Salesforce spring 2023 release: The business executive’s guide, part 2

We are seeing one overarching theme in Salesforce’s spring release — simplicity. Users have long requested a more user-friendly interface that doesn’t compromise performance, and Salesforce delivers. 

In Part 1, I covered new features you should use, including Lightning Web Runtime, Salesforce payments and enhancements to Salesforce CMS. This installment features recent enhancements to Sales and the Customer Data Platform. 

Sales: Analytics, Account Discovery Dashboard, AI and more

The latest sales updates are, in my opinion, a game-changer. They will make your sales process more efficient and easier to manage, which will help your teams close deals faster. Here are the highlights: 

Analytic efficiencies

Sales Analytics now provides filtering and faster access to data points, which gets you exactly what you need without sifting through irrelevant data. Sales managers (and reps) can determine which of their sales strategies are most efficient, which products are performing best and pinpoint areas that need improvement. 

Account Discovery Dashboard, now with AI

Account Discovery Dashboard now uses artificial intelligence with Einstein’s Discovery, which will help your business improve sales prospects and identify new growth opportunities. This feature can also analyze data to help your sales reps identify accounts with the highest prospective revenue returns while keeping your teams updated on the health of their accounts. 

Mandatory multi-factor authentication

Reps loathe multi-factor authentication, but it’s an extra layer of security to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your account. Turning it off is no longer an option. 

Quick promotion set-up

A quick promotion setup option now simplifies loyalty management and promotions programs. Instead of building a system from scratch, you can choose from predefined eligibility, rewards and criteria such as product, order and account-based criteria to help streamline the eligibility process. 

In addition, promotions managers can select from rewards options such as percentage discounts, fixed amounts, or free items and apply them to specific products or the entire order. This setup option can also be customized and will ultimately save everyone time — something we all need more of in our lives.

Salesforce CDP 

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) aggregate data from different sources such as CRM, email marketing and social media. In addition, you can activate data profiles to run more targeted content across both Google and Meta. 

Using Salesforce’s CDP, you can track and analyze customer engagement across all channels, which will help you create more targeted campaigns. The more you understand what resonates with customers, the more efficient your campaigns will be. That should yield more conversions/sales. 

The Account Engagement Optimizer will help you: 

• Identify improvements to your marketing automation system (think sales process and email campaigns) that will increase your ROI. 
• Identify risks to your marketing automation system to improve overall marketing efforts. For example, the Account Engagement Optimizer may flag a campaign to inform you that your click-through rate is lower than the industry average and prompt you to make changes.
• Prioritize recommended changes based on what is most important to your team. These recommendations will focus your team on changes that will make the biggest difference.