Salesforce Unveils New AI-Powered Sales Innovations to Accelerate Productivity and Growth

Salesforce launched new AI and data innovations in Sales Cloud, including embedded AI assistant Copilot for Sales, to empower every sales representative, leader, and operations team to sell faster, smarter, and more efficiently throughout the sales process – boosting seller productivity and business revenue.

These innovations provide sellers with a variety of AI-powered tools to streamline research and manual tasks like summarizing meetings and creating emails. New capabilities also connect real-time internal Salesforce and external data to build prospect lists, identify buyer intent, and optimize performance indicators, as well as enable sellers to bring Sales Cloud directly into Outlook, Gmail, and their web browsers.

All capabilities will be available in the newly integrated Salesforce Sales Cloud Unlimited Edition+ offering, which gives customers a simplified way to buy, implement, and consolidate their sales tech stack – including Slack, Salesforce Data Cloud, and Revenue Intelligence – on one platform. 

Why it’s relevant: Sales teams want to focus on closing deals and increasing profits, but the current sales landscape reveals a gap between ambition and reality:

• Today sales reps spend 72% of their time on administrative and non-selling tasks, including prioritizing leads, researching prospects, and planning. 
• Only 28% of sales professionals actually expect their team to meet annual quotas. 

What’s new: To narrow this gap, Salesforce is bringing new AI innovations to sales teams. With unified data powering trusted AI – and all sales processes integrated on a single platform – sales organizations can transform how they work. New innovations include: 

• Generative AI-powered sales assistant: 
  • Copilot for Sales* gives sellers an AI assistant to research accounts, update their CRM, and prepare for meetings from anywhere, including their mobile device and browser. 
  • AI-powered Call Summarization and Exploration automatically extracts call details, helping reps create and share meeting summaries with their teams. 
  • Sales Email uses generative AI to create personalized outreach emails for common sales scenarios, such as introductions or follow-up notes, in the seller’s unique tone and style. 
• Automated Prospecting*: Powered by Data Cloud – which unifies internal Salesforce and external data in real time – Automated Prospecting creates prospect lists based on account segmentation, customer fit, and buyer engagement scores to help sellers engage customers when they’re most likely to purchase. These scores can include metrics such as recent company expansion and levels of relationships with decision makers. 
• Process Intelligence: Sales operations teams can easily build data models from internal and external data sources to optimize performance indicators, such as win rate or attrition metrics.
• Sales Cloud Everywhere: Sellers can bring the power of Sales Cloud to Outlook, Gmail, and web browsers to effortlessly manage opportunities, update accounts, and look up CRM data from wherever they’re working. Additionally, it streamlines email communication by auto-generating and sending emails directly from these platforms.

This means that sales teams can shift their attention from processes to connecting with people, giving them more time to focus on what they do best – selling.

Ketan Karkhanis, EVP & General Manager, Sales Cloud

The Salesforce perspective: “A solid data foundation can unlock AI for all sellers. Built on real-time, connected data, Salesforce’s new innovations integrate powerful AI to support every step of the sales journey. This means that sales teams can shift their attention from processes to connecting with people, giving them more time to focus on what they do best – selling.” – Ketan Karkhanis, EVP & General Manager, Sales Cloud

Reaction to the news: 

• Grubhub: “An essential part of being a good partner to our merchants is having the tools to help them improve their operations and grow their businesses,” said Maegan Rolando, Director of Merchant Supply Strategy and Operations, Grubhub. “With Salesforce’s automated solutions, we’ve standardized our internal processes and increased our team’s productivity, freeing us up to sign more new partners and give better counsel to our existing merchant network.” 
• Esquire Bank: “As a client-centric, technology-focused bank, our investment in Salesforce technology remains pivotal in reaching our target market and ensuring future success,” said Kyall Mai, Chief Innovation Officer, Esquire Bank. “These innovations will enable us to scale our business by identifying, qualifying, and engaging more of our target clients with personalized content, aligning with their business goals on their terms and timeline.”

Availability: All solutions are available today, except for *Automated Prospecting, which is now in pilot, and *Copilot for Sales, which will be GA early next year. Except for Automated Prospecting and Copilot for Sales, all new capabilities are available in the Salesforce Sales Cloud Unlimited Edition+ offering, which is designed to help businesses drive more value and productivity at any growth stage. Solutions can be purchased individually or in packages that best suit business needs, including Slack and Salesforce Data Cloud, on one platform. 

Explore more:

• See why Gartner named Sales Cloud a leader for Sales Force Automation Platforms here
• Learn how trusted AI and generative AI are supercharging sales pros here
• Learn more about Sales Cloud’s latest innovations here
• Hear why Grubhub won one of the first Salesblazer Sales Excellence Awards at Dreamforce 2023 here
• Read about how Salesblazers are simplifying their tech stacks for centralized data that fuels effective AI here