Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to Salesforce product showcase event. Today we are excited to not only present our solutions to you but to also showcase a live demonstration of how Salesforce can help your business effectively. Before we begin, let me introduce myself, I'm Swapnil Desai from the Sales Dev team, and I will be a host for this event. In today's webinar, we will be showcasing you how you can sell smarter, faster and more efficiently with AI, data and CRM. We want this session to be very interactive. So please feel free to drop your questions and comments throughout this webinar and we'll take it up for sure. We are also joined by our subject matter expert, Ms. Chhavi, who is the solution engineer with great insight into the current real estate market in India. So over to you, Chhavi.

Thank you, Swapnil. A very good afternoon, everyone. Myself Chhavi. So just to begin the session, Salesforce being the public company, we would like to notify to you that whatever buying decisions, let's say, in future, you'll be making with us, please make those decisions on the basis of current offerings and solutions we have with us. With that, thank you once again for joining us today, taking out this precious time of yours for this webinar. We're looking forward to make it, as Swapnil said, an interactive session. So please feel free to ask any questions if you have in your mind. With that, I'll quickly rebrief the agenda of what we are going to cover. As Swapnil was mentioning, we will give you a crisp version on how the sector or an industry from the real estate perspective is doing and what challenges primarily most of the customers which we have interacted are facing, right? Then we'll try to give you an overview of what Salesforce can bring to the table when it comes to real estate industry or with the customers what we have been doing so far. And to make it a live experience for everyone, we'll try to cover the whole sales process, channel partners journey in a very shorter version to give you an idea of how and what Salesforce is bringing to the table for real estate industry. And towards the end, in between also if you feel you want to ask or clarify anything, we'll cover the Q&A. With that, let me just quickly cover the overview as I was talking especially after COVID, the real estate companies are facing a lot of issues with respect to managing this whole journey digitally. To have that field experience as well as managing the customer data with respect to the sales processes, which are more or less scattered right now because of siloed systems and not having or [indiscernible] scattered the channels which are there, which directly indirectly resulting in poor customer support, and off-line collaboration, while the customers are trying to interact directly with 1 person and not as a brand. And also limited market presence, not just hoardings and the physical banners will cover its digital world. So how you can expand yourself or your brand when it comes to make it digitally liked, right? Plus at the end, it's very important and what we have seen customers talk about is the part is missing for running what to do next, right, which will come from the insights, which more or less today is manual. So considering all this, Salesforce offers a connected experience when I say that. This complete donut gives you a 1,000 feet idea of all these offerings, which fit into our real estate model, especially catered towards Indian market, right, which rightly starts from managing your sales processes, which can be residential or commercial sales and connected experience for all the teams, presales, sales and post sales schemes and also, which is primary focus of all the real estate companies in today, providing that top-notch experience with services, good quality services and support to your customers who are getting onboarded with you or working with you already. Then digitalize yourself as one single brand, where the marketing portfolio helps you from Salesforce side to make it visible everywhere. This is the world of social media. So considering that in mind, there are different solutions which can be developed, right? And also, with this modern experience, the customer wants or expects to have some sort of app handy so that they can manage their inventory which they have bought or let's say, the leasing processes. Plus, you as a brand can generate those actionable insights, fast collaboration with different products, which with Salesforce, there's new software integrating with third-party systems and much more, right? With a new recent digital headquarters or productive AI tool, which is slack, you can make your cross-team collaboration in single go and talk single click. Carbon emission is also we have heard is a very immediate focus for most of the companies in the real estate sector. So there's a sustainability solution which Salesforce offers and brings to the table to manage your carbon emissions. With that, channel partners, especially in Indian market plays a huge role managing the inventory and breaking this whole process in a streamlined motion. So you can manage brokers, our channel partners. Even if you are an agency, you can have that experience connected with the builders together, right? So this is comprising the -- keeping your customer, which is the homeowner or tenants at the center, what solution Salesforce is providing to our existing customers. Now with that, there is a validation from L&T Realty, which is live on salesforce.com as well, that they took this crawl-walk-run approach with Salesforce, where they have started their journey with sales and then moving towards with marketing, onboarding services, from our solution to make it a unified view for their customers and deliver a connected and consistent experience. With that, after implementing these solutions when they were struggling with the similar challenges, which I was highlighting previously, 80% reduction in their lead response time is the live validation they have seen and also an increment of 20% productivity of their sales agents who are working on the field, right? These are just a few metrics, which were shared by L&T, similar other stories from other real estate customers, builders, agencies are live on salesforce.com. Now with that, but if we think how all of this comes on the table or what implementation we have done. So we usually believe in persona-wise journey. When I say that, for different people who are working with your brand, also directly indirectly associated, we provide different line of solutions, right? Rightly starts from the customer who's using an in-app support or let's say, any payment tracking directly indirectly customer is having that experience with all those touch points at his or her hand. A marketer can do personalized [indiscernible] manage the web content very easily and [indiscernible] monitoring and analytics as a single touchpoint on the screen. And as I was talking previously, your sales team and the channel partners can feel connected by managing this lead management, site visit execution, tracking their commissions, handling bookings and schemes all just by single platform with an extended access given to the third-party people. And last, once your customers are onboarded, what sort of support and to make it like a top-notch experience can be provided by the customer support managers by handling the omnichannel engagement with your customers and managing support in a beautiful manner. So this is how we are trying to engage with our real state customers and there is some impact drivers we have seen of what others who are already working with us from the real estate sector. Considering their strategic objectives in mind, keeping their customers happy, focusing on increasing their revenue and also managing their community with respect to the property they are handling. So basically, after utilizing Salesforce capabilities, they have seen a huge increment in their customer experience, coming positivity and also the increase of revenue, which directly indirectly is a primary focus for every company, right, managing their property management costs by most of the time it's like a major decrease and handling the campaigns in an effective manner. Now with that, we'll just try to give you a crisp view of how all this Salesforce is trying to achieve and what do we have to offer from the live demonstration perspective. Before moving to the live demo, any questions from anyone?

Please use the Q&A section to add your questions, any comments, any queries you have, and we will like to answer that. We'll wait for 5 seconds.

Please feel free to put your questions, as Swapnil said. Meanwhile, let's just start the demonstration. And if you have any questions while we are demonstrating, you can use the Q&A section, right? I hope my screen is visible. So to start the journey as I was speaking, a sales rep, usually, the trend or the processes starts from the sales or presales team when it comes to real estate, right? So now I'm assuming a presales agent who's working with any real estate company is logging into the system. So as soon as in lands here, he can get a crisp view of the new prospects, his broker community, what work he needs to do with respect to managing his channel partners in a better way? How the projects of the company are performing with respect to new leads, which are coming up? Also different statuses with respect to the current leads, which are there in the bucket, where do they stand? And let's say, there's a lot of leads, which are pending in the working category. So he can prioritize a state according to the leads which he needs to focus more on. Apart from that, to analyze your company structure or how these prospects are coming to you, you can check that what all channels these leads are utilizing while coming to you, either directly or any portal they're using or maybe direct means, right? So different activities of the day-to-day activities I can manage when, let's say, I'm interacting with the customers as leads or I'm working with existing customers for managing their property and inventory details, et cetera. All this is visible to me in a single click here. Now I can plan my day in a better way where I have my events listed, I can check what all meetings are there or maybe a site visit with the customer or what I need to send maybe an e-mail to a customer regarding demand, risk, anything. So all of this is live here and I can quickly click on this and complete that particular event or task, which is assigned to me. With that, live notifications will also come to me in case of any lead which is created in the system for the first time, which can directly come from, let's say, any portal, which is integrated with Salesforce. Salesforce is an API first platform or utilizing the landing pages either from the website or any social media channel. Also, with marketing capabilities, the campaigns can be managed in the single screen. So let's say, the presales team is also having some look on campaigns or a marketer is sitting in the system, he can check how the campaigns are performing. Campaigns across different channels, media units, what is the response we are getting? How is this campaign managing and so on and so forth. This is a [indiscernible]. Moving to the presales journey, let's assume that there's a new lead now in the system and what all can be done when it comes to this new lead specifically, right? So Sneha Sharma, she is looking for a 2 BHK house in Delhi NCR region. And once she has submitted her details from the website, this is how a new notification is created for the Salesforce. As soon as I click on this notification, I'll be landed here. Apart from that, I can check what basic details she has spilled up while she was trying to interact with us. I can send an introduction e-mail. It can an automated email as well. And I can make a call to her directly from the system or from my phone and log that call. Once I get to know her interest, that she's looking, let's say, for 1 of our projects, or maybe 2 of our projects, I can arrange a site visit for us, right? So to track this in a similar fashion or seamless way that even if multiple people are engaged in making this site visit happen, so a record is created and that site visit can be tracked on the phone itself. So whatever I'm demonstrating here, there is Salesforce1 mobile app. The console view of all of this will be available on the mobile app. So while someone is on the field, so if this person is going for a site visit at the prospect, he can quickly update the time site visit is done and maybe complete the site visit, right? So there's a live track of all this while interacting with the customer. At the same time, if a customer is asking details about projects, so there's project layers where the towers, units and everything, the inventory will be visible, right? To showcase maybe a sample site or an available unit to the customer. Now if I'll go back to the lead because the lead is -- after doing the site visit, Sneha is interested in moving forward and she has finalized one of the project, which is suiting for her work location, because she is a working professional. So now an inquiry is created into the system. But how to track that. So now it can go to the sales team or the same person can take it forward, where an inquiry is created in site visited stage. Here, the unit selection, cost sheet sharing, all those processes can be taken care of. So the beautiful thing which happens here is all of these apps when it comes to managing different things, are connected in a single console, right. Access, visibility of what can be shown to whom in the [indiscernible]. Going back to the story. Sneha finalized this project. And of course, the unit which she is interested, you can tag that unit. But let's say at any point of time, if you want to send the cost sheet and maybe the unit needs to be changed. She has changed her mind, maybe she wants to switch to the pool facing apartment, right? So what can be done? This is a customer 360 view, which is like a single source of truth for all the teams to manage customer data. Where we can check what project she's interested in, who is she, what interactions we have with her so far with respect to the activity she's done and so on and so forth, all the details, with respect to project selection, which project has selected, also the sales team member can initiate the house selection process from here, right? She is interested in this project. In this project, which tower, which unit is available according to my preference, which unit will fall in place and quickly update that, right? How is she looking to make the booking if she is okay with that unit. So I can quickly check that option and update the details here. So that can happen. With that, I will take a quick pause before going to the enquiry completion process in case anyone has any questions?

Chhavi, I would like to ask you a question. So as you mentioned about Sneha and let's say, I'm a real estate company. So will I be able to see my open pipeline and how much we have achieved in terms of our targets and whatever goals we've set for ourselves.

Absolutely, and that's a very wild question, which is like usually, we have seen our customers asking these things because this is what really matters to company's performance and planning your business in a better way. So what usually we do is, and this is all standard out of box from Salesforce, what happens is you can manage these filters and create these list views to plan your pipeline in a better way, maybe create segments. So let's say, every specific portion has a target of, let's say, selling 3 houses in a month for a specific project. So for that particular person, you can create list views like this, so that his inquiries will be visible and planning can be done accordingly, right? Plus a single team view from the management perspective can be created. It can be viewed in a Kanban manner, if required. To have a crisper visibility when it comes to managing your projects or inquiries and you can drag and drop and shuffle your pipe. At the same time, I was discussing a few things -- a couple of things on the main screen where you can see the funnel with respect to leads and similar funnel you can maintain with respect to open inquiries. So that target versus achievement planning can happen and people who are working as sales agents, presales agents, or let's say the post sales people who are doing these bookings can track their quotas and their commissions accordingly. I hope I'm answering your questions, Swapnil. With that, I'll quickly move to the previous journey, where we were trying to manage this inquiry for a 2 BHK house for Sneha and she is now actually looking for a cost sheet for this specific unit, which she is interested in. So what as a sales agent I can do, I can quickly prepare a cost sheet in just few clicks. I do not need to do or enter anything manually, I can print it and send it to Sneha in a printable view which will be tracked on my activities here, like I have sent the cost sheet over an e-mail, and it will be connected either to your Gmail and Outlook and plug and play or any other e-mails you were using. That capability we have to check. With respect to managing when I say the commercial details, what cost sheets is being sent, at what status it is right now, project information, who's in the household and maybe she has a sister who is also looking for a house. All that detail can be maintained here. Plus at the same time, the presale, sales, all the people who are working on this single enquiry, they can be managed. Once she's okay with the cost sheet sent, there can be negotiations which can happen, which can be tracked in here with the replies. Once she is okay, the unit can be blocked directly. Once the unit is blocked, you can quickly -- once the booking amount is in either in form of a check or any other payment method, medium which she has selected, this enquiry can be closed, right? So this is how easy it is to track all this information in the system and managing the whole process and making a transition from one team to another. Now as I was talking about Customer 360 where Sneha, she bought the house, all the information with respect to the post sales processes where the post sales team or the CRM team, which we usually generally refer in real estate can manage the payment milestones as well, which can be in sync with the accounting system per se, if you're using any. So let's say the booking amount is in from here, but the next demand will be created for a payment of next 30 days, right? So this demand can be generated from the system itself and a payment capture record or collection record can be created by syncing this with your accounting system, right, which I have just taken an example in form of [indiscernible]. So this payment collection record is created. I can send this demand by generating demand node document to the customer rightly from this system itself. So all where initially, we started that usually customers face this challenge of manual scattered sales processes. This is how all 3 teams presales, sales and post sales are connected in a single view with different accesses of cost, consisting what modules they need to handle. This is a sales journey. Now managing your broker or channel partner experience. So with respect to a builder or with respect to an agency who is working with multiple brokers, there can be a broker portal extended for the field team who's working, dealing with customers day in, day out. And they can quickly track. So right now, I'm entering into the show of a broker or a channel partner who is day in day out dealing with customers on the field and working for a specific builder, or specific projects per se. So this is the landing page for that broker where once he's there, he can quickly check what all leads under his bucket are registered this month, how many bookings being done, what commission being earned and which project he is targeting this month or, let's say, for a couple of months. Explore the project detail before directly interacting with customers, create a new lead, new site visit, share brochures with the customer if required directly from this portal. So as a channel partner, you do not need to call someone and ask for these details and just giving those hard copies to your customers, and there's no digital wipe. Also, at the same time, with respect to my performance, I as a broker, I can track a lot of details here. What sort of business I have done this month, how much commission on which all scheme I have earned, right? How many site visits I have been doing, if I want to track that and how does the broker leaderboard for, let's say, Delhi NCR region, are the brokers performing if you want to maybe create a competitive environment, but this is completely depending on what business model you follow. What different schemes company is running on different projects, which I can take advantage of and talk to customers. And also I can create new site visits for different customers from here, right, in a single view. Any new customer who's coming up for a project and preferred site visit, I can quickly submit that and create that site visit. So it's just a single click from me as a broker as well. And I can expertise or utilize this in the browser version on my phone also because it's not necessary that every time I'm sitting on the system. I can have a lead view similarly as for an internal sales person I can quickly check what all leads are standing in my bucket and which all statuses are there for which all projects they're interested in. At the same time, if at any point, customer is asking me while I'm on a site visit, let's say, or on phone customer called me to maybe -- details about payment, payment plan of the specific builder, how this agreement process maybe buyer builder agreement or the letter allocation happens, what sort of terms and conditions are there. So I can quickly click here and check those details and talk to customers. At the same time, if I want some ready to -- ready-made answers, there are FAQ articles published for me, and I can create a case as well which will go to internal team, and they can revert back to me officially. So all this can happen, right? So this is a basic version of broker experience or channel partner experience on Salesforce and this is all connected to the internal system or the back-end system when it comes to a builder so that both the parties or personnel are connected to each other. Now there can be a similar thing, which is the top-notch priority for most of the real estate persons today to provide that live experience to their customers. So let's say someone has booked or Sneha went ahead and booked the house. Once she's onboarded, she has made the payment or the booking amount, she can quickly get access to a mobile app from the builder itself, right? Or the channel partner can help her share this link, and she can log in quickly and start her journey. So she is the one who's yet to receive possession, there can be others who have already received possession. So these categories can be created. And she can quickly check that this is the project or unit she has booked and maybe she has other favorites as well for different projects. So all that can be maintained in a single view here. Apart from that, the live status for this unit, the address details, unit details, what all amenities are there, in which status the flat is right now, right, the live picture is updated here plus her stages of involvement, maybe what registration, final documentation, submission. All of this is just one place. The payment plans, the finance details, loan details, everything is mentioned here. And at the same time, she can have a customer success manager who is directly connected maybe on call, she can make a point and click call, send an e-mail or WhatsApp support from the app itself. With some ready-made FAQ articles for the customer for generic payment methods, project plan, et cetera. So for everything she is not calling someone or is dependent on, let's say, a channel partner or a sales agent to have that communication. Also she's getting live notifications on made a payment reminder for a demand generated. Any tedious process updates in the system or she can have a live chat at any point of time. If she is, let's say, not aware about the complete home loan process to the builder and there's some issue in approval of a loan. So she can get into the live chat with a support agent on the app itself. So like this different details can be shared and a real-time conversation can happen. With that, I think we were planning to cover this crisper version of sales team, brokers and the customers from a builder perspective. Now there can be other use cases as well. Where, let's say, the customer has already received the possession, and you want to maintain maybe some facility services and all that after receiving the possession. So that can be extended, but that's usually not a common use case, but we can support that as well, right? Where before, let's say, a MyGate comes into picture, there can be some sort of facility provided to this person if she is moving into the society. So this is the complete end-to-end journey for the 3 personas, the channel partner, the customer and the sales team, which comprises of different sales team members at any point of time. There's much more with respect to real estate, what Salesforce offers, right, with respect to leasing, commercial property handling, but this was an ideal scenario of a residential journey of a customer. With that, I'm towards the end of my presentation, I would like to take any questions if there are any.

So Chhavi, we have a question from Sarthak. The question is how do you monitor inventory? And do you have any indications with real estate ERP systems?

Yes. So I will take this question in 2 pieces. How do we maintain the inventory. First of all, usually, because as I've mentioned previously as well, Salesforce is an open API platform. So integrating Salesforce with any third-party system, whether it's in ERP or any other system from where any sort of touch point details are coming is not a challenge, right? We handle the integration and bulk stop and rest APIs in any which ways if the APIs are available with the third-party system. So integration, yes, we do that. Now with respect to managing the inventory, I was trying to give an overview on project detail as well, where Sneha was interested, let's say in Project Yamuna. So what you can do by fetching those details if you're doing inventory management in -- completely in your ERP, which is usually the case. Those details can be fetched in here and up to a level to showcase these units to the customers, can be showcased on the project level. Which units are available in which tower. So all that color coding can happen in Salesforce by fetching that information from the back-end data so that your team is not accessing multiple systems at 1 point of time, right? And this is how that single customer 360 view comes into picture.

Hope that answers your question, Sarthak. In fact, Chhavi, I have a question looking at your demo. You spoke about partners as well. So let's say, obviously, in a real estate company, we do have a lot of brokers who are also working. It was trying to get us leads, et cetera. So how am I able to differentiate my leads as a real state company between my sales rep and between the brokers, my partners, which are I'm working with.

Great question, again. So I was -- I hope you recollected that I've given a view of a portal for a broker or, let's say, a channel partner who is working day in day out with a builder, right? And at a point, there can be a possibility that multiple builders are working with a single real estate agency or a broker. So what usually happens is a developer or a builder extend these portals to the brokers, right? And whatever leads, let's say, a lead Swapnil has come to a broker A and he will enter that data on his portal. So what usually happens, this lead visibility will be there to the presales team or the sales team at the builder level. But they're not doing any [indiscernible]. So the actions, categorization of these leads will be managed by the broker but a read-only view or let's say, the full view will be available to the sales teams so that at any point of time once the booking process comes to near, they have that handshake between the brokers and the agents so that they can collaboratively view that information and make this process happen seamlessly when it comes to booking the flat at the builder level. So the segregation usually because all the data is connected at the back end, when I say back end the core system of Salesforce, which is visible to the sales team of a builder or developer plus an extended version is given to the broker where he is entering his leads, managing his lead journey and then our same is bifurcated for the sales team members. But on the other hand, if a lead is directly coming to the sales team, right, or sales agent, he will enter or create his lead manually or, let's say, by any process on the co-system and it will not be visible to the broker. If now the sales team person wants to push this lead to the broker manually, that can anyways happen. But the vice-versa is not usually a recommended thing, which we have seen in real estate. But this is how segregation or the complete handholding for brokers plus sales team works usually.

Audience, if you have any more questions, please put it in the chat window. Hope the session was insightful. And if you have any query, if you want us to repeat something, please let us know.

Let's just wait for a minute. And in case there are any questions, we can take them.

We have a question, Chhavi, from Tejas. In sales, the sales team would have hierarchy. Zonal manager, Area manager, Territory manager level. And each one having its own incentives and commissions. Does Salesforce track this or allows to customize these calculations?

Absolutely. A very valid question. So first of all, I was discussing the persona-wise approach in Salesforce. So usually, I handle this or maybe give you some insights in terms of privacy model or how the access thing works in Salesforce. So we usually work on OWD model, organization-wide defaults where we set this role hierarchy. There is a model in Salesforce, which is standard out of works to create the role hierarchy for, let's say, regional managers, zonal manager, then the agents will come into picture. And everyone will have their submission or calculation for these commissions plus their targets, right? So for every persona, let's say, for an agent, his view will be visible with respect to the work he is doing. But if a regional manager is logging in into the system, he can view the data or the submission of all the agents who are working under him plus his personal commission if directly indirectly he is engaged in any of the conversations. So bang on in Salesforce persona-wise approach or these dashboards we create for different personas so that they can track their own targets or their team targets specifically individual level, or team level or management level and accordingly, track the performance, drive the business, plan the business. I hope I have answered your question.

We have another question from [indiscernible]. Want to know about leasing as well. As an agent, I not only do sales from multiple builders, I also do leasing for multiple landlords.

So leasing is a completely -- so here, considering the time line and the bandwidth we have for presenting our solution with respect to real estate today. I just took our residential model approach with a residential story for Sneha Sharma. But there are multiple use cases. The leasing is one of them. So we do provide solutions of managing those complex calculations of your leasing portfolio when it comes to handling the leasing business completely as a sales agent and as a manager also or maybe at any hierarchy level. So if you're asking whether Salesforce is capable of managing the leasing processes or do we have something from that front? The answer is yes. We can have a chat or a separate discussion on that if you're interested. But leasing processes can also be maintained on Salesforce, depending on what workforce, what personas are involved except from the sales team who is directly working in managing this leasing process. I hope this is what you were asking.

Any more questions, please feel free. Any comments. So we have a question from RP. Which Salesforce product is the use here and can we know the license cost.

Sure. I think RP, maybe one of our account executives can get in touch with you if you're okay with that. With respect to the product offerings, there were multiple products I have showcased today in combination of different processes, which comprises our core product, which will be Sales Cloud for managing your sales process. And also for creating customer app, Heroku is one of our products, which I have used. And then for the portal, a broker portal, there was an extended product of ours, which is called Community or Experience Cloud, which I've used in this demonstration. But there's much more when it comes to handling the processes in real estate. This was just a quicker version, I was trying to showcase. With respect to the costing, I think we can get back to you if you are okay with that. Maybe our account executives can provide those details. But the products which I have mentioned cost and everything is live on salesforce.com. So you can just give it a try for the first level costing it. It's the list price, which is mentioned here. Indian market works on different models. So our accounting executives can get in touch with you for that. Any other questions?

If it's also in general about Salesforce, please feel free to ask about any other products of Salesforce. I just like to -- we'll just like to wait for another 10 seconds and maybe then we can drop up. Okay, then thank you so much for everyone to join this call to giving -- to give your time to us and to go to this webinar I'm sure that we've added some kind of value to your understanding. And we really hope if we can also see you [indiscernible] to help you solve all the complexities. Thank you, Chhavi, for the great session. Thank you for adding lot of value. Thank you so much, everyone.