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Agentforce Sales Foundations

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Agentforce Sales Foundations Study Checklist
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0/213Learned

  • Purpose and benefits of sales territory planning
  • Aligning territory design with company go-to-market goals
  • Why fair territories matter for reps and the business
  • Data-driven territory balancing with multiple factors
  • Matching quota and rep experience to territory size
  • Planning territories early for growth, buy-in and new-hire ramp
  • Maintaining and adjusting territories throughout the year
  • Leveraging territory insights to focus a rep's selling effort
  • Account-based selling versus a wide-net sales approach
  • Deciding when account-based selling fits a sales situation
  • Ideal customer profile as the filter for target key accounts
  • Tiering accounts to match coverage and touch level
  • SWOT and market research on a target key account
  • Purpose and core contents of a strategic account plan
  • Cross-functional and account team alignment on key accounts
  • Personalized outreach for high-value target accounts
  • Measuring and refining key account engagement
  • Growing existing key accounts after the first deal
  • Quota and quota attainment as core sales measures
  • Activity measures versus outcome measures
  • Calculating quota attainability from activity and conversion rates
  • Activity quality versus volume when pursuing quota
  • Building a quota attainment plan with a manager
  • Building rapport and trust as a trusted advisor
  • Five-step relationship selling sales model
  • Analyzing a customer's business, including small and private firms
  • Mapping and engaging decision makers across a customer account
  • Understanding each decision maker's role, priorities, and challenges
  • Buyer personas and role-based sales messaging
  • Sales success stories built on the Magic Formula
  • Referrals and continued business from existing customers
  • Trusted advisor role and insight-led thought leadership
  • Client Credibility Statement structure
  • Customer-centric conversation framework components
  • Whiteboarding with the customer to confirm challenges
  • Building a case for change through storyboarding
  • Key elements of executive conversations
  • Bottom line up front for brief customer and executive conversations
  • Executive presence and ineffective verbal tendencies
  • Engaging multiple levels and buying roles in a prospect account
  • Prospect account tiers in a contact strategy
  • Outreach touch levels, channels and prospect nurturing
  • Research and trigger events for timing prospect outreach
  • Qualities of an attention-grabbing prospecting message
  • Crafting a relevant customer success story
  • Purpose and approach of a prospect cold call
  • Social selling as a prospect engagement touchpoint
  • Networking and referrals to generate prospect interest
  • Handing a warm prospect to an account executive
  • Relationship selling versus transactional selling
  • Building trusted customer relationships
  • Practicing empathy to center the customer's experience
  • Customer experience as a driver of loyalty
  • Matching rep actions to the customer's lifecycle stage
  • Nurturing customer relationships after the deal closes
  • Driving product adoption after the sale
  • Expanding existing accounts with the relationship selling model

Given a scenario, identify how to qualify a prospect before moving to the next stage of the sales process

0/15

  • Basic sales process steps and the relationship-building stage
  • Sales process versus sales methodology
  • Leads, prospects and opportunities across qualification
  • Purpose of qualifying a prospect before the sales pitch
  • Fit and interest criteria for a qualified prospect
  • BANT qualification framework components
  • BANT as a yes/no checklist versus building blocks for investigation
  • Qualifying budget when no budget is allocated
  • Identifying authority and the buying team while qualifying
  • Running a qualifying conversation on an initial cold call
  • Qualifying call versus discovery call
  • BDR and AE roles in qualification and handoff
  • Deciding to advance, nurture or disqualify a prospect
  • Readiness criteria before moving a prospect to the next stage
  • Ongoing qualification throughout the sales cycle

Determine customer's business strategies, goals, initiatives, and challenges to define the scope of the solution

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Four steps of customer-centric discovery

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Distinguishing customer goals, initiatives, strategies and obstacles

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Three levels of customer issues

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Researching the customer's industry trends and challenges

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Research sources for public versus small or private customers

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Agenda Statement for a customer discovery meeting

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Sharing insights to connect with the customer

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Collaborate phase and the Questioning Model

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Open-ended discovery questions about priorities and obstacles

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Clarifying versus confirming questions

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Mapping decision makers and their priorities during discovery

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Purpose of challenge framing and its framing questions

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When to frame a challenge

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Challenge framing versus scoping and the elements of scoping

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Success metrics and common business goal types

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Building a case for change around a priority challenge

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Storyboarding and co-creating a plan from challenge to goal

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Develop and present the value proposition of a solution based on customer needs

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  • Customer-focused value proposition basics
  • Solution selling versus product selling
  • When to use solution selling
  • Mapping product capabilities to the customer's challenges
  • Create phase of the Dale Carnegie Sales Model
  • Summary Statement in the solution presentation
  • Fact, Benefit, Application technique
  • Evidence and customer success stories in presenting value
  • Talk-to-listen balance and needs alignment on the sales call
  • Building the customer's business case and return on investment
  • Purpose and core elements of a sales proposal
  • Sales proposal writing process
  • Choosing a pricing strategy for a deal

Identify and remove all challenges to finalize the deal

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  • Meaning and value of objections in the buying process
  • Common objection types and their underlying reasons
  • Empathetic listening and buying or warning signals
  • Defuse, Discover, Deliver objection-handling sequence
  • Clarifying the real objection before responding
  • Relationship selling tactics for responding to objections
  • Deny, admit, and reverse as replies to an objection
  • Relationship selling versus transactional approaches to objections
  • Handling a price objection in a value-focused sale
  • Stalling and hidden objections from a possible gatekeeper
  • Surfacing all remaining obstacles before the close
  • Give-and-get concessions and deal dials in negotiation

Gain customer commitment and close formal contract

0/13

  • Commit phase of the relationship selling sales model
  • Word Picture as the lead-in to asking for commitment
  • Relationship selling commitment methods
  • Asking for the commitment and setting a defined next step
  • Common sales closing techniques
  • Preparing a deal for the close
  • Creating the formal agreement after commitment
  • Purpose and required elements of a sales contract
  • Types of sales contract documents
  • Internal preparation and approvals for contract negotiation
  • Redlining and preparing the customer for contract review
  • Signature processes and the deal-closing timeline
  • Breaking a stalemate at sign-off
  • Pipeline as the leading indicator of annual contract value
  • Role of prospecting in the sales cycle
  • Benefits of strategic prospecting for the sales rep
  • Pipeline generation roles on a sales team
  • Ideal customer profile and target account focus
  • Inbound versus outbound prospecting
  • Prospecting outreach channels for finding new leads
  • Partnering with marketing to fuel pipeline
  • Existing customers as a source of new pipeline
  • Researching a prospect before personalized outreach
  • Targeting contacts above the power line
  • Benefit-led versus product-led prospecting messages
  • Lead nurturing to keep prospects engaged
  • Lead qualification before a lead enters the pipeline
  • Building a healthy sales pipeline
  • Sales pipeline definition and purpose
  • Sales pipeline versus sales funnel
  • Pipeline tracking dimensions and what each reveals
  • Metrics for evaluating pipeline health
  • Pipeline coverage relative to quota
  • Top-heavy versus bottom-heavy pipeline imbalance
  • Keeping opportunity records clean and current
  • Removing stale and poor-fit deals from the pipeline
  • Regular pipeline reviews and a shared pipeline view
  • Using pipeline insights to personalize and prioritize customer outreach
  • Purpose of a defined sales process
  • Sales pipeline stages and their typical order
  • Stage exit criteria and consistent stage definitions
  • Matching rep activities to the deal's current pipeline stage
  • Planning next steps to advance prospects toward conversion
  • Sales velocity and what a low velocity signals
  • Stage duration versus overall sales cycle length
  • Stage-to-stage conversion rates and sizing the pipeline
  • Getting a deal moving again when it lingers in a stage
  • Diagnosing stage bottlenecks across the pipeline
  • Why forecast accuracy matters to the business
  • Consistent stage definitions and stage-advancement steps
  • Forecast categories and stage-to-category mapping
  • Objective commit criteria versus rep intuition
  • Deal inspection questions for forecast placement
  • Weekly forecast review cadence and forecast submissions
  • Typical forecast accuracy benchmark
  • Analyzing forecast accuracy over time
  • Compelling events and close-date risk
  • Early deal red flags: stalled, pushed and inactive deals
  • Account team transparency for surfacing deal blind spots
  • Price increase impact on a deal and response options
  • Renewals and expansion as forecast risk and upside
  • Monthly progress measurement against quarterly targets
  • Pipeline versus forecast
  • Forecasting roles: rep, manager and executive
  • Opportunity details that feed the sales forecast
  • Deal lifecycle stages and rising close likelihood
  • Opportunity-level activities and dated next steps as forecast inputs
  • Current opportunity data versus static spreadsheets
  • Five forecasting questions: who, what, where, why and how
  • Business variables and trends that feed a forecast
  • Annualized contract value (ACV) as a sales metric
  • Pipeline coverage: conversion rates and pipeline gaps
  • Steps to build a sales forecast
  • Stages of the order lifecycle
  • Sales order versus purchase order versus invoice
  • Sales contract purpose and when to use one
  • Sales contract types and the contracting process
  • Actions from accepted quote to booked order
  • Verifying sales order details before fulfillment
  • Implementation planning after the agreement is signed
  • Customer lifecycle stages from first interaction to trusted relationship
  • Conversion half versus success half of the customer life cycle
  • Sales process as a continuing cycle after the close
  • Customer experience and connected customer journeys
  • Customer success role and objectives versus support
  • Sales-to-customer-success handoff
  • Communicating post-sale expectations to a newly signed customer
  • Standard versus escalation paths for post-sale customer issues
  • Renewal, expansion, and churn in the post-sale journey
  • Developing customers into champions and referral sources
  • Realized value versus expected value
  • Agreeing on desired outcomes and success measures with the customer
  • Key customer experience measurements and their goals
  • Net Promoter Score and CSAT as satisfaction indicators
  • Shared customer health metrics between sales and customer success
  • Post-sale check-ins and feedback on value received
  • Building trust, demonstrating value and minimizing effort
  • Responding when realized value falls short of expectations
  • Responding to a customer's total cost concern

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  1. Agentforce Sales Foundations Checklist
  3. Deal Management

Distinguishing customer goals, initiatives, strategies and obstacles

Explainer

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Practice Question

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Next conceptThree levels of customer issues

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  1. Agentforce Sales Foundations Checklist
  3. Deal Management
Distinguishing customer goals, initiatives, strategies and obstacles

Explainer

Learn More

Practice Question

Keep going

Next conceptThree levels of customer issues

Explainer

Before a sales rep meets a customer, the rep researches the customer's business to learn what the customer cares about. Part of that research is sorting what you find into goals, values, initiatives, strategies and obstacles. These are related, but each one means something different.
Core information
  • Customer-centric discovery (CCD) is Salesforce's model for discovery. Its first step, "Know your customer," is to research the customer before you meet with them, looking at their industry, their business and their people.
More details and nuances
  • Small or private businesses probably don't have public reports or presentations, so the rep has to get more creative. Options include reading the About Us page, shopping their store, checking their social media pages and posts, reading online reviews, reviewing what employees say about them on Glassdoor, and searching for their executive team on LinkedIn.

Explainer

Before a sales rep meets a customer, the rep researches the customer's business to learn what the customer cares about. Part of that research is sorting what you find into goals, values, initiatives, strategies and obstacles. These are related, but each one means something different.
Core information
  • Customer-centric discovery (CCD) is Salesforce's model for discovery. Its first step, "Know your customer," is to research the customer before you meet with them, looking at their industry, their business and their people.
More details and nuances
  • Small or private businesses probably don't have public reports or presentations, so the rep has to get more creative. Options include reading the About Us page, shopping their store, checking their social media pages and posts, reading online reviews, reviewing what employees say about them on Glassdoor, and searching for their executive team on LinkedIn.