Salesforce promotes COO Keith Block to co-chief executive

Salesforce announced this week the promotion of Chief Operating Officer Keith Block to co-chief executive officer. Block will lead the company with current CEO and Co-Founder Marc Benioff.

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with a suite of cloud-based applications to manage sales, marketing and and other customer-oriented functions. Benioff founded the company in 1999; it now has more than 10,000 employees and expects to deliver more than $10 billion in revenue this year.

Block joined the company in 2013 and has since served as vice chairman, president and a director. He has been COO since February 2016. Before he worked for Salesforce, Block was executive vice president of Oracle’s North America Sales and Consulting.

As co-CEO, Block will report to the board of directors.

In a blog post announcing the move, Benioff said:

Keith has been my trusted partner in running Salesforce for the past five years, and I’m thrilled to welcome him as co-CEO. Keith has outstanding operational expertise and corporate leadership experience, and I could not be happier for his promotion and this next level of our partnership.

Block acknowledged his first day as CEO in a Twitter post on Wednesday:

Customers are likely to see more of the same attention to product development as they have over the past five years that Benioff and Block have been working together. While the co-CEO designation is new, Benioff said, “This is very much already how we are operating the business.” Benioff is likely to remain the highly visible public face of Salesforce. Benioff told Fortune magazine he will continue focusing on products, technology and culture, while Block will focus on operations and distribution.

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Robin Kurzer

Robin Kurzer started her career as a daily newspaper reporter in Milford, Connecticut. She then made her mark on the advertising and marketing world in Chicago at agencies such as Tribal DDB and Razorfish, creating award-winning work for many major brands. For the past seven years, she’s worked as a freelance writer and communications professional across a variety of business sectors.