The sales force is a crucial element in any business. It's what makes the money. Without it, you have no revenue and therefore no business. But how do you run your sales team? What are some best practices for running a successful sales force?
Salesforce has been around for more than 20 years and it is continually evolving. Salesforce DX, the latest evolution of the sales force automation platform, brings new features to make development easier and faster.
But with any change come sales force best practices that should be followed to maximize ROI (return on investment).
Learn what you need to know about salesforce development best practices here - our quick guide will show you how to do both: increase revenue by increasing sales force efficiency and minimize cost by making wise customization decisions.
Learning Salesforce best practices is a never-ending process, but once you're connected to the proper people online and know where to go for useful materials, you'll be better prepared to leverage Salesforce to improve your products, customer experiences, and internal operations.
Before you install any new tools or features, including your overall Salesforce implementation, our teams recommend that you thoroughly understand your process and workflow.
From the very first step to the very last, you must understand your user's journey.
What happens next, for example, if you have a new opportunity in the pipeline?
What is the event that causes the following action to be taken?
Is it a signed contract, or does something need to be approved by an executive?
We won't know what to automate or produce if we don't know what to automate.
Whether you have a well-established org or are just getting started with Salesforce, the greatest thing you can do is continue to understand and develop your team's processes, as well as how technology may help them, rather than the other way around.
You risk generating an unmanageable or difficult new system for your team if you don't have a defined approach in place.
That's especially true if you're combining data from numerous sources; effective data hygiene and data governance are what will make Salesforce so valuable to your team. You might, for example, have several databases with customer names.
Salesforce is intended to be an organization's single source of truth, but without the right data, you'll never get the most out of your investment. Using data picklists or naming conventions, Salesforce can assist you in keeping your data clean.
However, in order for your reporting to operate, you must ensure that your data entry is consistent and free of duplicate records. No matter where you are on your Salesforce journey, this is an ongoing effort.
Just like Salesforce should be viewed as a single source of truth, your company should have a single point of contact who "owns" the platform. Salesforce is a complicated piece of software, and with frequent upgrades, your team needs to know who to ask questions to and where to submit concerns or requests for updates.
This might be a Salesforce administrator, but it could also be your company's Salesforce champion.
It's less about technical knowledge and more about mindshare and project management, especially if you're embarking on a new Salesforce implementation or project.
You'll need a single point of contact who can keep the project on track and is trusted by the business to communicate with stakeholders and SMEs on a daily basis.
This is an important best practice, but it doesn't have to be an in-house resource if that isn't what your team needs. Our managed services team helps clients who are new to Salesforce get up and running as they seek for the appropriate individual to hire.
We can provide end-to-end management of your Salesforce instance at Silverline, whether it's stepping in to implement something new or keeping up with the various changes you'll face.
Because Salesforce is so configurable, it's easy to get carried away with all of the glittering bells and whistles. Even if your company is well-established, we encourage using regular Salesforce features as much as possible.
This is due to the fact that they are more easier to maintain and debug.
Write Custom Objects only when they're absolutely necessary to support the flow of your process (see best practise #1), and always with the user in mind.
How many times have you had to jump through hoops when filling out an online form or calling to schedule a service appointment?
There shouldn't be any steps in your user flow that aren't absolutely necessary. If you intend to use a certain piece of data, it's a good idea to provide it.
However, if it's merely a "nice to have" or you're adding it to the flow because it sounds exciting, it's wise to give it some thought before putting it in place. You want to make sure that anything you add to Salesforce is useful to your company and users.
Salesforce, like any other piece of software, does not always perform as expected the first time.
That's why, for both new and current features, you should incorporate testing into your Salesforce development process. If you're not constantly monitoring the tool, new operating systems, products, or data sources can easily break connections.
Many firms rush testing, and it's understandable because you want to get your new project out the door as soon as possible.
However, new features should be thoroughly tested in a Sandbox environment before going live, especially if they handle sensitive customer information or mission-critical data such as revenue numbers.
People are averse to change. It's one of the characteristics that distinguishes us as human beings. We think that half of success comes from preparing technology for people, and the other half comes from preparing people for technology.
That's why, whether you're working on a Salesforce project or just using Salesforce in general, change management is critical.
Schedule time for your employees to be trained on new features as they become available, as well as general refresher sessions throughout the year. There's a good chance that certain members of your team aren't getting the full Salesforce experience.
Or perhaps they've figured out how to accomplish a couple of things for their current employment but aren't sure how to use more advanced reporting features.
If no one uses Salesforce, it is pointless.
If you're launching a new feature in four weeks or less, you'll need to develop a change management strategy right away so that your team is aware of it, understands how and why to use it, and reaps the benefits of all the hard work that's been done behind the scenes.
It's critical to have high-level stakeholders and champions on your team to assist you create a pleasant and welcoming Salesforce environment.
You adjust your Salesforce strategy wisely and successfully as you learn about the new Salesforce updates. Salesforce releases on a regular basis throughout the year.
Trailhead is a Salesforce feature that allows you to learn about new Salesforce releases from within your Salesforce instance.
You'll get an overview of the updates in each release module, along with supplementary materials, so you know exactly what's changed. You can also earn badges by earning points!
If you're feeling overwhelmed or bewildered in the Salesforce ecosystem, there are plenty of resources available online, but some are better than others.
The number of mobile users is growing exponentially every year.
If your sales team isn’t working on a digital strategy, they may be missing out on opportunities to increase revenue by serving their customers better and closing more sales.
Mobile applications should be designed for optimal user experience and sales force automation is no exception. If you want to be sure that your sales team members can access the information they need in real time, invest in a mobile strategy early on.
Keep in touch with other Salesforce Trailblazers in the Salesforce Trailblazer Community.
Keep this Salesforce for Dummies Cheat Sheet in your favourites to brush up on the basics or learn new abilities.
Check out David Taber's Salesforce.com Secrets of Success: Best Practices for Growth and Profitability if you're a voracious reader.
Keep in touch with Salesforce Consulting Partners who are both informed and entertaining, such as us.
The best place to learn about Salesforce is to bookmark the Salesforce blog. They publish release information, industry advise, and thoughts on unusual use cases on a regular basis.
These blogs usually include a video about the release, a preview, and the release notes, so no matter what your learning style or preferences are, you'll be covered! There's no better place to learn about Salesforce best practices and updates than from the experts themselves.
Salesforce's native products and Salesforce Shield provide a wide range of security features. However, it is up to the customer to make the most of these built-in features. Here are the top security best practices that experts advise you to follow:
To reduce the danger of unauthorised access in the event of a compromised account, enable IP restriction for user logins.
To further decrease the danger of unwanted access, enable multi-factor authentication for all users.
Make organization-wide sharing rules as restrictive as possible while permitting typical business functions, and extend access outside the organization-wide sharing rules using role hierarchies, sharing rules, permission sets, and other methods.
Require secure passwords with a minimum of 8 characters that include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
Set the maximum number of failed login attempts to between 3 and 5.
Enable password resets with obfuscated secret responses.
When a session timeout occurs, force a re-login, but allow the session timeout warning window.
Keep the session timeout as short as feasible without causing your Salesforce users to become irritated.
On the login page, disable caching and autocomplete.
Passwords for users should expire 90 days after they are created.
Password history should be enforced so that the same password isn't used again until at least 5 different passwords have been used since the previous time the provided password was used.
The word 'password' should never be used in a password.
If you're using platform encryption, you should produce a new tenant secret on a regular basis, which will result in a new encryption key.
Make sure all data encrypted with that key is decoded before discarding encryption keys.
If they're using old keys, re-encrypt already encrypted data with the most recent key, even if the old key is preserved and not destroyed.
Customer Visualforce pages with standard headers should have clickjack protection enabled.
Headers are disabled on customer Visualforce pages.
