21 Expert Tips to Get the Most Out of Salesforce

Want to improve your organization’s performance? Well, for that, you must make the most out of Salesforce. 

But what is Salesforce? It is a powerful customer relationship management tool that can keep track of the organization’s customer contact and sales. So, you have a better understanding of the analytics and keep the customers happy. Salesforce is an extremely powerful tool. It is used by more than 150,000 customers for running their business. 

However, to make the most out of it, you need to know the best practices. With these tips, you can stay at the top of Salesforce’s recent features and updates. 

Now, let’s check them out. 

1. Use the Feature Admin ‘Login As’

Don’t take the admin ‘Login as’ feature very lightly. The feature will allow you to log in as the user. 

Source: Pixy

For instance, if you are the admin and there is a ‘sales user’ in the system who has encountered some issue, you might not be able to reproduce the same problem since you have all permissions available to you. If you log in as the user, you can check things from their perspective. This can help in solving many problems that users experience. 

2. Stay Updated with the Salesforce’s New Features

Marc Benioff, Salesforce Co-founder- “You need to get to the future ahead of your customers and be ready to greet them when they arrive.”

 

Salesforce is updated every three months to offer an improved experience. You might be a Salesforce expert, but if you don’t refresh your knowledge and stay updated, you will soon find yourself in an unknown world. Often, there are new add-ons or feature update that can make your work easier. 

3. Look For The Right Tools 

Sure, Salesforce comes with many unique functionalities, but one of the primary benefits of using the CRM is the plugins and add-ons offered on Salesforce AppExchange. In case you come across a tool that’s ideal for the job role, it will make your work much easier. 

Source: Well Done By

Some of the popular Salesforce tools that you will come across are, 

• Dataloader.io
• Process Builder
• Clayton
• ORGanizer

So, look for the best add-ons or plugins for your business and implement them. 

4. Work for Continuous Improvement

Just as your business, Salesforce also evolves. Technologies keep evolving with time, and it is easier to lose track. So, make sure you set up periodic assessments for examining and aligning the applications with the requirements of your business.  If you keep the application updated, it will reduce the maintenance cost. 

5. Follow Influencers and Bloggers 

The salesforce ecosystem also consists of influencers and bloggers. Often, they can influence a new professional’s learning journey. Often a fellow user can explain things better and in a relatable way. 

Following a blogger or an influencer will help you get a better insight into things, such as Salesforce software reseller solutions, or get support for the technical problems you are facing. 

6. Notify Team Members About Important Events

With Salesforce, you can notify the team players about important events. To set up an automatic notification alert, you just must go over to the Setup screen and check the box for Email Alerts. 

Source: Egafutura

You can choose one of the different email templates and mention the recipient. Thereafter, you must use Workflow Process Builder for creating customized action activating the email alert. Whenever that even takes place, the nominated recipients are going to receive an email alert. 

7. Use Salesforce for Project Management

Salesforce is a useful tool when it comes to organizing customer contacts, project revenues, or analyzing performance.  But the tool can do a lot more than just this. It can be used for cross-project teamwork or managing project timelines. 

Salesforce feature Salesforce Chatter is an internal communication framework is an internal social network with the company. Use this to share data or files and communicate. With this, you can also manage different projects. If Chatter is not enough for you, install other tracking apps from Salesforce that will ensure more robust project management. 

8. Use Summary Report Formulas

Many users are not aware of this, but Salesforce allows you to insert summary formulas into your Salesforce reports. The formulas calculate the summaries included in the report.

For instance, you can use formulas, which calculate the conversion rate of your business for a specific period and reckon the percentage of total business every sales representative is bringing in. Thus, you have a better insight into lead conversion. 

9. Install the Salesforce Search Engine in Chrome

Add Salesforce search engine within Chrome. It ensures you can search for details within Salesforce in no time using the search/address bar in Chrome. In Chrome, look for the ‘Manage Search Engines’ option under ‘Settings.’ Add Salesforce and use simple keywords, such as ‘sf’ or ‘sale.’ 

For the URL, go over to ‘Salesforce Classic View’ and open the search box. Copy the URL of the page that opens and paste it in the ‘Add Search Engine Box’. Replace the searched term with % and click on ‘Save.’ 

While using Chrome for your search, use the chosen Salesforce keyword, add space, and include the search term. This will give you the results within Salesforce. 

10. Create Automated Reports

Rather than creating similar reports every month, use Salesforce to generate automatic reports and deliver them within a specific time. Simply create the report from the ‘Report tab’ and then choose ‘Run Report’ and click on ‘Schedule Future Runs’. You can choose the recipients and how often you would like to run a certain report. 

11. Integrate Salesforce with the Customer Service Platform

To retain true customers, organizations need to use customer service. However, research shows many businesses fail at it. It is mainly due to a disconnect or gap between sales and customer service. At times, the CRM report file isn’t delivered to the people who require it. Furthermore, when a problem arises, account managers and representatives struggle with it.  

With CRM, you can retain customers by lengthening the natural pipeline. You must include new steps in the process that will help customers after sales with special attention. 

12. Use Tasks, Activities, and Emails

Use tasks, activities, and emails or miss out on the core functionality of a robust CRM system. These three things require you to insert some additional data into Salesforce that people might call ‘Admin’. However, it is worth it. 

• Activities give you access to the log interactions which have taken place between you and your customers, the records of crucial meetings, and comments about the reason you interacted with the client.
• When it comes to tasks, you can create an action that you can follow up with. Set a date along with a reminder and brief description.
• You can send emails to your clients directly from Salesforce. This means you can take advantage of your own Salesforce time-saving features, such as email templates. Also, the email you are sending will be saved to Salesforce automatically. This saves you the time of logging the activity. 

13. Tap into Mobile Access

It might be surprising to some, but your sales team is more effective when they are given a choice to work away from the office. 

Source: Salesforce

How to integrate that? Well, with CRM’s mobile app, Salesforce1. It is an app that lets your sales team have access to Salesforce anytime, anywhere. 

If your team is not acquainted with it, take the help of a dedicated Salesforce Administrator. It will get your team up to speed in no time. When your sales team has access to Salesforce through their mobile device, they will have access to crucial information when they need it.

In fact, they can also log visits and phoned, update customer cases, forward important content to customers, and process orders even when they are not in the office. 

14. Save Customer Data in One Place Using Integrations

Back in the time, marketing and sales teams worked in the data storehouse. However, now they use Integrations. So, integration with customer support and service streamlines the customer communication touchpoints. It is now possible to record or capture interactions in your CRM that you had with the customer using the software. 

For instance, if your customer support team uses Freshdesk and your sales team uses Salesforce, you can integrate the former into the latter. It creates a transparent data funnel. Using this, your sales, customer service, and marketing team will have a complete view of every customer. 

15. Learn About the Core Object Architecture

Salesforce comes with a traditional object architecture that sales businesses can take advantage of.  This includes Accounts, Leads, Contacts, and Opportunities.

When a business uses an approved Salesforce sales process, customers with loosened interests or unknown fit in your product or service will be initiated as records under the Lead object. Since the Lead is qualified, it is changed to a Contact related to any Account, and ultimately an opportunity. 

16. Expand Data Validation

Several organizations are faced with the problem of data quality if many people within the company are using Salesforce for different purposes. Truth be told, many companies tend to attach validation rules in Salesforce for enhancing data quality.

Source: Wdcigroup

Thus, they can make sure that users are entering the right data at the right time and place.  Nevertheless, if you add these validations, it is better to enforce the data quality. Avoid applying this rule to every existing data in the system unless someone wants to fix the historical data. As you add validation on data collection, block different processes from updating themselves. This will lead to lesser errors. 

17. Include Target Tracking in the Solution

For the sales department, targets are the key.  You will hardly find any salesperson who doesn’t measure their performance against the target every quarter or month. But often, target and sales performance are tracked out of salesforce. This can reduce the effectiveness of salesforce to the managers and sales employees. 

So, the best way to go about it is to integrate target tracking directly into the system. Nevertheless, it might not be as easy as it looks. 

For instance, in Salesforce, several businesses find it difficult to use the Forecast feature. On the other hand, if your base targets on the scheduled revenue, your target tracking system must be more sophisticated. 

Regardless of the method you adopt, the target system must compare future prospective, while taking the historical performance into account. In simple words, the target system should compare the old pipeline with the historical pipeline for the next quarter or month. 

18. Use Bulk Update Record with List View

When it comes to sales, you often must update your small set of records to the same value. Going over to the section and updating each record can be time-consuming. But with Salesforce, you will be able to do it very easily. 

Use the list view to edit your records. Also, the list view should be filtered to only the records you would like to edit and update. 

If your organization uses record types, make sure that only the record type is available in the list view by enlisting a filter. Also, check that the ‘Inline Editing’ and ‘Enhanced Lists’ are enabled in the User Interface tab. Tick the boxes to tell Salesforce the records you would like to mass edit and then double-check the field you would like to mass edit. 

19. Sustain Your Leads

In case your lead is currently unable to buy your product or services, sales representatives should know how to nurture leads as it can be a complicated task. Usually, lead nurturing is more extensive than just calling every lead or sending them an email to verify if they will ultimately make the purchase. 

Source: Fexle

To sustain the leads, a sales representative must create meaningful conversations simply by sending industry research, tips, and other useful content that will solve the everyday problems of the lead and showcase your business as a reliable partner. In case you must improve the process, just use the drip drives of Salesforce Pardot’s that help with different lead nurturing tasks. 

20. Migrate Salesforce Data to and from the CRM Platform

At times, you must transfer data from one Salesforce environment to the other from a single system of the Salesforce. Nevertheless, this can lead to a problem of data being linked to one another. For example, the contacts are connected to the accounts, and it is moved to Salesforce, and thereafter, you must maintain the relationship.

The issue is each contact is connected to a specific account using a unique interface or ID from the system source. Thus, when the accounts are added to Salesforce, each of them will have a new ID.

Take a list of the added accounts with their ID, map up a new ID for every contact. But this means you must spend a lot of time and energy, especially when there is ample data to be transferred. 

So, an easy way is to attach the temporary file called Old ID in Salesforce. It will become an external ID that pushes the new reference from the last system. As a result, you will be able to use an external ID field to ensure every contact is communicated accurately. When you are done transferring data, remove the field. 

21. Consult Before Buying

Often, organizations only reach out to Salesforce consulting services after they have already bought Salesforce. These organizations believe that they won’t have to hire a Salesforce Consulting Service unless they start to use Salesforce. Nevertheless, the best time to interact with Salesforce Consultant is before investing in it. Since it is a software-as-a-service, you start to pay a fee as soon as you buy it. 

Source: Google

It is essential and recommended. Many organizations tend to over-purchase in the beginning, thinking that they are going to incorporate various aspects of Salesforce. Thus, you need to come up with a priority list. Moreover, you must do this before you buy Salesforce.

In case you fail to map work processes and data requirements against the software, setting up the application is one of the biggest mistakes you can commit while integrating Salesforce. If you hire the right Salesforce Consultant, you will get assistance with Salesforce products and their abilities. 

By leveraging Salesforce consultants before purchasing, businesses will be able to save on subscription fees. In the team time, Salesforce experts can tell you when you should implement your collected data. If your data is ready and the processes are mapped, you can easily assess the products you require and those you don’t require. 

Bottom Line

Use these tips to make the most out of salesforce. If you are finding it difficult to handle Salesforce all by yourself, reach out to Platinum Partner. With Platinum Partner, you can build solid Salesforce software reseller solutions. The company can help you build a robust recurring revenue stream, find new projects, and find new customers as you focus on growing and delivering to your target customers.