Independent reviewer finds Affinity for Salesforce transformative

As a leader in creating and curating content related to the world’s number one CRM provider, Salesforce Ben’s mission is to empower professionals across industries to advance their Salesforce careers. They do this by featuring best practice guides, ways to get more from Salesforce, and in-depth product reviews where a member of the team evaluates integrations that could benefit Salesforce Admins and other users.

The Affinity for Salesforce managed package recently underwent this rigorous process, with the Salesforce Ben team concluding:

“Affinity for Salesforce bridges the gap between activities happening outside of Salesforce and your valuable customer information… Otherwise unstructured email and meeting information is transformed into valuable insights, surfacing relationships that already exist between your team and prospects or customers, which can empower sellers to close deals at lightning speed.”  

To find out what contributed to this positive assessment, keep reading for the review’s key findings.

Activity tracking that works

Firms spend an inordinate amount of time sending and receiving emails and attending meetings. This activity is packed with insight that often doesn’t reach the CRM if the process is dependent on manual data entry.

Salesforce Ben found that Affinity’s out-of-the-box activity tracking eliminates this problem by “automatically [syncing] all this activity and [relating] it to Salesforce Accounts, Contacts, or Opportunities.”

As well as automatically creating records based on activity data, Affinity for Salesforce also offers data enrichment that makes insights in the CRM even more valuable. To do this, Affinity “collaborates with multiple data providers in order to feed your Salesforce records with the most up-to-date information about companies and their employees.” This enriched data exists in native Salesforce fields, so customers can pick and choose which fields make sense to their industry and needs.

Useful relationship intelligence

One powerful outcome of Affinity for Salesforce’s automatic activity tracking is relationship intelligence. 

Relationship intelligence gives firms “the ability to tap into their colleagues’ network of connections in relation to their Accounts or Opportunities” which “boosts sellers’ confidence and can ultimately help them manage and close deals while saving a great amount of research time.” 

Salesforce Ben points out that this is a clear differentiator for Affinity for Salesforce because while it’s possible to manually sync records and map relationships, “developing an actual calculation based on raw email and meeting data is definitely no easy feat!”

Rather, Affinity’s proprietary algorithm automatically surfaces these valuable relationship insights. Salesforce Ben explains, “based on the frequency and recency of communication between your internal users and their network of external connections, Affinity calculates a score from 0 to 100 which both sellers as well as sales leadership can leverage when making decisions or reporting on engagements.”

Extending the CRM to where sellers work

Insights from Affinity are easy to navigate to within Salesforce (via the Affinity Activities and Affinity Connections tabs) and as the information is synced to Salesforce fields, you can choose how much or how little to display to users—with the rest accessible via reports.

But since the majority of a dealmaker’s time is spent outside of Salesforce, Affinity has also developed new ways to surface CRM insights in the flow of work. Using Affinity’s inbox and browser extensions, firms “can review what has been automatically identified and easily create the missing Accounts which can then have the Contacts associated with them automatically if the functionality is turned on.”

This saves time as sellers can review Salesforce information, add relevant notes, and edit key fields all within the Affinity for Salesforce add-in and, crucially, without “disrupting the flow of work.”  

Salesforce Ben explains, “regardless of where the work is being conducted, it will become a breeze to ensure your Salesforce information is always up to date.” 

Easy setup and responsive team

In addition to the key features and benefits of Affinity for Salesforce outlined here, Salesforce Ben also reviewed the integration’s setup process. In their experience, “getting started with Affinity for Salesforce is much easier than you would expect from a tool that can transform your seller's work with Salesforce.”

And you’re not on your own. Salesforce Ben also praised Affinity’s support team for their documentation and the speed at which they responded to any lingering questions.

Visit Salesforce Ben to read the full review, including step-by-step guidance on setting up and using Affinity for Salesforce.

Interested in trying Affinity for Salesforce in your organization? Get in touch with our team today.

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