Tracking leads, clients, and transactions can be difficult if you don’t have the right software. Correspondence can get lost along the pipeline, and opportunities can be lost because someone didn’t send a follow-up email to an interested customer.
Most businesses use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to track all of these. Still, with so much CRM software in the market, it can be overwhelming for a growing business to choose what’s suitable for their needs.
One of the most popular CRM software in the market is Salesforce. Companies like Walmart, Coca-Cola, Disney, Adidas, and many others use Salesforce for their business needs. What makes Salesforce popular is the ability to customize, depending on a company’s requirements. They train their employees with Salesforce certification courses which is considered one of the best professional course providers.
Salesforce doesn’t have a free plan, and the pricing is on a per-user basis (except for the Marketing Cloud) and could vary depending on your needs.
Salesforce History
Source: 1000logos.net
In 1999, Salesforce’s goal was to create a business software application through a model known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). SaaS is a software model where a provider creates an application and provides maintenance, and the public pays for it based on their usage.
In 2014, Salesforce announced the development of their Customer Success platform to work together with Salesforce’s services, including sales, marketing, analytics, community, and mobile apps.
Salesforce was a huge success, and the company has begun acquiring different apps and companies. A few notable ones include:
- Heroku, a cloud platform where developers build, run, and operate their applications, was acquired in 2011.
- Quip, a collaboration platform, was acquired in 2016.
- Datorama, a cloud-based, AI-powered marketing intelligence, and analytics platform was acquired in 2018.
- Tableau, an analytics platform, was acquired in 2019.
- Slack, a business communication software, was acquired in 2024.
Salesforce has continued to improve amidst the challenges presented. Their recent Slack acquisition marks their goal of being a remote-first company. They’ve also partnered with different companies to address their needs. One good example is their partnership with FedEx to focus on shipping and e-commerce.
Setting Up Salesforce
Source: theskyplanner.com
Before purchasing and setting up your own Salesforce, you need to have a clear goal in mind, and you’ve done enough research to consider using Salesforce.
For an end-user who’s not familiar with how CRMs work, Salesforce can be overwhelming due to the number of features it comes out of the box. Although one can customize it on their own, having a dedicated staff of Salesforce administrators can save a significant headache.
Administrators should address the company’s needs for using Salesforce, data cleaning, bug fixing, training company team members in using the platform, and keeping it up to date.
Before hiring an administrator, companies should check a candidate’s credentials if he or she has undergone a certification process. This ensures that he or she knows the basics of using Salesforce and is dedicated to helping the company further improve its Salesforce process.
According to Focusonforce, there’s an uptick in the demand for Salesforce professionals with salaries being offered higher. If a company is solely using Salesforce for their business, they will always demand a Salesforce professional to work with them.
Setting up workflows inside Salesforce should be a straightforward process. Companies that focus on sales should have a sales funnel to keep track of deals won or lost. While those that have customer service systems in place should keep track of issues and reflect them in their reporting.
Why Salesforce
Source: theverge.com
The versatility of Salesforce makes it popular to most companies, especially those in the Fortune 500. They can customize the platform to address the following:
1. Better Customer Relationships
Integrating customer service tools can help a company understand how they can improve on their services. For example, a company can send a follow-up email to their customers in the form of a survey.
Companies can integrate a form into the website to gather feedback from customers. Feedbacks can be collated by managers and sent to the respective departments.
2. Streamline Customer Communications
Salesforce offers the ability to connect various social media tools of a company, which can help streamline customer communication aside from emails, calls, and chats. These are all tracked inside a Salesforce case to help managers and other company members understand the customer’s needs.
3. Streamline Business Needs
The AppExchange inside Salesforce offers a lot of apps ranging from data reporting to customer retention. Businesses can integrate them depending on their needs.
4. Understand Customer Data Through Reporting And Analysis
Salesforce offers data reporting and analytics which can help businesses understand their customers. It’s helpful if the company wants to keep track of the trends and what their customer needs.
Ways Of Using Salesforce
Source: zdnet.com
Depending on the company, they can customize Salesforce to fit their needs. The AppExchange inside offers tons of applications that a company can use, ranging from data analytics to customer retention.
Users can master the use of Salesforce in the following ways:
1. Customize Views
Views inside Salesforce can be customized, depending on a user’s needs. Since Salesforce keeps customer interactions through a Salesforce case, users can have the option to work on the oldest cases first.
2. Use Email Templates
Salesforce provides an option to save emails inside the platform, saving a user time looking for the proper response to a customer or client. They can also save their email templates, reducing the need to copy and paste from their notes.
3. Set Reminders
Opportunities and deals sometimes get lost inside the pipeline. Setting up reminders can ensure that you are following up with clients or customers and closing the deal.
4. Streamline Reporting
Salesforce provides the capability to generate reports, which can be helpful in case a view doesn’t display the correct number of Salesforce cases. It ensures a case is not ignored or falls through the cracks.
Final Words
There’s no doubt that Salesforce is the most popular and most used CRM. It offers companies and users options to fit it based on their needs. But companies need to do research and better understand the platform before purchasing a Salesforce license since it’s an investment that could help them in the future.
