Welcome to our guide on using Salesforce for managing your customer relationships, sales pipelines, and business operations. In this walkthrough, we’ll explore key features, including connecting with customers, managing deals, accounts, forecasting revenue, and streamlining business processes.
Whether you’re new to Salesforce or looking for advanced tips, this guide will help you get the most out of your platform.
Connecting with Customers
Upon entering your Salesforce trial or new organization, you'll notice options like "Connect with Customers", "Manage Deals or Opportunities", and "Manage Your Accounts". These choices guide you based on your needs, such as improving customer interactions, organizing business processes, or forecasting revenue.
Let's focus on connecting with customers first. When you dive into this section, Salesforce walks you through the Leads Intelligence View. This dashboard highlights key information about your leads—such as the number of leads with no activity, overdue tasks, and upcoming appointments. A standout feature is the ability to bookmark important leads for easy access.
Salesforce's Leads Intelligence View acts as a forecasting tool for leads, allowing you to manage them effectively and prioritize your outreach efforts.
Managing Deals with Opportunities
Next up, managing deals. Salesforce's Opportunity Pipeline allows you to visualize your sales opportunities. You can customize the pipeline by viewing opportunities in different stages, closing dates, and ownership. Want to see a chart instead of a list? No problem—you can switch views and focus on what matters most.
Salesforce makes it easy to track overdue deals, opportunities that should have closed but haven’t, and even offers insights through Einstein AI to predict the success of deals. If you want to fine-tune your opportunities, the inline edit feature allows you to adjust the status or details of your deals in real time.
This consolidated view helps you monitor your pipeline metrics, giving you better control and insights into the health of your sales efforts.
Managing Accounts: Stay on Top of Customer Relationships
Every business needs to keep track of its accounts, and Salesforce offers an Account Management feature that organizes your customer information, related contacts, contracts, and transactions. Each account contains a record of the customer's journey with your business.
You can also view an account's hierarchy, which is especially helpful for companies with multiple branches or franchises. Additionally, Salesforce offers an Account History view, allowing you to see all past interactions such as meetings, emails, and tasks. With tools like Einstein Activity Capture, you can gain insights from email and call interactions, providing a deeper understanding of your customer relationships.
Streamlining Business Processes
Efficiency is key when managing a sales team, and Salesforce has built-in features to help streamline your business processes. Through the Path tool, your sales team can follow guided steps in the sales process—whether they’re managing leads, opportunities, or accounts. At each stage, Salesforce provides key fields and guidance for success, ensuring that your team is completing necessary steps and maintaining data quality.
Salesforce’s validation rules enforce good data hygiene, ensuring critical information like amounts or close dates are entered before moving to the next stage.
In addition to guided paths, Salesforce also offers Einstein’s Next Best Action, which suggests the next step your team should take based on data insights. This feature ensures that your reps are always moving deals forward in a productive and informed way.
Forecasting Revenue: The Key to Accurate Sales Projections
Salesforce’s Forecasting Tools offer a powerful way to project revenue and track progress towards your sales goals. With an increase in forecast accuracy by 28% for customers using Salesforce, the tool uses data from your Opportunity Pipeline to provide detailed sales projections.
You can easily set date ranges for your forecasts, track quotas, and monitor your commit forecast, best-case forecast, and open pipeline. Salesforce also provides insights into opportunities that have increased or decreased in value, helping you stay informed about changes in your sales pipeline.
Einstein AI comes into play again by analyzing your opportunities and providing recommendations on how to improve your chances of closing deals.
Conclusion
Salesforce offers a wide range of tools to help businesses manage their customer relationships, streamline processes, and accurately forecast revenue. From connecting with customers to managing deals and accounts, the platform provides essential insights and automation to enhance your sales strategy.
By leveraging Salesforce’s built-in intelligence, such as Einstein AI, Leads Intelligence View, and Forecasting Tools, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the competition and drive business success.
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