This how-to guide helps Sales teams use Slack to minimize time spent on administrative tasks and maximize time spent on deals
7 min read
Efficiency and collaboration for sales teams has become even more critical with asynchronous workforces and changing economic environments. Using Slack to minimize jumping between platforms and to increase collaboration between teams, results in:
27%
more deals closed
26%
improved productivity
Collaborate on a deal
How to use Slack to efficiently collaborate internally on opportunities/deals
Channels
Reduce the volume of emails required between internal cross-functional teams by moving to Slack channels. With multiple people able to immediately collaborate on an account or task, you’ll create a more efficient sales process and reduce administrative overhead—and be able to focus instead on winning new business.
Examples of channels:
#account channels to pin important docs, plan strategy, view performance metrics, monitor customers’ business news and keep a historical record of account activity
#team channels to collaborate with the right group of colleagues
#sales channel to celebrate wins and share knowledge
#announcements channels specific to a department or location, with select users able to post
#external channel with prospects and customers: showcase firsthand the benefits of working in Slack and instill good ways of working for the future
#deal-desk to centralize contract and legal negotiations with management, legal and finance
#new-hires, added as single-channel guests before their start date: meet your coworkers, ask questions, and get comfortable with how your company works in Slack
#help- and #plz- to request support for progressing and closing deals
#feedback channels to be the voice of your customer and enable cross-team collaboration
#knowledge and #competitive-intel channels to keep your finger on the pulse of the competitive landscape
Organize channels by team (#sales-team), projects and accounts (#acct-teathyme), region (#sales-emea) and function (#salesforce-notifications or #sales-announcements) to keep conversations focused. Start with a few and add more as you go.
Name channels in a predictable way so they’re easier to find, like an index. Prefixes help! Think: #announce-sales or #proj-q4-sprint.
Keep tabs on conversations by starring important channels so they’re pinned to the top of your sidebar. It’s also helpful to pin essential files and resources to arm sales reps with all the information they need to get the deal over the line
Alleviate delays in receiving new leads and sharing them with account managers. Send new leads into a dedicated sales leads channel and alert relevant salespeople. This integration on average results in a 21%faster response time to sales leads.
New Lead: East West Company is interested in demoing. Assigned to Harry Boone
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Last reply today at 10:59 AM
ZapierAPP10:56 AM
New lead: Magellan Inc. is interested in demoing. Assigned to Zoe Maxwell
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Last reply today at 11:55 AM
Integrate with your CRM to allow leads to be shared in Slack.
Update Opportunity details in real-time
Integrate CRM with Slack to log opportunity updates directly from Slack. Sales teams are able to update opportunities at any time, anywhere. By integrating your CRM, your team will, on average:
27% average increase in win rate*
26% average increase in sales productivity*
*Source: FY23 Customer Success Metrics, Salesforce, survey of 115-755 Slack and Salesforce dual users, July 2022
Deal Approval
The sales team can work directly with management, legal and finance to centralize contract and legal negotiations within a private channel.
Deal support requests can be automated using Workflow Builder by standardizing a set of required fields and details about the account request to prevent unnecessary back-and-forth.
Collaborate on presentations
Use the Google Drive or OneDrive/SharePoint integration to collaborate on presentations and documents
Collaborate on key sales content
Receive notifications in Slack if a teammate adds a comment to a shared document.
For inspiration: How we at Slack collaborate on a deal
Our teams have developed several custom bots to support our sales organization at Slack.
Building decks faster
Midas Touch Bot
Is helping sales teams prepare custom decks in a matter of minutes (through connection to our CRM/Database/Templates)
Alert of buying signals
Midas Signals
Alerts the account team (via the account channel) to buying signals (for instance, a prospect attending an event).
Simplifying the Approval process
Approval Bot
Deal proposal template sent to your Slack Deal Support Request channel
Working in the sales organization
Bringing the sales organization together, including sales, bizdev and sales ops
Onboard new hires
New employees can receive phased onboarding communications and find all of the resources they need to get up and running successfully via powerful global search. New team members who onboard quickly will reduce their time to productivity and more effectively enable account transitions.
New-hire channels create a dedicated space to ask questions and share experiences.
Managers can use onboarding channels to track onboarding tasks.
Reps can review #accounts channels to quickly learn about accounts transferred to them.
Using Workflow Builder, you can welcome new hires with automatic messages and organize setup or help requests.
Using a New Hire onboarding template for a ready-to-go channel including all the important info to onboard your new employee. This template includes an onboarding guide, first week checklist, and onboarding buddy in one easy to access place. Just add in a few details!
Sales announcements
One simple place with restrictions on who can post in it
Only individuals with posting permissions for the #announcements channel, such as sales leadership, can post important information for teams to read and emoji-react (reacji).
Sales teams that feel engaged and supported report greater levels of job satisfaction and productivity. Sharing announcements in one location ensures that everyone receives them and drives engagement.
Announcements can include big wins, company news, and upcoming events or training.
Reacjis can acknowledge important posts or celebrate wins.
Asynchronous communication
Communicate with colleagues in different locations and time zones
Whether you’re assembling partners and customers for real-time collaboration or designing a pitch deck asynchronously, Slack has you covered.
Canvas: Account execs can record ideas and action plans in a document that lives on after the call is over, and is shareable with other teammates who may have missed the meeting.
Clips: Leave voice or visual notes asynchronously, to be viewed whenever your colleagues come back online.
Huddles: Quickly hop into audio or video calls inside any channel or message and problem-solve in a few minutes what would have taken you a half-hour to explain via text.
Templates: Use a sales deal tracking or sales enablement template for a ready-to-go layout, including all the important info to share deal progress with the entire team. These bundles of pre-configured canvases, lists, and workflows are all set up to help you start work faster in Slack and are available on all paid plans.
Create help channels
Always know where to find the right information
Leverage your internal network to ask questions and get feedback and support from colleagues.
Does anyone have the help page on how to update opportunities on your phone?
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Last reply today at 10:57 AM
Arcadio Buendía10:56 AM
Does anyone have experience with migrating a customer who has offices in multiple countries?
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Last reply today at 10:59 AM
A huddle happened10:57 AM
You and 6 others were in the huddle for 32 minutes.
#Portfolio-review
A private channel between director, manager and report that focuses on:
Prioritization and planning (you can even build workflows)
Blockers and risks
Successes and performance feedback
Pipeline
Workload check
#Competitive-intel
One place to share what’s happening in the life of your competitors.
Sales teams can post questions for the team in charge of positioning and/or product marketing
Cross-departmental collaboration
How to use Slack to efficiently collaborate on a big opportunity/deal
Align on sales strategy
Speed up cross-functional sales strategy decisions and planning processes by having all critical stakeholders across sales and finance collaborating in a channel.
Product feedback
Help the product team by centralizing customer feedback or requests
Create channels in relationship with the product organization, like #product-gaps, #[customer]-news, #feedback-[features] and #industry-[retail], to centralize information about specific customers, product features or industries.
Product announcement
Follow the product team with announcements about updates or new features
Similar to the #sales or #win announcement channel, having channels like #[feat]-gtm, #released, #product-roadmap, #released-internal and #released-minor with product and marketing will help share across the org about new products being released.
Customer handoff and onboarding
Sales and Customer Success create a seamless transition for the customer from pre- to post-sale.
Customer Success reviews customer information in the #account channel and communicates directly with the sales team to create seamless handoffs.
Incident management
One place for Sales, Success, and Support to be informed:
An incident is happening
Its severity and impact
The actions to take
The messages that can be shared
The RCA (root cause analysis) that can be shared
Monitor tickets from Support
For Sales and Customer Success teams it’s important to monitor what’s happening to their customers.
Integrations can track incidents, requests for training, or upgrades
Communicate directly with your prospects in Slack to answer questions and close deals faster
Slack Connect
Build on conversations with customers in Slack Connect channels by adding your partners—account managers, Customer Success managers and other team members who will be supporting the account—so they can continue to discuss customer needs and opportunities for renewals, upgrades and other negotiations. Not only does this help build rapport with customers, it helps create trust by getting 43% faster responses from customers, vendors and service providers, according to a 2021 IDC MarketScape assessment. Together, it all adds up to a deal cycle that moves four times as fast, thanks to Slack Connect.
Work across org boundaries in external channels and share a channel with up to 20 organizations. Send messages and files and build collective insights.
Directly message anyone, inside or outside your organization, in real time.
Extend the benefits of Slack to your external relationships: channels, search, apps and integrations.
Loop in subject matter experts on both sides!
Schedule customer meetings
Set up a meeting via the calendar integration directly from Slack from the Shortcuts menu.
Sign contracts
Use the Docusign or Hellosign integration to send, review, and sign contracts directly from Slack.
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Awesome!
