Coalitions can be powerful forces. Whether it’s to promote a cause, collect ideas, or provide support, coalitions speak for the many voices of an audience. In an effort to strengthen the cloud ecosystem and heighten awareness of the importance of third-party business applications available to Salesforce users, nine SaaS providers have established a coalition for the Salesforce AppExchange called the Cloud Collective. 

Creating a coalition requires a significant amount of upfront work. Here’s how the Cloud Collective did it. 

Establish the guiding principles

The Cloud Collective determined clear, simple points that defined their cause. These points encompass everything the coalition supports, and all the parties involved agreed on them. The Cloud Collective has weekly meetings to discuss the coalition, brainstorm, answer questions, plan and guide the conversation.

As the world’s #1 CRM platform, Salesforce has given rise to countless apps and CRM integrations that make tracking and monitoring organizational data a seamless and encouraging process. By aligning forces with top innovators in the Salesforce1 AppExchange, the Cloud Collective hopes to further educate the Salesforce community about the variety of apps at their fingertips and better serve the distinct needs of sales, customer support, marketing and IT teams.

Involve everyone from the start

By inviting and incorporating all parties in their meetings, the Cloud Collective established camaraderie and the true sense of a coalition from day one. Whether the conversations were meaty, such as the mission statement, or lighter, such as the first blog post, by involving everyone, great ideas can came from all places.

For the Cloud Collective, involving everyone included involving salesforce.com. “Companies are looking to transform the way they connect with customers, partners and employees to thrive in the today’s connected world,” said Ron Huddleston, Senior Vice President, Global AppExchange & Partner Program, salesforce.com. “By leveraging the power of the Salesforce1 Customer Platform, members of the Cloud Collective provide customers with the proven social, mobile and connected cloud technologies to accelerate business success.”

Grow the coalition

The Cloud Collective sought to involve many great independent software vendors in the Salesforce ecosystem. They continue to reach out to companies providing SaaS solutions that cover a variety of objectives including gamification, analytics, geo-mapping, backup, project management, productivity, unified communications, audio conferencing and data quality. To date, members include Arrowpointe, Bizible, Bracket Labs, Cirrus Path, Esna, UberConference, LevelEleven, RingLead and Spanning. The Cloud Collective continues to grow.

Announce your coalition

Once the Cloud Collective was ready to go public, they focused on key communication methods, including:

• Launching a website
• Creating a press release with their guiding principles
• Writing blog posts
• Creating a social presence (on Twitter, Facebook, Chatter, etc.) 

Have a call to action

As they get the word out, the Cloud Collective seeks to grow their coalition. The Cloud Collective is looking for new members, and they clearly share that on their website. To learn more about the Cloud Collective, and its founding member companies, visit www.cloudcollective.co.

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