Many sales people waste time and energy trying to find the answers they need to move a deal along. According to Massood Zarrabian, CEO for OutStart, these sales people lose to a competitor because the prospect doesn't feel they are responsive - or competent.

To meet this challenge, sales people can now use the integration of SellingEdge.com and Salesforce CRM. They first have to become salesforce.com customers and are then able to click on the SellingEdge.com portal within Salesforce CRM. There they can ask questions of the system and are provided with relevant knowledge, just like from an expert.

If the sales executive requires additional information, SellingEdge.com automatically identifies the relevant experts and requests a response. Experts receive and can respond to the request via email, and the sales executives receive answers via email as well as within SellingEdge.com. OutStart's solution also automatically tags and stores all answers for future use.

"SellingEdge.com connects sales people to all the knowledge they need. Using social software, integrated with collaboration and communication technologies, SellingEdge.com helps sales people find and capture expertise or quickly find an expert who can respond to a query for help", remarked Zarrabian. SellingEdge.com provides links between pieces of information rather than creating silos of know-how that are not tied together, like the Web 2.0 tools Wikis, blogs, and online communities.

"Outstart's SellingEdge.com on the Force.com AppExchange also gives customers the opportunity to make a one-time contribution of expertise that can be reused hundreds, or thousands, of times", said Clarence So, chief marketing officer, salesforce.com