Salesforce.com 2015 Annual Report Download - page 15

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Direct Sales
We sell our services primarily through our direct sales force, which is comprised of telephone sales
personnel based in regional hubs, and field sales personnel based in territories close to their customers. Both our
telephone sales and field sales personnel are supported by sales representatives, who are primarily responsible for
generating qualified sales leads.
Referral and Indirect Sales
We have a network of partners who refer sales leads to us and who then assist in selling to these prospects.
This network includes global consulting firms, systems integrators and regional partners. In return, we
typically pay these partners a fee based on the first-year subscription revenue generated by the customers whom
they refer. Also included in this network are ISVs, whom we typically pay a percentage of the subscription
revenue generated by their referrals.
We continue to invest in developing additional distribution channels for our subscription service.
Marketing
Our marketing strategy is to promote our brand and generate demand for our offerings. We use a variety of
marketing programs across traditional and social channels 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, offerings and value proposition;
User conferences and events, such as Dreamforce, as well as participation in trade shows and industry
events, to create customer and prospect awareness;
Content marketing and engagement on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube;
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;
Multi-channel marketing campaigns;
Customer testimonials; and
Sales tools and field marketing events to enable our sales organization to more effectively convert
leads into customers.
Customer Service and Support
Our global customer support group responds to both business and technical inquiries about the use of our
products via the web, telephone, email, social networks and other channels. We provide standard customer
support during regular business hours at no charge to customers who purchase any of our paying subscription
editions. We also offer premier customer support for an additional fee, which can include services such as
priority access to technical resources, developer support, and system administration. In addition, we offer a
mission critical support add-on that is designed to provide customers with responses for incidents from a
dedicated team knowledgeable about the customer’s specific enterprise architecture, and which offers instruction
to optimize their usage of our products.
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