If You Want a Smart Sales Team, Talk to them where they ARE: Slack, Salesforce, and Xactly

Originally published on the Xactly Blog

If you want to engage and educate sales reps, you need technology that finds them where they are. Xactly and Slack’s new integration helps reps stay productive, informed, and motivated from home.

I love sales kick-off events. One eventful year I had two SKOs simultaneously— ours, and a key partner. I finished a presentation in Santa Cruz around noon, flew to Vegas for a presentation, woke up the next day at 4:00 AM and was back in Santa Cruz in time for the mid-morning break.

Why did I do this? I had to go to where the sales team was. I have been a rep, and I have worked WITH reps, for a couple of decades plus. If you want to connect with a sales team member—you need to be where they hang out. But live events are only held so often, and at this time in the world, live events are canceled for the foreseeable future So where do we find the sales team to connect?

We find them in Slack. Slack has made a large footprint in the business world, and Xactly recently finished work on an integration with their platform. Now, reps can get a snapshot of their real-time earned compensation, check progress towards the quota, and even trigger a check on a missing payment. Once again, they do all of this without leaving the tool that they are constantly using already. We are always striving for new ways to connect with sales teams, and align rep behavior with company goals. This integration is a big step towards reducing friction across the business and creating a seamless experience for users of both Xactly and Slack.

We find them in their CRM. If you check the tabs on any rep’s browser, in addition to the various social media and sporting sites our stereotypical rep is viewing, you will find them in their CRM. As one sales lead would always say to me, “If it isn’t in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” Woe is the rep who was called into an impromptu meeting with their manager if their CRM data had not been updated. We knew this at Xactly, and have ensured that sales reps can always check out their earnings from within the CRM. 

If a rep opens Salesforce, they will have a tab where they can find the latest information on all deals they have received credit for, commissions coming to them, the latest sales contests, and a history of all commission payments. We don’t make them leave Salesforce, we put the information where they are already hanging out (electronically). But what about when they go away from their laptop?

We find them on their phone. This is why every company with a software solution has a mobile app. Salesforce has its mobile app to stay on top (and enter information into) the CRM, as does Workday (which has a great feature for mobile expenses, even if I can be a bit late in entering them). Xactly launched native mobile apps for both iOS and Android years ago, and reps today are checking out their potential and real earnings while on their phone at the airport, in a taxi, a bar, or right now on their couch wondering when they will be able to leave the house again.

It is our version of skate to where the puck is going. Talk to the sales team where they are, not where you wish they were. You can learn more about Xactly’s new integration with Slack here: https://www.xactlycorp.com/company/partners/partner-network/technology-partners/slack