Who has the greatest impact on your business? Your customers!

Research shows that 90 percent of CEOs firmly believe customers can make or break a business, and they’re right. In the United States, businesses have lost over $1.6 trillion, all because unsatisfied customers jumped ship.

If you want to keep the customers you have happy, while also attracting new ones, Salesforce can help. What is Salesforce? Read on to find out.

What Is Salesforce?

You might have a vague idea about how salesforce works, but what is salesforce exactly? Salesforce is a software company that uses cloud-based software.

The company’s official name is Salesforce.com, inc. and it’s an American based business. The headquarters for Salesforce is in San Francisco, California.

What does Salesforce do?

What does Salesforce do exactly? The main objective of Salesforce is to help companies with their customer relationship management needs or CRM.

In addition to helping with customer management, Salesforce can also help you plan for the future. For instance, they have enterprise applications that help with analytics. There’s also application development, making it easier for creating new apps.

Who Should Use Salesforce?

Any company that has customers can benefit from using Salesforce. You should also consider using Salesforce if you’re a new company that needs to grow, like a startup.

In the competitive business world, 70 percent of startups wind up realizing they need a better execution plan. The harsh reality is that intellectual property is worthless without the right plan to implement them.

Luckily, Salesforce has a special platform called Salesforce Essentials. Salesforce Essentials helps small businesses and startups execute their business plans. Small teams of employees can then use the Salesforce platform as a tool to improve each customer interaction.

For instance, employees will be able to use the cloud-based software to track all of their customer’s information in 1 location. You can also sync Salesforce with tools your company’s already using, like DocuSign, to help streamline things.

How to Use Salesforce

Is Salesforce easy to use? Yes! The entire idea behind Salesforce is to make things easier for companies by providing an integrated platform.

Departments like sales, marketing, and customer service, join together for a singular shared view of each customer. Customizations are also easy with Salesforce as you set up your preferences within the system.

You’ll also find that Salesforce is user friendly and visually pleasing to look at. They even offer a dark mode option to help people who are easily distracted by different colors.

Salesforce for Beginners

Since you’re new to using Salesforce, it’s important to take a moment to understand just how vast the cloud-based platform is. Here are a few key features Salesforce offers:

• Available on mobile devices
• Able to make quotes
• Artificial intelligence
• Salesforce field service
• Data management
• Marketing automation
• B2C commerce
• App development

Looking at the list above you might be thinking, “That looks complicated!”. While it’s easy to start using Salesforce, there’s nearly an endless amount of ways you can build on your expertise. The deeper you dive, the more features and benefits you’ll find access to you that can benefit your business.

Benefits of Taking a Salesforce Tutorial

To help you quickly master the different features and new add on’s, it’s helpful to watch Salesforce demos and tutorial videos. Watching tutorial videos will help you avoid making mistakes during the setup process that could cause problems later on. If tutorials aren’t your thing, Salesforce also offers frequent webinars.

Here are a few of the things you’ll want to make sure you set up properly:

• User administration
• Reports and dashboards
• Data backup
• Automated workflows
• Page layouts

User administration is a big part of using Salesforce since this is the feature that decides who can access your company data. You have to protect your company and customer’s information by making sure only approved and active employees have user access.

You’ll find that the more time you take to set things up properly, the easier it’ll be for your company to be productive. To get help setting things up, or maintaining features as your business grows, hiring a consultant like Cutopia can be a big help.

Tips for Navigating Salesforce

There are a lot of different functions, buttons, and tabs you’ll need to familiarize yourself with. Here are a few tips to help you navigate Salesforce like a pro:

• Personalize your tabs
• Create list views
• Collaborate with chatter
• Compact views

The tabs on Salesforce make it easy for you to quickly find the things you need to complete daily work tasks. However, the tabs might not be in the most logical order for your company’s needs. By clicking on the pencil icon in the right-hand corner of the screen, you can reorder the tabs to fit your preferences.

Next, list views are great at helping with data cleanup, segmentation, and so much more. When you create a list view, be sure to set a filter to ensure you see only see the information you need.

Moving on, Chatter is a social tool that promotes collaboration. You can use Chatter to collaborate with your employees, partners, and customers!

Do you want to cram as much information as you can onto your screen? In the righthand corner menu, you can adjust the Salesforce layout from comfortable to compact. The compact view will then show more information than the previous comfortable view was.

Taking Your Business to the Top

The next time you hear someone asking, “what is Salesforce?”, you’ll already have the answer! What features about the cloud-based software are you most excited about?

Is it the concept of integration, allowing you to create single shared views of each customer? Or how about how you can conveniently use Salesforce from your mobile phone?

Go ahead and start exploring the price points for Salesforce today to find out what plan is right for you! For more ways to help your company thrive, check out the rest of this site!