Salesforce co-CEO: We Are Just at the Dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

“Our customers, they’re betting their business on us,” says Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block. “They’re disrupting their business models. They’re reinventing themselves leveraging our technology. They want to know that we have a trust-based relationship. At the end of the day, it is all about trust.”

Block says that we are just at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and that companies love to work with Salesforce because they represent the future.

Keith Block, co-CEO of Salesforce, discussed how companies are going through massive business model and digital transformations in this Fourth Industrial Revolution that is just getting started. He was interviewed by the legendary Jim Cramer on CNBC: (video below)

We Are Just at the Dawn of this Era

We’re playing for the long game here. We’re going to be celebrating our 20th anniversary coming up in just a month. When we think about what’s happened over the last 20 years, we’ve seen revolutionary changes in technology and we’re in this Fourth Industrial Revolution. In that Fourth Industrial Revolution, we have companies going through business model changes and digital transformations and the role of the CEO is different than it used to be.

This is where companies love to work with Salesforce because we represent the future. We’re all about the future. We’re about creating and innovating and co-creating around customer engagement. This is a long game this Fourth Industrial Revolution and we’re just at the dawn of this era. So this will be happening for a long time.

Disrupt or Be Disrupted

It’s all linked together. We live in a world with these technologies where it is disrupt or be disrupted. If the CEO of a company is not the Chief Transformation Officer they need to come up with a strategy, they need to make a move, they need to embrace these technologies. No industry is really immune from this level of disruption.

At the end of the day, everything begins and ends with the customer. It’s all about the 360-degree view of the customer. That has been the Holy Grail since I’ve been in the industry. Providing the insights, providing the level of engagement, the technology, around how customers can have a greater experience.

Our customers, they’re betting their business on us. They’re disrupting their business models. They’re reinventing themselves leveraging our technology. They want to know that we have a trust-based relationship. At the end of the day, it is all about trust.

Everything Rotates Around Trust.

We are a values-based company. Since the day the company was established we were a values-based company. We have four values and our number one value is trust. Then we have customer success and innovation and equality. Those are very very important to our stakeholders. The modern company is a stakeholder theory company.

It’s not just about Wall Street and earnings, which is obviously very important. We take our shareholders very seriously. It’s also about our customers. It’s about our partners. It’s about the community that we live in. Everything rotates around trust. We have a trust deficit. Some people call it a trust crisis in the world right.

If you have an employee, an employee wants to know that they have a leadership team that’s listening to them, that they have a voice, and that they trust the decisions the leadership is making. They want to trust that they’re responsible decisions that are consistent with the values of the company. With governments, we trust in our leaders. We want to trust in our leaders that they’re making great decisions for our citizens.