At Salesforce’s Big Show, the Pitch is More Dream than Reality

This week, 170,000 people will descend on San Francisco for Dreamforce, Salesforce.com’s annual user conference. Thousands will pack the Moscone Center to participate in a familiar ritual: master salesman and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s latest pitch for the product that he says will revolutionize their sales and earn his company billions.

On the eve of this year’s big show, I looked back at some of the bigger recent Dreamforce announcements to see how they fared. There’s a full examination below, but here’s the gist: Since 2012, Salesforce seems to be batting about .500 (so far), with hits from 2012 and 2013 but uncertain outcomes for the past two years.