Salesforce today announced a raft of new features on its Sales Cloud platform that aim to make prospecting faster, billing more flexible and marketing automation more powerful for sales and marketing teams.
The San Francisco-based customer relationship management (CRM) heavyweight’s new toolkits came as Salesforce also published a new “Trends in Customer Trust” report, based on a survey of 6,723 global respondents.
This found that customers expect tailored engagement across all channels; 84 percent of respondents saying that “being treated like a person, not a number” is “very important” to winning their business, with over half (54 percent) adding that marketing messages aren’t as relevant as they’d like.
Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM, Salesforce Sales Cloud, said in a release: “Automation, integration and speed are essential to business success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution… by extending our Sales Cloud platform with faster prospecting, flexible billing and intelligent marketing automation, we’re providing our customers with a comprehensive and unparalleled lead-to-cash platform.”
Sales Cloud Platform: Faster and More Focussed
Time lost on manual tasks like researching prospects leaves the average inside sales rep spending a mere 32 percent of their day selling, according to the company’s 2018 State of Sales Survey.
The company’s High Velocity Sales toolkit aims to furnish sales teams with upgraded levels of automation and intelligence, making it easier than ever to prospect faster and manage leads more effectively. It has also added Work Queues, which uses machine learning to create prioritised email and call lists.
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Pardot, the company’s marketing automation platform also gets a range of updates, with new features including Einstein Campaign Insights, which uses machine learning to uncover which marketing campaigns are most successful based on content and subject line engagement, to help create more tailored campaigns that resonate with prospects.
On August 29 Salesforce reported record Q2 revenues of $3.28 billion, up 27 percent year on year. “Salesforce’s vision and position as the #1 sales, service, marketing and CRM platform is enabling our customers to stay ahead and thrive in this Fourth Industrial Revolution,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and co-CEO.
