Salesforce stands out as the ideal 💡 option for businesses when it comes down to managing customer relationships, hoping to improve their operations, and drive growth. As most businesses are investing in it to facilitate smooth workflow, increase agents’ efficiency, and automate time-consuming tasks.
But don’t get too excited – Salesforce can become time-consuming ⌛ if not used properly. Sometimes users do not fully utilize Salesforce features, which leads to agents’ overworking and a decrease in productivity. 📉
👉Don’t worry, though. In this blog, you will learn what Salesforce actually is, some of its key benefits, and some pro tips to boost your productivity using Salesforce.
Without further delay, Let’s dive in!
🔑KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform that empowers businesses to manage sales, marketing, and customer support operations
- Businesses can use Salesforce to effectively capture leads, manage contacts, manage accounts, and for reporting & analytics.
- Salesforce offers numerous benefits including, streamlined workflows, improved customer experience, scalability & flexibility, and increased sales and revenue.
- The best way to boost productivity through Salesforce is by automating workflows, exploring inbox features, utilizing Einstein search, personalizing dashboards, inspecting pipelines, using SUMO scheduler, embracing inline editing, using Salesforce trailhead, increasing collaborating with chatter, and customizing global action.
- You can enhance your call productivity with Salesforce and KrispCall by allowing agents to access customer data in real-time during calls, using advanced analytics to provide insights into call patterns and customer behaviors, and using features like automated call logging and reporting features to streamline administrative tasks.
- Using Salesforce, you can tailor your dashboard to display the most relevant information for your workflow, enabling quick access to crucial data without unnecessary clicks.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is one of the leading cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. It empowers businesses to manage sales, marketing, and customer support operations efficiently and provides a centralized platform for storing and managing customer data.
For instance, imagine a sales rep working at a company. Using Salesforce, they can effortlessly track leads, manage pipelines, and obviously foster relationships with customers. Along with that, Salesforce keeps all the customer data in a centralized form, which means it can be accessible to any agent.
Moreover, sales reps can log calls, send emails, schedule meetings, and even update deals – all within the Salesforce platform. Salesforce is more than just a CRM; it offers an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for marketing automation, finance, human resource management, and other purposes. Moreover, it meets the needs of businesses of all sizes.
Here’s an overview of how businesses can use Salesforce:
- Lead management: Using Salesforce, you can effortlessly capture and qualify potential leads. In addition, you can also track progress through the sales funnel and prioritize high-potential opportunities.
- Account management: In Salesforce, accounts represent companies or individual clients that your business interacts with. Salesforce offers a comprehensive set of features to manage accounts effectively. You can create new accounts to store information about new companies or individual clients and edit existing accounts to update information.
- Contact management: Seamlessly stores and manages customer information, which includes contact details, communication channel preferences, and even past interactions.
- Reporting & analytics: Provides insightful reports and uses dashboards to track KPIs, identify new trends & patterns, and make informed decisions.
What are the benefits of integrating Salesforce with other business applications?
Integrating Salesforce with other business applications offers numerous benefits. Here are some of them:
Streamlined Processes and Improved Efficiency
There’s no more frustrating situation than agents manually entering data into multiple platforms. However, Salesforce integration allows businesses to streamline processes and improve efficiency by automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
For instance, setting up email notifications to alert sales representatives when a new lead is assigned to them or automatically updating customer records based on certain actions.
Automating workflows through Salesforce integration not only saves time and effort but also reduces the risk of errors linked to manual data entry and repetitive tasks. Aside from that, businesses can benefit from automation by enhancing productivity, improving accuracy, and freeing up agents for larger strategic initiatives.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Around 86 percent of customers leave a brand after having a poor customer service experience. But you don’t have to worry about it with Salesforce integration. Integrating Salesforce with other business applications can significantly enhance customer experience by offering a 360-degree view of the customer.
For instance, agents can view all the customer information, including past interactions and support tickets, within the Salesforce dashboard during a call. With customer’s information in hand, they can tailor their interactions based on customers’ needs and preferences, ultimately enhancing customer experience.
Increased Sales and Revenue
The Salesforce integration with other business tools helps you increase your overall sales revenue with automated workflow and employee productivity. Also, it fosters sales collaboration by enabling teams to share opportunities and track progress.
For example, Salesforce enables sales teams to prioritize leads based on their engagement with marketing campaigns, resulting in higher conversion rates.
With Salesforce, you can work more efficiently and without consuming any time or integrating data manually. As a result, sales representatives can focus on more important tasks, such as building trustworthy relationships with their clients and providing them with on-time services without having to worry about anything.
Scalability and Flexibility
With Salesforce, you can easily scale your business as your needs change. Also, Salesforce easily integrates with other business systems, which means you can easily add more functionalities as your business continues to grow. Along with that, Salesforce is highly customizable, so you can tailor it to your specific business needs.
As a further benefit, using Salesforce to run your business allows you to access all of your data and make accurate business decisions. Through it, users can interact with customers and partners to take advantage of more potential benefits to grow their businesses.
11 Salesforce tips to boost your productivity
The majority of Salesforce users are unaware of most of its functionalities and features. To boost your productivity, here are some tips on how to take advantage of Salesforce’s features:
1. Automate Workflows & Processes
Performing the same tasks over and over again, such as data entry or repetitive administrative duties, can be stressful. Despite this, Salesforce’s automated workflows and process builder can save you a great deal of time and effort.
For instance, Imagine setting up rules that make things happen without you having to take any action – like sending emails, updating stuff, or even creating and giving out tasks. When you use automation, you’re not just saving time and effort, but you are also freeing yourself to do more important tasks like connecting with customers and growing your business.
2. Explore Inbox by Salesforce (Beta)
Salesforce Inbox integrates email and calendars with Salesforce so that your sales team can manage their sales in a more efficient manner. Along with that, inbox increases sales reps’ productivity on each email message, doesn’t matter whether they are on the move or at their desk.
Here’s what Inbox has to offer:
- Outlook and Gmail integration: The email integration allows sales reps to work with Salesforce data straightly in Microsoft Outlook and Gmail or in the Salesforce Inbox mobile app.
- Advanced Inbox Features: Salesforce records can be viewed along with your email, and email messages can be correlated with Salesforce records, keeping colleagues up-to-date.
🔴Remember: This feature is only available in the beta version.
3. Elevate Your Daily Tasks, Activities & Emails
These are the crucial functionalities of the Salesforce system, and if you are not utilizing it by any chance, then you are missing something significant in this powerful CRM system. With that said, let’s explore and understand each of them:
- You can use an activities tracker to track client interactions, keep notes about important meetings, or write a brief explanation of why you interacted with them.
- Tasks allow you to create a follow-up action for yourself. You can set three fields: the date, the reminder, and a brief description. Added bonus – you can assign tasks to others as well!
- You can send emails directly from Salesforce to clients. With Salesforce, you can automate this process using email templates that save time. Also, the email will be automatically saved to Salesforce, so you don’t have to log it.
4. Leverage Einstein Search
The next one is Einstein’s search. This Salesforce feature helps you to work faster and smarter – and it lives up to its claims. In addition to many others, this feature can be enabled by your Salesforce administrator and can be found in most Salesforce editions.
Aside from that, Einstein search has revolutionized the way Salesforce users search for information. In addition to empowering users to find relevant records, files, and data faster, Einstein Search uses artificial intelligence to deliver personalized search results.
5. Personalize Dashboards & Reports to Analyze Metrics
Salesforce integration allows you to unlock the power of personalized dashboards and reports. By unifying data from various applications, you can create custom views tailored to specific roles. In addition, sales reps can track individual account progress and identify upsell opportunities.
Marketing teams can also analyze campaign performance across channels and measure ROI. Everyone can leverage data visualization tools to transform complex information into actionable insights, driving data-driven decisions and optimizing performance across the organization.
6. Pipeline Inspection
This is one of the innovative features offered by Salesforce. This can be sales managers’ best tool as it provides valuable information about an individual rep or team’s forecast for a given time period.
Regularly reviewing and analyzing sales pipelines is important for driving revenue and optimizing sales processes. With Salesforce’s intuitive pipeline management tools, you can track opportunities, forecast sales, and even identify bottlenecks, facilitating proactive decision-making to improve productivity.
7. Utilize SUMO Scheduler
Research from growth-natives found that around 25 percent of sales reps spend their time scheduling phone calls and appointments. Instead of utilizing their time to get in touch with clients and closing more deals, they are busy scheduling meetings. But, with the Salesforce SUMO scheduler feature sales reps can effortlessly schedule appointments and calls.
SUMO scheduler is none other than a scheduling tool integrated with Salesforce that simplifies appointment booking and scheduling processes. It allows clients or team members to schedule appointments based on availability
8. Embrace Inline Editing
While inline editing might be new to some users, some of its features, such as the list view, have been around for quite some time. What inline editing actually does is that it lets you edit records without actually using the edit button. This feature is unbeatable when you have multiple records and find it difficult to edit each individual record.
Moreover, this feature not only saves time but also enhances user experience, especially when making quick edits to multiple records simultaneously.
9. Stay Updated with Salesforce Trailhead
Salesforce Trailhead is none other than a comprehensive learning platform that offers a range of interactive modules, trails, and even projects to help users learn and master the Salesforce features and functionalities.
In the end, by staying updated with the latest and innovative features and best practices through Trailhead, users can enhance their Salesforce skills and productivity.
10. Foster Collaboration with Chatter
Chatter helps you to foster your team collaboration with seamless integration with Salesforce. It provides the functionality of a complete social network. Chatter is a Salesfore’s enterprise social network that facilitates collaboration, communication, and even knowledge sharing among team members.
Chatter isn’t just a messaging app; instead, it enables you to create groups focused on a specific account, campaign, or region. In addition, you can also create an account, get expense reports, update orders, and get news without having to leave the network.
11. Customize Global Actions
For everyday tasks, Global actions are your go-to shortcuts. You can think of them as customizable buttons that simplify your digital life. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating reports, sending emails, or launching your favorite apps. By using Global Actions, you can access your most-used tools with just a click, making your workflow more efficient.
Enhance business call productivity with Salesforce X KrispCall
Effective communication is the key to success for any business. Every interaction offers you the opportunity to connect with potential clients, close deals, or even resolve issues. However, effectively managing these calls can be challenging for businesses, especially for growing ones. And this is where the Salesforce integration with KrispCall comes into play, changing the way organizations handle their interactions.
Salesforce integrated with KrispCall offers numerous benefits by combining Salesforce CRM with KrispCall’s advanced cloud telephony features. Whether it’s sales, support, or marketing teams, the Salesforce & KrispCall integration facilitates seamless conversation between businesses and customers. For instance, click-to-call functionality, where reps can easily connect with customers without manually dialing their phone numbers, saves them time and effort.
In addition, the integration of Salesforce and KrispCall provides a wide range of useful features for call handling. These features include call logging, call recording, automated call routing, IVR, call barging, and more. By utilizing these features, agents can not only improve their call-handling skills but also provide more personalized experiences to customers.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce is a great tool to manage your customer data effortlessly and efficiently. This platform helps you streamline your workflow, increase sales and revenue, and much more. But to fully harness Salesforce, you need to know about its features is essential. Apart from that, you also need to have a knowledge of certain tips.
Consider tips like automating workflows and processes, leveraging Einstein search, pipeline inspection, and utilizing the SUMO scheduler.
Using Salesforce to its full potential can significantly enhance productivity and efficiency for businesses. Users can achieve their business objectives more effectively by implementing these tips to streamline workflows, optimize processes, and drive better results.
FAQs
How can I integrate Salesforce with other tools?
In order to connect Salesforce with other tools, you can make use of different Salesforce integration tools that are available in the market. There are several integration solutions for connecting systems and applications, such as Salesforce Connect (Lightning Connect), Salesforce App Cloud (Force.com), and pre-built integration apps on the AppExchange.
How can I customize Salesforce to meet my unique business requirements?
Salesforce can be customized to meet business needs by defining business requirements, planning and prioritizing, integrating with other systems, and customizing communication.
What are the Salesforce tips and tricks for sales?
There are some Salesforce tips and tricks for sales:
- Utilize built-in reporting for data analysis
- Manage leads with tasks activities, and emails
- Access data anywhere with Salesforce mobile app
- Utilize salesforce chatter
