The Richys, Recognizing Excellence in Salesforce Enablement

We get to see and test-drive a lot of sales support and sales enablement tools at Richardson Sales Performance. And, as a leader in sales training and performance improvement, we know a winner when we see one.

We created the Richys in response to the great feedback from our post on Top 10 Disruptive Sales Technologies and as a way to recognize cool, innovative, and standout products that make an impact on improving sales effectiveness and efficiency. The Richys – the latest addition to our blog, Richardson Sales Performance Sales Excellence Review – will offer unbiased reviews of some of the great products and services in the sales ecosystem.

Each month, we will recognize a company or product for the excellence and innovation it brings to sales. This is strictly our own opinion based on our observance and interaction with the product or service as used by our clients, Richardson Sales Performance internally, or from our personal use.

Let’s get started with the first-ever Richy.

And the Richy goes to…

Our first Richy goes to Salesforce.com’s Chatter.

Chatter can best be described as a one-to-many collaboration platform that connects your teams with critical business information. It sits within Salesforce.com, but is also available in a desktop version.

Richardson Sales Performance recently implemented Chatter within our own sales team, and we saw immediate improvement in communications and information sharing.

At first I was apprehensive about the product, thinking it would be one more tool to manage. I quickly saw its’ power and the benefits in posting information, accessing internal teams, and providing data to the sales team.

Here is why our team thinks Chatter should receive the inaugural Richy:

• Social selling research – allows the quick sharing of information between reps that could benefit a current prospect or account, including research on prospects, clients, companies, or former projects.
• Social learning or reinforcement – allows the sharing of knowledge, support tools, competitive info, and the like to targeted team members in specialized groups…or to the entire team.
• Mobile convenience – the team can access Chatter anyplace, anytime using desktops, smartphones, or other mobile devices.
• Adoption – it’s easy, because it’s intuitive and sticky, like Twitter or Facebook
• Enterprise collaboration – it supports our ability to not only align Sales and Marketing, but to collaborate more effectively across the enterprise to support sales and, in doing so, to support our clients.
• Client engagement – allows you to create controlled-access groups and drive improved collaboration and communication with clients. The value of this feature can’t be underestimated.
• System integration –it’s integrated into Salesforce.com, so it’s easy to get up and running.
• Removes silos – as a truly open social collaboration tool that you can use internally, Chatter removes barriers to collaboration. Whether there’s a discussion around opportunities and implementation or simply knowledge to share, Chatter gives people the ability to automatically become involved.
• Improves data cleanliness and accountability – by being linked to Salesforce.com, Chatter forces sales reps to continuously update data, which then becomes the new reference point for the entire company. The ability to passively follow deals or join groups allows users to be updated in real-time of any changes or posts; there’s no need to chase answers or be officially “in the loop.”
• Low adoption costs and ease – Baseline Chatter (ChatterFree) is free and allows you to include the entire company. The cost comes from the level of Salesforce.com access you want Chatter users to have. As for ease of use, Chatter mimics other social media platforms, which has the additional benefit of forcing employees to be more social media savvy.

Congratulations to Salesforce.com’s Chatter on being named the first Richy. You can learn more about the product here.