Salesforce.com Promises Sales Turbocharger

8 Ways An SMB Makes Most Of Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com introduced a Sales Performance Accelerator service on Wednesday aimed at resolving three common sales problems: bad leads, long sales cycles and poor win rates.

Sales Performance Accelerator is a blending of the company's Sales Cloud with its Data.com and Work.com services, but the company insists the offering is more than the sum of its parts. The Data.com data-cleansing and data-enhancement service has been more deeply integrated with the Sales Cloud to help salespeople avoid wasting time on leads that are based on bad or incomplete data. The Work.com coaching, motivation and feedback app has been better tied into the Sales Cloud to guide salespeople toward more effective sales practices, according to Salesforce.

If a sales manager discovers that a sales rep is having trouble closing deals because he or she isn't reaching the right buyers, a first step would be to coach the rep on how to use Data.com to reach the real decision-makers within a prospect organization. The Data.com service is designed to correct and update bad or sketchy contact information and then flesh out organization-wide details on other contacts and reporting relationships.

Work.com comes in when employees need to improve their sales techniques. If a rep isn't injecting a sense of urgency, for example, managers can use Work.com coaching tools to share pointers and best practices. When the rep finally succeeds, managers can recognize them with customizable, game-style badges that specifically note what the rep did to improve closing skills. Badges are added to employee profiles and can be shared with the entire sales team or the entire company to improve motivation.

[ Want more on Salesforce's Oracle deal? Read Salesforce 'Betrayal' Seen Sparking Private-Cloud Moves. ]

"The traditional approach is to have a successful sales rep get up in front of the team once a quarter and share their big win," said Nick Stein, Salesforce.com's senior director, marketing and communications, in a phone interview with InformationWeek. "Now every win can be shared instantaneously through Work.com in the Sales Cloud."

To align individual and team efforts to company strategy, Work.com is used to spell out employee goals together with details on how the goals are connected to Sales Cloud performance measures.

Work.com and Data.com are extra-cost services, but Salesforce says the Sales Performance Accelerator combo offers discounted pricing. New customers can get Sales Cloud Professional together with Work.com and Data.com for $90 per user, per month, whereas these services would cost $110 independently. The Sales Cloud Enterprise combination is $140 per user, per month, whereas costs would start at $160 independently.

Data.com and Work.com both include upgrade options. Data.com, for example, offers Prospector and Premium Prospector services for lead-generation and targeting that cost $125 to $165 per user, per month, whereas the basic Data.com Clean service is $25 per user, per month. A Work.com Perform service adds HR performance summaries and dashboards for $20 per user, per month, whereas the entry-level Motivate service is $10.

Salesforce.com is clearly trying to get an upsell foot in the door with the discounted Sales Cloud Accelerator bundle. And what good salesperson wouldn't appreciate the way that deal is structured?