GambitP

Doing everything sales

I just don't get it [help] -> How to use Slack in my team?

Am I missing anything, or Slack is helpful for basically nothing...

Do you use Slack for internal communication? What for?

Using Slack - nah or yah?

Attached poll

Don't have Slack, and I love it :) I have a few channels but my manager is the only one posting Use it for status updates & requests Use it instead of 1:1s What else? Write in the comments

*Voting in this poll no longer yields commission.

🤓 Sales Tech

✌️ Growing Pains

🤠 Culture

36 comments

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Chep

WR Officer

Bitcoin Adoption Specialist

I like slack because they got /giphy for ours and I spend way too much time deciding what gif ima use

CoorsKing

WR Officer

Retired King of the Coors Knights

Lol. Yeah some of the bots and integrations are great.

Salespreuner

Big Shot

Regional Sales Director

True that 💯

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Agreed. I LOVE gifs!

funcoupons

WR Officer

👑

I mean...you can use Slack for anything you want. In depth meetings are not going to be done efficiently through Slack and are better in person/on the phone, but random small questions/status updates/requests/updates/off topic chat are all very Slack friendly...

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

How do you provide a status update in one/two sentences? I find it hard to talk about a deal without giving the full context. I think that's why in our team we prefer to just pick up the phone...

funcoupons

WR Officer

👑

If it's a simple yes/no question like "has the contract been signed yet" it's easy to do on chat. Of course if it's a more nuanced discussion it's better to just have a verbal conversation.

CoorsKing

WR Officer

Retired King of the Coors Knights

Slack is incredibly helpful for 1 off questions you do not need a meeting for, or when you need something and the individual is in a meeting. Basically what Funcoupons said, slack is not a replacement for Zoom or another meeting tool, slack is an internal messaging platform for quick questions and group messages.

We create slack groups for each larger sales cycle we run so everyone can quickly collaborate and get on the same page.

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Nice. Do you add a reference to the opp page in SF? Or just write the entire story every time?

On the larger sales cycle - is it more for one-off questions or do you truly drive the deal tactics from there?

CoorsKing

WR Officer

Retired King of the Coors Knights

One off questions. Nothing is driven over email or slack, that is all done over the phone. If we need something quick (approval for pricing, deal desk to do something, etc) then that can be handled over slack.

paddy

WR Officer

Director of Business Development

Slack is ruining America

JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

I use slack channels for account/deal project teams. Much easier than using email!

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Sounds like a total mass. I have 30 opps at every given moment. I imagine having ~30 live Slack channels where I need to drive the conversation... plus another ~100 of old channels...

How do you handle all of it? Email is obviously even worse..

JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

I only use Slack for the extra complex or needy opps. Most I just document through their opp record in SFDC and loop in people via email or Zoom chat when needed. The thing I like about it is that I usually get quicker responses via Slack then via email.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

We are fully remote so we are using it for just about everything. We have individual deal channels to help reps, managers, executives, product, engineering, etc, all collaborate together. Others for random shit that we have to coordinate. I use it for easy 1:1 comms. It's how we run our async meetings, etc.

Gotta build a culture around it.

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Cool :) Do you have an individual channel for each deal or pod? I'm trying to get the ultimate structure for using Slack to get more shit done without having gazillion internal calls

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

We create deal channels right from HubSpot.

CoastLife

Good Citizen

Large Enterprise Sales

Slack can be incredibly powerful for sales teams.
Lots of resources out there including: https://slack.com/intl/en-ca/blog/collaboration/slack-on-slack-how-channels-power-our-sales-team

You can have channels with your team. A place to share what you are working on, where you need help etc.
Channels to collaborate on your accounts. Invite in your SE, CSM. Pin your account plan.
Channels to get deals approved.
Channels to post legal questions or ask for legal support #sales_legal

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Sounds like a lot. How do you overcome the lack of context in Slack - I mean it's like you need to have Salesforce attached to get the full, updated deal context

CoastLife

Good Citizen

Large Enterprise Sales

It might sound like a lot at first, but if everyone in your company is using Slack, life can be a lot easier.
I have to say I worked there for 4 years and we were power users.

Think of all the collaboration you do with people in your company that don't have access to salesforce...
- How do you raise product insights from customers to your product team
- How do you negotiate legal contracts today? A Slack channel is great as you can provide all the relevant info, tag the appropriate resources and often get answers a lot faster.
- How do you collaborate with your AMs, SEs, CSMs, Partner Managers on accounts? Probably not very well in SFDC.

Anyway, just some ideas. Take em or leave em.

Wolfof7thStreet

Valued Contributor

We use it all the time, all day. My leaders post wins in the company wide channels, people ask product related questions in specific or general threads, my team communicates with it throughout the day. Important to note the company is all remote

goose

Politicker

Sales Executive

We've added clients to slack. They respond immediately.

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Really? That's a great idea!

At what point in the process do you add them?

goose

Politicker

Sales Executive

After any sort of discovery and in the solution design phase.

Smithy

Politicker

Director of Sales

Use it for general team comms and 1-2-1 conversations, but I wouldn’t use it as much if we were in the office

KPIMaster

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

I think this all depends on the size of the company you work for. I find it very helpful to get in touch with everyone while we work remote or in other offices, especially support staff around accounts sold.

Daniel.Camara

Director of Sales and Business Development

If you are using SFDC you should talk to your admin about leveraging the slack integration. Depending on your sales strategy, you can create deal-specific rooms and collaborate with other people and keep the topics focussed on that customer. For example, you can have your AE, SE, Sales Leadership, and Support on the same thread to make sure the customer is getting what they need, while having it all track back and forth with SFDC so your notes and plan are all in order.

SalesTO

Personal Narrative

Team Supervisor

Slack comes off much more casual than email when presenting status updates & requests. It feels the messages come across much more collaborative. Whereas email is more "this is the way things are done around here"

Send Gifs also help break the tension. Spend way too much time finding the right one haha

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Totally, but can you give examples of what type of status updates & requests?
-> Do you ask your reps for deal updates on Slack? Why not in SF?
-> Some ppl said they ask for discounts or legal help, but don't you need to give the deal context? Don't the requests & updates usually lead to a call?

SalesTO

Personal Narrative

Team Supervisor

Great follow up Q!
I don't typically ask for deal updates in general as it's up to the reps to own their pipeline. Either it's in the forecast on SF or it's not in. We have weekly 1s to discuss the likelihood of deals closing to ensure they are trending in the right direction.

There is a SF approval process for discounts. However, talking through Slack collaboratively on how to get the deal done whether legal or discounts eliminate meetings, which reps are tired from with customer interactions.

For legal, there is also a Slack channel to ask legal directly that is answered within 1-2 days, in case we just don't know the answer. sometimes search that channel thread in case it's been answered in the past as well.

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

You drop this 👑
Thx!!!

SalesTO

Personal Narrative

Team Supervisor

Hahah thank you for the kind words :)

BCD

Politicker

BDR

If you learn how to use Slack that way that it was intended to be used, not just as a chat tool - game fucking changer

GambitP

Good Citizen

Doing everything sales

Show me the light 💡
how do you do it?

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Slack is critical to my job. Definitely not a replacement for 1x1s though. It's helpful to get quick answers to random questions and pull everyone together to discuss a specific topic (e.g. I create slack channels for all my large deals that include sales manager, my engineer, finance, legal, product, etc.)

FeedTheKids

Politicker

Solutions Consultant

All internal communications.... Mostly we use it to bother the dev team and send random gifs