by Mike Walsh | Jul 18, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Automation saves time and prevents human error. On most forms, entering the address is a manual process where the street, city, zip, and country must be entered individually, and without verification. However, if you want your form to be better than most, you can make your address inputs smarter with Google Places. By using Google places you speed up the submission process, prevent mistakes and add an additional layer of address verification to just about any form.
Google Places utilizes the vast Google and Google Maps database to autocomplete the location details in the form, from only a few keystrokes. With this feature enabled, as you type in the address field you will see suggestions for the full address and can easily pick the correct address and watch as the Street, City, State, Postal code, and country are populated automatically. Not only is this a faster way to define the location, but it ends up being more accurate too!
From a developer standpoint, the addition of Google places is relatively simple. Users need to first sign up for a Google Places API key https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/places/ – Google gives you unlimited API calls if you are just using them for the basic simple places address autocomplete (https://developers.google.com/places/web-service/usage-and-billing#standard-usage-limits-for-places-api) Then in the backend, reference the Google Places library and set which fields you want it to apply to.
Click here to learn more about Google Places
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Jul 11, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Configure. Price. Quote. CPQ can revolutionize a sales cycle, and though CPQ is not unique to Salesforce, (there are many different options for CPQ out there) but the powerful Salesforce version is one of the better options on the market.
What is CPQ?
For any company that faces the challenge of quickly and efficiently producing error-free sales quotes, CPQ is the answer. CPQ is essentially a software that helps your Sales reps create accurate, up to date and effortless quotes for clients. This software is especially effective if your company offers a large number of pricing and combination options.
CPQ takes what used to be a complex, time-consuming process and makes it quick, simple and eliminates errors.
CPQ functions like a pricing wizard. It tracks and stores all of your products, prices, and options, and allows your Sales reps to click through the process to create the quote. Let’s take a look at each function.
Configure
Creating an accurate quote can often be quite a challenge. Every business has their share of bundles, combinations and product options, and each of these can, in turn, have their own associated requirements. Maybe a certain product can only be sold in a bundle or perhaps a product requires a number of customizations. You don’t want to send out a quote that doesn’t include these essential details.
In the end, memorizing all of your business’ pricing rules, dependencies and exceptions can be tricky if not impossible. And pricing spreadsheets and charts aren’t always effective either. This is why having all of your business’s rules loaded into a smart guide is a must for many companies. CPQ does the hard part and makes sure every quote is configured according to your specific rules.
Price
Just like product configuration, there are very often pricing exemptions and discounts that need to be considered for every quote. Few businesses sell their products at full list price to all customers. From discounts for nonprofits to special incentive promotions to credits for current customers, you probably have more than a few considerations for every price quote.
Mispricing a quote can not only be embarrassing but can potentially jeopardize the deal. With CPQ, you can create advanced pricing rules and take into account discounts, pre-negotiated pricing, subscriptions and more. The more complex your pricing options, the more your Sales team needs CPQ to streamline the entire process.
Quote
Following the configuration and pricing automation, CPQ provides a professional and efficient method of creating the quote. Salesforce CPQ allows reps to create the quote and send it via email (complete with e-signature options) all with just a few clicks. This is all done from a WYSIWYG editor, making template creation a breeze.
The Benefits of CPQ
More Sales – Turning out fast quotes leads to higher conversion rates and also gives your reps more time to work on additional deals. Complex, in-efficient processes leading to long quote creation times are a huge problem for many companies. Getting an accurate quote out the door quickly is pretty essential in the fast-paced world of 2018. Adding in the automation of CPQ to the process dramatically speeds up the process, giving your company a decided advantage over your competition.
Better Accuracy – Automating your company’s workflow rules not only makes the process faster, but it means significantly increase accuracy. Validation rules ensure that every quote that goes out is properly priced and configured, and will take into account all of your business rules that could easily be forgotten or inaccurately applied through human error. With CPQ, you can rest assured that outgoing quotes have the correcting pricing, product combinations, description and are within discounting limits.
Efficient Invoicing – With an easy quoting process, that is stored directly into your CRM, you also get full tracking and reporting on your invoicing. Not only does this save you time, but it also leads to improved customer service.
Subscription Management – Subscription-based services require quite a bit of administration, but CPQ can help. The software streamlines many of the processes, such as discounts, refunds, renewal and contracting to make subscriptions easier.
Usage-based billing – Salesforce Billing and CPQ allow your company to handle complex usage and subscription-based monetization needs out of the box.
Better Reporting – An integrated solution, connected to your CRM, provides deeper insights into your business. You can track and report on buying patterns, projected cash flows and more. Create custom dashboards so you can keep an eye on your most important metrics with a quick glance.
Reduced Administration – With streamlined automation for invoices and quotes, CPQ takes a lot of the legwork out of administration. You can reduce administrative overhead, and have them spend more time on other projects.
Salesforce Quote-To-Cash
Salesforce doesn’t do just a basic CPQ, but offers what they refer to as a full “quote-to-cash” platform. Quote-to-cash is the combination of both Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Billing that brings together the best features of both. You get everything from the chart below:
Not only do you get all of these fantastic features, but you can keep your CPQ on the same platform as your CRM, making for a better and more powerful integration. With Salesforce CPQ, you can access customer credentials, past purchase history and many other great integration features.
Do You Need Salesforce CPQ?
Like most customer configuration and development projects, adding a software like Salesforce CPQ to your org will be based on a number of individual factors. If one or more of the below apply to your company, you may need CPQ:
- You have a large Sales Team. Think 100+ employees.
- If your salespeople spend around 25% of their day creating quotes
- Your products have many different custom configuration options
These are just a few simple guidelines, and by no means are hard and fast rules. If you think Salesforce CPQ is something that would help your company and would like more information, Contact one of our Consulting Specialists.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
Want to discuss adding Salesforce CPQ to your implementation? Need to boost your ROI and maximize your investment?
Whatever your needs, we have you covered. Contact one of our Salesforce experts and we will find you a better business solution.
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CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | May 21, 2018 | Salesforce Tips
When it comes to developing and implementing Salesforce based system, there are undoubtedly best practices (and worst practices). Worst practices might range from writing code in pig latin, to rubbing melted chocolate on your keyboard. But what are best practices? “A best practice is an industry-wide agreement that standardizes the most efficient and effective way to accomplish the desired outcome. They generally consist of a technique, method, or process.”
Not only do best practices provide the most effective processes or techniques, but they also allow any and all users to be able to work with the system and not break the structure or format. Not a bad idea right? With the new availability of Salesforce DX, best practices are becoming even more important. DX is all about focusing on better and more effective ways to do development work. A few quick examples of best practices include test automation, audit trails, and rollback ability. In the end, following these standards is good for everyone involved, and as DX becomes more widely used worldwide, increasingly essential.
The team at SalesforceBen has put together a great article (below) that will take you in-depth on these and some other Salesforce best practices!
Salesforce Best Practices
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | May 9, 2018 | Salesforce Tips
Using the Salesforce Data Loader is pretty much mandatory when you are working with large numbers of records, and need to perform a mass upload or update. To get optimal results, Salesforce recommends Data Loader usage when you are working with 50,000 to 5 million records. If less, regular batch tools work perfectly, and if you are working with more, 3rd data apps are the best way to go.
Nonetheless, when running Data Loader, you can schedule these big loads into batches, and let automation process them in the background. There is a catch though: the larger the batch size, the greater the chance of running into issues, like CPU timeouts from lack of memory or query limits in orgs with lots of automation. Basically, errors that are the result of too much data being processed all at once. Considering how essential it can be to use a Data Loader process when working with a large volume of records, how can you avoid hitting these errors and still process your uploads?
One solution is to manually drop the Data loader batch size from the default 200 to 1. Whoa, that’s a big leap, right? By dropping your default batch size you can easily avoid the above errors from large data batches and the resulting lack of bandwidth. However, this solution does have a few drawbacks to consider.
First, there are daily batch limits, and for larger datasets, you may not be able to process all records without reaching that limit. Second, it smaller batch sizes mean your total upload time will take a bit longer. How much longer varies depending on automation and the number of records, but it generally won’t be a crazy large time increase. In the end, if you have a lot of processes running every day, lowering your batch size is a handy trick to help you avoid overloading the system, but still being able to process all of your data.
Read the: Data Loader Guide from Salesforce
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Apr 3, 2018 | Salesforce Tips
While the Engagement Studio is not new to Pardot, having been released in 2016, it is increasingly taking the place of Automation Rules in Pardot. Salesforce describes Engagement Studio as “the nerve center, the IQ, the brain behind the marketing automation” and as the next generation tech for marketing. Engagement Studio provides an end-to-end view of marketing campaigns, powerful reports, analytics and automation tools!
Engagement Studio enables:
- A Guided Buying Process – Always on campaigns and guided processes give prospects a more relevant and personalized buying journey.
- Easy Campaign Creation – Everything you need to build top notch Marketing Campaigns. Landing pages, automated rules, actions, triggers and more!
- Buyer Experience Testing – You can now test and experience the marketing path you create for your potential buyers.
- Improved reporting – Success metrics give you greater visibility, understanding, and insights.
Click here to learn more about Engagement Studio
-Ryan and the CMB Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
