Salesforce.com Positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the world's #1 CRM platform, today announced Salesforce Sales Cloud has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the "Leaders" quadrant for Sales Force Automation (July 2013[i]). This marks the seventh consecutive year salesforce.com has received a "Leaders" position.

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According to the Gartner report, sales force automation applications support the automation of sales activities, processes and administrative responsibilities for B2B organizations' sales professionals. Core functionalities include account, contact and opportunity management. Additional add-on capabilities focus on improving the sales effectiveness of salespeople. Among those capabilities are sales configuration, guided selling, proposal generation and content management, and sales performance management support, including incentive compensation, quota, sales coaching and territory management.

Comments on the News

• "We believe our position in the 'Leaders' quadrant in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation 2013 reinforces our leadership and innovation," said Linda Crawford, EVP and GM of Sales Cloud, salesforce.com. "As the #1 CRM app, customer companies trust the power of Salesforce Sales Cloud to transform how they sell to their customers and ultimately close more deals faster."

Salesforce Sales Cloud: The CRM App of Choice for Customer Companies
The shift to social and mobile has empowered companies to connect with customers in entirely new ways and become customer companies. Customer companies sell as a team, close deals faster and gain higher win rates. Salesforce.com is the only company delivering a next generation customer platform that gives companies the power to create deeper connections with their customers and unlock greater levels of growth, innovation and success.

Salesforce.com customers including Design Within Reach, Kelly Services and NBCUniversal have transformed how they connect with their customers, employees, partners and products to ensure that sales teams can close every deal with the Sales Cloud. According to a recent third party survey, companies who have deployed the Sales Cloud have seen an average 38 percent increase in lead conversion, an average 36 percent increase in sales productivity, an average 45 percent increase in forecast accuracy and an average 28 percent increase in sales[ii].

Recent Analyst Recognition, Momentum and Accolades for Salesforce Sales Cloud

• In addition to the Sales Force Automation category, Gartner has recognized salesforce.com as a Magic Quadrant Leader in CRM Customer Engagement Center (May 2013) and Social CRM (September 2012).
• The recently announced Sales Performance Accelerator is a newly integrated solution that combines the world's #1 sales app, Sales Cloud, with clean, targeted lead and customer data from Data.com and coaching and feedback tools from Work.com. With the new Sales Performance Accelerator, sales teams can now seamlessly connect and access everything they need to supercharge their performance, empowering them to close more deals, faster, both at their desks and on the go.
• Fortune named salesforce.com the #1 Most Admired Company in the Computer Software Industry 2013.
• Sales Cloud won the highly-coveted CRM Magazine 2012 CRM Awards for the fifth consecutive year. Salesforce.com was the winner in two categories for Enterprise Suite CRM and Midmarket Suite CRM.

Additional Information

• The Gartner Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant report is available at http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1HA4SNG&ct=130717&st=sb
• Like salesforce.com on Facebook: http://facebook.com/salesforce
• Like the Sales Cloud on Facebook: http://facebook.com/salescloud
• To learn more about the Sales Cloud, visit: http://www.salesforce.com/sales-cloud/overview/
• Follow @Salesforce and @SalesCloud on Twitter

[1] Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales force automation, Robert Desisto, Published July 17, 2013

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the world's largest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software. For more information about salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

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[ii] Source: Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Survey conducted March 2013, by an independent third-party, Confirmit Inc., on 5,200+ customers randomly selected.  Response sizes per question vary.

SOURCE salesforce.com