PeopleLinx Launches Updated Social Selling App for Salesforce.com

Social selling platform provider PeopleLinx has expanded its solution to additional channels, including email and phone, to arm salespeople with more accurate and data-driven recommendations for the next-best sales step to take. The previous version of PeopleLinx's solution relied on social intelligence to make predictions about the direction of a sales interaction and make suggestions for a strategic course of action that would help a sales team close deals. Now, in addition to drawing from potential customers' social behaviors, PeopleLinx can reach into salespeople's email exchanges and phone interactions with clients, Michael Idinopulos, CMO at PeopleLinx, explains.

"Every salesperson knows that a multichannel approach is the most effective way to engage people. There is no single best way to engage buyers—the most successful reps use all of them to surround a buyer. But, some channels are good early in the funnel, while other are good at the bottom of the funnel. Reps need to know which to use when, and with which buyers, and that's why it was important for us to branch out into other channels," he says.

PeopleLinx technology works through an integration with Salesforce CRM and determines the next steps a salesperson should take by analyzing the pipeline and pinpointing how far along deals are. The solution monitors email engagements and keeps track of phone calls to potential customers to further gauge lead status, and then makes action recommendations. It doesn't trigger any action automatically, however, because automation goes against the PeopleLinx philosophy, according to Idinopulos. "We believe engagements can't be automated," he says. "We provide all the information salespeople need to take action, but you'll always need that human touch when it comes to sales," he adds.

One of the most powerful use cases for PeopleLinx technology is middle-of-the-funnel engagement. While most sales reps are focused on the five to 10 deals they're trying to close in the current quarter, what they're not prioritizing are the 20 to 50 deal leads that have been placed on the back burner but should be nurtured for the next quarter, according to Idinopulus. PeopleLinx can be used to awaken any dormant leads that still hold a lot of long-term potential.

The solution also has an analytics component that enables sales teams to measure the correlation between engagement and deal outcome. For example, it can determine whether opportunities nurtured by social channels closed at a higher rate than those nurtured via email. "People are always wondering whether social selling really works. Here's a way to measure not only whether or not it works, but also how well it's working compared to other channels," Idinopulos says.

The updated version of the PeopleLinx app is available today and can be found on the Salesforce AppExchange. 

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