Salesforce.com 2010 Annual Report Download - page 13

Table of Contents
Sales, Marketing and Customer Support
We organize our sales and marketing programs by geographic regions, including North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific which includes Japan. Over
30 percent of our revenue comes from customers outside of North America.
Direct Sales
We sell subscriptions to our service primarily through our direct sales force comprised of inside sales, which consists of personnel that sell to customers
primarily by phone, and field sales personnel, that are primarily based in geographic territories comprising customers and prospects. Both our inside sales and
field sales personnel are supported by telesales representatives who are primarily responsible for generating qualifying leads. Our small business, general
business and enterprise account executives and account managers focus their efforts on small, medium-size and large enterprises, respectively.
Referral and Indirect Sales
We have a network of partners who refer customer prospects to us and assist us in selling to these prospects.
The network includes consulting firms, other technology vendors, systems integrators and partners in markets where we do not have a large direct sales
presence. In return, we typically pay these partners a fee based on the first-year subscription revenue generated by the customers they refer. We expense these
fees at the time the customer signs the subscription service contract.
We also continue to develop distribution channels for our subscription service.
Marketing
Our marketing strategy is to continually elevate our brand and generate significant demand for our offerings. We use a variety of marketing programs to
target our prospective and current customers, partners, and developers.
Our primary marketing activities include:
• press and industry analyst relations to garner third-party validation and generate positive coverage for our company and product strategy;
• user conferences and launch events, as well as participation in trade shows and industry events, to create customer awareness and prospect
enthusiasm;
• search engine marketing and advertising to drive traffic to our Web properties;
• Web site development to engage and educate prospects and generate interest through product information and demonstrations, free trials, case
studies, white papers, and marketing collateral;
• use of social network solutions such as YouTube;
• email, direct mail, and phone campaigns to capture leads that can be funneled into our sales organization;
• use of customer testimonials; and
• sales tools and field marketing events to enable our sales organization to more effectively convert pipeline into completed transactions.
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