Reinvent work with a new digital sales floor

Editor’s Note: 
As you may have heard, Slack is now a part of Salesforce! This means some of the information below is dated, but we wanted to keep it around for historical context and other good reasons. For more details on Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack, read the official announcement. 

 

For sales teams, 2020 demanded creativity. It required new ways of generating and pursuing leads, nurturing and educating customers, and collaborating with colleagues—all while working remotely.

Many sellers relied on Slack to communicate and close deals while working outside of the office. Now that workplaces are becoming not just virtual or physical but a hybrid of both, sales teams are doubling down on Slack as their digital sales floor.

To help explain the most effective ways that Slack helps sales organisations thrive, we’ve gathered lots of useful tips and examples, plus some surprising statistics, and created the new e-book Reinventing sales.

In writing the e-book, we talked to business and sales leaders across industries and countries about their challenges, strategies and predictions for what comes next. From their input, we identified five big themes:

• Employee engagement is breaking free from the 9-to-5 mindset
• Culture and alignment are the next source of competitive advantage
• Customer-led disruption is forcing rapid CX convergence
• A new ecosystem economy demands a new partner playbook
• The winners are accelerating work through automation

The guide examines what these themes mean for sales leaders, and shows how sales organisations at some of the world’s most successful companies are adapting to the new world of work with Slack.

Beyond the “lone wolf”

In the e-book, you’ll learn about two tactics that smart sales organisations implemented to succeed during the work-from-home era:

• Moving from “lone-wolf” selling to team-based selling by forming cross-functional teams to craft tailored propositions, answer prospects’ questions and provide credible advice
• Introducing the concept of a “digital sales floor,” where reps, managers, cross-functional experts and exec sponsors can unite to close more deals, faster

We’ll show you the essential role Slack can play in both of these strategies, and why sales teams that work in Slack are 5% more likely to win a deal than those that don’t, according to IDC research.

Discover what works

The guide also includes real-world examples from companies that have used Slack to execute successful sales strategies and exceed revenue targets. Learn how:

• Content delivery company Limelight Networks created a Slack channel that announces deals won, as well as regional-based channels for employees to collaborate on prospecting efforts
• Data analysis platform company Splunk uses Slack to onboard new sales reps, giving them a central home to share knowledge and ask questions
• Sales reps at ride-share company Lyft use a Salesforce integration to update deal stages and their pipeline dashboard right in Slack
• Our own team here at Slack built an internal app called Midas Touch, which saves our sales reps literally hundreds of hours every week by automating the process of creating sales decks for specific accounts

And we explain how Slack integrates with more than 2,500 apps like Salesforce, Calendly, DocuSign, Crossbeam, HubSpot, Drift, SalesLoft, Marketo and Highspot, giving sales teams seamless access to their most important account data and tools, right within Slack.

“We’re spending more time prospecting and less time on the administrative work updating deals in Salesforce,” says Tyler Lefeber, senior strategic account executive at Lyft Business. “There’s no doubt reps are able to source more business and close deals faster.”

Read the full e-book to learn more about how sales teams are reinventing work with Slack.