Salesforce names former Oracle exec head of enterprise sales
Salesforce.com hired another high-level sales executive from Oracle as the company looks to juice its penetration in large enterprises and verticals.
The company said Wednesday Anthony Fernicola will become president of global enterprise sales at Salesforce. Fernicola was most recently senior vice president at Oracle where he lead the company's North America technology organization.
Fernicola will report to Keith Block, president at Salesforce. Block was also a long-time Oracle sales leader.
With the move, Salesforce is telegraphing that it largely has its product portfolio in place and plenty to sell. Now Salesforce is looking for the sales throughput to grow revenue. Growing revenue and building a large enterprise footprint is also behind the company's partnership with Oracle.
Fernicola has led the sales efforts for technology licenses, engineered systems and financial services.
Some analysts have questioned the returns on Salesforce's sales management investment. In a research note, Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher said:
We think investors are giving the new sales management team too much credit and are not paying enough attn to what we see as significant competition in the emerging category of Marketing Automation. We do not believe CRM's “Marketing Cloud” is a layup. We see a company with a brand new product for a brand new buyer; a high sales execution hurdle.
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