“We are firing on all cylinders right now even though it’s a very dynamic environment,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “One of the great ironies probably that we’ll look back on is that the industry that is focused on selling digital technology spent so much time in the physical world trying to sell that technology. You can do remote selling over a video conference, over Webex, or Zoom in many cases just as easily as you could in person.”
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discusses how tech companies during the pandemic have discovered that it’s more effective for them to sell remotely using all of the technologies they have developed rather than relying so much on physical meetings:
We Are Firing On All Cylinders Right Now
We were super happy about the Q2 that we just announced a couple of weeks ago. We were able to beat on revenue estimates and the guidance we gave on revenue, on EPS, on operating margin, and we also delivered strong billings and cash flow performance. We also raised our guidance for the full year on revenue as well as our operating margin targets for the full year.
We are firing on all cylinders right now even though it’s a very dynamic environment. Obviously, the broader macroeconomic environment still remains a challenge in many sectors. We are seeing growth at this time and we’re seeing a lot of our enterprise customers continue to expand with us as they go and drive broader digital transformation initiatives.
Great Irony: Tech Industry Learns To Sell Digitally
One of the great ironies probably that we’ll look back on is that the industry that is focused on selling digital technology spent so much time in the physical world trying to sell that technology. We’re seeing is that customers want really great products. They want those products to be delivered efficiently to them. You can do remote selling over a video conference, over Webex, or Zoom in many cases just as easily as you could in person. The other benefit is you can now reach more customers in a single day or in a single week.
As an example, we have our customer conference happening tomorrow. We’ll have about 25 000 registered attendees to that event which is three or four times larger than what we would have in the physical world. We’re able to reach more customers and we’re able to have more conversations. We’re ultimately able to support our customers right now with our technology which is helping them move to the cloud and helping them secure their corporate data. It is also easier to collaborate securely across enterprises and then ultimately integrate with all of their applications.