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Tip of the Week – Sales experts share what they’re thankful for

Tip of the Week – Sales experts share what they’re thankful for

It’s that time of year again. The big December holidays are almost upon us, and for those of us in the States, it’s time for Thanksgiving. Recent research has shown significant health benefits related to cultivating gratitude, and the team at Salesforce put together a list of things sales experts are thankful for. In the post, David Brock shared the following:

I’m thankful for the opportunity we have to contribute to the success of our clients.  We work with some of the smartest sales professionals in the world, dealing with some of the most complex business challenges. It’s a thrill working with them and collaboratively figuring out how to solve them. It’s a privilege, we are constantly learning with them. I’m also thankful for Starbucks Spiced Pumpkin Latte, really hits the spot this time of year.

Check out the rest of this fantastic post and let us know what you’re thankful for this year! Happy Thanksgiving!

-Jared and the Salesforce Guys

Tip of the Week – Top 5 Salesforce apps to be thankful for

Tip of the Week – Top 5 Salesforce apps to be thankful for

Salesforce is an incredible tool out of the box. Take a peek around a new Salesforce org and you’ll see Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, Cases. Maps display natively to give you a visual of where your customers are located. Reports and Dashboards let you organize and visualize your data. With a little configuration, you can have Email-to-Case and Web-to-Lead up and running in no time, create automatic assignment rules, and spin up some powerful workflow automations which will save you seconds and hours every day.

But the real power of Salesforce lives in the AppExchange. Thousands of apps come prepackaged with tools ready to help your team drive success. With Salesforce, the sky’s the limit, and by leveraging prebuilt tools from the AppExchange, you can go from the 0 to 10,000 feet in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the cost it would take if you built everything yourself. These are some of the apps we’re most thankful for (presented in no particular order), as they allow our customers to grow and scale at record speed.

5. Conga Composer

Conga Composer was our App of the Year back in 2013. Conga lets you automatically generate a wide range of documents straight from Salesforce. Contracts, work orders, invoices, even spreadsheets and presentations can be created with the click of a button, automatically on a scheduled basis, or based on an update to a record in Salesforce. And with a little creativity, you can even have Conga choose the right template based on the scenario – different contracts for different States, different data based on the type of customer, the possibilities are endless!

4. DocuSign

If you send contracts or other documents requiring signatures to your clients, you should really check out DocuSign. DocuSign lets you easily merge, send, and get electronic signatures back on all of your documents, and can help accelerate your sales cycle. Because electronic signatures are so convenient, you’ll get more signed contracts, and you’ll get them faster. And if that wasn’t enough, DocuSign works hand-in-hand with Conga, making even complex, variable contracts a breeze to prep, send, and get back signed.

3. InsideSales

Call centers, sales teams, customer support offices, you spend your life on the phone. Having the ability to quickly click a link and make a call to a client is huge. Letting the system dial your call list so that you can stay on the phone and get things done is incredible. And having a call routed directly to the right sales or support rep, the customer’s record popping up on the screen as they answer the call? That’s a game changer. InsideSales is one of the most powerful CTI tools on the market! And if it’s not quite the right fit, check out this handy guide to help you choose the right CTI provider!

2. GridBuddy

Making the move from Excel to Salesforce means getting an insanely more powerful system that can grow and scale with you. It also means moving away from a very comfortable and intuitive user interface to something that requires some more clicks to get all the information you’re looking for. GridBuddy is the tool that brings the simplicity of Excel to the power of Salesforce by giving you customizable, simple grids of your Salesforce data. If you’re new to the idea of CRMs, you’re going to want to check it out!

1. Cirrus Insight

Google Apps has become one of the most widely utilized email hosts on the market, and loads of businesses live in Gmail all day. If your team uses Gmail and Salesforce, you’ll want to check out Cirrus Insight. It’s one of the best Salesforce-to-email connectors on the market!

Bonus: XIRR Calculator

If you’re a lender or broker, all of the above apps are perfect for you. They’ll help you streamline your processes and get more deals closed in less time. But we created this little gem with you in mind. This app is designed to streamline calculating XIRR on a deal. Just enter the funding and repayment amounts, terms, fees, and commissions, click calculate, and you have your answer. Easy.

-Jared and the Salesforce Guys