How to play business journalists like a fiddle

Someone pointed out a Q&A interview between Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Forbes writer Victoria Murphey Barret to me today, but I’m just now getting around to reading it. The interview was posted this morning, and it includes comments from Benioff on how to present a company to the media.

Benioff provides the following suggestions in dealing with journalists:

“Reporters are writers. They like to write stories with a protagonist, a villain and a plot. Most entrepreneurs aren’t willing to present their company as part of the story. Our story was that the big evil software companies were extorting millions from customers. And the Internet was coming to save these customers. Then you fill in the details and figure out what’s next in the story line.”

“You have to be able to relate your product to something familiar. Journalists will use your metaphor in their story because they can’t come up with one on their own. It is a hard, not trivial, thing to do. And I spend hours and hours on this, because I think it is so crucial to getting the message out.”

“At user conferences, reporters were led around like sheep. But reporters don’t all want the same story. You have to tell each reporter something a little different.”

“Reporters think I value my relationships with each of them. I have a list of 25 reporters I consider influential worldwide. I pay special attention to this group. I always answer their e-mails….If that 25 believes in what you’re doing, and write about you, that’s great.”

Read more here. I can’t make this stuff up any better. Remember that this is the guy that met with Wall Street Journal managing edior Paul Steiger to complain about a story that mentioned his mansion in Hawaii, and he also made life difficult for the reporter when she was in Hawaii.