Dreamforce is our big family reunion where Trailblazers (dreamers and innovators from every industry) come together and share what they’ve learned. This year, the focus is on sales hacks for driving efficient growth — and doing more with less.
Sales leaders are under pressure to increase sales productivity without increasing costs. But they’re seeing the opportunity in this challenge — the chance to bring in real-time data, guide sellers with AI, and make buying easier across channels.
Discover their top sales hacks below.
1. Personalize your sales outreach using real-time data
Companies use an average of 976 different software applications that contain customer data, according to the 2022 MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark Report. These data sources are both internal and external, often disconnected, and often not updated in real time. They can overwhelm sellers with data at speeds and volumes that don’t let up.
The rallying cry from the Dreamforce stage? Simplify your tech stack. Replace your patchwork of point solutions with a complete platform — one that can unify your customer records into a 360-degree view of the customer, with real-time data to keep you in the present moment.
This vivid customer view helps everyone in the business — from marketing to finance — deliver personalized customer experiences. For sales leaders, that means having answers to critical questions at your fingertips. What does your customer care about? Where are they in the sales conversation? What’s the next step? With that information, you can be ruthlessly relevant every time you reach out.
How Sales Cloud helps you see the customer through all your data:
Sales Cloud Genie is our sales activity platform. It processes vast volumes of data — over 100 billion sales activities per month — in real time. With the Sales Cloud Unlimited Edition, you can bring this real-time data and wall-to-wall intelligence to your sales team, and work smarter and faster to drive efficient growth.
Watch the demo of Sales Cloud Unlimited Edition in action, powered by Genie.
2. Use AI to spot red flags
“Think of the last time a deal of yours went sideways,” wrote Dave Borelli, senior vice president of sales at Salesforce, about sales pitfalls. “Odds are it was because of something you didn’t see. Maybe it was a deal that seemed solid, but then a stakeholder derailed it at the last minute — someone you should have seen coming. Or maybe a customer made a comment in a meeting that should have raised a red flag — but that flew under the radar instead.”
At Dreamforce, we’re hearing the number one sales hack to overcome these blind spots: bring in AI. Human intelligence is great for a lot of things. Sifting through data to spot invisible signals is not one of them. Besides, sellers have better things to focus on — like selling.
The growing adoption of AI is part of a larger shift — away from intuitive selling and toward data-driven selling. The first step is to use AI-powered tools that analyze customer data in the background, seeking potential deal-sinkers. Second, plug these tools into the system you use to manage the sales process, so sellers get insights and recommendations they can act on: deals that put the forecast at risk, customers who need attention, and sales calls that contain negative comments.
How Sales Cloud helps you spot risks and opportunities with AI:
Revenue Insights Dashboard shows you which opportunities you should pursue and drop, without having to dig through the data manually.
Einstein Forecasting shows real-time changes in your pipeline, and predicts your forecast and whether sellers are on track to hit their quota.
Pipeline Inspection with Deal Health Insights make predictions about deal health and give sales teams recommended actions to move deals forward.
3. Use automation to make your reps more productive
Sellers spend two-thirds of their time on non-selling tasks, according to our State of Sales report. When you reimagine what can be automated, you drive efficient growth by making your reps more productive.
For example, automation can eliminate manual data entry by populating deal records with customer information from sources like emails and meeting notes. It can also auto-assign tasks throughout the sales process, including cumbersome approvals. With automatic alerts for next steps — like which customer is likely ready for an upsell — sellers go from hunting information down to getting it served up.
How Salesforce can help you increase sales productivity with automation:
Inbox pulls in data from emails, updates deal records automatically, and populates emails with the latest data, so sellers can speed through deals.
Slack Connect integrates your sales information with the collaboration and messaging tool your sellers already use, so teams can advance and close deals right through Slack.
Sales Engagement uses automation to help you gear up for virtual selling, with tools for building sales cadences, improving customer connections, and coaching your reps.
Einstein Conversation Insights helps you squeeze every drop of useful customer data from your sales calls, so you can spot trends and coach your reps.
4. Create enablement programs that make a measurable impact on revenue outcomes
Work has gone hybrid, there’s less room for error, and sellers are expected to be experts. Too many are not feeling the love. In a June 2022 Salesforce survey, 40% of reps said they lack the training they need to sell virtually.
How can you rise to meet the moment? “Turn your focus to enablement,” said Scott Santoro, vice president of sales at Delta Air Lines. At Dreamforce, he shared how to shift away from the traditional mindset of sales enablement, where you deliver training and hope something sticks.
The new approach? Relevant, personalized programs that change how sellers do their jobs with training tied to specific revenue goals. The key to unlock it is automation.
“We made the shift to enablement that uses automation to train sellers on the go — without taking away from their day,” Santoro said. “As we move forward, we’ll embed coaching milestones in the flow of their work that auto-complete as reps hit them. Then we define and measure the behavior change we want to achieve, to see if we’re on track.”
How Sales Cloud helps you tie enablement to revenue goals:
Enablement — built on the Salesforce platform — helps you achieve your revenue goals with personalized enablement milestones, automatically integrated into the seller’s workflow.
5. Make it easier for customers to buy with new sales channels
Your most efficient sales strategy may not have your sales team at the center, but rather a partner or a self-service channel like an online store.
The truth is, buyers are leaning more on digital buying experiences. They want to buy on the channels that serve them best.
“Not every buyer wants to pick up the phone and talk to a sales rep every time they want to make a purchase,” said Tiffani Bova, growth evangelist at Salesforce. “They want it to be easy. Maybe they want to buy from a distributor they’re already talking to. Maybe they want to do it over Slack. Maybe they want to add software to an online cart at 2 a.m. while wearing their pajamas.”
So, sales and revenue leaders need to think deeply about how to set up new paths to growth, and build an omnichannel ecosystem that can book revenue in different ways.
There’s benefit for your sales team, too: Activating new channels can help you build high-volume, low-touch selling into your ecosystem, freeing your sellers to focus on the most impactful deals.
Don’t know where to start? Consider your goals.
If you have a subscription business and are looking to wring more revenue from it, consider building self-service channels for buying, renewing, and billing. Or, if you’re looking to scale your business and reach new markets, consider accelerating your sales by selling through partners.
How Sales Cloud helps you activate new sales channels:
Subscription Management helps you automate the complete revenue lifecycle for your business, and build self-service channels for easy buying and billing experiences.
Partner Relationship Management simplifies your channel sales process with step-by-step guidance that gets your partners up to speed faster.
What’s next?
The basic fact about sales will never change. It’s about one seller talking to one customer. With automation, intelligence, and real-time data, sellers can make these moments more meaningful. That might be the great irony of taking sales digital: It’s about the human element after all.
