Claude Cowork Sales Plugin: A Complete Tutorial for Sales Teams

What's new in sales plugin 2.0

• From 9 to 36 skills. New skills cover deal reviews, close plans, stakeholder maps, renewals, customer health, lead routing, CRM updates, meeting booking, inbox sweeps, and team pipeline views.
• Works across CRMs and email providers. Skills read your CRM's own stages and fields instead of assuming one vendor, and work the same on Gmail or Outlook, Slack or Teams.
• Uses uploaded files when nothing is connected. A pipeline export, a transcript, or an account list is enough to start.
• Acts when you ask. Skills can update CRM records, create or send email, post to chat, and book meetings within each connector's permissions. Changes a skill proposes on its own are shown to you first, with the evidence.
• Treats outside content as information. Emails, transcripts, and documents are never followed as instructions; if one asks for an action, you see it before anything happens.
• Old names still work. Skills such as call-prep, account-research, and forecast keep their names. Note that forecast now writes a commit, best-case, and pipeline narrative instead of best, likely, and worst scenarios.

Install the sales plugin

In Claude, open Customize → Plugins, search for Sales in the default Anthropic marketplace, and click Install. Plugins require a paid plan. In Claude Code, you can install the same sales plugin from the terminal:

claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
claude plugin install sales@knowledge-work-plugins

Then run /sales:setup. It shows what is connected, what each tool unlocks, learns how you write from past emails, and renders a starter dashboard. For more on how plugins work, see our Cowork plugins directory.

Connect your CRM and tools

Every skill works with nothing connected, but results improve sharply once your tools are linked. The sales plugin supports these categories:

Salesforce and Microsoft 365 are included, but your organization's admin must enable each in Claude first; for Salesforce that includes setting up your org's Salesforce app. Microsoft 365 setup is covered in our Microsoft 365 integration guide, and general connector setup in the connectors guide.

Salesforce in Claude (beta): the official Salesforce plugin

On September 15, 2026, Anthropic released Salesforce in Claude in beta, a plugin built with Salesforce that brings a seller's accounts, opportunities, and pipeline into Claude under their existing Salesforce permissions. It ships with 37 sales skills for daily account-executive work, such as account research, call prep, pipeline review, and CRM updates. It followed Claudeforce, the expanded Salesforce and Anthropic partnership announced on August 26, 2026.

• Who can join: organizations on any paid Claude plan that Salesforce approves through its beta sign-up. You need the latest Sales Cloud enterprise edition.
• Where it works: chat and Claude Cowork, on web and desktop.
• Permissions: Claude sees only what the seller can already see in Salesforce.

The two plugins complement each other. The sales plugin is CRM-agnostic and covers the full selling workflow, while Salesforce in Claude goes deeper on Salesforce data. Teams on Salesforce can run both, using the sales plugin's prospecting and call-prep skills with Salesforce in Claude handling record lookups and updates.

The skills to learn first

Skills run when your request matches, or by name with the /sales: prefix. With 36 to choose from, start with the ones that map to your week.

Your day

Accounts and deals

Pipeline and forecast

A day with the sales plugin

Here is how an account executive might use Cowork across a normal day.

1. 8:30, briefing. A scheduled daily-briefing is waiting: four meetings, two deals closing this month, and a customer email that needs a reply before noon.
2. 9:00, call prep. Ask “Prep me for my 10 a.m. with Acme.” call-prep pulls attendees from the calendar, recent emails, the last call transcript, and the opportunity stage, then suggests discovery questions.
3. 11:00, after the call. Run /sales:call-summary and name the call. You get a follow-up email draft, a summary for the team channel, and proposed CRM updates. Nothing is sent or written until you approve.
4. 14:00, a stuck deal. “What would it take to move Globex to proposal?” deal-advance-gap lists missing steps with owners and dates, and stakeholder-map shows the economic buyer hasn't been engaged.
5. 16:00, prospecting. account-research on three target accounts, then draft-outreach for a short, personalized sequence.
6. 17:30, close out. end-of-day confirms calls are logged and lists tomorrow's top three.

Scheduling the briefing and a weekly deal-signals digest with Cowork scheduled tasks turns the plugin from something you remember to use into something that shows up for you. Pair it with the productivity plugin for everything that isn't a deal.

For sales leaders

Managers get their own set of skills. team-pipeline shows the whole team's pipeline by rep and stage with at-risk deals. rep-context preps a one-to-one with a rep's pipeline and recent activity. win-loss-review finds patterns in recently closed deals: where deals are lost, common objections, and what wins. Before a forecast call, forecast writes the commit and best-case story with what changed and where the risk is, from live CRM data or an uploaded export.

Admin settings and safe automation

Connector permissions control what the sales plugin can do. Each connector can allow, ask, or block each of its tools, and the skills never go beyond those settings. If a write tool is blocked, the skill still works and hands the rep a checklist to apply by hand.

Anthropic recommends one rule for scheduled runs: set send, post, and write tools to ask, so a morning briefing or weekly digest never sends email, posts to chat, or changes the CRM without a person approving it. That keeps automation useful without letting a misread email trigger an action. Our enterprise deployment guide covers organization-wide settings.

Customize the plugin for your sales process

The plugin reads your CRM's own stages, so it adapts without configuration, but a little customization goes a long way:

• Add your qualification framework, ideal customer profile, and deal stages definitions to the skills so reviews use your language.
• Include your pricing rules and discount approval limits, so drafts never promise what reps can't give.
• Drop in your best talk tracks and battlecards for handle-objection and competitive-intelligence.
• Put personal preferences, like email tone and signature, in your global instructions. Our Customize guide explains where each rule belongs.

What the sales plugin won't do

It helps to set expectations early, so reps trust the sales plugin for the right jobs. It will not invent numbers for a customer deck; if the data isn't in your CRM or files, it says so. It will not act on instructions hidden inside an email or transcript, because outside content is treated as information only. It cannot see tools you haven't connected, so a forecast without CRM access is only as good as the export you upload. And it does not replace judgment on pricing, legal terms, or relationships; it prepares the material so you spend your time on those decisions.

Rolling the sales plugin out to a team

1. Start with three to five reps who already take good notes and keep the CRM current; the sales plugin works best with clean data.
2. Connect the CRM and calendar first, then email, then the call recorder. Each connector adds context but also permissions to review.
3. Agree on which write actions stay on ask, such as sending email and changing opportunity amounts.
4. Customize the plugin with your stages, qualification framework, and approved messaging, then publish it to your organization's marketplace so everyone gets the same version.
5. After two weeks, compare prep time, follow-up speed, and CRM completeness against the rest of the team before expanding.

A shared sales plugin also improves consistency. When every rep's call summaries and deal reviews follow the same structure, managers can compare deals fairly and coach from the same evidence.

Tips for better results

• Name the account and meeting. “Prep for Acme, Thursday 10 a.m.” beats “prep my next call.”
• Review CRM changes. Proposed updates come with a before and after; read them, especially amounts and close dates.
• Use uploads to start fast. No CRM connector yet? Export your pipeline to a spreadsheet and ask for a pipeline-review.
• Keep assets honest. create-an-asset builds decks and one-pagers from your account data with no invented numbers; still check every figure before a customer sees it. For a fully designed deck, hand the content to Claude Design.
• Measure the time. Track how long call prep and follow-up took before and after. Our ROI calculator helps make the case.

Frequently asked questions