Salesforce Blog Takeaways: 4 Productivity-Boosting Tips for 2020

The Salesforce blog is an excellent resource for sales teams who want to boost productivity and get more out of their Salesforce implementations.

But research takes time and energy – to help readers stay even more productive, we’ve researched the Salesforce blog ourselves, hunting for some of the best ideas that Salesforce has to offer.

Below, we’ll look at some of the best productivity-boosting tips and takeaways found on their blog in 2020.

Salesforce Blog Takeaways: 4 Productivity Tips for 2020

Salesforce teams who want to stay productive and proficient in today’s fast-paced environment will need to become perpetual learners. After all, Salesforce is continually updated, the workplace keeps evolving, and digital ecosystems shift from day to day.

Here are a few of takeaways from Salesforce’s blog that can keep Sales teams at the top of their game in 2020:

Streamline sales processes with CPQ

Salesforce configure, price, quote (CPQ) significantly streamlines and simplifies the sales process.

This extension offers a number of benefits:

• Sales representatives can close deals faster, since much of the product pricing process is automated
• Organizations gain visibility into their sales flows, since they have greater insight into what is being offered and sold
• CPQ removes silos between departments and teams, democratizing information and enhancing transparency

With CPQ, companies can even develop new revenue models, offering greater flexibility to customers – and more bottom-line revenue to the company.

Create a “virtual” sales culture that knows how to sell remotely

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic forced employees around the world to work from home.

This global event has disrupted countless organizations and sales teams, completely removing much of the energy, dynamism, and enthusiasm present in the workplace.

With that gone, it is important to build a virtual sales model for today’s remote world.

Pilar Schenk, McAffee’s VP of global sales operations, recommends starting by creating a virtual sales culture.

He advises:

• Understanding seller’s needs, which often revolve around the need for connection with their peers and customers
• Use technology, such as Salesforce’s High Velocity Sales, to simplify processes and speed up products
• Evaluate the situation carefully, then leverage technology to build a “culture of togetherness” and maintain close relationships with customers

Process, Schenk says, feeds culture as much as culture feeds process.

Through organizational culture change, simplification, and prioritization, companies can rebuild stay productive and create a successful virtual culture for the remote world.

Use AI to improve Sales coaching

Digitization, digital transformation, and digital innovation have completely transformed the way sales teams operate.

Newer technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), have also begun to alter sales workflows, and they will continue to do so for some time to come.

Salesforce AI is at the forefront of this trend, and it offers many AI-powered features that can improve sales team productivity, including:

• Product trend monitoring through Einstein Call Coaching, which analyzes and transcribes calls, then highlights the points of interest in the conversation
• Tracking competition by using AI to search call transcripts for mentions of the competition
• Using keyword tracking to alert sales leaders to common mistakes that appear in sales representatives’ conversations
• Call reviews that can be performed automatically by AI, significantly speeding up the evaluation process

Although AI will never replace human sales representatives, its successful use in the workplace can dramatically boost sales performance and productivity.

Keep up with 2020 customer relationship management trends

2020 has been a year of great change, and that change will continue to impact customer relations for years to come.

To stay productive, sales teams need to understand and keep up with customer relationship management trends.

Here are a few to watch for:

• The customer identity problem. Personalization can significantly enhance the customer experience and boost sales performance. But successful personalization depends on understanding the customer identity. With the right technology and strategy, it will be easier to resolve customer identities and deliver better sales outcomes.
• Shopping at the edge. Retail has been languishing for years, and 2020 only exacerbated that problem. In the years ahead, commerce businesses should expect to see more “shopping on the edge,” which will include new touchpoints and channels such as voice, social media, and even gaming.
• Voice technology. Sales representatives spend far too much time on administrative tasks, such as managing emails and logging activities. Voice technology, the Salesforce blog suggests, may be the best way to improve productivity in the years ahead.
• Increased customer expectations. Customer mandates are continuing to evolve, and organizations will need to keep up with those mandates in order to ensure customer continuity. For instance, 4 in 10 customers won’t do business with a company that can’t use its preferred communication channels. And 7 out of 10 expect companies to communicate in real time.
• Cross-company integration. Enabling these new workflows and capabilities will require companies to become more flexible and agile. Data will need to be democratized and business units will need to begin working more collaboratively.

Since customer expectations are changing quickly, companies must also change.

New sales processes, strategies, and cultures will become more and more imperative as we move towards the post-COVID next normal.