What’s your company’s relationship with Salesforce’s Chatter? May I guess?
About a year ago, you might have said something like: “We’ve heard of it, but we don’t use it.” Or maybe you had a bolder statement – something like: “We don’t use it, and we don’t see a need for it in our business.”
Fast forward to 3 or 4 months ago. Since then, your answer has probably changed. Now you know you should be using Chatter, but you’re not sure how exactly. Your response today sounds something like: “We have it, but we have no idea what to do with it.” Or: “We’re just figuring out how to use it.”
Or maybe none of this describes your relationship with Chatter. It describes the trends we’ve observed with clients, though. And we’re always trying to help them see the value Chatter brings. We’re trying to do the same for you right now.
Here are 10 ways your team could be using Chatter:
1. Improve recognition
Did you know that internal recognition is the top non-financial motivator for sales success among best-in-class firms? Take advantage of that by encouraging your team to use Chatter for recognition. It takes less than a minute to sign into Chatter and post a quick “thank you” or “great job” for everyone to see.
2. Collaborate before sales calls
Let’s say someone on your team just landed a sales call. She posts about it on Chatter. This opens opportunities for a few positive scenarios…
- Scenario A: Someone else sees the post and happens to have a connection that works at the prospective company, so they comment. Your sales person goes into the call with a potential edge.
- Scenario B: Someone else sees the post and happens to have a client in the same industry. His client just doubled sales thanks to your product. So he comments. Your sales person goes into the call with those statistics.
- Worst-case Scenario: Nobody comments on the post, but everyone stays in the loop. So the team will be ready to congratulate that sales person when she returns to the office, signed contract in hand.
3. Solve customer service cases in one place
Customer issue? Your customer service manager could communicate with the team members needed to solve it via multiple email strings, a phone conversation and a few face-to-face meetings. Or he could host one conversation on Chatter.
Then if a similar issue occurs in the future, your team will remember exactly how the last one went down, too.
4. Allow for interdepartmental conversations on accounts
You know that customer issue you just solved? Since it’s in Chatter, the sales person on that account will know the details. And your marketing director, who is writing a case study on that client, won’t go into her next interview with them blind.
5. Share competitive insights
Launch a “Competitive Insights” group on Chatter, so your team understands what it’s up against. Include things like links to press coverage or comments you’ve heard about competitors. Then your team can comment on how the insight relates to your product and capabilities.
6. Offer access to marketing collateral
Make sure you’re not one of those organizations where the marketing department is the only one with updated collateral. Upload those files to a Chatter group instead. It’ll help your marketing team stay organized, too.
7. Keep track of customer ideas and feedback
When a member of your sales team finishes a conversation with a customer, they can post any ideas or feedback they heard on Chatter. Then it won’t land on a sticky note or get lost in a notebook. Customer opinions will be heard.
8. Share research and industry-related articles
If you find an article – say, on the 10 ways you could be using Chatter – that you think could advance you and your team, share it with them on Chatter.
9. Announce company updates
Announce news regarding anything from just-published blog posts to upcoming events via Chatter. Your team won’t have to sort through emails when they’re trying to remember what time the networking function starts tomorrow or wonder whether there’s a blog post that could answer a prospect’s question.
10. Reinforce competitions
If you’re using competitions to motivate your employees, Chatter can advance it. A little trash talking never hurt anyone – in fact, it can help you to get the most from a competition by further tapping into your team’s competitive nature.
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For more on Chatter – for example, to find out why our new team members see messages like this on the platform:
– check out our posts here.
