"You don't close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise."
– Patricia Fripp, an award-winning speaker, author, sales presentation trainer, and in-demand speech coach.
We're all living in a digital age where everyone and everything is connected, the way people have been doing business over the decades has not just changed but has evolved. And, so have the strategies we implicate to generate leads, convert those leads to prospective customers, and transforming negative relationships to positive. We are all well aware of that and the company that specializes in customer relationship management (CRM), Salesforce.
It is one of the first global companies to bring together cloud-based CRM software successfully. Founded by the former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff, Frank Dominguez, and Parker Harris in 1999. Salesforce helps a business build strong relationships with its customers and draw benefits for long through the use of cloud technology. It facilitates to bridge the gap between a customer and a company.
Source: IDC, 2019
According to a finding of an IDC study, the above bar chart shows that the net new business revenue contribution to the economy and the jobs created by Salesforce Cloud will increase rapidly between 2018 to 2024.
Let's go step-by-step through the reasons that hands-down makes Salesforce for businesses a necessity to understand its customers, connect with them, and build its customer base.
1. Salesforce offers a range of services to cover a company's CRM needs.
- SaaS comprises solutions for different sectors.
- Sales Cloud - It gets you from the first contact to a final handshake. It includes all the information that it takes to close a deal - from arranging contacts to connecting with customers and partners and tracking potential.
- Service Cloud stresses in making sure you give out the best customer service experience possible by encouraging a one-on-one marketing relationship with every customer, across multiple channels. It makes it possible by ensuring all problems of the customers are registered to and resolved.
- Analytics Cloud (Wave Analytics) - It is a business intelligence platform that emphasizes on simplifying data by working on large data files and representing the information in the form of charts, graphs or any other pictorial form. This way, you can convert big data into a significant advantage for your business.
- Marketing Cloud - It helps you find relevant customers by tracking down their journey so that you can contact the right people with the right kind of approach at the right platform. It altogether enables your business to generate leads and drives sales.
- Community Cloud results in building vibrant and engaging communities that let customers, partners, and employees help themselves and each other.
- App cloud lets the developers build modern employee and customer-facing apps so that engagement becomes accessible and more manageable in a secure, trusting, and mobile environment.
- IoT Cloud Connect is engineered in a way to store and process IoT (Internet of Things) data so that every business or company can attend to their need with IoT. It makes sure all your information is up to date and accessible from anywhere, even your mobile phone.
- PaaS offers specific platforms for developers or non-developers to build their applications on the cloud. Example; Heroku, Fuel, Force.com Development, and Lightning.
2. Salesforce claims that on an average, every company that uses Salesforce notices -
- Increase in customer satisfaction by over 34%
- Increase in sales revenue by over 27%.
- Increase in lead conversion by over 32%
- Faster deployment by over 56%.
3. Majority Add-ons and tools support Salesforce.
The Add-ons developed by third-party developers when used with Salesforce makes it ten-fold more functional. It is excellent that the majority of these Add-ons support Salesforce, a few of which are mentioned below.
- Adobe EchoSign - Edit documents, sign them, send it, track it, and manage all the other documentation and PDF documents with Adobe EchoSign. Adobe EchoSign working with a powerful CRM like Salesforce clouds, together will help you close deals in 90% less time and reduce contract errors.
- Box - Get your work done faster by managing your box files within Salesforce. Salesforce integration with Box lets you access, share, and manage files and documents (all of your content) without leaving Salesforce as a result of which collaboration on sales content becomes more streamlined and effective.
- MapAnything - It optimizes the sales process by assisting in Data visualization, Scheduling and routing, and Lead generation.
- Data. com - Salesforce Data.com assists in keeping the Salesforce data in place (online), sorted, and up to date. This way, the data becomes accessible anywhere and anytime. Thus, resulting in a means to work in a mobile environment and hence, increased productivity and maximizing business profiles.
- MailChimp - Connecting your Salesforce account to Mailchimp will let you sync the Salesforce data and contacts with Mailchimp, view campaign statistics, manage contacts, put Mailchimp's marketing tools to great use, and more. Together, they let you understand how the leads are engaging with marketing within the Salesforce CRM, use the right kind of email marketing to grow your business by viewing the subscriber's activity and email statistics.
- DocuSign - Send documents for signature, capture information, and track, without leaving Salesforce. It will enable your business in the following ways -
- Save time
- Reduce risk
- Increase productivity
4. Salesforce list of mergers and acquisitions seems to grow by leaps and bounds.
As on date, Salesforce has acquired 61 organizations - the latest being Evergage on February 3rd, 2020.
It’s top mergers those being beyond compare have been -
- Tableau - A company that provides its customers with an analytics platform by extracting data from anywhere so that data is more accessible. Salesforce acquired it on June 10th, 2019 on a purchase price of $15.7B
- Mulesoft - A software company that provides an integration platform that helps the business to connect data, applications, and devices. Salesforce acquired it on March 20th, 2018 on a purchase price of $6.5B
Other top acquisitions were ClickSoftware on August 7th’ 2019 for $1.35B, Demandware on June 1’2016 for $2.8B, ExactTarget on June 4th’ 2013 for $2.5B, Bonobo Al on May 6’2019 for $45M, Krux on October 3rd’ 2016 for $800M, and a host of others.
These groundbreaking Mergers and Acquisitions have resulted in Salesforce acquiring many major applications under its belt. Consequently, they now offer the best services in almost all fields.
5. Salesforce Best Practices that contribute to providing the best customer service.
Salesforce says, “If the level of service isn’t consistent across departments, 73% of customers start looking for other brands.”
For this not to happen, Salesforce came up with a set of practices for every business to deliver consistent yet exceptional customer service.
These practices include hiring the right people, to treat them well, to manage customer expectations accurately, to focus on first impressions, to consistently collect data, to personalize the data and the customer’s experience, to be where the customers are, and to maintain focus. Salesforce clouds and software assist you in keeping track of all of the above.
6. Collaboration with Apple to develop the best devices for business and the world.
On September 24th’ 2018 in San Francisco, Apple and Salesforce came into a strategic partnership to bring together #1 CRM management platforms and powerful mobile applications for Business on iOS (the world’s most advanced operating system). This partnership stressed over the following -
- Native Salesforce iOS apps for business
- Empowering Salesforce developers on iOS
- Accelerating developer learning and career growth
On November 18th, 2019 at Dreamforce - San Francisco, Apple, and Salesforce together announced the launch of two flagship applications from the world’s #1 CRM.
1. The redesigned Salesforce Mobile App - The New App features -
- A reimagined interface powered by Lightning Experience for the customers to have a smooth and faster navigational experience with personalized options.
- Einstein Voice Assistant lets the users create, read, update, display information from Salesforce.
- Einstein Analytics focuses on letting users explore data and take action accordingly, keeping in mind sales, service, and marketing without leaving the application.
2. Trailhead GO learning App - A learning App for users to learn demanding skills consisting of modules and badges to help users get the job you want.
Susan Prescott, Apple’s Vice President of Product Marketing for Apps, Markets and Services says
“Working together, Apple and Salesforce have helped hundreds of businesses, and millions of developers transform the way they work.”
The points mentioned above impressively stand out for Salesforce, but in addition to that, its customers also procure ease on business management and functionality. The features on Salesforce clouds offer the Sales rep with clarity on the dos and hows of maintaining accounts, contacts, tasks, reports, opportunities, all from a single place. It streamlines the entire process for a business.
Every business has individual needs, and Salesforce knows how to cater to all. How the user would want the tool to work for its company depends on the configuration and customization. The Salesforce Customization Services is what lets Salesforce address every business’s unique needs using APEX (a programming language) and VisualForce (a platform for front-end framework). These make navigation easy so that everyone can use Salesforce.
By now, you get how innovative this company is and how they never fail to surprise its customers with improved and innovative solutions. They pay heed to their customer’s reviews, requests, work on them, and come up with features as solutions. Thrice a year, Salesforce brings new features to the market, maintaining its reputation and providing the best in class customer satisfaction.
Businesses know of the expertise that comes to their company when working with Salesforce. Some of the top Salesforce consulting companies in India are -
- Deloitte (Service network)
- Bodhtree (IT service management company)
- CirroLogix (Consulting)
- BlueScope Steel (Manufacturing)
- KONE (Manufacturing)
- Cisco Systems Inc (Computers and Electronics)
- Motorola Inc (Telcom)
- Yamaha Corporation (Wholesale and Distribution)
- Allianz AG (Financial Services)
- Thomson Reuters Corporation (Financial Services)
The reason India's top companies outsource to Salesforce is that they know they will be putting their work in the hands of the specialists.
There is no reason why any business shouldn't get the most of Salesforce.
