Tien Tzuo, Chief Strategy Officer for Salesforce.com, believes that investments are shifting from direct-marketing campaigns to online marketing. Customer awareness is created through buzz, PR and dialogues in the marketplace rather than spending a great deal on advertising.
With increasingly demanding 21st century customers, Tzuo believes that it is important to provide them with a free trial of the product. This implies that one has to serve the customers even before they have committed, despite resistance from the sales representatives.
Tzuo talks about a methodology used for designing complex products. It involves creating a layered application with dummy samples. The first layer is intuitive and simple. As the layers are peeled, functionality and complexity increase. The customers can choose the degree to which they remove the peels.
In the enterprise software industry, Tzuo talks about how there has been a shift from the "field-sales" model, where traditional sales representatives win deals from big customers, to a "two-tier-sales" model. This is fueled by customers coming to the website rather than the sales representatives approaching them, creating a need for another tier of sales people to serve as telesales representatives.