Guide to-selling-faster-smarter

4 Steps to
Transforming Your
Sales Process

What’s Inside
Today’s biggest business trends revolve around helping
companies provide exceptional customer experiences.
These include big data insights that reveal and predict
customer needs, integrated platforms that enable end-
to-end personalization, and artificial intelligence (AI)
solutions that automate and scale tasks that used to be
painfully manual and time-consuming.
The same forces are changing the way sales teams
operate, too. Today, winning in sales means giving your
customers a frictionless buying experience from start to
finish. Because if you don’t, someone else will.
In the pages ahead, we’ll take a look at:
• Why selling in the age of the customer is different
• How to connect with your customers in a whole
new way
• What leading companies are doing to transform sales
Read on to discover how your sales team can sell faster,
smarter, and the way they want to with the world’s #1 CRM.
3
8
10
CHAPTER 1:
Selling in the Age of the Customer
CHAPTER 2:
Connect With Your Customers
in a Whole New Way
CHAPTER 3:
Transforming Your Sales
Blaze your Trail to more sales at Trailhead.
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trails you’ll be up and running in no time.
Find your path forward at salesforce.com/trailhead
86% of buyers will pay more for a better
customer experience.
“Second Annual State of Sales,” Salesforce Research
4STEPSTOTRANSFORMINGYOURSALESPROCESS

CHAPTER 1
Selling in the
Age of the
Customer
Today, we’re in what we call the Age of the
Customer. What does that mean, exactly?
It means customer expectations have
changed, thanks to the Amazons and Ubers
of the world. Buyers in both the B2C and
B2B worlds are demanding more; they
want a personalized and frictionless buying
experience that is fast, smart, connected,
and available anywhere.
Let’s take a closer look at the type of
elevated buying experience that today’s
customers expect:

Fast: For decades, buying a car has been a cultural trope for frustration:
a complex process full of confusing features, payment options, and price
haggling. Now, companies such as Tesla let you learn about, configure, and
even buy the most technologically advanced car in the world with a few
taps on an iPad. Buying a car can be that fast and simple.
Connected: Amazon has already trained consumers to buy any product
under the sun from the same site — and get it delivered to their doorstep
the next day. With Amazon Dash, it’s taken it up a notch. Dash buttons
connect directly to Amazon’s e-commerce engine and can be placed
anywhere in your home, allowing you to reorder your favorite detergent and
other household products the moment the need arises with a single touch
of a button.
Anywhere: Mobile devices have ushered in a new age of localized,
personalized, on-the-go service experiences. Consider this as the new norm:
With OpenTable for instance, you can check availability and instantly make
reservations at top restaurants in the current city you’re in, right from your
mobile device.
Smart: Now that smartphones are basically extensions of our own bodies,
consumers regularly use them to make purchasing easy. Home Depot
has an app that shows you exactly where the items on your shopping list
are located in the store, and maps out the quickest way to find them. The
same app delivers consumer behavior intel (like which items are most
frequently bought together) to Home Depot and its vendors to help
optimize floor layouts and the overall shopping experience. Win-win.
4 /

Engage Customers
Consistently Across the Entire
Buyer Journey
These are just a few examples of the types
of experiences that customers expect today.
Anyone who’s ever bought anything can tell
you that the best buying experiences are
smooth and consistent from start to finish,
without any nasty surprises (faulty product!)
or frustrating disconnects (misleading
claims!). That’s what you want to deliver to
your customers: a seamless, personalized
buying experience that makes them want to
come back for more.
In order to do that, you need a sales
process that connects every customer
touchpoint (from website downloads, to
social comments, to emails, phone calls, and
meetings). That requires giving all employees
easy access to one complete view of your
customer: surfacing clear insights derived
from the information that’s captured each
time a customer interacts with you, across all
channels and all stages of the buyer journey.
Activity
history
Online
interactions
Social
engagement
Channel
preferences
Key
contacts
Customer
communications
Past
purchases
Internal account
discussions
Industry
developments
5 /

Today’s Sales Challenges
It might sound simple, but keeping up with every customer in this fast-paced world
of ever-evolving technology is no easy feat. It’s especially tricky if your sales, service,
and marketing processes aren’t fully integrated.
In fact, we hear again and again from the companies we talk to that disconnected
sales processes are the no. 1 challenge that keeps them from effectively engaging
their customers. Some organizations talk about how their amazing marketing
campaigns fill the pipeline with qualified leads, but things break down when the
sales team can’t access the right lead information to bring that sale over the finish
line. Other companies tell horror stories of week-long delays in the quoting and
proposal stages, which result in stalled sales and lower order volumes.
If the systems you use to manage sales, service, and marketing are not seamlessly
connected on one platform, critical customer data is getting lost in the shuffle. The
result? Disjointed and confusing experiences for your customer as they interact with
different people throughout the buying journey.
“In fact, we hear again and again from the companies we talk to that
disconnected sales processes are the no. 1 challenge that keeps them
from effectively engaging their customers.”
Sales
Service
Marketing
Sales
Service
Marketing
6 /

Disconnected Sales = Inefficient Sales
And disconnected sales processes don’t just impact the customer experience. Your sales team suffers,
too. They experience lower productivity, frustration from deals that are delayed or lost due to inadequate
knowledge transfers, and confusion when poor data quality makes it impossible to get accurate forecasts
or clear visibility into the pipeline.
Challenges of a Disconnected Sales Process
Limited deal
collaboration
So the question is: How can you connect your sales process to deliver an amazing customer
experience at every stage of the buying journey?
Inability to
forecast
Lack of pipeline
visibility
Lost and
delayed
deals
Poor data
quality
Limited customer
intelligence
Low
customer
satisfaction
Low rep
productivity
No knowledge
transfer across
deals
7 /

CHAPTER 2
Connect With
Your Customers
in a Whole
New Way
The answer is simple: Use a single,
integrated CRM platform that allows
you to manage the entire buyer journey,
from capturing a lead, to closing a deal,
and following up with top-notch service.
Salesforce for Sales provides the world’s #1
CRM platform that lets your team sell faster,
smarter, and the way they want.

With Salesforce for Sales, your teams can:
• Track prospects and customers
through the sales cycle
• Engage customers at the
right time with built-in
marketing automation and
collaboration tools
• Get visibility into sales forecasts
and team performance
• Customize workflows, reports,
and dashboards
• Identify the best upsell
and cross sell opportunities
• Use intelligence and
productivity tools at each stage
Deliver a Connected Experience Across the Entire Buyer Journey
CUSTOMER SUCCESS PLATFORM
Grow Pipeline
Marketing
Automation
Create Advocates
Sales Data
Lead & Opportunity
Management
Forecasting Quote-to-Cash
Custom Sales Apps
Sales Analytics &
Predictive Intelligence
Close DealsMobile Sales
Collaboration & Partner
Management
Cross sell &
Up sell
9 /

CHAPTER 3
Transforming
Your Sales
We all know from experience that transforming your
entire sales process isn’t done with just a snap of a
finger. It takes more (sometimes a lot more) than
that. So how exactly do you make the jump from a
disconnected, inefficient sales process to an integrated
system that lets you deliver that cohesive, end-to-end
buyer experience that today’s customers demand?
It is possible. And, thanks to new technologies, it’s now
easier and more accessible than ever for companies of
all sizes and industries to up their selling game.
At Salesforce, we have the opportunity to work
with some of the world’s best sales teams. We’ve
seen first-hand how they’re laying
the foundation for lasting sales
success. Here’s what we’ve learned
from them.

TRANSFORMATION 1
Use Automation and Analytics
to Close Deals Faster and
Maximize Revenue
Built-in automation and analytics lets sales team:
• Reduce manual data entry
• Organize info in one central location
for easy access
• Quickly surface the hottest leads
• Easily identify upsell and cross-sell
opportunities
• Instantly deliver personalized quotes
and contracts
11 /

Boosting Efficiency
and Increasing Sales
Mitsubishi Electric’s Cooling & Heating
Division provides high efficiency climate
control systems across the globe, serving
as the hub for an international network
of distributors, contractors, and design-
engineering firms all committed to building
brand loyalty and delivering exceptional
customer service.
However, they were struggling with a
decentralized sales process that relied on
an inconsistent mix of spreadsheets, price
books, emails, and voicemails to collect
information and generate quotes. The lack
of visibility into pipeline caused inventory
gaps and unpredictable revenues, and
the slow quoting process limited sales rep
productivity and made it nearly impossible
to pursue urgent bid projects.

Building the Foundation for Success
Mitsubishi partnered with Salesforce to bring all of its divergent product
information, partner certification, quoting, and lead registration
processes onto a single, online CRM platform that provides automated
documentation and quoting tools, centralized collaboration, and
anywhere, anytime access to product and pricing information. Instead of
operating in blind silos, Mitsubishi’s internal reps and distributors can see
leads in the pipeline, collaborate to convert them into opportunities, and
generate accurate, up-to-the-minute quotes in minutes. This is important
in an industry where timeliness can make or break a deal.
Within six months Mitsubishi had:
“By making everything online and easy to use for our distributors
and sales team, we’re able to respond to projects faster and
win more.”
— Christopher Osment, Director of IT
Checklist for Driving
Operational Excellence
Centralize lead,
opportunity, and
account management
into one online
platform
Automate data entry
and quoting processes
Offer flexible reports
and dashboards for
real-time product,
prospect, pipeline,
and revenue insights
Provide anytime,
anywhere
collaboration tools
and deal guidance
DISCOVER HOW >
Decreased
sales cycle
length by
1,000%
Reduced
partner
certification and
accreditation
management
time by
80%
Improved
sales pipeline
visibility, closed
inventory gaps,
and made
revenues more
predictableReduced
quote
approval time
from two days
to two hours
Increased
documentation
and approval of
proposals by
30%
13 /

TRANSFORMATION 2
Connect Sales and Marketing
to Accelerate Pipeline Growth
Integrating sales with marketing automation
and pipeline intelligence lets teams:
• Quickly prepare for any call with holistic
customer insights
• Automate the nurture process
• Add prospects to marketing approved drip
campaigns for higher lead conversion
• Predict future sales and identify gaps
in the pipeline
14 /

Expanding Markets
and Doubling Revenue
George Street is a Chicago-based wedding
photography and videography service that
connects couples across the country with
local photographers and videographers in
their network.
Though it had dreams of expanding into
new markets, the company kept coming
up against some big roadblocks. Namely,
because it was using many different systems
to track leads, appointments, orders,
payments, and customer communications,
its data entry and reporting were in
shambles. Company leaders didn’t have the
ability to accurately forecast revenue, and
it took days to simply calculate total sales.
The company knew if it wanted to grow, big
changes were needed.

George Street transitioned all its marketing, sales, and customer
service operations onto the Salesforce for Sales CRM platform,
allowing employees to track — and report out in real time —
lead generation and conversion. It’s now leveraging marketing
automation to run and optimize nurture campaigns, and using
automated workflow rules to route leads from the inside sales
team to local outside sales consultants — plus match leads with the
photographer or videographer that best fits their style. In addition,
George Street now manages and tracks all customer service
activities on the same platform.
Since making the transition, George Street has:
“We wouldn’t be in half the markets that we are in without
Salesforce”
— Michelle Mantel, President
Checklist for Unifying
Sales and Marketing
Integrate marketing
automation, campaign
reporting, and lead
tracking onto one platform
Automate workflows and
partner management
processes
Provide lead scoring to
prioritize follow-up
Offer anywhere, anytime
campaign and conversion
reporting for accurate
forecasting
DISCOVER HOW >
Generated
384% more
leads and
181% more
appointments
Reduced
sales
consultant prep
time from 30
minutes to
5 minutes
Shortened
service case
response
time from 3
days to under
24 hours
Increased
close rate
by 33%
Grown
sales by
459%
16 /

TRANSFORMATION 3
Empower Sales Reps
to Sell Faster
Integrated productivity and collaboration tools
let sales teams:
• Access and enter data anywhere,
from any device
• Sync their email and calendar with the CRM
to reduce data entry
• Easily build apps to boost workflow efficiency
and automate tasks
• Access customized reports and dashboards
to quickly get actionable insights
17 /

Streamlining the Sales Process
for Maximum Efficiency
Accenture is one of the largest consulting
firms in the world, serving clients in more
than 200 cities and 120 countries. Due to
the scale and the breadth of its services and
offerings, Accenture’s business processes are
highly complex.
Yet the company was managing their sales
was rudimentary and sorely out of date.
Sales meetings and business decisions were
still run off of spreadsheets. Despite having
customer-facing employees spread out all
over the world, they didn’t have any sort of
centralized system for communicating or
recording customer interactions. Delays in
the sales cycle were the norm, and sales
velocity was limited.

Accenture adopted the Salesforce for Sales CRM to manage its
entire end-to-end sales process for its five distinct business lines
on one single platform, complete with built-in collaboration and
productivity tools. The company customized a world-class sales
enablement tool: a one-stop-shop that gives 25,000 employees
and 6,500 client account teams across 50 countries the ability to
track deals, log calls, check dashboards, access client information,
and collaborate on projects. All in real time, on any device, from
wherever in the world they may find their client work taking them.
The results? Accenture was able to:
“Salesforce is driving all sales enablement at Accenture”
— Andrew Wilson, CIO
Checklist for
Accelerating Deals
Through Your Pipeline
Create one shared point
of record for all customer
interactions
Integrate configuration,
pricing, and quoting tools
to accelerate the closing
process
Offer branded and
streamlined proposal
creation
Provide real-time mobile
access
DISCOVER HOW >
Digitize
their entire
end-to-end
sales process
in under 5
months
Integrate
sales, service,
and marketing
processes
Streamline
the sales cycle
to reduce
delays
Unify
geographically
diverse teams
with a single point
of record for
all customer
interactions
19 /

TRANSFORMATION 4
Engage Customers with a
Complete, Customizable CRM
Offering one customizable view across sales,
service, and marketing lets sales teams:
• Identify and solve gaps in the sales process
• Use B2B marketing automation to surface
the hottest leads, faster
• Deliver personalized quotes and contracts
quickly
• Build self-service and partner communities
to generate more upsell and cross-sell
opportunities
• Optimize the entire customer lifecycle
20 /

Creating One Conversation
with the Customer
Schneider Electric is a global manufacturer
of energy management and automation
equipment, providing power to almost half
of the world’s buildings. As you can imagine,
its selling and service model is complicated,
made even more so by decades of rapid
growth and acquisitions that resulted in
a disparate array of business systems that
weren’t integrated.
With thousands of partners, service agents,
and employees interacting with customers
across the globe, Schneider Electric found
it was having difficulty providing a consistent
customer experience. Instead of one
cohesive customer conversation, customers
were having a repetitive and disjointed
experience with the company as they
interacted with people on different teams.

To solve this, Schneider Electric kicked off an initiative called One
Schneider — creating one seamless, unified customer experience.
To do this, it partnered with Salesforce and adopted the world’s
#1 CRM platform to align and centralize its various processes and
systems, connect an increasingly mobile workforce, and provide one
customizable view across sales, service, and marketing.
Schneider Electric was able to:
“Salesforce has completely transformed the way we manage
our customer base. We now have one version of the truth
to rally the company behind.”
— Chris Leong, CMO
Checklist for Selling
Smarter with a Complete
View of Your Customer
Provide a shared
360-degree view of your
customer on one mobile-
accessible platform
Offer built-in predictive
analytics and account
insights to spot trends
and anticipate needs
Maximize productivity
with intuitive case
management and self-
service communities
Streamline cross-sell,
up-sell, and account
management for
increased adoption
DISCOVER HOW >
Unite 43,000
users, 400,000
partners, 4,000
service agents,
and over 20,000
salespeople on one
shared platform
Provide
one complete
view of the
customer and
one place for
collaboration,
accessible from
any device
Increase
efficiencies:
now only 4,000
service agents
solve 10 million
cases each
year
Boost
solution
selling, which
grew from 10%
to over 40%
of revenues
Dramatically
improve
customer
satisfaction
22 /

Build a Foundation
to Drive Long-Term
Sales Success
The Age of the Customer is officially here. To succeed, companies
have to provide customers with a seamless, personalized buying
experience from start to finish. And to do that, you need to
empower your sales team to connect with your customers in a
whole new way.
Transform how your
sales team works with
Salesforce for Sales,
the world’s #1 CRM.
Grow your accounts.
Find new customers.
Customize workflows and
dashboards. Accelerate
productivity. Make
insightful decisions.
Close more deals, faster
— from anywhere.
See Salesforce for Sales
in Action
WATCH DEMO >

“Sales is a process. To be great you
need to master each step, otherwise
your efforts will not lead to results.”
The 7 Sales Skills That CAN Be Taught,
by Dan Ross, Sr. AVP, Commercial Sales,
Salesforce
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