97 Minutes of Your Life Back Every Week? Thank Slack AI!

This week on Funnel Frontier: Explore Microsoft's latest AI for CRM, Salesforce's Slack AI slashing work minutes, and a peek into the future of personalized marketing and conversational sales mastery.

This week:

• GenAI is Slack-ing (via Salesforce)

• Cruis’n CRM: Chatty Copilot edition (via Microsoft)

• Man that’s meteoric marketing (via Capsule) 

• Pleasing with personalized planets (via Monday)

• Conversational clout (via Pipedrive)

Stat of the Week 

Social media business trust was at 49%, keeping it in the red despite a +5% bump in 2023. (Edelman)

Cruising with a chatty Copilot (via Microsoft)

Do androids dream of electric AI?

Microsoft probably thinks so. They recently unveiled two new AI-based navigational tools: Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service. 

More cyborgs, why not? These ones pinky-promise to steer through yawning business processes and boring belts of repetitive tasks.

Copilot for Sales is intended as a beacon for sales teams navigating the ever-embiggening galaxy of customer accounts. It's not just about charting new territories but doing so while “going into plaid”—all from the warm, familiar command bridge of Microsoft Teams. 

Meanwhile, Copilot for Service intends to act as a universal translator for customer service, breaking down barriers between scattered knowledge systems. #nofriction never dies. 

Later this month, the Copilot for Sales chat feature will gain CRM connectivity. That’s gonna let sellers and sales managers peep data-driven insights on the spot.

Later this year, Copilot Microsoft PowerPoint and OneNote features will get plugged into CRM, too.  

Do not go gentle into that vast infospace. Go with more AI stuff.

The Week @ CRM.org

Sales CRM Software. Apps that sizzle with the science of selling—our 2024 list of the best. 

Pipedrive Review. Clean, calm small business CRM… with caveats.

CRM for macOS. CRM + Apple mind melting, it’s a thing.

Weekly Bloom

Dieter Rams: 10 Principles of Good Design. Yes, your iPhone was inspired by a Braun coffee grinder.

GenAI is Slack-ing (via Salesforce)

The rumors are true. The House of Benioff has unleashed Slack AI. 

Yes, Salesforce, acting as galactic council (they own the tallest building in SF), doth spaketh. And they declareth that Slack—which they acquired in 2021—shall be a beacon of GenAI efficiency. 

Slack AI offers:

• AI-powered search 

• Channel recap

• Thread summaries

• Digests / key highlights (coming soon)

• AI integration with Einstein Copilot for Salesforce CRM (coming later) 

Salesforce promises it will save earthlings an average of 97 minutes per week. The precision is… chilling. 

The new tool, natively available in Slack, is yet another nod to AI’s ability to sift the dirty space dust of data. To offer a lifeline to e-stronauts adrift in an Edvard Munch tableau of workplace comms.  

Salesforce also implies this is not one small step for Slack but rather one giant leap for worker-kind—a glimpse into a future where work happens in conversation with AI itself. 

No HAL 9000 metaphors please; those are played out. 

Anyway, it’s early days, but the Slack AI + Salesforce CRM integration could be The Deal. 

Plugging vetted customer data from CRM into chat is a bit like using a giant laser to open a letter. It may be overkill, but as long as we aren’t vaporizing the contents, hey, let’s do it. 

Stellar Strategies: Tips & Tricks for Sales, Marketing & Service

Making meteoric marketing (via Capsule)

In the eerie exosphere of digital marketing, every twinkling metric could be a shiny gold star of insight—or just some mangy molecule.

Data is the new space race. Analytics tools for measuring marketing performance are rocket fuel. The grass is green. 

It’s all about exploring customer engagement and ROI galaxies with the right navigational tools. So don noise-canceling headphones, squeak past the siren song of vanity metrics, and enter the light of actionable insights. 

Some ideas:

• Track the right KPIs, i.e., the ones that make space-sense for specific campaign goals

• Keep lean with automated data capture, and avoid the manual data maelstrom

• Zap conversion data into CRM for all-in-one-ness

Peeping personalized planets (via Monday)

Customer info exerts its own gravitational force. To blast past the other space junk and get into orbit, you’re gonna need a hyper-personalized marketing machine.

As you strap in, do consider the myriad of data types: personal, engagement, transactional, behavioral, and psychographic. Each offers unique resources to fuel your marketing engines. 

Design strategic marketing campaigns and optimize product and service development—this is how you win.

So chart a course through the consumer verse, finding life-sustaining (or at least revenue-sustaining) worlds ripe for your message. 

More tips here.

Coalescing conversational clout (via Pipedrive)

Signal vs noise, a story old as time itself.

In the sales-verse, conversational intelligence is what it takes to reach your audience with clarity and precision through the ether. 

Imagine your words as a… spaceship. Yes, a spaceship! Navigating the complex asteroid fields of customer interactions, powered by thrusters of empathy and active listening. 

The manual says to do this:

• Keep an AI co-pilot to examine the emotional nebulae of customer responses and help personalize comms

• Drill in active listening to sharpen crew response

• Send out probes to understand the alien landscapes of your clients' needs

Yes, when it comes to sales, it would seem Conversational intelligence is indeed The Force™.

Pipedrive has some more pointers.

Galactic Gourmet

CRM blips from around the web

HubSpot reports Q4 and 2023 full-year results. Revenue in Q4 2023 was up 24% compared to the same period last year. Total revenue for the year was up 25% at $2.17 billion.

IAMPHENOM training day registration opens. The HR training day takes place on April 23rd in Philadelphia, before the main conference from April 24th to 25th.

Web services firm MEGA chooses SugarCRM. MEGA, which has 10 million daily active users, chose the CRM after consultation with Sugar Partner Optimate.me.

Pipedrive announces Partner of the Year winners. The 3rd annual awards are based on performance and span global and regional partners.

Astronomical Assets

Significant Stock Moves from Last Week

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