Salesforce Looks to Turn Service Desks into Sales Engines

5 Tips to Successfully Plan for IT Modernization

In theory at least, one of the best times to sell anyone anything is during a service call. The challenge comes in first training service personnel on what to sell, and then giving them the means to do it.

With that issue in mind, Salesforce this week announced it has extended the reach of its Salesforce CPQ software into the Salesforce Cloud Lightning software-as-a-service (SaaS) application to manage price quotes.

Godard Abel, senior vice president and general manager for Salesforce Quote-to-Cash, says to be effective as salespeople, the service staff needs access to the same software the sales staff are using to construct price quotes and other data relevant to making a purchase. Otherwise, all they can really do is refer a deal on to a salesperson versus closing a deal.

Armed with the right data, Abel says service staff are often in a better position to upsell and cross-sell complementary products after successfully resolving a service issue. In fact, Abel notes that when this is properly executed, an organization should be able to free up its sales staff to focus on landing new customers versus servicing existing ones.

“We think this approach allows the sale staff to focus more on hunting for new customers,” says Abel.

Naturally, the degree to which any organization can execute a sales strategy incorporating its service personnel will vary. Sales teams don’t necessarily want to give up commissions they perceive are due them every time an existing customer buys a new product or service. But to find out just how good service personnel might be at selling anything, organizations are going to have to put the right sales tools in the hands of the service staff.

Save

Save