You are considering attending Dreamforce, a huge decision for any fast growing startup.  Aligning your company with salesforce.com’s ecosystem can deliver a huge return on investment, but it takes work. Here are five tips from a Dreamforce participant to maximize the ROI of your trip and keep your VC partners smiling.

Leverage salesforce.com employees

 It’s an old rule at Dreamforce that salesforce.com employees are expected to go out of their way to create a world class experience for customers, prospects and partners.  Take advantage of us! Introduce yourself, give us a brief overview of what your company does and leverage our internal network.  Use the Chatter Dreamforce app to ask questions and meet experts.  The more salesforce.com employees you know, the more you will get out of your relationship with us.

Get your pitch right

It shouldn’t take more than two minutes for you to explain what your company does and who the target market is.  You should be able to explain it to someone that does not understand your primary use case or buyer.  To practice, call your mom (or someone that knows nothing about the technology industry) and see if she understands your pitch. No? Keep refining to make it easy to grasp.  Take a look at this Trunk club video for a great example.

Participate in a volunteer event

Getting out of the Dreamforce hive of activity to spend time in the community helping people puts your experience into perspective.  It’s part of the salesforce.com DNA.  Volunteering is another way to meet people and build lasting relationships with your fellow attendees. It can be as simple as grabbing an hour onsite in between sessions, or signing up for one of the multi-hour events that week. See above for a picture of me volunteering at Westside Community Services in San Francisco back in 2007.

Leverage sessions in unique ways

If you can get onto a panel in a session, that’s a great way to build your credibility on a topic.  Attend a technical session to get a grip on how our API works and improve your integration.  Listen in on a customer session to gain insights about product marketing ideas.  Understand our product roadmaps to identify whitespace opportunities.  Dreamforce is a content machine, don’t waste any opportunities to learn as much as possible.  Our SMB sessions are tailored to your needs as a high growth company:  Check out the session builder to find great sessions like “Angels & VCs: The Startup Founder's View on the Fundraising” and “6 Ways to Align and Engage Your Small Business Like an Enterprise.”

Have a follow up plan

It's Friday November 22, time to crack a beer congratulate yourself on a job well done. Not so fast! Dreamforce is only the starting point – you need a follow up plan for all the leads you generated.  Think of Dreamforce as the first step in a relationship with the salesforce.com install base.  You need a plan to continue to build and nurture your company’s relationship with Salesforce.com.com customers.

If you are coming to Dreamforce let’s meet.  I hope you have a great experience.