What is Salesforce?
If you’re a Salesforce professional, I’m sure your friends and family has asked, “what do you do?” When you answer, they usually follow up any number of these:
“Oh so you’re in sales.”
“Is that a company?”
“Are you hiring?”
“What do you sell?”
“So you’re in IT…can you take a look at my computer?”
“Is that a Star Wars thing?”
If you manage a business and have heard about Salesforce before but not entirely sure what it is, you’ve also come to the right place.
Introduction
In a nutshell, Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) software that helps businesses keep records of their customer data. They are the world’s leading CRM platform by a wide margin. So much so that their ticker symbol in the stock market is “CRM”.
Most companies keep a record of their customer data in one form or another so that they can understand their wants and needs in order to provide better products or services to them. But why should you use Salesforce?
Why Salesforce?
Let’s say you run a massage clinic. You’re a small business owner and the only member on staff. You have multiple clients per day and you keep a notebook for schedules, contact information and note taking. You also have a spreadsheet on your computer of services that you have provided for clients as well as payment details. Additionally, clients send you text messages, emails and have phone and in-person conversations with you. Since you are on your own, having to manage and juggle between all these different sources of information can take a lot of time and overwhelm you given your busy schedule.
This is where Salesforce comes in. To alleviate this burden, you can have a platform where all of your customer data is stored in a central location, in the cloud. This means that your data is not only secure but easily accessible virtually anywhere that you have an internet connection. You will never have to worry again about misplacing that notebook or dropping to your laptop to the floor!
Features
Salesforce not only is a single source of truth for record-keeping, but also has capabilities beyond of those of any other CRM software. Here are some key features:
Manage all of your customer data: Record your customer’s name, email, phone number, address, birthdate, etc.
Keep track of customer history: Easily store and find each transaction and interaction with the customer so that you can see at a glance what they did and when.
Customizable record system: Add additional fields of data that you may need to know about the customer (i.e. a list of allergies).
Analyze your data with reports and charts: Combine your data to seek trends so that you can better serve and sell to your customers.
Cloud-based system: Securely access your data from anywhere. No installation necessary.
Scalable system that grows with your business: Easily add individual or multiple records at a time using built-in importing tools. Expand your team by adding new team members to the system while using built-in collaboration features.
Automation creation: Want to send a “Happy Birthday” discount email to your customer? Save time by building automated work flows of repetitive tasks.
Third party application store: Install new applications on top of your Salesforce for expanded capabilities.
Not only that but you can also customize the system to track literally anything you want: product details, inventory, provided services, financial information, human resource information, events, activities, and much more.
Learn More
I hope that you now know what Salesforce is and how it can help businesses. Of course, all of this comes with a learning curve and willingness to adapt. This is why Salesforce professionals exist. We’ve learned the in’s and out’s of the platform so that businesses can focus their efforts on selling their products and providing their services to their customers. Now I do sound like I’m in sales…
Although we’ve only scratched the surface, stay tuned as we dive deeper into the Salesforce ecosystem. If you would like to learn more, feel free to book a free consultation here https://calendly.com/nimbuscrmsolutions or send us an email at myron@nimbuscrmsolutions.com. Cheers!
