Top 10 Salesforce Headaches

We'll get your users loving Salesforce!

User adoption can be a challenge when users see Salesforce as 'admin' rather than a tool that helps them do their job.

The goal is to make Salesforce a resource that users can't live without. We help clients make Salesforce a tool that users want to use. For example, we can help users:

• Configure Quotes/Proposal Documents with E-Signature: Make the process of generating proposals happen in a few clicks and help users track opens and signatures.
• Identify 'White Space' for Account Managers: Provide a clear view of the products or services your clients have purchased so your team can pursue the gaps.
• Track Performance Against Quota: Help your team see their 'Gap to Quota' and 'Pipeline Coverage' (how much Pipeline exists vs. the Gap to Quota).
• Track Commissions: Build resources that allow your sales team to see their commission forecast.
• Integrate Systems: Whether it's email integration or another system with an API, we can eliminate inefficiencies and make Salesforce the only platform your team needs.

Having bad data in Salesforce is a real bind.

Bad data in Salesforce can be a significant problem for several reasons:

• Inaccurate Reports and Analytics: Bad data leads to unreliable reports and forecasts. Decisions based on faulty data can steer a company in the wrong direction.
• Duplicate Records: Bad data often results in duplicate records, causing confusion and inefficiency in sales and customer service processes.
• Poor Customer Experience: Incorrect information can lead to customer experience issues.
• Lost Revenue: Poor data quality can lead to missed sales opportunities, mistargeted marketing, and other issues.

We can help by:

• Assisting with bulk data fixes and showing you how to resolve this in-house as part of your system housekeeping.
• Employing effective validation rules to ensure that users are adding the data you need and keeping complete/comprehensive records.
• Using duplication rules to help your team identify and merge duplicate records.

By addressing these issues, companies can ensure that their Salesforce instance provides accurate, reliable, and actionable data, leading to better decision-making, improved efficiency, and enhanced customer relationships.

Forecasts are one of the most important features of Salesforce.

If you're not forecasting directly from Salesforce, you're missing out. The forecasting tools are one of the main advantages of Salesforce compared to other CRMs, and getting this right will confer some significant benefits.

Many businesses export Opportunity data from Salesforce and manipulate it in spreadsheets. This can take hours each month, and as soon as data is exported, it is no longer live and doesn't give an accurate position. To truly have your finger on the pulse of the business, you'll need live forecasting.

So why do businesses find it so difficult? Here are a few reasons:

• Poor user adoption: If your users aren't recording data in Salesforce, generating forecasts is impossible. Getting your forecasting right usually starts with some 'groundwork' with users.
• Lack of understanding the tools: Selling products on a monthly subscription and need to smooth revenue? Need to adjust the forecast numbers for your team before presenting the data? Need to see territory or product-based forecasts?
• Fundamental build: If there are issues with the setup of your Salesforce org, these can make generating forecasts a struggle.

Forecasting in Salesforce is very versatile, so whatever your needs, there's likely to be a solution.

Salesforce Training

Confidence in using Salesforce is crucial for successful adoption and minimising errors. We specialise in bridging knowledge gaps and ensuring that users navigate Salesforce with confidence.

Tailored Training Approach

We design training programs that cater to the specific needs of your users. Our approach includes intensive sessions for those who need extra support, ensuring everyone reaches the required proficiency level.

Comprehensive Training Solutions

Our training services cover both end users and system administrators. We empower your internal team to manage regular administrative tasks effectively and can develop a comprehensive training syllabus for new joiners.

Flexible Training Formats

We offer training in various formats to suit your needs, including:

• Remote/online sessions
• On-site training
• Video content in searchable learning portals

For clients with in-house training resources, we also support a train-the-trainer approach, enabling your team to sustain ongoing training needs.

Empower Your Team

With our training, your team will be well-equipped and confident, positioning you to leverage Salesforce effectively and move forward with your business goals.

Design Your Opportunity and Quote Process to Fit Your Business Needs

It's essential to align your Opportunity stages with your sales process. Each stage should represent a genuine milestone, with specific activities required for each phase. We use Salesforce validation rules to ensure opportunities are placed in the correct stage.

For businesses with multiple sales processes (e.g., different deal types with varying durations), we design and apply additional processes tailored to each opportunity type.

For managing quotes and authorising discount levels, we set up efficient approval processes. If you need more advanced quote tools, we can implement document generation and e-signature capabilities, making it easy for your team to issue and track quotes, and for your customers to authorise them.

Optimising your Opportunity and Quote processes can significantly enhance your Salesforce setup, and we specialise in delivering these improvements.

Optimising Lead Management in Salesforce

Effective lead management is crucial for your sales success. Here's how we can help:

• Inbound Leads: Leverage web-to-lead to ensure leads from your website are directly captured in Salesforce.
• Referrals: Integrate with third-party systems to receive referred leads smoothly, allowing for quick response times.
• Outbound Leads: Import lead data from sources like Apollo.io, RocketReach, and ZoomInfo into Salesforce.

Use Salesforce Sales Engagement to Supercharge the Lead Management Process: We help you manage leads systematically using Salesforce Sales Engagement, ensuring efficient data handling and clear guidance for lead treatment.

Conversion Criteria: We work with you to define what constitutes a lead conversion, using leads as a qualification object while managing the main sales process through opportunities.

By refining your lead process, you'll enhance efficiency and set your team up for success.

One of the biggest challenges businesses face is not being able to see how sales team activities, like emails, calls, and meetings, are translating into actual sales results. Without a clear view of these activities, it’s difficult to assess whether sales efforts are aligned with our revenue goals and whether the sales team is resourced sufficiently to manage the revenue expectations of the business.

Without a clear view of sales activity, it's also difficult to track performance against averages and to see who is putting in the effort and attaining results.

Understanding the correlation between sales activities and sales outcomes is crucial for optimising any sales strategy. If you’re unable to track this relationship effectively, it hampers our ability to make data-driven decisions and adjust tactics.

We’ll help you see not just the volume of activities, but also how these interactions contribute to closing deals and driving revenue.

By leveraging Salesforce’s capabilities, we can create detailed reports and dashboards that visualise this data, providing valuable insights into your sales team’s effectiveness and enabling you to fine-tune your strategies for better results.

Many businesses struggle to pinpoint which campaigns and strategies are effectively driving their sales. This lack of clarity makes it challenging to assess which marketing and outbound sales efforts are yielding the best results and which ones might need adjustments. Often, companies have difficulty linking their marketing and sales activities to actual sales outcomes, resulting in wasted resources and missed opportunities.

Salesforce’s standard Sales Cloud 'Campaigns' feature helps address this issue by allowing users to connect campaign activities directly with Leads and Contacts. It also tracks the costs and revenue associated with campaigns and their influence on Opportunities and sales.

With this feature, you can monitor which Leads and Contacts are linked to specific campaigns and view their engagement status. This connection between campaigns and outcomes provides valuable insights into each campaign's performance and return on investment, enabling businesses to make informed decisions about where to allocate their resources.

Salesforce marketing solutions are top-notch, but we understand that migrating to a new system isn’t always straightforward. If you’re using a well-known marketing platform, there’s a good chance we can help integrate it with Salesforce using AppExchange solutions.

That said, Salesforce’s native Marketing Cloud solutions offer the best integration between your marketing and sales systems. They provide advanced features such as lead scoring and grading, automated email journeys, and detailed engagement metrics. You can gain access to deep insights into how prospects interact with your content, allowing you to tailor your marketing efforts more effectively.

Marketing Cloud enables you to track which content resonates most with your audience and provides tools to segment your data and better understand your ‘Ideal Customer Profile’. This segmentation helps in targeting your marketing efforts more precisely.

All this information can be presented in customisable dashboards, tailored to your needs. Salesforce enables you to track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to campaigns and sales, helping you identify trends, measure success, and make informed, data-driven decisions.

When dealing with a large volume of Leads, prioritising them for effective outbound strategies can quickly become overwhelming. Without a streamlined system for managing and sorting these Leads, it’s challenging to focus efforts where they will yield the best results. Expecting your team to handle 100-200 Leads and keep track of which ones need follow-up and which should be prioritised is unrealistic. Managing such a high quantity of records through lists alone and delivering timely, personalised messaging to maximise conversions is simply not feasible.

This is where Salesforce Sales Engagement comes in. It’s one of Salesforce’s most valuable tools, offering significant benefits for Lead management. Sales Engagement allows you (or us) to design ‘Cadences’—structured plans that outline the number of required actions (calls, emails, LinkedIn touches, and custom updates) and their timing throughout the Lead process.

We often describe Sales Engagement as a ‘sell by numbers’ approach, which is particularly useful for businesses running early-stage outbound campaigns. It ensures that all Leads are treated consistently, preventing scenarios where some Leads are overworked while others are neglected.

With Sales Engagement, you can set clear expectations for your outbound sales process, fostering a mutual understanding between sales development representatives (SDRs) and their managers. It also allows you to conduct split tests on cadences and refine strategies, ensuring that only actions leading to conversions are pursued. This helps avoid wasting time and resources on Leads that are unlikely to convert.

Additionally, Salesforce’s Einstein Lead Scoring intelligently evaluates Leads based on their likelihood of conversion. Cadence tasks are prioritised according to these Lead scores, optimising your team’s time and effort for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.