers, much of it coming from consumers themselves. Companies that invest in creating a strategic social listening culture supported by tools can effectively understand what's important to customers and prospects in real time.

Being able to integrate social data with transactional information is critical to discovering important insights. And while aggregating disparate data and analyzing it calls for analytical tools and skill sets, it also calls for an empathic approach to convert those insights into appealing interaction opportunities.

Interactive and Integrated (I)

Social, mobile, and cloud technologies have unleashed people's collaborative nature, and it's important for companies to not only embrace this, but to find ways to facilitate it. And as customers, people want to be valued beyond the financial transaction their business brings.

Pamela O'Hara, CEO of social CRM vendor Batchbook, says early customers are crucial to her business. They help figure out who the company's market is, how to reach that market, and at what price point. Because of this, O'Hara says it is important for her entire team to be involved in the relationship they are building with customers. Integrating customers' voices—not just their wallets—is key in building a business today.

Responsive and Reliable (R)

That building trust is critical to finding and keeping customers isn't news. But it's something that can get lost in the excitement generated by social media, mobile technology, and the cloud. And listening sometimes, responding when you can, or doing things right occasionally won't get you far with customers. It raises expectations quicker, and disappoints faster when those expectations aren't met.

Because consumers are operating differently today, and more differently tomorrow, companies must embrace the environment in which we're operating. It's only fair to customers that companies rethink their approach to doing business and building relationships with them.

This post originally appeared on DestinationCRM.com.

Brent Leary is cofounder and partner of CRM Essentials, a CRM consultancy focused on small and midsize enterprises.  In 2009 he coauthored Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Business. He is in the process of writing his next book, The Amazon Effect: How a New Customer Culture is Creating Crazy New Business Opportunities and Killing Companies That Won't Adapt, due out in 2014. Leary writes regularly for America Express OPEN, CRM magazine, and Inc.com, and serves on the advisory board for Social Media Today.  You can email him at bleary@crm-essentials.com or send him a tweet at @brentleary.

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Once you have leads in your pipeline, how do you nurture the leads? With so many industries cutting back on field sales, creating content that answers buyers’ needs and questions throughout their buying process is an effective way to nurture leads and speed up sales cycles. This is content marketing.

For your content to work, you have to be strategic. Your content needs to add value. And to create value for prospects, you have to get inside their heads. Map out the process your prospects go through. Understanding what information they’re looking for and filtering accordingly is critical to determining what content you’ll create for lead nurturing.

As you’re thinking about prospects’ buying journey, focus on content that:

• Changes or shapes their perspective
• Helps them build a case for moving in a certain direction
• Educates them about their options and how to prioritize their needs
• Gives them insight into how other people like them are solving the same kinds of problems

Here are five ideas for types of content that can accomplish these goals by drawing in and engaging prospects with information they crave.

1. Original research reports

You have access to knowledge your prospects want through your own client base. Conducting research through a survey and sharing the results can be a successful way to hook prospects. Make sure your research report has a narrative, a point of view and an easy takeaway for your readers. And be careful about publishing research that comes across as self-promotional or skewed. Focus in on research and best practices that help a customer succeed.

2. A video or podcast chat with a customer or expert

Video and audio are opportunities to provoke thought and bring in new perspectives. Do a conversational interview with a customer or an industry expert. People love hearing from their peers, and if you package these chats to be short and substantive, prospects will eat them up.

3. A market brief

People are busy, and it’s hard to keep up with everything happening around them. A market brief — a “brief” summary of an issue and how people are addressing it — can be a welcome update about how technology is evolving or a regulation is shaping how people do business. Prospects will be grateful for this fast and easy way to get up to speed on an issue, without having to dig around for information online.

4. A slide deck

Slideshows have become valuable currency in the social media world now that event speakers regularly share their slides online. Develop content into an easy-to-consume slideshow, and share it on SlideShare and other social channels, post it on your website, and promote it through email. Avoid product or sales decks; make your slides fun, visual and full of “quick bites” of knowledge or insights.

5. A decision guide or tool

If buying your product is a complex process, you can simplify pieces of it for prospects by creating a decision guide. It might be an infographic leading them through steps or a simple checklist. Or you might explore building an interactive decision tool. As your prospect moves through the funnel toward a decision, this guide or tool will become a valuable resource.

Remember it will take some time before they’re ready to buy. Content marketing should consistently add value as they read, weigh options, win allies, build budgets, and look skeptically at data and solutions. You can’t hit them over the head with “buy, buy, buy!” Slow and steady wins the race — as long as you’re delivering quality, relevant content to them at every turn.

About the author

Stacey is the founder and president of Suite Seven, a content strategy and brand communication consultancy in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has managed complex digital and brand content projects for companies such as McKesson, Microsoft, AT&T, and Silicon Valley Bank. She currently serves as executive VP for the San Francisco chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and is a co-organizer of the San Francisco Content Strategy Meetup. Stacey writes and speaks frequently about the importance of strategy behind multi-channel brand content and thought leadership.

Learn more content marketing ideas with the Content Creation Guide below.