Salesforce Feature Deep Dive: Sales Cloud Einstein

Today’s blog is another Salesforce Feature Deep Dive, looking at the Sales Cloud Einstein tool. We’ll review the basics, the benefits, the requirements, and how to implement this tool in your Salesforce account. If you have specific questions about Sales Cloud Einstein and your organization’s Salesforce account, you can always get in contact with our team of consultants. 

What is it? 

Sales Cloud Einstein incorporates AI technology into Salesforce’s key Sales Cloud capabilities to provide additional insights and other information.  

Who can use it? 

Salesforce Einstein is available in the Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic (which is being phased out). Organizations with Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions can add Sales Cloud Einstein to their portals. For more information specific to your account, contact your Salesforce account representative to learn more about pricing and implementation. 

How does it work? 

By analyzing the data in your CRM and reviewing your sales team’s actions in Salesforce, Sales Cloud Einstein learns and identifies trends. It can then provide insights and information about opportunities for growth and retaining customers to your Sales Cloud users. 

How does it help users? 

While Sales Cloud Einstein isn’t a mandatory tool to get the most out of the Sales Cloud, it does have strategic strengths that can take your Sales Cloud and sales team to the next level by: 

Increasing Productivity: Sales Cloud Einstein highlights areas of opportunity and how to better engage with leads. This helps your sales team stay on track while minimizing the amount of time spent chasing dead ends. 

Adding Insights: By analyzing your CRM data and the actions tracked by your sales team within the Sales Cloud, Sales Cloud Einstein provides additional insights that can optimize your sales team’s actions and help meet sales goals. 

Forecasting More Accurate Pipelines: Increased productivity and added insights combined with Einstein’s AI capabilities to analyze your Sales Cloud data. With all of that data working together, you can be assured that your sales forecasts and future pipeline prediction are most accurate. By combining human and technological insights, you get the best of both worlds.  

What problems does it solve? 

For serious sales teams, Sales Cloud Einstein solves a couple of important problems, including missed opportunities, client retention, and the need for accuracy: 

Missed Opportunities: If you already have a data science department that reviews your sales team’s data and actions, then you may not notice the impact of Sales Cloud Einstein quite as much. If you don’t have a business or data science analyst at your beck and call, then Sales Cloud Einstein can help fill in the gaps. Your sales team is busy doing just that, sales. They don’t always have the time to review deals and trends from a bird’s eye view. Sales Cloud Einstein’s insights can highlight opportunities for growth and prevent missed opportunities by keeping your sales team on track. 

Retaining Clients: While most sales teams are focused on reaching out and converting new leads, attention should still be on ensuring current customers are satisfied. Happy customers will also be more open to new opportunities that you present to them. There’s revenue potential in retaining clients and Sales Cloud Einstein highlights the right path to retaining and up-selling customers with ease. 

Data Accuracy: When you create your pipeline reports and forecasting for sales meetings, what level of confidence do you have in your numbers? When questions are raised about your models, can you answer with certainty? Einstein forecasting brings the power of data accuracy and confidence to its predictive models, whether you’re viewing pipeline reports or looking at future forecast models. 

Preparation and Set Up 

If everything so far sounds like a major boost to your sales team, then the next step is to head down the path of preparation and setting up your account for Sales Cloud Einstein. 

Review Data Requirements: You can view all requirements here. Just to start, see if you meet the first few requirements. These include: 

• At least 1,000 leads must be created in the last 6 months (180 days). 
• Of the leads created in the last 180 days, at least 120 should be converted to an account and contact. 
• You must have at least 30 business accounts. 
• If you use person accounts, at least 50 percent of accounts must be business accounts. 
• At least 20 opportunities must be closed in the last 180 days.
• The median lifespan of closed opportunities should be more than 7 days in the last 180 days. 

Consider Limitations and Goals: Once you’ve reviewed the requirements, you’ll also need to consider if your organization’s account falls under any of the limitations that Sales Cloud Einstein includes: 

• Sales Cloud Einstein is available only to users with standard Salesforce licenses.
• When you purchase Sales Cloud Einstein, Salesforce installs two packages in your org, SalesforceIQ Cloud and Sales Insights. Each package adds an associated integration user and profile. Salesforce uses these entities to provide insights to your org. If you update these entities, it can affect your org’s ability to get insights. Depending on the Einstein features you turn on, these integration users may have full access to Accounts, Campaigns, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities, these users will not modify your org’s data and don’t affect your Salesforce license usage.
• Platform encryption isn’t currently supported with Sales Cloud Einstein. 

Before going too deep down the road towards implementation, you’ll also want to review your organization’s goals and the goals of your sales team. Do they align with the capabilities of Sales Cloud Einstein? Does your organization have the budget to add the license for Sales Cloud Einstein right now? 

Run the Sales Cloud Einstein Readiness Simulator: You’ve reviewed the requirements and considerations, and think that your account can support Sales Cloud Einstein. Then you can move forward with running the Sales Cloud Einstein Readiness Simulator. It is a tool that analyzes your account and provides a personalized report as to the readiness of your account for implementing the Sales Cloud Einstein tool. If your account isn’t ready or you still have requirements to meet, then the report will explain these to you in detail. 

Talk with your Salesforce account representative about adding a license to your account: You’ll need to speak with your account representative in order to purchase a license to add Sales Cloud Einstein to your account. Your account representative should also provide any additional insights about the process and answer remaining questions that you have about the setup. 

Move forward with the Sales Cloud Einstein Setup Assistant 

The final step is to run the Sales Cloud Einstein Setup Assistant, once your account representative has added the license to your Salesforce account. The Setup Assistant will guide you through the process of choosing the settings for your account’s Sales Cloud Einstein as well as set permissions for which users will be selected for Sales Cloud Einstein. The Setup Assistant walks you through the process, so it is a linear process to complete the initial set up. 

And that’s it! While an administrator can complete this entire process on their own from start to finish, this is also something that is great to pass off to a Salesforce consultant. If you aren’t using a consultant to maximize the benefits of optimizing your Salesforce account, you could be missing out on the latest updates, integrations, and implementations that Salesforce has to offer. And the last thing that you’d want to do is implement a new tool your organization is paying for and not reap all the benefits. 

Don’t have a Salesforce consultant on speed dial? Oceanforce Solutions experts are Salesforce certified and are happy to help! Get in touch today to discuss your organization’s needs and goals. We’ll help you reach them.