Slack for sales: 4 ways to close deals quicker

Efficiency and collaboration for sales teams has become even more critical with asynchronous workforces and changing economic environments. Using Slack to minimise jumping between platforms and to increase collaboration between teams, results in:

• 27%

  more deals closed

• 26%

  improved productivity

 

Collaborate on a deal

How to use Slack to efficiently collaborate internally on opportunities/deals

Channels

Reduce the volume of emails required between internal cross-functional teams by moving to Slack channels. With multiple people able to immediately collaborate on an account or task, you’ll create a more efficient sales process and reduce administrative overhead – and be able to focus instead on winning new business.

Examples of channels:

• #account channels to pin important docs, plan strategy, view performance metrics, monitor customers’ business news and keep a historical record of account activity
• #team channels to collaborate with the right group of colleagues 
• #sales channel to celebrate wins and share knowledge
• #announcements channels specific to a department or location, with select users able to post
• #external channel with prospects and customers: showcase firsthand the benefits of working in Slack and instill good ways of working for the future
• #deal-desk to centralise contract and legal negotiations with management, legal and finance
• #new-hires, added as single-channel guests before their start date: meet your colleagues, ask questions and get comfortable with how your company works in Slack
• #help- and #plz- to request support for progressing and closing deals
• #feedback channels to be the voice of your customer and enable cross-team collaboration
• #knowledge and #competitive-intel channels to keep your finger on the pulse of the competitive landscape

Organise channels by team (#sales-team), projects and accounts (#acct-teathyme), region (#sales-emea) and function (#salesforce-notifications or #sales-announcements) to keep conversations focused. Start with a few and add more as you go. 

• Name channels in a predictable way so they’re easier to find, like an index. Prefixes help! Think: #announce-sales or #proj-q4-sprint.  
• Keep tabs on conversations by starring important channels so they’re pinned to the top of your sidebar. It’s also helpful to pin essential files and resources to arm sales reps with all the information they need to get the deal over the line

How to create a channel

Alert Sales teams to new leads

Alleviate delays in receiving new leads and sharing them with account managers. Send new leads into a dedicated sales leads channel and alert relevant salespeople. This integration on average results in a 21% faster response time to sales leads.

Integrate with your CRM to allow leads to be shared in Slack.

Update Opportunity details in real-time

Integrate CRM with Slack to log opportunity updates directly from Slack. Sales teams are able to update opportunities at any time, anywhere. By integrating your CRM, your team will, on average:

• 27% average increase in win rate*
• 26% average increase in sales productivity*

Deal Approval

The sales team can work directly with management, legal and finance to centralise contract and legal negotiations within a private channel. 

• Deal support requests can be automated using Workflow Builder by standardising a set of required fields and details about the account request to prevent unnecessary back-and-forth.

Collaborate on presentations

Use the Google Drive or OneDrive/SharePoint integration to collaborate on presentations and documents

• Collaborate on key sales content
• Receive notifications in Slack if a teammate adds a comment to a shared document.

How to install Google Drive and OneDrive/Sharepoint integrations.

Send emails into channels

With the Slack for Gmail or Outlook plugin, you can avoid long email threads by pushing the email received to the account’s channel.

+ Set up auto alert (from News website) to the account’s channel

Suggestion: pin important docs to the channel

How to install Gmail or Outlook integrations.

For inspiration: How we at Slack collaborate on a deal

Our teams have developed several custom bots to support our sales organisation at Slack. 

Building decks faster

Midas Touch Bot

• Is helping sales teams prepare custom decks in a matter of minutes (through connection to our CRM/Database/Templates)

Alert of buying signals

Midas Signals

• Alerts the account team (via the account channel) to buying signals (for instance, a prospect attending an event).

Simplifying the Approval process

Approval Bot

• Deal proposal template sent to your Slack Deal Support Request channel

Working in the sales organisation

Bringing the sales organisation together, including sales, business development and sales operations

Onboard new hires

New employees can receive phased onboarding communications and find all of the resources they need to get up and running successfully via powerful global search. New team members who onboard quickly will reduce their time to productivity and more effectively enable account transitions.

• New-hire channels create a dedicated space to ask questions and share experiences.
• Managers can use onboarding channels to track onboarding tasks.
• Reps can review #accounts channels to quickly learn about accounts transferred to them.
• Using Workflow Builder, you can welcome new hires with automatic messages and organise setup or help requests.

Sales announcements

One simple place with restrictions on who can post in it

Only individuals with posting permissions for the #announcements channel, such as sales leadership, can post important information for teams to read and emoji-react (reaction emoji). 

Sales teams that feel engaged and supported report greater levels of job satisfaction and productivity. Sharing announcements in one location ensures that everyone receives them and drives engagement.

• Announcements can include big wins, company news and upcoming events or training. 
• Reacjis can acknowledge important posts or celebrate wins.

 

Asynchronous communication

Communicate with colleagues in different locations and time zones

Whether you’re assembling partners and customers for real-time collaboration or designing a pitch deck asynchronously, Slack has you covered. 

Canvas: Account execs can record ideas and action plans in a document that lives on after the call is over and is shareable with other teammates who may have missed the meeting. 

Clips: Leave voice or visual notes asynchronously, to be viewed whenever your colleagues come back online. 

Huddles: Quickly hop into audio or video calls inside any channel or message and solve problems in a few minutes that would have taken you half an hour to explain via text.

Create help channels

Always know where to find the right information

Leverage your internal network to ask questions and get feedback and support from colleagues.

#Portfolio-review

A private channel between director, manager and report that focuses on:

• Prioritisation and planning (you can even build workflows)
• Blockers and risks
• Successes and performance feedback
• Pipeline
• Workload check

#Competitive-intel

One place to share what’s happening in the life of your competitors.

• Sales teams can post questions for the team in charge of positioning and/or product marketing

Cross-departmental collaboration

How to use Slack to efficiently collaborate on a big opportunity/deal

Align on sales strategy

Speed up cross-functional sales strategy decisions and planning processes by having all critical stakeholders across sales and finance collaborating in a channel.

Product feedback

Help the product team by centralising customer feedback or requests

• Create channels in relationship with the product organisation, like #product-gaps, #[customer]-news, #feedback-[features] and #industry-[retail], to centralise information about specific customers, product features or industries.

Product announcement

Follow the product team with announcements about updates or new features

• Similar to the #sales or #win announcement channel, having channels like #[feat]-gtm, #released, #product-roadmap, #released-internal and #released-minor with product and marketing will help share across the org about new products being released.

Customer handoff and onboarding

Sales and Customer Success create a seamless transition for the customer from pre- to post-sale.

Customer Success reviews customer information in the #account channel and communicates directly with the sales team to create seamless handoffs.

Incident management

One place for Sales, Success and Support to be informed:

• An incident is happening
• Its severity and impact
• The actions to take
• The messages that can be shared
• The RCA (root cause analysis) that can be shared

Monitor tickets from Support

For Sales and Customer Success teams it’s important to monitor what’s happening to their customers. 

• Integrations can track incidents, requests for training, or upgrades

External collaboration

Communicate directly with your prospects in Slack to answer questions and close deals faster

Slack Connect

Build on conversations with customers in Slack Connect channels by adding your partners – account managers, Customer Success managers and other team members who will be supporting the account – so they can continue to discuss customer needs and opportunities for renewals, upgrades and other negotiations. Not only does this help build rapport with customers, it helps create trust by getting 43% faster responses from customers, vendors and service providers, according to a 2021 IDC MarketScape assessment. Together, it all adds up to a deal cycle that moves four times as fast, thanks to Slack Connect.

• Work across org boundaries in external channels and share a channel with up to 20 organisations. Send messages and files and build collective insights.
• Directly message anyone, inside or outside your organisation, in real time.
• Extend the benefits of Slack to your external relationships: channels, search, apps and integrations.

Loop in subject matter experts on both sides!

Schedule customer meetings

Set up a meeting via the calendar integration directly from Slack from the Shortcuts menu.

Sign contracts

Use the Docusign or Hellosign integration to send, review and sign contracts directly from Slack.

Interested in learning more? Visit our Help Centre or attend a webinar!