The Best View Ever: Sales Cloud 360 - S2 Ep2 | Simply Put | Salesforce

I think that I'm really fun to work for. We joke around a lot on the floor, but when it's time to get down and get busy, they know when I mean business.

What's up, y'?

All?

I'm Emmanuel Acho, your host for Simply Put, a show that takes difficult business problems and gives them clear solutions. No, sync up the ecosystem here. We'll translate it so it's actionable and understandable. On this episode, assembly put. We'll be talking with Armstrong Steel sales director Brooke Gerhardt. She's the uber salesperson responsible for managing the department. Which means the buck literally stops with Brooke. No pressure, Brooke. You'll also hear from Fatima Mikawi all around Salesforce expert at sales cloud, who will help unpack this story. Then she'll walk us through a demo that will really make sense of things. Stay tuned for that. We all in. Cool. Over to you, Britt.

There's a lot of roles in steel buildings that have to be followed. Otherwise it's not engineered properly. I've been doing it for almost six years and I'm still learning new things that you can and can't do with the steel building. So it's ongoing training. I started in sales with the company so I understand where they're at right now and the challenges they face on the phone. When you're working with a customer, you just have to understand that this is their dream and you're helping them make their dream come true. Most salespeople have a kind of fun, open personality. I think that's what makes a good salesperson is someone that could have candid conversations and get to know not just their project, but them as a person.

Brooke is spot on. Letting salespeople be themselves is so important. I'm in sales and let me tell you that building relationships with prospects maybe my favorite part of the job. And when technology allows us to focus on relationships, that's fantastic. Brooke and her team found that sales cloud can make that happen.

Oh, my relationship with technology, it's not great. That's why I love having our IT guy Sean there to help with that kind of stuff. He is also my fiance. Salesforce is great. It's super user friendly. You don't have to be super tech savvy to be able to use it. Luckily, because I'm not. If we didn't have Salesforce, it would be like six years ago when you have stacks of paper sitting all over your desk, your hot stack, your warm stack, your dead stack, sticky notes all over the cubicle.

So how do you get away from piles of sticky notes and endless spreadsheets. You need the right tools like a single source of truth, where everything from prospect information to call data lives. For sales leaders like Brooke, it's all about developing new methods of managing sales.

Cloud really allows us to keep everything all in one place and have a 360 view of one customer. When I first started, we didn't utilize Salesforce as much as we do now. And I mean we would estimate buildings on a piece of paper, on graphs and now we have it hooked up to where my reps can request a quote with just a push of a button. So we have quotes back within the hour, which is really, really nice. Also with Lightning Dialer being able to track their talk time and their dials, it tracks how many emails they're sending, both outgoing and incoming. It has them in a little bit of competition as well because Nobod wants to be on the daily slackers list.

Let's see what Brooke is talking about. She's looking to find new ways to manage her team. And because she wants every rep to be an A player, she starts with sales coaching which helps her managers give their reps personalized coaching at every stage of the sales cycle. Using natural language processing, she and her managers can track specific keywords in call recordings. They can glean market insights like which keywords are trending so that their reps can have better conversations. Lets say it's mid quarter and Brooke wants to check her forecasts. With the help of automated machine learning, her managers can better predict their forecasts and receive intuitive insights behind those predictions. So when she looks for an update, it's at her fingertips. For a busy sales leader, automation is key. Brooke uses Salesforce automation to track lead volume conversion rates, every part of Armstrong sales pipeline for a real time view of the business. For sales leaders, leading isn't just about hard skills and tech. Skilling up your team is also about coaching.

Going remote has really helped me as a coach develop my skillset. I had to get a little more tech savvy than I have in the past. I'm so used to doing things hands on and one on one. And when you can't do that, you have to rely heavily on technology. Normally, you know, when we're in the office, I'm roaming the floor. If I hear something, something they're not saying right, I can mute their phone and help them. When we go remote, you know you can't do that, Einstein. Call coaching will help me find calls that I might need to listen to and help train better ways to say certain things. Salesforce is literally the tool that we use for everything.

Feeling inspired yet? How will you coach your teams to big wins this year? You can use Einstein Call Coaching to help your team excel in every call like Brooke did, or use trailhut to make your team's learning customized, gamified and engaging. No matter how you lead, Sales Cloud can help your team work more efficiently right in their daily context.

My name is Brooke Gerhardt and this is. Simply put.

That was one power packed episode. A million thanks to Brooke and Fatima for letting us into the world of sales at Armstrong Steel. We got to look at Lightning Dialer and Sales Cloud and loved what we saw. Are we ready for episode three? That's a loaded question. Of course we are. Click that button and start the episode. I'll be back.