by Henry Abenaim | Jun 27, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Managing duplicates can be a big deal. Most businesses these days are collecting larger and larger amounts of data, however, too much data, especially if it lacks organization or management, just becomes a whole lot of noise that can be more confusing than helpful.
If your Salesforce instance has tens of thousands of leads and contacts, you know exactly what I am talking about. In this article, we want to quickly talk about some of the main issues that arise from having unchecked duplicates in your CRM. Following that, we will discuss the default duplicate checking and prevention rules in Salesforce, and give you a few tips on using them.
Issues Related to Data Duplicates
Prevent Multiple Reps from Contacting the Same Leads
This is obviously a big no-no, and makes your company look pretty bad. Duplicates of your accounts, contacts, and leads can make it impossible to track who has done what, no matter how diligent your team is with updating their activities. The ugly scenarios are many, including sales calls being made to current or former clients.
Automation Nightmares
You probably want to automate as many processes as you can right? But duplicate data can put a wrench in the works. If you use automated lead assignment, multiple reps can get assigned different versions of leads, creating many extra phone calls, and unhappy customers. If you have duplicate records, your reporting will certainly be off and make it impossible to get good metrics on sales pipelines and more. Even works, dupes could cause repeated transactions, processes, or info requests creating plenty of extra work and possibly even losing you money directly.
Disconnects Between Marketing and Sales
If you are using Salesforce and one of the marketing programs out there, Marketing Cloud, Pardot, HubSpot, etc. you will be sharing those leads and contacts. Most people unsubscribe pretty fast if they receive the same marketing email 2 or 3 times in a day. Beyond that, if you have a large volume of duplicate records, you can actually negatively effect your marketing performance, either by slowing down the works with too much volume or by getting your emails marked as SPAM by various email filters.
Duplicate Management in Salesforce
If you type the word “dupe” into the AppExchange, you will a plethora of powerful, functional apps. If your system is riddled with duplicates and suffering from significant problems, we recommend looking into these apps, or even hiring a consultant who specializes in data de-duplication.
However, for those who aren’t suffering from critical data issues, Salesforce comes standard with duplicate management options that, with a little time and effort, should get the job done. It needs to be noted that these rules are geared at leads and contacts, with accounts being an option as well.
If your org was purchased after 2015, your duplicate check rules come automatically activated, while those who purchased earlier, you need to activate them yourself. Watch this video for a quick guide on setting up your duplicate rules.
These rules will allow you to do a couple of things:
1) When someone manually enters a new lead, a notification will pop up if the matching rules register the lead or contact as a dupe. You can also block matched duplicates from being entered here.
2) On an already created contact or lead page, the system will automatically check for possible duplicates, and the lead page can be set up so that users can quickly see and merge possible dupes.
Not bad right? Well, there is one more bit of info here to be aware of, and that is what the criteria are for the matching rules. Different companies all look for different data points when entering leads, such as, company, location, email, etc. Salesforce has defined a small series of their most common rules that would flag a lead as a possible dupe, such as First Name, Last Name, Title, and Company. This is obviously important, because depending on your business practices, the default rules may give you too many dupe hits, or not enough. For a full list of what Salesforce looks for, click here.
Of course, Salesforce being pretty darn customizable, you can also create your own matching rules if you find that the default rules are not effective enough for your org. Simply find “matching rules” under your Salesforce Setup menu – click New, and define your own custom set of criteria!
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | Jun 20, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
So you are looking for a new CRM for your company, and have been eyeing Salesforce. You know that it is heavily touted as the world’s #1 CRM, but when it comes to knowing which Salesforce Edition and which clouds to buy it can be pretty overwhelming.
This article is going to focus on the question of “which edition?” for Sales Cloud. After all, this is Salesforce and it only makes sense to start with the bread and butter of the CRM. The other Salesforce Clouds, such as Marketing and Service. are a topic for another day. A quick note, all editions available now are for Lightning only. For those familiar with Salesforce Classic, it is being phased out with the complete migration taking place fall of 2019.
So without further ado, let’s jump into the breakdown:
Salesforce Essentials
The Essentials edition is best for small companies that need basic CRM software with standard features.
As the most basic version of Salesforce available, this version of Salesforce gives you what you would expect, the basic functionalities and features to run a small business, and not much else.
You can store, manage, search, and analyze data but won’t have access to the extreme flexibility that it provides.
For small businesses, this can be an added benefit. By keeping the package small and light, it needs little attention or maintenance, since most small companies don’t have a dedicated IT or CRM admin anyway. To let you know just how small we are talking about, Essentials limits the number of users to 5.
What you get:
- Account, contact, opportunity and lead management
- Basic automation
- Cloud/mobile functionality
- Trailhead – Salesforce’s interactive training
Salesforce Professional
Professional is ideal for mid-sized companies with finite product or service offerings and a single sales unit. Most growing businesses will look to Professional as their answer, especially as it is the least expensive option that allows for unlimited users.
Professional builds upon the features of Essentials, give you more robust functionality, customization and integration options, while still remaining easy to use. To get the most out fo this edition though you will need to have someone with Salesforce admin experience available to spend time with the system.
What you get:
Everything in Essentials, plus:
- Increased automation, including validation rules, sales paths, lead routing and tracking and account insights.
- Lead management with various lists and campaigns
- Dedicated access to the Salesforce mobile app for iPhone and Android.
- Customizable tabs within the record pages.
Salesforce Enterprise
Enterprise, as you would also expect, is for medium to large businesses with larger sales and marketing teams. These businesses likely need custom functions, access to an API, automation, the ability to send emails, and various 3rd party integrations.
Salesforce Enterprise meets the need of complex businesses with large scale deployments. It has full flexibility and customization and has options for sales, marketers, and executives alike.
What you get:
All the features of Professional Edition plus:
- Automated lead workflows
- Action Plans with tasks, categories/hierarchies
- Email Marketing – Send marketing emails from Salesforce.
- API connections with Salesforce
- Custom Dashboards
- Privacy settings for individual users
If you are going for Enterprise, you will likely require an experienced Salesforce Admin to keep the system running smoothly. While this admin work can be outsourced to an outside consultant, it is often a good idea to have someone on staff for the quick fixes and everyday tweaks.
Salesforce Unlimited
This is for the big-time players. If you don’t know if you qualify, then you probably don’t. Unlimited edition is best for large companies with thousands of users. With Unlimited, you get 24/7 toll-free support, access to the premium knowledge database, developer support that facilitates custom code development and multiple Developer Pro Sandboxes for development and testing of new functionalities.
Companies with Unlimited generally require a large number of custom applications, multiple sandboxes, or have unique business needs.
What you get:
No limits on functionality or customization, and everything in Enterprise, plus:
- Instant access to Salesforce Support
- Unlimited custom tabs
- Larger storage limits
- Unlimited custom applications
- Multiple Sandboxes for development testing
So there you have it. In the end, the best option for you and your business depends on your needs, both short term and long term. Finally, for a quick pricing guide, and a detailed breakdown of each and every feature in each edition, take a look here.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | Jun 13, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
User adoption is critical, especially for software that drives your business like Salesforce. At the end of the day, it just doesn’t make sense to be spending money on a system that your team isn’t using.
However, the importance of user adoption is more than “we bought it so use it”, rather, user adoption has been linked to all sorts of business issues, including:
Keeps Data Relevant
One of the most powerful features of Salesforce is its ability to capture, track and analyze many facets of your Sales data. However, if your users aren’t using the system or aren’t entering everything properly, you can pretty much throw all your data out the window.
Avoid Losing Leads
Proper use of Salesforce across all sales team members can provide timely, accurate and detailed information to potential consumers, encouraging higher conversion rates.
Improve the Skills of Your Sales Team
Full adoption and utilization of Salesforce helps team members grow their skills, which leads to higher conversion rates and a stronger return on investment.
Discourage Ghost Users
Ghost users are those who simply log in, and do a few things every so often to avoid being shamed. When adoption is high though, it is more difficult to hide and avoid using Salesforce without being noticed.
Encourage Collaboration
When a company has high adoption, each department can contribute their expertise to the benefit of the entire company. Conversely, when a company has low adoption – the data is unreliable and each department must work much harder to find information.
So with all of that being said, how do you increase user adoption? Well, there are a number of ways, from setting incentives to designating internal use champions to working with a consultant to help your team. This article gives a nice example of going at it from the consulting perspective.
There are quick and easy options as well, like Emojis! Emojis can be useful in more than just text messages, and can, in fact, make your org more user-friendly, fun and actually help drive user adoption.
Take a look at this article here, and remember that every bit of adoption helps, even the little things like emoji! 🙂
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | Jun 7, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Are you familiar with Salesforce Quick text? Quick text lets users insert predefined messages into emails, tasks, events, chats, and more to save time and increase standardization.
As a part of the Winter ‘19 Release, Quick Text has gotten a simple but powerful expansion. Tasks and events previously did not allow quick text, however, that is now a thing of the past. So users can create and save common descriptions like, “Follow up in 2 days” or “Left voicemail”, and quickly insert them rather than typing it out every time.
In addition, Salesforce has added more ways to use the Quick Text predefined messages. Users can now add their messages from a keyboard shortcut, a button in a rich-text editor toolbar, or a popup button next to supported text fields.
If you are already using Lightning Experience, then Quick Text is enabled by default in all orgs. For those of you still using Classic, remember that all orgs will be required to upgrade to Lightning later this year, so you too will soon have Quick Text enabled by default. If you want to enable Quick Text in Classic, you are just a simple setting change away.
Want to learn how to set up your own quick text message? Click here
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | May 30, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Modern business practices mean you need to have some level of tech proficiency. Especially as a decision maker in a competitive industry, you need to be able to stay on top of the latest trends and technologies so you can keep ahead of your competitors.
If you have Salesforce, then you are already one step ahead of everyone else, because you have the most powerful and flexible CRM out there. But if you want to get the most out of Salesforce, you need to understand just what it offers. So let’s take a quick look at a more technical topic, namely: what is the difference between an API, framework, and middleware?
All of these important components of a modern business solution, and understanding what exactly they are and how they interact will help you make better decisions about what you need for your company.
API
An API is short for Application Programmer Interface. API simply refers to the method programmers use to interface with software, and only works via software to software. API’s are open-ended and can be built to do just about anything. For example, when you buy a movie ticket online, your card info is being sent via API.
For business purposes, API’s are a great way to send data, particularly sensitive data if you encrypt it, to another business, client or partner. Developers can craft the API for just about any business use and when you connect it to the Salesforce API’s, you can send and populate data directly into your CRM.
Framework
A framework is a tool or set of tools designed to solve a specific purpose or set of purposes. Frameworks use the above mentioned API’s to connect with other software, apps or separate systems.
A framework can also be thought of as a partially finished solution to a problem. The base foundation is there, and you build upon that to solve your specific needs. Salesforce itself can be used as either an out of the box solution or a framework, depending on your business needs.
Middleware
Middleware is also software that uses API’s, however, middleware is designed specifically to help isolated or separate systems interact. Mulesoft is a middleware solution recently purchased by Salesforce, whose powerful and unique code allows very complex programs to connect almost seamlessly.
A standard system, (frameworks included) is built with many layers stacked on top of each other, just as the OS, hardware, libraries, etc. Middleware works by taking slices of these layers, vertically! When done right, it provides a full or partial solution to any area within the application and can provide a much more robust connection between systems than a single or even a grouping of API’s.
So hopefully you now have a little bit better understanding the foundations that your business solution is built on!
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-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | May 23, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
When you need to work with a partner or partners, and want to do it through Salesforce, communities are the way to go. We have written before about how you can Enhance a Business Partnership with Salesforce Community – but to summarize, a Partner Community allows two or more businesses to share any specified Salesforce data, including, contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities.
Companies can use the Partner Community to increase transparency, communicate efficiently and push leads and deals through the Sales pipeline faster. Of course, one of the big considerations here is: what about the business info and data that you don’t want shared? After all, you love your partners, but that doesn’t mean you want to give them access to everything in your Salesforce org.
Naturally, Salesforce has a way to handle this, and it is done through user types. Partner communities contain various types of users who require varying levels of access. What users see depends on their user type and which tabs the administrator selects when creating the community.
And the varying degrees of access is extensive, meaning that you can pick and choose who can see or modify just about anything in the portal, from being able to see or modify the global header, to restricting certain information of the various users. This enables anyone with admin access to the portal, to fine tune exactly who can see what in Salesforce Communities, and ensure that anything you want to keep private, will stay that way without impacting the power of the portal.
For a complete list of user roles and standard permissions, click here.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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