Zendesk, Inc. today launched Zendesk Sell, a sales force automation (SFA) tool to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for sales teams. Sell stems from Zendesk’s acquisition of FutureSimple Inc., the company behind Base, in September 2018 and marks the first step in integrating the sales force automation software into the Zendesk family of products.

In addition to a new name and logo, Sell is launching with new core SFA capabilities added since the acquisition, including simplified collaboration via at-mentions, and customizable performance dashboards.

Sell is also launching with a new integration for Zendesk Support, giving support agents more context from the sales process and allowing them to notify sales of opportunities surfaced during a support conversation. Sell now offers the deepest SFA integration on the Zendesk Marketplace.

According to Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Kate Leggett on the Forrester blog post Sales And Service Tech: Two Sides Of The Same Coin? from September 17, 2018, "Customer service spans both pre-purchase and post-purchase activities. Sales activities target new and existing customers. There is not much difference between the conversations that customer service agents and inside sales reps have prior to a customer purchase — explaining the details of a product or helping properly onboard a customer. In addition, the technology capabilities that these roles use to interact with customers are similar."

“Delivering a great customer experience is a team effort, requiring integrated tools,” said Matt Price, senior vice president and general manager for Zendesk Sell. “But salespeople won’t use tools they hate. Zendesk Sell is a tool that salespeople love to use, which means better data and better decisions so the whole team hits their targets. And with the new integration with Support, every conversation with a customer is visible across the organization.”

“I find information from my sales reps in Zendesk Sell, and information from my support agents in Zendesk Support—those two solutions hold the keys to everything around here,” said Dave Savage, CEO of Mortgage Coach, which offers an online and mobile mortgage experience. “Now both teams have a holistic view of the customer from the solution they primarily work in.”

Sell launched alongside Sunshine, Zendesk’s new CRM platform that enables businesses to connect and understand all their customer data, wherever it lives. Sell will be the first SFA to integrate with Sunshine, publishing key events from the sales timeline into Sunshine’s customer interaction history. With Sunshine, Sell gives businesses the benefit of information that flows seamlessly between support, sales, and other functions, resulting in a single conversation with customers and better alignment between teams.