Want to increase your sales team’s productivity like never before? Then you’ve come to the right place. From seamless follow-up mechanism, to easy record access, to knowing exactly what to do (and when) in Salesforce, Sales Engagement is a one-stop-shop for all your team selling activities.
In this guide, we will take a deep dive to show the ins and outs of Sales Engagement, formerly High Velocity Sales, and how exactly this suite of functionalities can become a sales rep’s best friend.
What Is Sales Engagement?
Sales Engagement helps reps to sell faster and more efficiently. The product makes it easier for sellers to complete the building blocks of their job (sending emails, making calls, booking meetings, etc.) by structuring tasks in easy-to-follow cadences, automating repetitive jobs, and delivering key insights to optimize performance over time.
This product suite is clearly focused on taking virtual selling a good few steps forward, with more possibilities for custom automations and clear tracking for actions. From the first meeting to a closed deal, every step of the process will be significantly more streamlined.
It’s worth noting that Sales Engagement is part of the Sales Cloud Unlimited offering, but can also be purchased separately for other editions. In July this year, Salesforce also bundled limited versions of several features into Professional and Enterprise editions, including email productivity and quick cadences.
There are multiple features included within Sales Engagement, such as:
- Lightning Sales Console
- Inbox Mobile App
- Buyer Assistant
- Sales Cadences
- Automated Actions
- Work Queue
- Einstein Activity Capture
- Einstein Conversation Insights
- Sales Dialer (optional, additional SKU)
Get Started With Sales Engagement
Setting up Sales Engagement is a walk in the park. The guided, step-by-step interface couldn’t be any simpler. Everything from the email behavior preferences to the automations and permissions can be set under the Sales Engagement Settings page in Setup. Make sure you explore the available permissions here.
Buyer Assistant (Beta)
Since June 2023, the Buyer Assistant has been available as an open beta feature within Sales Engagement. Buyer Assistance is a web bot that can connect with prospects on your website, accelerating your time to lead and ensuring that prospects, for example, have the right information regardless of the time.
Sales Cloud Everywhere
While you may already be familiar with the Salesforce Chrome Extension, what may come as a pleasant surprise is the recent update it received. Now, Sales Cloud Everywhere allows you to both interact with and take action on Salesforce records, while navigating around the web – all without actually having to switch tabs back to Salesforce.
The first thing you’ll notice when starting to use Sales Cloud Everywhere is that there are three main sections:
To Do List
This is the same to-do list your users might already be familiar with, including, of course, Sales Engagement specific to-dos like Cadences, which we’ll explore further in this post. Even within the extension, the filters can be as detailed as they are in Salesforce, with the option to create and customize labels and tasks as needed for easy navigation.
Workspaces
The Workspace feature allows users to quickly sort, filter, and modify multiple records directly from the browser. Currently, Opportunities, Accounts, Leads and Contacts Workspaces are available out of the box when first opening the Workspace tab, but starting with the Winter ’24 release you can create your own. This functionality is similar to in-line editing within Salesforce reports or list views, without a need for reps to build the report themselves or navigate back to Salesforce to take action. The good news is that you don’t have to filter by one Record Type only!
Feed
The same Feed available within Lightning experience is the third option within Sales Cloud Everywhere. You can easily view if prospects opened emails, clicked on links, or replied. Additionally, you can enable Chrome notifications to always be up to date with these activities and action them immediately.
Empower Sales Managers to Sell Faster
As you have surely guessed by now, Sales Engagement is built for sellers first. The main functions align to the main needs of reps, and can be configured to suit the needs of different teams.
Work Queue
Here is the place you’ll be able to redirect sellers to so that they can view and action all their currently pending cadence steps. These might vary from calling a prospect or sending a follow-up email to a customer, to even delaying a step until it’s ready to be completed.
Cadences
Cadences are a predefined series of sales actions for reps to take for a specific prospect. They can include calls, automated or manual emails, SMS, LinkedIn activities, and with flows, can kick off processes internally.
Sellers will mostly see existing cadences, however, there is the option to build their own in a no code builder. While the recommendation is to start small with only a few users having access in the beginning, permissions can be extended to sellers, sales managers, or sales operations – ensuring the cadences will be built with sales best practices in mind and tailored for specific teams.
The most common roll-out model, however, is for permissions to be tightly controlled, with the use of Quick Cadences to push automation downstream (more on them shortly).
Cadences can contain just a few actions, or be as long and complex as needed, combining different mediums such as emails, calls, SMS, and LinkedIn outreach. Salesforce offers a list of cadence templates, which can be leveraged as soon as Sales Engagement is enabled.
In addition to the standard outreach actions, Salesforce Admins can add record-triggered flows once the step is completed.
For example, instead of the business development rep manually updating five fields on the Lead, these could be done automatically when a lead reaches a certain point in a cadence.
Screen Flows mean this experience can be tailored even more, with no need to leverage only the out-of-the-box options if the complexity of your process increases.
Quick Cadences
While Cadences are robust tools for complete multi-step processes, Quick Cadences are single-step reminders reps can use to follow up with prospects. When combined with Automated Actions, sellers can auto-add targeted prospects to a Quick Cadence, empowering them to take control of their sales process and still automating mundane, repetitive tasks.
Depending on the assigned permissions, users can create automated actions either for themselves or for their teams to use. The simplest example of a task in Sales Engagement that can immediately be automated is assigning records to a cadence based on criteria.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn, and its associated products, is the workhorse dataset for B2B sellers. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a sales-focused product, connects with Sales Engagement, removing the need to handle actions such as connection requests separately.
Following the cadence setup, a connection request can be sent to the matched record, followed by a personalized InMail, all from within the Work Queue or the Salesforce record.
To Do List
I mentioned the to-do list as an option within the Sales Cloud Everywhere extension – in reality, this list has been around for quite some time now. Within Salesforce, it is crucial for sellers to know exactly what they need to focus on each day to maximize their time.
Tasks are something you would certainly expect to be displayed here. In addition, users have immediate visibility into everything, including upcoming or overdue cadence steps and, more recently, even flow orchestration work items. Not only are these items visible, but they can be actioned directly from the To-Do List in the Utility Bar!
Analytics
Right from the start, the out of the box Sales Engagement Dashboard offers you a bird’s eye view across your organization when it comes to cadence performance, including converted Leads and email engagements. You can, of course, further customize the dashboard and or reports as needed, as well as build your own.
Tailor the User Experience
Similar to any other Salesforce product, the overall experience for your own internal users might make or break the adoption. With so many features to choose from, it’s important to take the time to arrange the components in a way that is easy to access, while avoiding clutter. In this situation, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ – count on their feedback, and don’t forget the enablement sessions!
P.S. Have you considered In-App Guidance yet?
Summary
No matter where your sales team is on their journey with Salesforce, Sales Engagement is sure to offer much needed features for both new and experienced users, as well as different roles within your organization. What’s your favorite feature so far?
As always, Trailhead is a trustworthy resource, and you should take a look at the Sales Engagement Basics module to discover everything that can be achieved.