Salesforce extensions for Google Chrome, Gmail, and Outlook are an easy way to improve the functionality and accessibility of your CRM. These extensions make it possible for sellers to access critical insights where and when they need them, increasing productivity and eliminating crossed wires. With the right extensions, sellers can also take actions like creating new Opportunities, adding notes, or editing existing records, all without breaking the flow of work.
This post will focus on the traditional inbox and browser extensions meant to boost your sales team’s productivity and CRM engagement.
The Power of Salesforce Extensions
There are many Salesforce extensions, including Salesforce’s Chrome and Outlook extensions, all serving different purposes – some help Salesforce users access and analyze data, while others help them automate data entry.
During a recent Affinity roundtable discussion for Salesforce Admins about driving productivity for sales teams, one admin stated, “everyone is aware of the struggle of getting sales professionals to adopt Salesforce, so you need to give them a reason to log in”. They also listed a few examples, “things like automation, time savings, and other things that let them focus on selling [will help]”.
With Salesforce for Outlook sunsetting and the ongoing need to improve CRM adoption, now is an excellent time to evaluate your extensions or research new ones. Here are five ways sales teams can use Salesforce inbox and browser extensions to save time, uncover Opportunities, and close more deals.
5 Ways Sales Teams Can Use Salesforce Inbox and Browser Extensions
1. Update Salesforce From Anywhere
Move deals forward while responding to emails and researching around the web. Salesforce extensions can give sellers the power to update existing records and create Contacts, Accounts, or Opportunities from anywhere without having to disrupt their workflow by navigating to Salesforce.
For example, with the Salesforce Outlook Add-In, sellers can manually create new Salesforce records directly in Outlook.
2. Improve Team Collaboration
Maintain visibility for relevant stakeholders. Your team can use Salesforce’s Chrome extension to view notes, basic Account details, and high-level activity history without opening Salesforce.
This level of transparency enables teams to work faster while also eliminating the possibility of crossed wires because everyone has access to historical context and engagement activities. No more blindly reaching out just to find out a coworker already contacted the same prospect last week!
3. Access Deal Context
Get quick access to interaction history and Contact and Account data. The ability to access Salesforce records and engagement data inside Outlook, Gmail, or Google Chrome can keep sellers up-to-date about current Opportunities and help them build more informed Account plans.
“If you can easily see what kinds of meetings took place in an Account a year ago, what kinds of emails were exchanged, that provides you with a level of context so you can make informed outreach to specific Contacts,” says Ben Maxwell, Strategic Account Executive at Affinity. “It allows your outreach to be much more relevant based on the information that was automatically logged.”
4. Add Relevant Notes
Add useful notes to Salesforce while scheduling a follow-up, responding to emails, or browsing websites and LinkedIn profiles. While Salesforce’s browser extension allows one-click task creation, sales teams also benefit from the ability to turn notes into a one-click process. This premium feature allows sellers to add new notes or view existing ones without having to navigate to Salesforce.
5. Automate Data Entry
Reduce time spent on non-selling activities. Context-aware inbox extensions can automatically capture engagement data and automate the creation, update, and enrichment of Salesforce records so sales teams can focus on revenue-generating activities.
In addition to capturing interactions from email and calendar events, some activity tracking extensions enrich Salesforce records with biographic, firmographic, or experience data. This gives sellers the additional context they need to qualify deals and personalize outreach without scouring the web to find it.
Extending Salesforce to Where Sales Teams Work
Your customer data is meant to live in Salesforce, but that isn’t always where your team works. Get your sales team to engage more with Salesforce by extending data, actionable insights, and record creation directly to the tools they use every day – their email inbox, web browser, and LinkedIn.
Affinity for Salesforce is the premier option for sales teams. With Affinity’s Google and Outlook extensions, your sales team can:
- Find their next prospective client while researching on the internet or LinkedIn. Affinity automatically surfaces enriched data points next to websites and LinkedIn profiles to help sellers assess companies and people as they source prospects – this helps them qualify prospects in real time.
- Keep the sales pipeline up-to-date. Sellers can create Contacts, Accounts, or Opportunities and update deal data and Opportunity statuses directly from their email or web browser.
- Improve team communication by instantly sharing insights. Notes, record updates, and Account changes made in extensions are instantly viewable in Salesforce.
- Close sales faster by identifying shared connections. Sellers can identify the best warm introduction to key stakeholders at prospective and existing Accounts as they qualify them. They can also see the strength of these connections across the company’s collective network, so they can go into every introduction fully understanding each relationship.
- Trust your Salesforce data. In addition to reducing manual effort – and eliminating the errors that come with manual updates – automatically creating, updating, and enriching Salesforce records ensures that sellers never lose the context they need to progress deals.
Summary
By seamlessly integrating with Google Chrome and email clients, Salesforce extensions allow sellers to access critical insights and take actions without disrupting their workflow. With a focus on boosting productivity and CRM adoption and engagement, this post highlights five high-impact ways to use Salesforce inbox and browser extensions. Benefits include being able to update records without navigating to Salesforce and fostering better collaboration among team members.
Whether you’re looking for a Salesforce for Outlook replacement or are in the process of evaluating productivity tools, we’ve compiled a list of inbox and browser extensions and their corresponding pros and cons.