Uncle Kunkel's Corner
A former AE who went to the dark side (consulting) and reports back.
The Quick & Dirty
The whole issue, fast
You're busy. I get it. Here's the highlight reel:
- Salesforce dropped some Einstein Copilot stuff in Spring '25 that's actually worth demoing. I played with it for way too long this weekend.
- I've been on a bunch of calls lately where reporting keeps coming up more than automation. Thought that was interesting.
- Helped a mortgage company cut their lead response time from 36 hours to 4 hours. Still kinda proud of that one.
- Also, I totally botched something on a demo and I'm sharing it here so you can laugh at me and also not do the same thing.
What Salesforce Shipped
New toys from the mothership
Look, I know every release has like 400 things in the notes and most of them are things nobody asked for. But there are a few in Spring '25 that caught my eye and I think are actually worth knowing about.
This one auto-generates follow-up emails and meeting summaries. I've been messing around with it and honestly it's pretty solid. Not perfect, but solid enough that when a prospect asks 'so what does AI actually do in Salesforce?' you now have a real, live thing to show them instead of hand-waving.
You can now see email opens and clicks right on the contact timeline without switching to another tool. Small thing, but I would've loved this when I was an AE. No more guessing if your prospect read your email or if it's sitting in the void.
Multi-step, multi-user automations are officially out of beta. I have no idea if you'll ever need to explain this on a call, but if a prospect starts describing some approval process that involves 4 departments and a guy named Greg who has to sign off on everything, this is the thing that fixes that.
If you're the type who reads full release notes, the Salesforce blog has everything. I am that type. I accept this about myself.
Stats That Slap
Numbers you can drop to sound smart
I don't know why I enjoy digging up CRM stats but here we are. These two felt useful enough to pass along.
of companies with 10+ employees use a CRM now. Which means the 9% who don't are basically running on vibes and spreadsheets. Those are your people.
average revenue increase in Year 1 after CRM adoption. I didn't make this up. It's from Salesforce's own report, but still, that's a real number you can use in a real conversation.
Know Thy Enemy: HubSpot CRM
What the other guys are up to
I run into HubSpot a lot on calls these days, so figured I'd share what I'm actually hearing from prospects who are comparing.
Free CRM forever, enterprise features at a fraction of the cost. And honestly? For really small teams, the free tier is legitimately good. Credit where it's due.
The cracks show up fast once you need custom objects, real reporting, or workflow automation beyond basic triggers. Their Enterprise tier, which is what you actually need to match Sales Cloud, isn't as cheap as people think.
Don't trash them. Seriously. It looks bad. Instead just ask: 'How many custom objects do you think you'll need?' and 'Walk me through your approval process.' Those two questions let the prospect figure out on their own where HubSpot runs out of road.
Uncle Kunkel's Pro Tip
Things I learned so you don't have to
Path Settings: Honestly Can't Believe More People Don't Use This
So I set up Path Settings for a client a couple weeks ago and their VP of Sales literally called it the best change they'd made to Salesforce. I screenshot that so fast. I don't even have a testimonials page but I'm saving these for when I make one someday.
Anyway, Path Settings lets you customize the key fields and guidance for each Opportunity stage, so reps have to fill in critical info before they can move a deal forward. Most orgs leave it at default and it drives me crazy because it takes like 20 minutes to set up and it solves the #1 complaint I hear about Salesforce.
Next time someone on a call says 'our reps just don't update Salesforce' (and they will, it's like the universal CRM complaint), you can say: 'There's a built-in feature called Path Settings that nudges reps to fill in data at each stage. No extra cost, takes 20 minutes to configure.' That's it. One sentence. You just made their biggest headache feel solvable.
From the Field
Patterns I'm seeing across deals
I'm on a lot of calls every week across different industries, and sometimes I notice the same things coming up over and over. Here's what's been on my radar lately.
This surprised me. A few years ago, every prospect wanted to talk about automating stuff. Lately? It's all about reporting. I've had like 4 calls this month where the biggest pain was 'I have data everywhere and I can't see anything useful.' If you're still opening with 'let me show you our automation engine,' it might be worth leading with dashboards and reports instead. Just something I noticed.
I'm seeing more VPs and Directors in their early 30s on these calls. They've used SaaS tools forever. They don't need the CRM 101 pitch; they want to see the product and judge it themselves. Might be worth skipping the intro slides and going straight to a live demo. Just a thought.
Not saying you need to overhaul your whole approach, but if some calls have felt off lately, maybe try leading with visibility and reporting instead of automation. Might land differently.
The Rookie Mistake
A gentle callout from someone who's made them all
Leading with Features Before You've Heard the Problem
This one is close to my heart because I used to do it all the time. You learn about some cool feature, you're excited about it, and 5 minutes into a call you're screen-sharing. The prospect nods, says 'that's cool,' and then disappears for 3 weeks. What happened is you showed them a solution to a problem they haven't told you about yet. It's like a doctor handing you medicine before asking what hurts. I still catch myself doing this sometimes, honestly.
Try spending the first 15 minutes just asking questions. 'What's your process today?' 'Where does it break?' 'What does that cost you?' Then when you DO show a feature, frame it as 'you mentioned [their words], let me show you how that gets solved.' Now you're not demoing Salesforce, you're solving their thing. Way different energy.
What I'd Do Differently
Hindsight from the Salesforce trenches
The Time I Over-Built a Demo and Lost the Deal
Early in my consulting career, I had this prospect in equipment services. Big deal, I was pumped. I spent 3 entire days building a custom demo: fake data, custom objects, branded dashboards, the whole thing. I walked in feeling like I was presenting at Dreamforce.
About 20 minutes in, the CFO said it was impressive, but he honestly couldn't tell if their people would actually use it day-to-day. It looked complicated. He was totally right. I'd built a demo that impressed ME, not one that helped THEM see themselves using it. Lost the deal to a competitor who showed a simple out-of-the-box setup and said 'we customize from here.' Still think about that one.
Show what Day 1 looks like, not Day 180. People buy when they can picture themselves in the tool tomorrow morning, not when they're impressed by your configuration skills. Save the fancy stuff for after they've signed. I wish someone had told me that earlier.
The Playbook
An objection I keep hearing, and what I'd say back
We tried Salesforce before and nobody used it.
I hear this one a LOT. And honestly it's usually true: they bought licenses, did minimal setup, nobody got trained, and then everyone blamed the platform. The good news is it's actually one of the easier objections to handle because the problem was almost never Salesforce itself.
Honestly? I believe you. That happens more than Salesforce would probably want me to say out loud. But here's the thing: in my experience, when adoption fails, it's almost always a setup and training problem, not a platform problem. That's actually good news for you because it means the fix is pretty straightforward. Can I ask, what did the implementation look like last time? Because that usually tells me everything.
Three things are happening here: (1) you're not getting defensive about the product, which builds trust immediately, (2) you're reframing the failure as fixable, and (3) you're positioning yourself as someone who gets it. Now they want to tell you the story. And once they're telling you the story, you're in a conversation, not a pitch.
The Win Column
Proof this stuff actually works
Can't tell you who this is, but I can tell you this actually happened and I'm still a little giddy about it.
Mortgage Lending (Mid-Market, ~40 loan officers)
Loan officers tracking follow-ups in spreadsheets. Average lead response time was 36 hours. Deals just falling through the cracks constantly. Management couldn't see what anyone was working on.
Set up Sales Cloud with automated lead assignment, auto-created follow-up tasks, and a Lightning page for each officer to see their own pipeline. Nothing custom-coded. All configuration.
Response time went from 36 hours to 4 hours. Pipeline visibility up 60%. They closed 22% more loans in Q1 compared to the previous quarter.
We helped a mortgage lender go from 36-hour response times to 4 hours with out-of-the-box Sales Cloud. No code, no huge consulting project, just smart setup. That's the kind of thing that's fun to mention on a call.
Homework (But Actually Fun)
One module worth your time
Einstein Copilot Basics
~25 minutes · Beginner
With Spring '25 putting Einstein Copilot front and center, you're going to get asked about it. This module gives you the vocabulary to explain it like a normal person instead of saying 'leveraging AI to drive transformational outcomes.' Please don't say that. Do this module instead.