The Sales Cloud Edition
A question we often get asked by our customers is “what is Einstein, what should my sales team be using it for and how?” Part of the confusion comes about because there are a number of Salesforce products past and present with the Einstein branding that touch on Sales Cloud and they all have different use cases, implementation timeframes and licensing implications.
So here’s a quick explainer of what Salesforce Einstein is and what it can do for your sales organisation.
What is Einstein?
Not to be confused with a certain famous theoretical physicist, Einstein is also the name given to Salesforce’s artificial intelligence technology. You’ll find it integrated into all areas of the platform to deliver AI powered insights directly to users. From allowing sales managers to more accurately forecast pipeline to recommending products to sales reps based on a customer’s previous purchases, Einstein empowers users to make smarter decisions based on automated machine learning and powerful predictive models.
What Products Use Einstein?
Sales Cloud Einstein
As you might expect Sales Cloud Einstein delivers a full suite of AI powered features aimed at increasing sales rep performance and productivity. Below are the key features included:
- Einstein Lead & Opportunity Scoring – ensure sales reps are focusing their time on the Leads and Opportunities most likely to convert and close by prioritising them based on past deals
- Opportunity Insights – deliver insights such as how likely a deal is to close, customer sentiment and engagement based on interactions all from the Opportunity page
- Einstein Forecasting – uses AI machine learning to improve forecasting accuracy and provide predictions based on previous forecasting behaviour
- Einstein Activity Capture – allow sales reps to connect their Outlook or Google email and calendar to Salesforce so relevant email and events can be seamlessly synchronised giving reps back time to do what they do best, sell!
Implementation Effort – Low
Licensing – Additional per user cost on top of standard Sales Cloud licenses
Einstein Next Best Action
Generates recommendations based on past interactions and collected data. For instance, if a customer has previously bought a product it could recommend a sales rep cross sell opportunities based on aggregated customer purchasing habits.
Implementation Effort – Medium
Licensing – Usage based (orgs receive a monthly allowance of Next Best Action requests)
Einstein Prediction Builder
If the out-of the-box Einstein prediction apps don’t meet your needs you can create your own AI driven predictions using point and click tools. For example you may want to know “If I sell customer Product A what is the chance that the customer will also buy Product B?” or “if I add a discount of 10% to my opportunity what is the chance it will close over not applying a discount at all?”
Implementation Effort – Medium/ High (depending on the complexity of what you are trying to predict although everything is done via config so no coding is required)
Licensing – Additional per user cost (a ‘Try Einstein’ version is available that lets you build up to 10 predictions and enable up to one of them at a time)
Einstein Analytics
Einstein Analytics (now rebranded Tableau CRM) is an entire enterprise business intelligence universe of possibilities in its own right that would take several blog posts to cover. It’s worth noting that various ‘prebuilt apps’ are available for Sales Cloud to accelerate implementation. Further details at the link below:
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.bi_app_sales_wave.htm&type=5
Implementation Effort – High (Medium if using pre-built apps)
Licensing – Additional per user cost
Where do I Start?
Most Einstein features come with an additional license and implementation cost but Opportunity Scoring can be enabled for free with relatively little effort. If you’re not already empowering your sales reps with AI driven insights and predictions this is a good place to dip your toe in.
If your company is a new user of Salesforce or a small organisation without the history of opportunity data required to drive the scoring model, Salesforce will handily use a global model based on anonymised data aggregated from other customers until you do.
For any Salesforce licensing queries please speak to your friendly local Salesforce AE. If you’re interested in discussing a potential Sales Cloud project, want to add Einstein capabilities to your existing implementation or discuss any of the products mentioned please contact us via the form below.
