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I FORGIVE WALL STREET friends their office clich s touch base or net net though I reserve the right to take a swing at anyone who introduces himself as a team leader. Imagine my recent discomfort in seeing analysts pull out their finest hyperbo-flattery, including game changer and category killer, to describe a software company not 10 years old, and with sales of well less than $1 billion.

Perhaps SalesForce.com deserves it. It is, after all, among the largest players in a fast-growing and lucrative subset of the software business called software-as-a-service. (If you already call it "sass," then you have the makings of a fine team leader.) Essentially, installable software is for fogies. Applications of the future will be hosted by the software company and accessed online for a rolling fee. Taxpayers and dieters can already inflate their deductions and deflate their calorie counts without installing software at TurboTax.com and WeightWatchers.com. Google hasn't yet taken much share from Microsoft Office with its online word processing, spreadsheet and presentation suite, but the idea is at least of interest to anyone who often starts stock columns in his bathrobe and finishes them a subway ride away in pants.

Online software is perhaps of greatest interest to corporate Internet technology workers, or rather, to profit-incentivized managers who wish to trim costs by reducing the number of those workers. Any company with a sales or customer-service arm needs a good "customer relationship management" suite. That's what tells a cellphone rep that you've called four times this week about a billing mistake, or that you're still bound to your plan by a giant deactivation fee, or that your pet's name and account password is Professor Snugglepaws.

Installed CRM suites require an army of attendants and servers to handle software updates and maintenance. They often carry big upfront fees, resulting in messy accounting for the buyer and lumpy revenues for the seller. Online CRM software frees companies from having to host programs or install updates and allows them to pay as they go. SalesForce.com sells access to just such on-demand software. It assists salespeople and helps analyze their performance, trains new staff, keeps call-center reps informed, tracks marketing and public relations campaigns and more.

I'm no judge of such things. Tom Roderick, an analyst for Thomas Weisel Partners, an investment bank, is. He launched coverage of SalesForce.com stock with a Buy recommendation on July 21, noting it has "a legitimate chance to unseat first-tier software competitors and redefine the software market as investors have historically known it." That sounds promising. So does this, also from Roderick: "We find it unique that a diverse partner community has begun to develop native applications on SalesForce.com's proprietary APEX code, suggesting that SalesForce.com is a rare breed of company that has the power to create its own ecosystem."

The overall market for CRM software is saturated and slow-growing, with sales expected to increase at a compounded rate of just 8% through 2012. But on-demand CRM software, now just 12% of a $9.3 billion market, is forecast by market researcher IDC to grow to 24% of what should be a $10.8 billion market by 2011. That's a compounded yearly growth rate of better than 30%.

SalesForce.com's sales are expected to jump 44% this year and 31% next year. It turned up recently on a search for companies whose sales have grown faster over the past year than they have, on average, over the past three, and which have grown faster still in the most recent quarter. The company's stock has increased fourfold in price since its June 2004 debut, and now fetches $68 and change. Roderick reckons it'll hit $90 within a year. It just might, but I'm afraid I'm too chicken to second his recommendation. All looks promising except the price/earnings ratio of 196 times this year's forecast and 102 times next year's. That seems pricey even for a game changer.

Have a look at seven other companies that survived my Accelerating Sales Growth screen if you like. Run the search yourself anytime using SmartMoney's stock screener and the full list of search criteria.

Also See:
8 Stocks Fit for Contrarian Investors
8 Stocks Promising Growth at a Bargain
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See All the Screen Survivors

Accel. Sales Growth Screen Survivors
Stock Ticker	Company Name	Industry	Curr. Price	3-Yr. Sales Growth (%)	1-Yr. Sales Growth (%)	Forward P/E (Curr. Yr.)
	Bunge Ltd.	Farm Products	91.50	20.17	42.18	8.01
	Celgene	Biotechnology	76.07	47.09	54.90	55.12
	Central European Distribution	Beverages-Winery/Distlers	69.07	21.22	22.59	25.58
	Foster Wheeler Ltd.	Heavy Construction	50.58	31.37	43.72	14.49
	LKQ	Auto Parts Wholesale	20.51	37.87	87.70	23.85
	Salesforce.com	Internet Software & Svcs	68.21	49.58	50.31	194.89
	UTi Worldwide	Air Delivery/Freight Svcs	17.94	21.22	23.85	16.31
	XTO Energy	Independent Oil & Gas	43.83	26.88	38.17	10.31

Data as of Aug. 5, 2008.

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Accelerating Sales Growth Screen Recipe

Three-year average sales growth greater than 20%

One-year sales growth greater than three-year average sales growth

Most recent quarter sales growth greater than one-year sales growth

Next-year EPS estimate raised within past quarter

Trailing 12-month sales great than $300 million

Average daily trading volume greater than 100,000 shares