Refresh, the mobile tool for making you smarter at meetings, is now positioning itself to help sales teams be smarter about their clients and potential clients. To do that, the company has created a new product for Salesforce’s AppExchange that will allow users to access detailed information about the people in their professional network.
Ever since it launched in April, Refresh has been one of my favorite tools for learning more about people I am scheduled to meet with. Especially when I am having coffee with someone for the first time, the app enables me to quickly get up to speed on their background without them having to tell me.
It does that by surfacing publicly available information from a wide range of sources, including social networks like Twitter and professional networks like LinkedIn, as well as a user’s contacts and email, to provide actionable insights about people booked on my calendar.
Frequently that also results in learning about common professional connections or things we have in common — like where we both grew up, for example — that helps result in more interesting conversations. And, well, having a record of our interactions by email or previous meetings is just plain invaluable.
So I can imagine how useful the app would be in a relationship-driven business like sales, where keeping tabs on a potential customer, being able to see your previous communication with them, and finding common connections to get referrals would be a huge advantage.
It’s no surprise then that Refresh is taking all of those insights and making them available where many salespeople do their work — that is, within Salesforce. With a new product available on the Salesforce AppExchange, customers will be able to integrate Refresh’s data on top of their Salesforce dashboard.

The Salesforce app is available in part thanks to the web view Refresh rolled out recently, but it has a few advantages. For one thing, users on Salesforce will be able to save Refresh data back into their Salesforce records as notes, share information with their colleagues via Salesforce Chatter, or email insights to any contacts outside Salesforce. The service also works with the Salesforce mobile app.
For now, a bio with Refresh information appears as a widget in the Salesforce dashboard when customers add it from the AppExchange, and more detailed info can be accessed as a sort of pop-out that appears above the dashboard when clicked. In the future, however, Refresh will work to bring more of that information directly into Salesforce. Automatically adding a record of previous emails, for instance, could be helpful in moving future conversations forward.
For Refresh, the availability of the Salesforce app also provides the company with a revenue stream. While its mobile dossier app will remain free, Salesforce customers will pay $20 per user per month to access its data in their dashboard.
Refresh has raised $10 million in funding from investors that include Redpoint Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Foundation Capital.
