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Lee Nightingale

If you haven't looked closely at Salesforce in the last 12 months, you're looking at a different platform. The AI layer has moved from novelty to infrastructure — and for mid-market companies weighing CRM investment, that changes the ROI calculation in ways that deserve serious attention.
  |  Lee Nightingale posts
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Salesforce in 2026

Salesforce in 2026: What’s Changed, What Matters, and What to Do About It

If you haven’t looked closely at Salesforce in the last 12 months, you’re looking at a different platform. The AI layer has moved from novelty to infrastructure — and for mid-market companies weighing CRM investment, that changes the ROI calculation in ways that deserve serious attention.

The Platform Has Fundamentally Shifted

Salesforce has reorganised its entire product story around one idea: autonomous AI agents that do work, not just assist with it. The buzzword is Agentforce, and while it sounds like marketing, the underlying shift is real.

Three components define this new Salesforce:

  • Agentforce — the autonomous AI agent platform
  • Einstein Copilot — the AI assistant embedded across every app
  • Data Cloud (now Data 360) — the unified data layer that powers both

Understanding each one — and how they interact — is essential before making any investment decision.

Agentforce: AI That Acts, Not Just Advises

Agentforce is Salesforce’s answer to the question: “What if AI could handle entire workflows, not just surface suggestions?”

In practical terms, Agentforce deploys AI agents that can resolve customer service cases, qualify leads, schedule appointments, update records, and escalate to humans — all without manual intervention. As of Summer ’26, these agents can work together through Multi-Agent Orchestration, sharing context across channels so customers never repeat themselves.

The numbers back the momentum: Agentforce and Data 360 reached nearly $1.4 billion in annual recurring revenue by Q3 fiscal 2026, up 114% year-over-year — the fastest-growing product in Salesforce history.

What this means for mid-market companies:

The traditional argument against Salesforce automation was complexity — building it required developer resource and ongoing maintenance. Agentforce shifts that. The new Self-Service Help Agent deploys in six clicks or fewer, and the low-code agent builder means admins, not developers, can configure most use cases. For a business running 2–5 customer-facing teams, this is the most meaningful capability change in a decade.

The highest-ROI starting points are service and support. Automated case resolution, intelligent routing, and 24/7 self-service handle the volume that currently drains team capacity. Sales teams benefit next — Agentforce Momentum captures every call, email, and meeting and writes structured data back to Salesforce in real time, removing the manual logging that kills CRM adoption.

Einstein Copilot: The Assistant That’s Finally Useful

Einstein Copilot has been available since early 2024, but 2026 is when it became genuinely practical. It’s now embedded across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, drawing on your actual business data rather than generic language models.

Practical use cases that are live today:

  • Sales reps get AI-drafted emails, call summaries, close plan suggestions, and forecast notes — without leaving Salesforce
  • Service agents get Real-time knowledge article recommendations and next-best-action prompts during live cases
  • Admins get Usage dashboards that make it possible to measure and demonstrate AI ROI to leadership
  • Marketers get Generative content and segment suggestions grounded in unified customer profiles from Data Cloud

Copilot is included at no extra cost on higher-tier Salesforce editions. For lower tiers, Einstein add-ons range from roughly $50–$150 per user per month depending on edition and features required.

Data Cloud: The Foundation Everything Runs On

Data Cloud — rebranded as Data 360 in 2026 — is the component that makes the other two actually work.

The premise: most mid-market companies have customer data scattered across a CRM, an email platform, an ERP, an e-commerce system, and various spreadsheets. Data Cloud ingests all of it, unifies it into a single customer profile, and makes that profile available to every Salesforce tool in real time. Einstein personalises from it. Agentforce acts on it. Dashboards report from it.

Salesforce has made a meaningful pricing concession for existing customers: data ingested from Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud Engagement, and Commerce Cloud is now free. For mid-market companies already paying for these tools, this substantially reduces the barrier to entry.

Starter pricing for Data 360 begins at $60,000 per year (including 10M Data Services Credits and 5TB of storage), with a consumption-based credit model for more flexible scaling. It’s not cheap — but for companies currently stitching together data manually or through expensive third-party integrations, it often replaces cost rather than adding to it.

The ROI Calculation Has Changed

For years, mid-market CRM ROI rested on three pillars: better pipeline visibility, faster sales cycles, and reduced churn. Those still apply. But the 2026 Salesforce ROI equation has expanded:

  • Labour replacement. Agentforce agents handling tier-1 support, lead qualification, and appointment scheduling can reduce headcount pressure in ways that pay back licence costs within months for growing teams.
  • Data unification value. The cost of disconnected data — in duplicated effort, missed cross-sell signals, and inconsistent customer experiences — is usually invisible until you calculate it. Data Cloud makes it visible and addressable.
  • Adoption rate. Einstein Copilot reduces the friction that kills CRM adoption. When Salesforce does the data entry, writes the emails, and surfaces the next action, reps actually use it — which is worth more than any individual feature.

The caveat: these returns require proper implementation. Agentforce out of the box is powerful. Agentforce configured around your specific sales process, your products, and your customer journey is transformational. The difference is in how you set it up.

Quick-Reference Summary

Capability What It Does Mid-Market Relevance Key Consideration
Agentforce Autonomous AI agents for service, sales, and ops High — reduces manual workload across teams Needs configuration to deliver full value
Multi-Agent Orchestration Agents collaborate across channels with shared context High — single customer experience across touchpoints Summer ’26 feature; best for complex service workflows
Einstein Copilot AI assistant embedded across all Salesforce apps High — drives adoption, saves time on repetitive tasks Included in higher editions; add-on cost on lower tiers
Data Cloud / Data 360 Unifies customer data across all systems Medium-High — transforms personalisation and reporting $60K/year entry point; ingestion from core Salesforce apps now free
Agentforce Momentum Captures calls, emails, and meetings into CRM automatically High — solves the adoption problem for sales teams Included in Agentforce Sales; requires Sales Cloud
Tableau MCP Integration AI agents query analytics directly Medium — better reporting for data-driven teams Summer ’26; strongest value for teams already using Tableau

What to Do About It

The worst outcome is to spend the next six months waiting to see where this goes. The platform has matured. The use cases are real. And companies that move now build a capability advantage that compounds — better data, better-trained agents, better customer experiences.

The best starting point isn’t a full platform overhaul. It’s an honest assessment of where your current CRM is underperforming: Where are reps skipping data entry? Where is the service team overwhelmed by volume? Where are you losing deals because follow-up is inconsistent?

Those are the problems Agentforce and Einstein Copilot were built to solve — and they’re solvable faster in 2026 than they’ve ever been.

Ready to See What This Looks Like for Your Business?

We work with mid-market companies to assess their current Salesforce setup, identify the highest-ROI use cases for AI and automation, and build a clear implementation roadmap — without the enterprise complexity or the enterprise price tag.

Book a free discovery call: connectingbusiness.co.uk

No pressure, no pitch deck — just a straight conversation about what’s worth investing in and what isn’t.

Sources: Salesforce Summer 2026 Release · Agentforce Platform · Salesforce Q3 FY2026 Results · Data Cloud Pricing · Sales Cloud Review 2026

 

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What to consider when deciding on a CRM platform?

That’s a great question but one we don’t hear as much as we would like! All too often, we’ve seen companies jump in and find that the project fails.

Below are just a few of the fundamental reasons why:

  1. Technology is selected based on the hype or recommendation of others. Looking at someone else’s ‘all singing and dancing’ system is great to get a sense of what can be achieved but all too often, customers aren’t always made aware of just what it takes in terms of effort and cost to get there.  This leads to a ‘we don’t have budget to get it there’ after it has been purchased.  We call this the ‘Hype and Dive’…
  2. ‘Cheap’ or ‘Free for Life’ offerings seem attractive. This inevitably leads to either technical limitation (it just cannot do the more complex automation or business process flows), or hidden ‘paid for version upgrades’ where companies get stung with unforeseen upgrade costs just to add standard CRM features such as reporting and analytics.  We call this ‘Cheap Vs Value’…
  3. Consideration isn’t given to all business units within the company which leads to a disconnected and inefficient platform. We call this ‘Silos = Hi’s and Lo’s’…
  4. Hiring the right people. Often we hear of companies that do not engage with a CRM expert to assist with the project and opt to let an internal ‘they know a bit’ resource handle the project.  Does he/she/they have the necessary knowledge and experience to implement an end-to-end solution?  We call this ‘Hire or High Wire’…
  5. Integrations aren’t taken in to consideration. Ensuring your CRM can connect with other 3rdparty platforms such as Marketing Automation and Finance systems is essential in tracking the entire ‘Interest-to-Cash’ process.  ‘Integrate to Profit Take’…
  6. Data migration challenges. Can you export the data from your existing systems in a format that can be imported into the new platform?  Due diligence should be done on data quality and field mappings. ‘Left Hand meet Right Hand’…
  7. Do you need to interact with prospects, clients, partners and suppliers? If so, you may need to consider a platform that can support that with a ‘Partner Portal’ or ‘Community’ area.  Simply put ‘Collaborative Economy Support’…
  8. Automation of manual tasks can be critical when implementing a new platform. All too often, users are asked time and time again to ‘do more’, ‘enter more details’ into the system.  If you want to promote high user adoption, it is worth considering automating tasks where possible.  Most importantly, it is favourable to establish this before selecting a platform, as not all CRM’s offer this capability.
  9. The Marketing department own the CRM project. This does not work.  It doesn’t work if any one department works in isolation.  Marketing are great at generating interest and brand awareness, but aren’t always the best people to be dictating Sales Methodology, Finance processes, Support ticketing systems, etc. and how these functions work together. The project and decisions should be made by collaborating with every department centrally to achieve the greatest ROI and benefit.  ‘Let’s Get Together’…
  10. How will you know what success looks like? It is crucial to establish what the end goal is i.e. to support revenue growth, to improve productivity and then map out how you will analyse where you are against your objectives.  ‘Strategic Vision Vs Restricted Vision’…

So before committing both your time and budgets to a CRM project, we encourage you to put in the groundwork first!  It will definitely ensure a higher chance of success and will provide a Central Intelligence System connecting all areas of your business, helping you to generate more revenue!

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Connecting Business is Proud to Be Lead Sponsor of The Nightingale Foundation

We’re delighted to announce that Connecting Business is the lead sponsor of The Nightingale Foundation, a charity close to our founder Lee Nightingale’s heart, who co-founded the organisation to give children and underprivileged families a fair shot at opportunity.

Our Mission, Shared

As Lee puts it: “Our mission is to provide children and underprivileged families with access to sport and technology to help with their physical and mental well-being as well as their educational needs.”

That mission plays out in practical, everyday support:

  • Sport access — covering membership fees, coaching sessions and equipment so cost is never the reason a child misses out on a team.
  • Technology for learning — donating pre-loved laptops, mobile phones and TVs so young people can do their homework, stay connected, and simply switch off and relax like any other kid.
  • Community support — standing alongside local refugee charities and groups, extending the Foundation’s reach to some of the most vulnerable families in our community.

Why We’re Backing It

At Connecting Business, we believe technology and opportunity should go hand in hand — it’s the same principle that drives our CRM and business process work with clients every day. Supporting The Nightingale Foundation as lead sponsor is a natural extension of that belief: helping people connect to the tools and support they need to thrive.

As a Pledge 1% company, giving back has always been part of how we operate, and this partnership lets us put that commitment directly behind a cause with real, visible impact on families in our community.

Get Involved

The Nightingale Foundation is built on compassion, integrity and accountability — and it runs on the generosity of people willing to support it. If you’d like to donate, volunteer, or simply learn more about the work, visit thenightingalefoundation.org.uk.

We’re proud to stand behind this Foundation and look forward to sharing more of the impact it makes in the months ahead.

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The Quickest Way to Lose Customers – Treat them as Customers!

One thing that is baffling me with business models today, particularly in the technology space is… why would you spend 5x to 10x more marketing budget, sales efforts and compensation pay-outs on acquiring new customers, only to treat them worse once they become customers?

The probability of a sale from a brand new customer is only 5-20% whereas the probability of a sale from an existing customer is between 60-70%. In fact, 80% of your future profits will most likely come from 20% of your existing customers.

I tell you why, greed! Executives, shareholders and the board, demand high growth through net new business to boost the share price and increase their own personal wealth.

What then happens is so common…

Customers then see their ‘introductory offer’ removed, with prices doubling, tripling or more when they come to renew. But, the customers tend to stay where they are because of the path of least disruption. They simply can’t be bothered to change again, don’t have time to sort it out, or get lost in automated phone systems trying to cancel or get told ‘Sorry you are locked into a contract’.

The providers prey on this knowing they are likely to keep some and lose some through this process and seem ‘OK’ with losing customers not due to the level or service or quality of their product, but because the customer felt like they were treated second rate compared to new customers.

A current customer view could be… “As a buyer of your product or service, I have made a conscious decision to place my business and thus hard earned money, with your company and expect to be treated in a way that see’s your company respecting that fact. It’s not too much to ask… is it?”

Essentially, the only way to ‘win’ as a consumer/purchaser of said products or services, is to keep switching providers to get their introductory offers. Which is a total pain and an unnecessary process.

Notwithstanding the fact that I understand companies want to grow their businesses, increase share prices and launch new products, etc. My humble opinion is that the stock market should reflect stability in a company, should reward continuous moderate growth coupled with high customer retention rates, rather than over inflated, fast growth, yo-yo balance sheet, here today gone tomorrow companies.

If providers changed attitudes and made customer loyalty the highest priority, they would not only see customer retention rates stabilise, most likely increase, but new business acquisition would start to happen organically through customer referrals with customers sharing their great experience with their personal and business network, and thus you wouldn’t need to spend so much on new customer acquisition

Subsequent marketing cost savings could be passed on to your existing customers by not increasing their prices quite so much and so frequently!

It should be more difficult to become ‘part of the club’ for new customers, seeing existing ‘members’ get the most benefit!

Here at Connecting Business, we prefer to value our present and new customers alike, and in doing so, regularly receive comments such as:

“Thank you again for assisting us in EVERYTHING. Great support. World class!”
(Great Place To Work Norway)

Stats sources:

Forbes – https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymyler/2016/06/08/acquiring-new-customers-is-important-but-retaining-them-accelerates-profitable-growth/#662a09d96671

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-cost-customer-acquisition-vs-retention-ian-kingwill

 

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Do you generate Revenue or Profit?

How do you know if you are profitable if you are not tracking and measuring your success accurately?

Heating, lighting, staffing, rent, supplier costs, transport, refunds, time spent on fulfilling orders, meetings, calls, emails, all play a part eroding your profit!

Starting off a business in the right way will enable you to make decisions based on facts and pivot your business to where it has the most chance of success. Operating blind on a day-to-day basis just leaves yourself open to the probability that you won’t make much or any money out of what it is you thought was a great idea. The chances are, that it still may well be a great idea, but you didn’t give yourself the best possible chance to succeed.

I’m not saying you must have a CRM, I’m saying you MUST. GDPR laws state that you must have a system in place to securely store customer data, track who has opted in to receiving communications from you and could ‘forget’ a customer by removing them from your database. So at the very least, you need to be able to comply with those requirements.

So why not put something in place to fulfil those obligations? Its highly likely that this same tool can also be used to manage your business, automate processes, provide vital analytics and ultimately, boost sales, now you will have a powerful system to get you business. And it really doesn’t need to be the biggest, best, most expensive system, just one that fits your business.

If you have intentions of growing your business to a point where you are looking for investment or indeed to sell the company, then anyone who is looking to invest / buy will, from the very outset, be asking you for essential metrics to get a feel for the business.

 

  • What is your customer retention rate?
  • What is your average order value?
    • By Industry
    • By company size
    • By Lead Source
  • What is your MRR / ARR (monthly recurring revenue / annual recurring revenue)?
  • What is your average sales cycle?
  • What is the size of your Pipeline?
  • What is the size of your Forecast for the next 1, 2, 3 years?
  • Who are your most successful sales people?
    • Why?
    • What is it they are doing different?
    • How many activities per week / month are they doing?
  • Who are your least successful sales people?
    • Why?
    • What are they not doing?
  • What are your conversion rates from Lead to Opportunity and from Opportunity to Sale?
  • What is your profitability?
    • By deal size
    • By company size
    • By Product
    • By Sales person
    • Who is discounting the most?
  • The list is almost endless.

 

Revenue: £100
– Cost of Goods Sold: £50
= Gross Profit: £50
– Operating Expenses: £30
= Operating Profit: £20
– Taxes: £5
Net Profit: $15

 

So, if I were to ask you all of the above questions, today, right now, how many of you would be able to answer even half of those questions? How long would it take to gather that data? Would you be frantically rushing around asking your team, pulling spreadsheets together, asking your accountant? Even if you aren’t looking for investment or a sale, it’s just good practice to keep your finger on the pulse.

Sound familiar?

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Let’s Get Together and Make CRM Work

Who should be involved in Customer Relationship Management “CRM“. Sales? Marketing? Finance? Delivery? Support? Research? The best answer we find is….. ALL OF THEM!

It’s a common misconception that CRM is a technology in isolation and only designed for Sales. We completely disagree with this notion, however, would agree that it is commonly configured to only support the Sales process. We believe CRM can not only support all business units, but can enhance them through the centralisation and sharing of data and it is best used to advantage all.

When considering your CRM strategy, encompassing people, process and technology, it is strongly advisable to bring all parties to the table and work collaboratively on the ‘now’ and the ‘future’. Typically, we find inefficiencies happening across the individual business units and a lack of holistic insight that results in either dissatisfied or lost clients.

Fundamentally, customers are becoming more demanding in the way they are interacted with. The expectation is that we must have all their information to hand, purchases, emails, support tickets, etc. How often have you called a provider and heard ‘I’m sorry, I don’t see that on my system’, or ‘I don’t have access to that data’. It’s very frustrating!

From an internal perspective, Business Analytics is always a challenge. It’s a challenge because data is usually stored in multiple places such as Outlook, Excel or non-integrated 3rd party platforms. Management struggle to get the holistic view across the business allowing them to make strategic decisions.

Usually, this involves a ‘down the line’ report request i.e. From the top down, each manager requests the data they need from their direct reports in order to collate the information at the top. This results in productivity loss while they are pulled away from their daily role. It is highly likely that these issues can be addressed by bringing all business units together in one platform, or at the very least, connecting your platforms.
At Connecting Business, this is what we do, it’s at our core, it’s what we are passionate about. Bringing your business together, improving productivity, supporting revenue growth and profitability, ultimately, maximising ROI and CRM success!

Connect your Business with ours:
Twitter @connectingbness
FaceBook @connectingbusinesslimited
Phone 0844 2720071

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Introducing ‘Connecting Business’.

Welcome to ‘Connecting Business’. We are excited to relaunch our company with a new name and branding (formerly Lee Nightingale Limited).

We provide businesses with Insight, Clarity and Knowledge to obtain Optimum Business Performance! Harness your data to not just sell, but more importantly, establish relationships and provide the best customer service possible.

Connecting Business helps it’s clients to achieve this through our extensive knowledge of best practices and industry experience, underpinned by the leading CRM platform… the Salesforce SalesCloud, MarketingCloud and ServiceCloud.

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