Salesforce.com Launches Salesforce1 Sales Reach

With more than 80 percent of customers' purchasing decisions influenced by mobile engagements, connecting with them through their mobile devices is crucial for sales teams. But reaching out to a prospect at the most opportune time can be a challenge—between frequent travel and delayed communication with marketing divisions, salespeople are often limited by both time and content.

Salesforce.com's Sales Reach, a new solution for the Salesforce1 Sales Cloud app, aims to help sales teams overcome those challenges by not only streamlining the process of following up with leads, but also enabling salespeople to launch their own mini-marketing campaigns without having to reach out to—or wait for—marketing teams.

Sales Reach unites the capabilities of Salesforce1 Sales Cloud, Pardot, and Salesforce Communities into a solution that puts more marketing power into the hands of salespeople. "What we're noticing in the sales process is that it's becoming less linear," Mark Wollen, senior vice president of marketing at the Salesforce1 Sales Cloud, says. "The buying journey has evolved, and sales teams need to be able to reach customers at critical times. Sales is working much more closely with marketing to better connect with their prospects, but sometimes that outreach has to be quick and urgent, and there isn't enough time to go through marketing," he adds.

For example, if a sales rep wants to take immediate action after a prospect downloads a white paper from the company Web site, Sales Reach's Real-time Activity Notifications feature will send him an alert detailing the activity, and giving the sales rep an opportunity to take action, such as send an email using a predesigned marketing template.

If the sales rep wants to take a more personalized approach, Sales Reach now allows salespeople to build their own customized campaigns with the Micro Campaigns feature. "This makes the campaigns more localized and targeted, and better suited for individual prospects and situations," Wollen says. "This is also an important tool for marketers, who can keep track of the micro campaigns that salespeople create and develop a deeper understanding of their needs."

Sales Reach also offers Lead Tracking, a dashboard feature that gives salespeople access to a prospect's recent activity record, and Mobile Nurture Campaigns, which allow sales reps to instantly add a prospect to a templated marketing nurture program. "It's traditional for marketers to be in charge of creating a nurture journey, but it's becoming an increasingly important capability for salespeople to have," Wollen says. "For example, if a sales rep calls a prospect that just downloaded a case study, but that prospect says he isn't ready to buy yet, the sales rep can add him to a nurture campaign right on the spot. The prospect can start receiving relevant messaging immediately, and the sales rep can keep himself in front of that prospect consistently throughout the buying process," he explains.

The new solution's fifth and final capability, Salesforce Communities for Prospects, gives prospects a chance to directly engage with each other. Salespeople can invite them to join different groups where others are already sharing insight, starting discussions, and asking or answering questions. And sales reps can also track all community activity, "joining the conversation when the time is right," Wollen says.

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