Three ways that Salesforce sales leaders use Slack to build trust and drive productivity

Regardless of what tools are in your tech stack, if they’re not helping you to establish trust, your teams may not be reaching their full potential. Why? Trust drives productivity.

Society for Human Resources Management research shows that workplaces that prioritise trust enjoy 50% higher employee productivity and 106% more energy at work. What’s more, companies with high trust levels outperform companies with low trust levels by 186%.

Building trust means following through with what you say you will do. However, many sales reps are bogged down with repetitive tasks and can’t stay on top of their most important priorities. Read on to learn how Salesforce sales leaders use Slack’s AI and automations to help their teams be accountable and work faster by connecting and engaging the people that they work with.

 

Automate with workflows

According to Salesforce’s State of Sales Report, sales reps spend 72% of their time on non-selling activities. Slack’s automated workflows are one way to resolve this dilemma. Workflows created in Slack’s no-code Workflow Builder can automate repetitive tasks in any app connected to Slack and can pull data and events from those apps to trigger actions. It was designed to be user-friendly enough that anyone can create a custom workflow and deploy it instantly.

For example, a few leaders have created weekly automations for their account executives that drop a message in one-to-one channels every Monday with a pep talk that reminds them of priorities, goals and targets. It also includes links to docs and details, plus a button that says, ‘Are you ready?’

‘When they hit that button, that’s my way of knowing they’ve read it,’ says Daniel Martin, a regional vice president of sales at Salesforce, ‘and when that button is clicked, the next thing that pops up is, “OK, let’s go hit our number.”’

It’s not just sales managers and leaders who can harness the power of workflows. Sales reps use Workflow Builder to drive efficiency and – planned for release later this year – will also be able to deliver AI-powered conversation summaries with Slack GPT. The tool can be used to help new sales reps get up to speed on a project or account channel by summarising everything that’s happened since they joined, and it can summarise an employee’s highest-priority channels to catch up quickly post-holiday.

Your sales teams can work more efficiently when they spend less time on administrative tasks and more time selling. Less time spent on repetitive work means faster response times internally. And your reps will get more time with customers to build relationships through meaningful interactions. Ultimately, your sales teams can foster more trust with your colleagues, partners and customers.

Have knowledge at your fingertips with Slack’s search

On average, a Fortune 500 employee toggles between applications and windows 3,600 times per day to complete their work. A lot of that time is spent searching for relevant information. Salesforce relies on Slack’s powerful search to prevent context switching. This feature offers instant access and visibility into all company knowledge, including the archives of public channels, canvases, huddles and clips. Relevant results can be filtered by keyword, sender, channel and date. In seconds, sales reps can hunt down past information about deals, critical files and experts to help them close deals faster.

Using Slack creates transparency and promotes accountability because everything is documented and easily retrievable. By having better context at their fingertips, sales teams can provide customers with high-quality service in less time without pulling in additional people or handing work off to someone else.

Slack channels save sales teams valuable time. For example, when an AE wanted to connect with an asset manager but didn’t know how to find them, she used Slack’s search to get the correct contact information. She then synced with her leader in their Slack channel and had all the context that she needed to write a pitch email. This speedy, simplified communication led to a deal win.

‘Four years ago, we would never have found the right information,’ Martin says. ‘Now people and conversations belong in the realm of institutional knowledge.’

Stay accountable with reminders

Slack’s reminder feature ensures that sales reps never miss out on responding to a customer query or fulfilling a commitment. Reminders are great for internal efficiency. Set a one-time, same-day note to remind yourself to follow up with a solutions engineer about a new product feature that your customer wants to know about, for example. You can also set recurring reminders.

Reminders are also great for far-off, future events. Weeks after a conversation with a customer, when they’ve long forgotten that they told you about their anniversary, they’ll be impressed that you remembered to circle back to congratulate them. And just like that, you’re depositing little trust coins into their account. Those personalised interactions – which more than 70% of consumers expect, according to McKinsey – matter when creating customer loyalty. And they pay dividends in future interactions.

Quickly responding to requests and following up are simple yet powerful ways to show customers that their needs are valued and respected. ‘When you’re making virtual connections, and you can’t shake hands with customers, sometimes it’s as simple as doing what you say you’re going to do in a single conversation that builds micro-moments of trust,’ Martin says.

Slack’s tools allow trust to flourish in a sales setting, making accountability, transparency and alignment the norm rather than the exception. Learn more about how you can maximise sales productivity using both Slack and Sales Cloud.