The Weekend Picklist ?? Top Insights from the Salesforce Ben Salary Survey, New Sales & Service Cloud Announcements, and Another Big Acquisition!

Every weekend, we’ll be delivering our top headlines – highlights from the previous week for you to enjoy with a cup of coffee! ??

Top 5 Insights from Our Mega Salesforce Salary Survey With 3500+ Professionals

Do you know what you should be getting paid? How does it match up with the results of our survey?

We’re proud to announce that the results from our first ever annual Salesforce Salary Survey are in, and we’ve been able to gather insights from over 3,500 professionals in the ecosystem on all things jobs, workplaces, and salaries.?

Although nothing compares to getting the full scope of info from the official report (which you can now download using all email addresses by the way), we’ve rounded up five of the top insights you should really know about.

1. The current job market isn’t great. Now, this itself shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the results of our survey have allowed us to showcase the drop off of new entrants to the ecosystem, how long it’s taking professionals to find jobs, and how people are feeling about it all.
2. Salesforce is still very lucrative. Salaries are still very high compared to average salary figures, and Salesforce is still an extremely prominent technology.?
3. More certs = higher salary. I know, I know, we’ve been telling you that certifications aren’t all that. Which is why we think some of the data could surprise you here.
4. The type of company you work for matters. The salary survey dives deep into different company factors, and how salary can change based on these data points, as well as many more.?
5. Salaries are trending down. It’s not great to hear, but for the core roles in the ecosystem, these downward trends? are only in the single digits.

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4 Must-Know Sales Cloud Announcements at Dreamforce ’24

If you thought that we were done with Dreamforce announcements, then think again!

Over on the Sales Cloud front, announcements have been aplenty, coming in from the Sales Cloud keynote, as well as individual sessions and booths.

If you couldn’t catch up with them last week, don’t worry. Here are four that we think are super important:

• Agentforce for Sales signals a new wave of AI. While Agentforce is meant to conduct tasks across any LOB and Industry in the end, when it comes to Sales Cloud, Salesforce has unveiled two readily available Agents that you can quickly set up with clicks, not code, directly in Setup: SDR Agent and Sales Coach Agent, which will become GA in October.

• Sales AI is bringing the future closer across Sales Cloud. Agentforce comes along to complete the already existing suite of features available within Sales Cloud, which together can supercharge and transform previously manual processes in no time! From automated activity capture to meeting summaries and guided selling, your reps can be empowered to focus more on customer relationships.

• Your integrated growth platform. Salesforce has brought every tool companies may need to succeed under the one Revenue Cloud umbrella, which aims to fully automate the revenue lifecycle in a new simplified user experience and modernized UI.
• Introducing Sales Cloud Go. It sounds fun, I know, and it is! Generally available in the Winter ‘25 releases, Sales Cloud Go is a reimagined setup experience for all customers who want to make the most out of their implementation, and ultimately make setting up any feature easy.

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A message from IBM

Are you ready to shift from ROI to reinvention??

The 13th annual IBM State of Salesforce 2024-25 report contains research that highlights key insights on what leading Salesforce customers are doing to adopt more strategic and forward-thinking approaches.?

For this year’s State of Salesforce report, IBM’s Institute for Business Value surveyed more than 1,100 Salesforce customers to identify which practices and perspectives are driving business value.

IBM has been a Salesforce global systems integrator for over 25 years and offers a unique perspective around enterprise transformation in today’s Gen AI landscape as a technology partner and market researcher. Salesforce and IBM deliver unparalleled value to business as they embark on their AI transformation journey because, together, they can uniquely tackle these challenges as ecosystem partners.

Download your copy of the report

5 Key Service Cloud Announcements at Dreamforce '24?

If we’ve talked about Sales Cloud, then of course we have to talk about Service Cloud!

Service Cloud had its fair share of cool new announcements at last week’s Dreamforce, and it’s safe to say that combining Agentforce with Service Cloud opens a whole new set of possibilities! So here are five of the top announcements that you need to know about:

• Agentforce Service Agent: Agentforce Service Agents are AI-powered, autonomous agents designed to handle and resolve customer cases across channels 24/7 in natural language.?

• Service Planner: Service Planner is an AI-driven tool that automatically generates step-by-step resolution plans tailored to individual cases.?

• Customer Experience (CX) Intelligence: CX Intelligence monitors customer sentiment and reveals useful and actionable information. It’s basically intelligent analytics with AI-driven recommendations (powered by Einstein AI) wherein support leaders can proactively identify trends based on data from customer surveys and conversations.?

• Field Service Highlights: New updates include Dispatcher Agent, asset service prediction, and multi-model troubleshooting.
• Serviceblazer is now on Slack. The Serviceblazer Community, which was once only available on Trailhead, is now available on Slack. Hooray for better connectivity!

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Breaking News: Salesforce Acquire Zoomin For $450M

Does anybody else feel like it’s acquisition central at the moment? Because we certainly do…?

Continuing on with their successful acquisition streak, Salesforce have recently acquired Israeli-based data management provider Zoomin for $450M.?

The acquisition, predicted to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s 2025 fiscal year, is set to boost the capabilities of the company’s new Agentforce tool using Zoomin’s data management expertise.

So, who are Zoomin?

Zoomin works with large-scale companies such as Dell Technologies and Mastercard to help them break down the plethora of unstructured data in their organizations and effectively feed it to AI models, which can then deliver more accurate responses to business employees.

Benioff believes Agentforce AI agents can offer a simpler and more accurate alternative to Microsoft Copilot, thanks to Zoomin. Once Zoomin’s technology is fully integrated, customers can expect significant improvements in customer service automation, sales forecasting, and marketing strategies. By leveraging unstructured data quickly and efficiently, Agentforce will be capable of delivering next-level insights and actions, marking a new era in AI-driven solutions.

?Salesforce has said that Zoomin will be first introduced in Data Cloud and Service Cloud platforms, with ambitions to expand to all of its cloud platforms in the future.

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Klarna-Salesforce-Workday Partnership Called Off Amidst Major Gen-AI Overhaul

Lots has been happening over at Klarna HQ, and this set of news only adds to the growing conversations surrounding the mighty payment platform and the world’s biggest cloud giant.

So what’s the news this time? Well, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski recently announced in a call with his investors that his company is terminating two of its largest SaaS partnerships, Salesforce and Workday, as part of a complete generative AI overhaul.?

In short: Klarna believes that it can phase out both providers and replace them with equivalent systems through the power of AI; the company now wants more flexibility in its operations and believes that AI-driven solutions are the best way to stay agile in the fintech market.

But, can they survive without Saas??

While it’s true that certain aspects of AI have the potential to change modern-day operations, creating a competitive in-house alternative to such powerful platforms could be a seriously difficult undertaking. Generative AI is still in its infancy, and creating in-house platforms and tools with the power to go up against existing Saas platforms is always going to be tricky.

We commend Klarna for their ambitions, but will wait to see whether this was the right choice or not.

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