Salesforce, the e-commerce and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems specialist has unveiled several new aids for selling in the Covid-19 world.
Based around the company's Sales Cloud CRM offering, the new tools will focus on producing a tech-driven 360-degree view of the customer.
The revised Salesforce system will feature all-encompassing views of meeting attendees supplemented by customer history, open service cases and bios of the people they’ll be selling to. Notes from the virtual meetings can be automatically logged for internal collaboration using Salesforce Anywhere.
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The company also revealed Einstein Video Call Coaching, which will enable sales teams to analyze video conversations, using Artificial Intelligence to produce a more tailored approach moving forwards.
Adding to the Covid-19 focus is Salesforce Maps Field Safety Kit, which homes in on key data held in the CRM to determine how sales personnel can travel safely out in the field.
Topping things off is an enhanced High Velocity Sales feature that lets sales staff deep dive into dynamic data within the CRM. It’ll assist employees to sell even if they’re working remotely. This is even more critical now that many sales teams are working from home.
State of Sales
Salesforce has also published its annual State of Sales report, which showcases how sales teams have been faring over the last twelve months. Naturally, Covid-19 features heavily in the findings, with businesses having to adapt dramatically to new ways of trading.
The research highlights just how much harder sales personnel are having to work in order to record sales. For example, some 67% said that enforcement of activity logging is stricter than it was last year. Also for 2020, 63% of those questioned reported they log more details about customer interactions than they did during 2019.
However, salespeople also reported positive change thanks to the help of digital transformation. A sizeable 84% of sales operatives said that digital activity has accelerated since last year and many are now using tech tools to help them make sales. These include the likes of video conferencing, AI and mobile sales apps along with the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
The report underlines the growing importance of AI to staff, with its adoption by sales teams having increased by 76% since 2018. The changing face of trading is also reflected in the amount of retraining going on. 70% of managers are now retraining their sales teams to sell from home. In addition, rather than hiring new people, many existing sales staff have been reskilled to take on other roles.
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