Salesforce launches new email app for sales personnel

Enterprise cloud computing and customer relationship management platform Salesforce claims to have introduced an ‘intelligent’ Salesforce Inbox Calendar made specifically for sales professionals. Salesforce aims to extend intelligence to the calendar by altering the Inbox into a modern CRM app of every sales Cloud user. The technology is built on Tempo which was acquired by Salesforce in June this year.

How does it work

Salesforce Inbox Calendar surfaces relevant Salesforce records on every appointment, that claims to equip sales personnel with the context required to get the most out of every meeting. Sales professionals can leverage the Inbox Calendar to find everything at one place, rather than searching through an array of disconnected applications. According to a CSO Insights study, sales personnel have to search as many as 15 data sources to find relevant information on a single customer or prospect. As a result, they are spending up to 70 percent of their time on tasks other than selling. Stephen Ehikian, GM of SalesforceIQ, Salesforce said:

Today’s sales reps live and breathe by their calendars, but their calendars simply aren’t designed to help them be productive. Salesforce Inbox Calendar will supercharge sales reps’ productivity by intelligently mapping relevant Salesforce data to every meeting invite, allowing reps to spend time connecting with customers and closing deals.

The Calendar claims to plan required data for every meeting invite and also integrates with Salesforce 1 app that allows reps to update existing records and review past communication right from their mobile calendar. It digs deep into all the CRM data for further insights or update fields to keep the data 100 percent accurate.

Salesforce Inbox Calendar innovations include:

• CRM Records on Every Meeting, where every calendar invite can be enriched with relevant customer data from Salesforce. For example, a rep walking into a meeting with a prospect will be able to open their meeting invite and have the prospect’s information, including Salesforce records, past communications and opportunity data associated with the meeting attendees, right at their fingertips.
• Lightning Sync Integration which lets reps automatically sync every calendar event to Leads and Contacts in Sales Cloud, saving them time on administrative tasks and ensuring that updates are logged in Salesforce in real-time.
• One-Click Conference Calling which can integrate with conference calling services like GoToMeeting and WebEx. Now a salesperson on the go won’t have to toggle back and forth to type in a conference number and the passcode.
• Smarter Workflows—Meeting Notes & Quick Record Creation that lets sales reps easily log a meeting and attach notes directly to the account in Salesforce, right from their calendar. And with Quick Record Creation, sales reps can create an opportunity directly from their calendar, right where they are working.

Ehikian, in a blogpost mentioned, “Not only is relevant CRM data is surfaced alongside each email for full context of the relationship, but Salesforce Inbox intelligently pulls in social media profiles from LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. to every contact, automatically. In addition, with email tracking, reps always know when customers are engaging with their messages and can reach out at the right time to keep the deal moving forward. With these intelligent insights, Inbox customers are experiencing, on average, a 21 percent faster sales cycle.”