Sales Engagement (rebranded from High-Velocity Sales) is a Sales Cloud add-on that streamlines outbound prospecting workflows. The core feature is Cadences: structured sequences of activities (calls, emails, social touches, waits) that reps follow against a set of leads or contacts.
Capabilities:
- Cadence Builder — drag-and-drop visual builder where you define each step: Day 1 = call + voicemail, Day 2 = email template A, Day 3 = LinkedIn touch, Day 5 = email template B. Cadences can branch on response (engaged vs not).
- Work Queue — a unified queue for the rep showing every cadence step due today across all their target accounts. Reps work the queue top-down rather than juggling separate task lists.
- Email templates with merge fields — built into the cadence so each step uses the right template.
- Engagement tracking — opens, clicks, replies tracked back to the lead/contact record.
- Manager analytics — funnel reports on cadence performance, A/B test cadences against each other, see which reps work cadences fastest.
Setup as an admin:
- Enable Sales Engagement (requires the licence).
- Configure cadence-related permissions and the Sales Engagement permission set licence.
- Build cadences for each motion (e.g., "New SaaS Inbound", "Renewal Outbound", "Re-engagement").
- Wire enrollment: reps add prospects manually, or you build a flow that auto-enrolls leads matching criteria into the right cadence.
- Add the Sales Engagement Lightning components to relevant page layouts.
Differentiates from regular Salesforce because cadences are time-aware — they advance steps automatically and surface "do this today" tasks. They're closer to Outreach.io / SalesLoft than to plain Tasks.
Often a build-vs-buy moment: orgs that already use Outreach/SalesLoft might not adopt Sales Engagement; orgs that want it native to Salesforce do.