Salesforce 101: How to Use Salesforce to Boost Productivity in 2023

One of the core aspects and the most common principles of business survivability is profit. 

Of course, even if you have the right amount of people, you won’t be able to quintuple your sales without the right technology. 

That’s where Salesforce comes in. 

It’s not the one and only ultimate software for lead management and conversion, but over the last few years, Salesforce had a lot to show for. 

According to Statista’s most recent consensus, one of the main reasons behind the ‘why use Salesforce’ or ‘How to use Salesforce’ analogy is the sheer number of revenue the software’s been bringing in. 

The annual Salesforce revenue has already surpassed $31 billion as of 2023. That’s an all-time high number as compared to the last few years. Imagine the revenue and profit that Salesforce has helped businesses to rake in; those numbers are too hard to account for, because Salesforce has over 150,000 customers in the form of business owners and dignitaries. 

Having said that, this post not only sheds introductory-level insight on how to use Salesforce CRM implementation but also talks about the software for first-timers who haven’t had the pleasure of using it before. Let alone, if you haven’t tried CRM software before, you may need to get a refresher on the origins of Salesforce and what it’s capable of.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a California-based company, founded in 1999. 

The platform helps businesses of all sizes to manage their sales, customers, marketing, and support. 

It enables companies to streamline their processes and store customer data in one place. Over the years, Salesforce has become the most popular CRM implementation software on the market due to its intuitive interface and powerful features. 

Customizable CRM software can help organizations save time and money by automating common tasks such as lead tracking, lead nurturing, sales forecasting, and more. In addition to its core CRM capabilities, Salesforce, as an example of customizable CRM software, also offers various add-on apps for marketing automation, analytics, mobile app development, and more.

 With such an expansive suite of tools, Salesforce has become an indispensable tool for businesses of all sizes looking to maximize their sales efforts.

Why Use Salesforce as Compared To Other CRM Tools?

Although it might be a matter of preference, or the fact that you already started with Salesforce too long ago, and it’s difficult to backtrack by now, there could be many reasons behind the ‘why use Salesforce’ question.

However, if we were to compare Salesforce’s performance since its inception and the overwhelming amount of features + technical improvements they have brought to the table since 1999, there are one too many reasons to go for the software, especially with the guidance of CRM implementation companies.

Key Features

Some of the main reasons for using Salesforce are:

• Salesforce offers a comprehensive CRM solution that covers all aspects of customer relationship management, including sales, account and contact management, activity tracking, lead generation, collaboration tools, and more. 

• The platform makes it easy to collect data on prospects and customers in a single place so businesses can develop effective marketing campaigns and better understand their target audience. 

• It also provides automated reporting to track performance metrics such as total leads generated or revenue earned for each marketing effort. 

• This CRM software allows users to create customized workflows for specific business processes like order fulfillment or customer onboarding. This helps streamline operations by ensuring each task is handled properly from start to finish. 

• The platform’s powerful analytics capabilities provide deep insights into customer behavior and preferences which can be used for more personalized marketing efforts. 

And let’s not forget about the minimalistic UI design makes it easy for non-technical users to learn how the system works quickly without needing extensive training or support. 

Salesforce 101 – What Are The Different Types of Leads Related Modules In Salesforce?

There are dedicated modules for not only lead management but also accounts, contacts, and opportunities. The latter comes in the form of potential customers who may have visited your website, or web app, or they might have placed items in their cart, but never proceeded with order materialization. 

Salesforce grants insight into everything.

Dedicated Lead Management Module:

If you’re trying to figure out how to use Salesforce for the first time, the lead management module will be the most frequented area of the program.

It is a powerful tool designed to help businesses effectively manage, convert, and acquire leads. 

Salesforce lead management module enables users to track and monitor the progress of their prospects throughout the sales cycle, making it easy to identify opportunities for improvement. With Salesforce, you can easily create campaigns and nurture potential customers through targeted outreach. 

In other words, it helps to define business logic when you are engaged in outreaching customers in real-time.

You can keep track of your team’s performance through comprehensive reports that provide insight into each individual’s performance. By taking advantage of this feature, businesses can ensure that their resources are being utilized efficiently and that they are maximizing their potential for success.

Dedicated Account Management Module:

The account management module is one of the most powerful tools offered by Salesforce. 

This module provides businesses with a comprehensive set of features to manage and maintain accounts, contacts, and customer service. It acts as a central hub for all account-related information, allowing businesses to keep track of customer data, contact histories, and customer service activities in one place. 

With this module, you can quickly create new accounts and contacts in the system, assign tasks to team members for follow-up tasks, store customer data securely in the cloud, and track customer interactions. 

Dedicated Contact Management Module:

With this module, you can easily store and organize your customer data in one centralized location. 

It offers an easy way for you to track the progress of your leads, keep an eye on customer interactions, and even automate sales processes. The contact management module also allows you to easily segment your contacts based on criteria such as geographical location, job title, or company size. 

This helps you to tailor your messages and promotions to the right people at the right time. 

Other Salesforce modules such as marketing automation and reporting for further insights into customer behavior. Before we forget, you can also mass import contacts in Salesforce via MS Excel sheet or other 3^rd party records management software. The entire list can be pruned against duplicate entries for better results before you start sending out your nurture emails.

Dedicated Opportunity Management Module:

Moving on with the basics of how to use Salesforce, the opportunity management module comes as an incredibly powerful tool that helps businesses maximize their sales potential. 

This module enables companies to acquire, convert and manage leads in a way that maximizes revenue generation. It allows organizations to track leads from the initial contact all the way through to the closure of the deal. 

Doing so also ensures that opportunities are not lost due to a lack of follow-up or lack of resources.

Organizations can easily view, edit, and update lead data in order to generate more qualified leads and maximize their return on investment.

How To Use Salesforce CRM To Fit Within Your Business Activities?

If you are struggling to manage an overwhelming amount of customers, with a higher lead churn rate due to a lack of time constraints, then Salesforce might be the best solution.

Depending on your exact business requirements and market variables, we don’t recommend following these tips on how to use Salesforce to the letter. For best results, take them as a piece of general advice, and feel free to make improvements as you see fit.

Automate Repeat Tasks To Invest Time In Other Business Scalability Activities

Automating tedious tasks in Salesforce can save you a lot of time and effort, allowing you to focus on higher-value activities. In this blog post, we’ll look at how to automate some of the most common tasks in Salesforce to make your job easier. 

Salesforce’s automation tools such as Flow Builder and Process Builder streamline certain sales processes. There’s also Lightning Connect and external applications to integrate Salesforce with other systems and services. 

Using these tools can help to reduce the clutter that you and your staff are already dealing with.

Gather Reports and Analytics To Optimize Your Future Strategies

Gathering reports and analytics in Salesforce is an essential component of successful lead management. 

With the right reports, you can gain valuable insights into your leads that will help you better understand your target market and tailor sales strategies accordingly. 

Salesforce provides a wide range of pre-programmed reports that allow you to quickly analyze data related to lead activities, customer trends, and more. 

Salesforce also offers advanced analytics capabilities for users who wish to dig deeper into the data. For some people, it’s a numbers game. If you are a beginner-level user contemplating how to use Salesforce, then the advanced feature can be held off until later. 

Expert users reportedly benefit from the Wave Analytics Dashboard, users can create custom dashboards from their datasets to be used for forecasting lead behaviors or assessing customer satisfaction levels. 

To take it up a few notches for a more comprehensive approach to using Salesforce reports and analytics tools, there are also several third-party applications available. These applications offer additional features such as automated report scheduling, advanced data visualization tools, and more. 

Use 3^rd Party Sales Integrations As Much As Possible

Integrating sales tools with Salesforce can be a game-changing move for any business. 

It allows you to create powerful processes that can generate more leads and close more deals. By connecting 3^rd party tools, you can streamline your workflow, automate tedious manual tasks and increase your productivity. 

You can start with installing or porting over your data from Zapier/ PieSync to Salesforce. 

These services allow you to connect different apps to automate manual tasks and streamline processes. Once set up, these services will keep your data in sync between different platforms and create powerful workflows for your business. 

Zapier’s paid services offer additional features that benefit large-scale companies. We recommend using Zapier’s free version to get the gist of how automations and data importing in Salesforce will pan out.

Conclusion:

If you still are stressing over how to use Salesforce CRM without any positive results, you can scour through hundreds of online YouTube videos. They offer plenty of insight on setting up your business’s basic lead management modules, data importation, and other aspects in Salesforce without going too deep. 

Ultimately, it’s going to take time and practice to garner results. So, don’t expect overnight changes. Keep at it, and you’ll eventually be able to pinpoint certain areas that allude to maximizing sales as compared to other competitors. 

FAQs:

1. As a new CRM tool user, what is the best platform for learning everything about Salesforce?

The best platform for learning everything about Salesforce is Trailhead. 

It’s Salesforce’s official knowledge base on cracking the code on the CRM tool.

That’s where learners can access tutorials and courses that teach them how to use Salesforce products and solutions. The content on Trailhead covers end-user topics, such as how to customize objects, create reports and dashboards, or configure workflows; developer topics, such as Apex development or Lightning Component development; and admin topics such as understanding user management or security settings. 

Users can also take certification exams on the platform to gain official certifications in various Salesforce product knowledge areas. 

2. Why Salesforce gains precedence over other CRM tools in the market?

If we had to sum it up for you, we’d say there are three main reasons for business owners to prefer Salesforce over other CRM software.

1. Salesforce has a minimalistic user interface that makes it easy to use and navigate. 

It’s a design philosophy that not only transitions to drool-worthy UI, but the UX spans over various accessibility options and features without cluttering the program’s interface.

The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to quickly create custom reports without having any technical knowledge or programming experience. 

2. Salesforce integrates with a variety of 3rd party applications such as Google Apps, Gmail, LinkedIn, and more which allows users to achieve greater efficiency by being able to access data from multiple sources on one platform. 

3. Finally, the cloud-based architecture enables organizations around the world to access their data regardless of location or physical limitations thus providing true scalability as business needs grow over time. 

This unique feature creates a level playing field where small businesses can compete directly against larger enterprises – and that too, without worrying over data security because everything’s ironclad in Salesforce’s very own cloud servers.