Integrating SMS into a Salesforce Sales Engagement [Former High Velocity Sales] Cadence
10 min
In a world where every second counts, having just a call-based sales flow is not enough: nobody wants to waste time talking to a salesperson. To make matters worse, younger generations are becoming more skeptical about taking calls from strangers or will not even bother to answer, even to family. For that reason having an SMS plan integrated alongside phone calls is a must-have. Sometimes just a "Hi, my name is X, from Company. When would be a good time to call you?" can do wonders to conversion rates.
And when talking about Salesforce, there is no better way to organize your sales cadences than with High-Velocity Sales (HVS). Instead of relying on a few well-versed salespeople wasting time training and managing teams, we can plan different sales cadences based on customer information, seasons, or products. Then is just a matter of assigning leads or contacts to a rep, and the predetermined steps in the cadence will be an easy path to follow.
However, and sadly, HVS does not have out-of-the-box integrations with SMS systems. As a result of this, we are left with two options:
1) Create a custom step to leave the SMS on the reps' hands, or
2) Create a trigger around each step and automate it
Each option has benefits that are downsides to the other. Let's dig into the alternatives:
1) Creating a custom step:
This is by far the easiest and fastest option; any admin can set this up in less than 5 minutes.
The custom step will create a task for the rep to complete. Once completed, it will move the target (contact or lead) to the next step in the cadence.
You can name the step with the body of the SMS, a reference to a template somewhere else, or leave it at the agent's discretion, to name a few alternatives.
However, there are some significant disadvantages.
For starters, there is no control over if the rep actually sent the SMS. Additionally, especially if agents have quite a few tasks to complete, it could lead to delayed completion of the step, heavily impacting the speed-to-lead and conversion metrics. Other disadvantages include possible typos, inconsistent language (if left to the rep's discretion), or poorly copied names (no customer would like to receive an SMS that was copied but not updated).
To solve these problems, we would need to go with option number 2: using code.
2) Create a trigger:
- Here the process is:
- Enable Change Data Capture for the "sales cadence step tracker" object
- Create a trigger around it
- Define the steps and templates to use
The first step is asking Salesforce to create a "notification object" (by enabling change data capture). This will start the trigger every time an agent interacts with a cadence’s step (starting, completing, or skipping it).
The trigger will have the logic to get the target id and, from there, the customer's mobile phone. It should also account for the step name, status, and the template to use.
It is important to mention that this method will only work if the SMS solution enables us to make programmatic message deliveries (basically, if we can send SMS through code).
For example, let's say we have a simple cadence with four steps:
1) Make a call
2) Send an email
3) Wait 4 hours
4) Make a call
If we want to send an SMS after the first call, the trigger should check if the step is completed and if the step name is equal to the first step of the cadence. Then we can use a label to keep the text we want to send and use code to replace the customer's name.
You must also consider that this is not only harder to implement but also to maintain; if you add more cadences, want to send more messages, or even change the body too much, you will most likely need to rework at least part of the code.
If you want to go down this road, you can use this help article as a rough guide, as well as this one to help with the tests for classes that use Change Events.
To sum up, adding SMS to your HVS cadences is advisable, but you will need to consider that it is not as straightforward as with calls. You can go the easy way, adding a custom step and relying on reps to send the text messages or using code to make something automated, but that will need a bit more back-end work.
Have you ever had to incorporate automation into your HVS cadences? What about something else? Let us know in the comments!
