True revenue intelligence begins with good data. The cornerstone of a good revenue operations platform is to have a solid foundation built on accurate, reliable, and trustworthy data. Are you sure that the data foundation of your sales organization is built on solid ground? The best way to shore-up your revenue operations is to ensure that you have the right fundamentals in place to scale your sales organization.
The first thing to do is to stop relying on your sales reps to manually enter the data into your CRM. Sales reps are hired to sell your products – not to manually enter data into Salesforce.com. Yet, in spite of this widely known fundamental truth, most sales leaders and sales operations professionals are still complaining about their sales reps not entering enough information into the CRM. It is not a secret that sales reps never enter the right data into the CRM; they tend to only enter the essential data about who they are communicating or meeting with. Most sales reps are not disciplined enough to create new contact records for every person that attended a demo meeting – they usually only enter information for the primary contact. Likewise, they rarely log every email correspondence, scheduled meeting, and phone calls that they have with their prospects.
Instead of expecting your sales reps to manually enter this information, look for tools that can automate this process. There are revenue intelligence platforms like SalesDirector.ai that can completely automate the process of capturing sales rep activities such as logging email correspondences, logging scheduled calendar events with prospects, create new contacts with the corresponding opportunities, etc. With SalesDirector.ai, sales reps do not have to manually enter ANY of this data in Salesforce, SalesDirector.ai automatically does this in the background without any sales rep intervention and without any client-side plugins, browser extensions, or downloads.
Issues With Einstein Activity Capture
As you read this you might be thinking, “Doesn’t Salesforce already do this with Einstein Activity Capture?”
The answer to this question is, “Sort of and not really.”
Prior to Einstein Analytics, Salesforce had a variety of email sync and logging tools that were available to users. All of these tools required some kind of download, installation, plugin, or browser extension to work properly. Insecure and enterprise environments, the process of installing software on every sales rep’s laptop was onerous and created a security hole that could be exploited. Additionally, tools such as SalesforceInbox are often used to log activities but often still require the sales rep to manually click emails and associate activities with contacts, etc. In short, it helps the sales reps but still relies on manual intervention in order to work properly
Recently, Salesforce has been pushing Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) as an alternative that automates the process of capturing sales rep activities. Unfortunately, there are several problems with Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) and shortcomings that you should know about.
The number one problem with Einstein Activity Capture is that it does not automatically create new leads and contacts. EAC will only update existing contact and lead records with data. This is a big problem if you are trying to completely automate the process of creating new contacts found in sales rep emails and calendar events. If you are still relying on the manual behavior of sales reps, we know where that will end up – usually in non-compliance.
Additional problems with Einstein Activity Capture:
Sales Reps Cannot Edit / Delete Logged Emails
- The Salesforce Admin is the only person who can delete logged emails. Sales reps are not able to delete or clear-out irrelevant or old emails attached to the opportunity.
No Direct Access to ANY of the logged data.
- The calendar event and email data that is being logged into Salesforce are not available via API, User Interface, or standard reporting. This also means that further down the line Business Intelligence systems cannot access this data and report against it.
Your Data is Not Stored in Salesforce
- According to Salesforce: “Data that is captured by Einstein Activity Capture is stored outside of Salesforce and, therefore, does not affect your Salesforce data allocations.” This means that there is no TRUE real-time activity tracking in Salesforce.
Your Data does not stay with you
- The data that was captured and accessible through Salesforce is deleted if your business decides to no longer use Einstein Activity Capture.
The key to achieving successful revenue intelligence is to have good, reliable data at the foundation of your business. This starts with automating the capture of sales rep activities. Stop relying on sales reps to manually enter the data into your CRM and instead, take a closer look at ways to automate this process with revenue data platforms like SalesDirector.ai.
Cleark Roney is a content writer who is always looking for the next project to sink her teeth into. His favorite thing about writing is that it can be applied to any industry and He loves getting to combine creativity with knowledge of an industry. Cleark enjoys reading, hiking, traveling and watching movies in her spare time. Cleark Roney is a creative content writer who has been published on various platforms. He likes to write about topics related to every where he spent all his time and gained knowlegde.
