After losing the bid for LinkedIn to Microsoft, Salesforce hires exec from the social network

Salesforce has a new flagship solution on the horizon aimed at tracking business ventures and options, and has recently announced that its new head is the recently-welcomed Doug Camplejohn. So what's all the fuss?

As it turns out, industry veteran Camplejohn is arriving from LinkedIn as its Vice President of Product Management - and LinkedIn is precisely the company Salesforce attempted to purchase back in 2016, only to lose out against tech giant Microsoft. Now as Executive Vice President and General Manager for Sales Cloud, it signals that Salesforce is specifically targeting an individual with a bird's eye view of social media's selling power to lead their largest product in customer relationship management.

Camplejohn joined LinkedIn five years ago in 2015 after the network purchased his co-founded predictive sales and marketing startup Fliptop, where he served as CEO. After his arrival, he was set to work on Sales Navigator - the solution that screens hundreds of millions of profiles on the platform, and specifically identifying individuals at companies that help salespeople close their deals, as well as automatically update sales outreach solutions.

Microsoft had good things to say about this style, known as "social selling". CEO Satya Nadella spoke to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner following a stock tumble against analyst expectations in 2016, and the pair began discussing a potential partnership. Salesforce, too, saw the signs, and CEO Marc Benioff offered an olive branch as well, but after LinkedIn deliberations, Microsoft became the final choice.

Since the conclusion of the whopping $27 billion acquisition, LinkedIn has been working on integrations, and it's currently possible for firms to use Sales Navigator with Microsoft's business products - notably Dynamics 365 for Sales, a direct competitor of Sales Cloud.

The software behind Sales Cloud has a long history, and a successful one. Most recently it created $1.17 billion in quarterly revenue according to the end of October 2019 - a 15% year over year increase that makes up approximately 26% of Salesforce’s total revenue.

Camplejohn will be taking the helm from interim General Manager Adam Blitzer, while LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Management Lindsey Edwards takes over for the Sales Solutions group.