Dreamforce 2016 has ended and — whew — what a climb. The Small & Medium Business Trail took trailblazers on an awesome journey via phenomenal sessions, inspirational speakers, and 1:1 help. Missed some of the learning, or just want to hike it again? Read on for our favorite tidbits from the SMB keynote and beyond.

• Find Customers. Engaging with customers at the right time helps you build quality pipeline and nurture it to close. At the SMB keynote, Jamie Domenici, VP of SMB Marketing at Salesforce, shared how Pardot and Salesforce Engage help you have personalized conversations with customers and easily scale your marketing as you grow. But automation is key; 63% of small companies that utilize marketing automation are outgrowing the competition, both big and small.

• Win Customers. Wasting time on admin tasks that don’t help your business? You’re not alone. Domenici told of a sales team at the New York Post which logged calls on spreadsheets that were aggregated every evening. Every evening! Most sales reps spend 60% or more of their time on administration. To help, Salesforce offers two solutions: SalesforceIQ (CRM for companies just starting out) and Sales Cloud (a complete CRM that scales with your business). These solutions help small businesses easily manage their sales processes, so they can spend more time selling.

• Keep Customers. At Dreamforce, Salesforce introduced Einstein, artificial intelligence (AI) for any business. In addition to lots of other cool stuff, AI gives customer support agents recommended best next options and helps them understand customer preferences based on actions. This info lets agents address customer needs before they even have a chance to explain them! At the keynote we also saw LiveAgent, a new addition to Service Cloud that lets agents seamlessly switch from email to text, which aids interaction and speeds response times.

• Connect everything you do. Matt Reinjtes, CEO of Yeti Coolers, shared how his company grew from two founders with an idea for a better cooler to a 60-person lifestyle brand. All the while the company has maintained close, 1-on-1 relationships with consumers and retail partners. The secret? Technology. For 10+ years, Yeti has grown with Salesforce, using it to offer personalized sales, service, and marketing. On running a growing business Reinjtes says, “Don't be afraid of the cliff — jump. You never want to be a spectator of your growth curve.”

Hungry for more? You can watch the SMB keynote here. Or watch this short video to see how our guy Carl (a small business CEO) grows his business with help from Salesforce. And when you’re ready to get up and grow, see how much your company could benefit from CRM with our new Benefit Calculator. It’s specifically built for small and medium businesses to give you an accurate idea of the impact Salesforce can have.

We hope you enjoyed Dreamforce 2016 as much as we did. And don’t forget to save the date for next year’s climb… Dreamforce 2017 takes place November 6-9 in San Francisco!