One of my most trusted friends and mentors recently joined a very intriguing company called – SuccessFactors (stock symbol SFSF). They specialize in HR software with a SaaS product that is second to none in the market.

From a marketing and social media perspective several things about this company got my attention and my envy as a marketer.

First was the clear communications from the top down. The CEO Lars Dalgaard uses email to the entire company much like an internal blog at all hours of the day reporting back on things like successful client meetings and other interesting findings. Best of all it creates an open dialog with the entire company and builds an internal sense of community and esprit d’ corp.

Next was the sheer amount of new client wins that are coming out of this company. I monitor their RSS feed and every time I turn around they are pumping out press releases with another new client name in it. Kudos to the communications department and the sales team for making that happen!

But what really got my attention was how they unleashed their own internal community on rating and ranking each of the Presidential Candidates by 10 different competencies and published it on their public website. This is a fabulous example of demonstrating your product and its possibilities by connecting it to something that everyone is interested in.

So when last I checked here was the tally…

1. Budgets/Cost Controls – Vote McCain
2. Communication – Vote Obama
3. Decision Making/Judgement – Vote Obama
4. Dependability – Vote Obama
5. Global Perspective – Vote McCain
6. Integrity/Ethics – Vote Obama
7. Listening Skills – Vote Obama
8. Leadership – Vote Obama
9. Managing Conflict – Vote Obama
10. Planning – Vote Obama

Overall Winner - Obama

Sorry Hillary but I guess you already knew that!