Salesforce gave Sales Cloud users an early preview of CRM features planned for release throughout 2022, including new details on Slack integrations, revenue intelligence subscription management and sales enablement.

The features, taken together, help both sales reps and their managers stay connected across disparate locations, said Bill Patterson, Salesforce executive vice president and general manager of CRM applications. Many sales teams still work remotely; prior to the pandemic, sales was typically a team sport played in close office quarters.

Combining Slack and Salesforce Sales Cloud helps bridge the distance between sales team colleagues and managers, said Forrester Research analyst Kate Leggett. It also helps address the reality that large sales deals require increasingly more collaboration between sales teams and the customer’s buying team.

Leggett pointed to a recent annual Forrester survey of 957 businesses globally: Respondents said the average number of interactions between selling and buying teams increased from 17 in 2019 to 27 in 2021. Deals are taking longer to close, too. In 2015, 19% of deals took four months or longer; that number rose to 32% in 2021.

Slack channel integrations with Salesforce Sales Cloud may make those deals move more efficiently, Leggett said. While it’s not necessarily exciting technology, all CRM platforms need to drive online collaboration as Microsoft has done by connecting Teams and Dynamics together.

“There are more stakeholders that need to communicate and collaborate during a sales cycle. Deals are taking longer, involving more people,” Leggett said. “It’s a no-brainer to bring CRM and collaboration together to make it easier to get energy around a deal.”