Seven months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature of B2B buying and selling has changed, and companies are eager to re-accelerate growth. That’s why today, Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the global leader in CRM, announced a new suite of technologies to empower sales teams to stand out from the pack and provide engaging and trusted buying experiences for customers. 

This year, every sales rep became a virtual seller and has had to reimagine how they interact with customers. Buyers face uncertainty and are looking for trusted sales advisors to help them get back to growth. And sales leaders need to rapidly deploy technology and processes to increase rep productivity. Companies are relying on Sales Cloud — widely recognized as the flexible, scalable CRM platform that delivers fast time to value, built around a 360 view of the customer.

“The wise move is to take the time to pause, evaluate, and decide what few simple things — and I mean very few — are the priority. For McAfee, it was Salesforce. The platform could easily adapt to new processes and resulted in big wins for both the business and our new virtual culture,” said Pilar Schenk, Vice President of Global Sales Operations at McAfee. “We really want to enable sales to have one place that they can go to ensure that they have the collaboration, the connectivity and the visibility, and Salesforce is that hub, all centered around the customer.”

Today, Salesforce is announcing the following new capabilities to supercharge virtual selling with a 360 degree view of the customer: 

• Salesforce Meetings: A new meeting management system that helps reps be better before, during and after sales calls. Before meetings, sales reps have a 360 view of all meeting attendees on a single screen —  including customer history, open service cases and attendee bios. Once the meeting starts, both the presentation and the presenter are shown together for a more engaging, human connection. And after the call, reps can log notes for internal collaboration with Salesforce Anywhere and move deals forward faster with automated action items. 
• Einstein Video Call Coaching: Einstein Call Coaching can now analyze video conversations to capture AI-powered insights on customer needs and rep performance.  Managers can better personalize their coaching as employees shift to selling via video, and build out team strategies based on customer needs.
• Salesforce Maps Field Safety Kit: With the Maps Field Safety Kit, sales organizations can now understand how customers are affected by visualizing COVID-19 trend data inside the CRM to determine which areas are safest for travel. Easy-to-build travel approval workflows and new mobile enhancements with customizable pre- and post-visit health checklists ensure field sales are both efficient and safe. 
• Enhanced High Velocity Sales: High Velocity Sales, originally built for prospecting, will now provide automated actions across the sales cycle on opportunities and accounts. When COVID-19 took hold, every field sales rep suddenly had to become a virtual seller, and now only 54% of outside reps are confident in their personal ability to close deals in the current environment.¹ Tailored outreach across various communication channels like calls and emails can now be applied to the deals that outside sellers are working on. This ensures that a fully remote team can be even more efficient than they were when working in the same location. 

“The world’s best performing sales teams use the #1 CRM, Salesforce,” said Doug Camplejohn, GM and EVP, Sales Cloud. “And with our new innovations in Sales Cloud 360, you’re seeing us continue to set the bar. We’re enabling sales reps to stand out in a sea of virtual meetings, and helping remote teams to work together more effectively during these unprecedented times.”

“This is a transformational moment for sales, more so than any other role in the enterprise,” said Gerry Murray, Research Director, Marketing and Sales Technology at IDC. “Companies have to find new ways to optimize the day to day tasks of sales reps and support contactless relationships with customers. With Salesforce’s new virtual selling suite, reps can better leverage a 360-degree view to sell more effectively and elevate their customers’ experiences.”

Availability

• Salesforce Meetings is expected to be available in pilot in October 2020. The product is expected to be generally available February 2021, and is compatible with all leading video conferencing providers.
• Einstein Video Call Coaching, Salesforce Maps Field Safety Kit, and Enhanced High Velocity Sales are expected to be generally available in February 2021.

Additional Information

• To learn more about Sales Cloud, visit here. 
• Register here to learn more about Salesforce Meetings. 
• To learn more about Einstein Video Call Coaching, visit here. 
• To learn more about Salesforce Maps, visit the product page here.
• To learn more about High Velocity Sales, visit the product page here. 
• To learn more about how sales teams are adjusting to new customer and leader expectations and thinking about new growth strategies, read our new State of Sales report here. 

¹ Salesforce State of Sales, September 2020.