Social networking – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. – are big news in the sales world, and no wonder. These sites allow colleagues to keep each other informed about what’s happening in their business and personal lives. And that’s obviously a good thing when it comes to developing opportunities and building strong customer relationships.

But it’s been difficult to tie that activity into the CRM environment, which is the heartbeat of the sales organization. No longer. Salesforce.com recently unveiled Salesforce Chatter, a "secure enterprise collaboration application and social development platform." That’s a fancy way of saying that salesforce.com has created a way for any company to collaborate in real time on a secure and private social network.

Two key concepts here are "secure" and "private." With this application, content, applications, and people will now have profiles, feeds, and groups, enabling them to be deeply connected. Unlike on the public sites, however, access on Salesforce Chatter can be tightly controlled so that the activity doesn’t spin out of control.

More importantly, the activity inside Salesforce Chatter is tied to your salesforce.com data so that you can integrate it into your lead-generation and opportunity-development activities. And because the entire application runs with the AppExchange network, Salesforce Chatter will work well with thousands of native Force.com applications. In other words, you’ll be able to link your social-networking activity to email marketing, lead-generation activities, incentives tracking, and the entire wealth of sales technology available today.

WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT IT:
Social networking has provided consumers with new insights into what’s happening in the world. But using traditional social-networking sites to help with sales activities has proven difficult, because the traditional social-networking content, apps, and people are disconnected from the enterprise. Salesforce Chatter allows companies to extend their CRM activities to include collaboration between employees, customers, and partners in an intuitive yet secure manner.

For example, just like the profiles on popular consumer-oriented, social-networking sites, Salesforce Chatter profiles can include contact information, areas of expertise, work history, and photos. It therefore provides an easy way for sales professionals to introduce themselves to other people inside the company. Or, if customers are permitted to join, they can have presence and visibility within their vendors’ social network.

Salesforce Chatter also includes some interesting productivity aids. For example, the status update feature allows employees to keep everyone informed of what they are working on – without endless email chains. The application also supports feeds that notify users when new or updated content is available. For example, a user can set up a Twitter search for a competitor and automatically stream the real-time results into the salesforce.com environment.

We love the way that the entire application is so fully thought out. For example, it’s available on any BlackBerry, Windows Mobile device, or iPhone, so employees can take the conversation with them, regardless of where they are located.

We seldom run across sales technology that has the potential to really change the way that companies work. But this one does.

PROFILE:
Partner: Salesforce.com
Application: Salesforce Chatter
Application announced: November 2009
Pricing plan: To be announced
More info: www.salesforce.com/chatter