This week, you do not want to miss out on Salesforce 2015 State of Sales Report with the results from a survey done to 2,300 sales leaders, and we have some insights on it here; this report can help you and your company understand top priorities across all digital channels. Plus we have Marc Benioff answer after SAP CEO refused its proposal to work more closely together, all this an more in our Things We’ve Learned This Week.
1) Marc Benioff Claims SAP CEO Is Scared of Salesforce
Benioff said in an interview at the customer event held in Munich last week that he offered Sap a partnership opportunity so that the two companies would work more closely together. “We offered an olive branch to them. I’ve told Bill I’ve wanted to have a deeper relationship with them. Yes we’re competitors, we should also be partners,” Benioff said. “He’s scared of Salesforce” he added afters SAP”s CEO rejected the partnership.
This offer was made because customers were asking for better technical compatibility between the two software but according to Bloomberg, SAP CEO, Bill McDermott refused the proposal. Salesforce currently has partnerships with Oracle, Microsoft and VMware, so this came as a surprise to Salesforce. The offer goes also in line with Salesforce plans and strong efforts to expand beyond US market, where the majority of its sales occur but apparently a partnership between SAP and Salesforce is not going anywhere any time soon.
2) Salesforce Delivers 2015 State of Sales Report.
Salesforce performed a survey to more than 2,300 sales leaders worldwide and revealed the results this week; the report examines the priorities, behaviors and technology use of today’s sales teams.
It’s no secret that with the introduction of technology to the sales strategy such as mobile optimization, social media and wearables, sales teams (and how they perform) have shifted dramatically. “Technology is rapidly becoming the difference between big quarters and big misses,” said Mike Rosenbaum, Executive Vice President of Salesforce’s Sales Cloud. “The companies who deliver strong sales results not only use modern CRM platforms to gain critical insight into all the customer touchpoints, but are also deploying newer technologies like sales analytics to sell smarter and mobile to respond anytime, anywhere.”
Here are some of the results from the survey that prove how companies that leverage this technologies have better results:
- High-performing sales teams are 3.5x more likely to use sales analytics than under-performing teams.
- Sixty percent of high-performing sales teams currently use or are planning to use a mobile sales app, while only nine percent of under-performing sales teams report using mobile apps in their sales processes. Among all sales leaders surveyed, mobile sales app use will more than double in the next two years, growing by 125 percent.
- Customers and prospects increasingly expect to be able to buy products directly via mobile apps. More than half of high-performing companies currently deliver or plan to deliver sales directly to customers and prospects via a mobile app in the next two years.
- According to an April 2015 Salesforce research report “Putting Wearables to Work,” 83% of all sales teams are currently using or planning to use wearables in some form in the next two years.
- High-performing sales teams are more than twice as likely to be heavy tech adopters than moderate and under-performing teams.
- Technology accelerates sales processes 3x more often for high-performers than for under-performers.
To download the 2015 State of Sales report, please click here.
3) Shiseido Innovates with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce announced that Shiseido chose its Marketing Cloud to support its comprehensive web beauty service community “watashi+(plus),” establishing one-to-one connections with members via email and the LINE mobile messaging platforms.
Shiseido is not staying behind and is in constant improvement of its relationships with its clients; this time goes all in on digital leveraging Salesforce Marketing Cloud to move forward and improve communications with their customers. As explained in the Salesforce State of Sales report companies are in need of diversification, and there’s an obligation of introducing technology to their operations in order to respond to customers needs; companies need to provide constant and personalized experiences and this is just what Salesforce Marketing Cloud does. “I believe Salesforce Marketing Cloud will enable us to achieve our goal of improving customer engagement” said Yasuhiko Sasama, Director of Digital Business, Japan Operations, Shiseido.
The system will be up and running by July 2015.
http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2015/07/150703-2.jsp
4) AppMesh launches SalesMesh 3.0
AppMesh brings sales into the mobile era with a full suite of responsive, personalized and intuitive sales productivity tools and tracking capabilities. Founded by Salesforce.com, AppMesh empowers mobile professionals with the features they need in order to focus on what matters: building strong relationships and great businesses from anywhere, at any time.
SalesMesh new version launched recently, creates a parallel CRM outside of Salesforce, so sales reps can keep their deal info, contacts, and even communications with other sales reps outside of the ecosystem until the deal seems likely, it basically serve as a work space where reps can work their deals up before they’re ready to push them into the enterprise CRM. Additionally sales reps can now share individual customer or company contacts, deals, and related notes or interactions with anyone, regardless of where the person works or uses a CRM software or not.
For more information, visit http://www.appme.sh.
5) App of the week
spDHL, Ship more efficiently with DHL Express
spDHL combines the power of the world’s #1 CRM platform Salesforce with the power of international courier DHL Express by integrating DHL shipping capabilties directly into your Salesforce organization so it lets you control all your shipping processes from Salesforce.
spDHL uses your native Salesforce data to populate your shipment details. And any data input into spDHL is automatically reconciled with the corresponding Salesforce record. Now you’ll save time on creating shipments, requesting quotes, printing labels and others, as you’ll be able to do it all in one place.
If you want to learn more go to the Salesforce Appexchange web-page or Contact us for more information by clicking here