by Barry Thomason | Sep 5, 2018 | Business, Process Improvement, Sales, Salesforce
You follow your carefully crafted sales process to the letter, but many times your deals wither and die. You either lose outright or the deal simply doesn’t progress. What can you do?
Start addressing the issue by looking at how realistic your sales process stages are and how closely they relate to how your prospects typically make buying decisions. Think of it this way, a simplistic sales process (that some people actually use) is Prospect > Qualify > Demo/Presentation > Quote/Propose > Close. Granted, these stages are all things that sales reps typically do, but reps can do them all day long and still be nowhere near closing a sale. This process generates a lot of activity but not necessarily any results — and it can leave you frustrated. You’re working hard but nothing is happening. So, what’s the problem? If this describes you, your problem is likely that your sales effort is not aligned with your prospect’s buying effort. (more…)
by Barry Thomason | Aug 9, 2018 | Business, Process Improvement, Sales, Salesforce, Salesforce Adoption
During Salesforce implementation discussions, we often encounter people that struggle with how to use the Salesforce Leads object. This post will give you a framework for thinking about and working with Leads (even if you don’t use Salesforce yet). Note that for the purposes of this post, Leads are defined as individuals that are potential buyers or buying influencers. We are not talking about the use of Leads as it relates to a potential business opportunity, though some businesses also use the word Lead in that way. These type of Leads are dealt with differently and separately than buyer or buying influencer Leads. There are a variety of ways to deal with potential business opportunity Leads, but we will not address those here.
To set the framework for this discussion, here is a matrix you can use to categorize Leads.
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by Barry Thomason | Apr 6, 2016 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Marketing, Sales, Software, Technology
As a continuation to our post on the Salesforce Adoption Maturity Model, let’s discuss Basic Adoption in detail. Basic Adoption is usually attained when the entire team is tracking sales activities and managing prospect and customer relationships within Sales Cloud. The key to Basic Adoption is consistent usage – everyone is using the system on a regular basis and following similar processes. It’s not about perfection, it’s about consistency. Most companies in the Basic Adoption phase have made modifications for their specific business processes to help track important information about the Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities they are engaging.
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by Nikki Francisco | Mar 11, 2016 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Sales, Software, Technology
Everyone knows that Salesforce is the go-to solution for the CRM and sales needs of any business, but did you know that it can do much more? Salesforce is a complete and comprehensive system that can manage your entire business from anywhere using any device.
Here are some business problems Salesforce can solve that you probably didn’t know about: (more…)
by John Burdett | Feb 15, 2016 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales, Software, Technology
Customer Relationship Management (CRM), or as we like to call it – Consistent Relationship Management, solutions have been around for decades now and most everyone has tried to institute some level of CRM processes whether it is basic contact management or implementing a robust system like Salesforce. However, most companies have failed at adopting CRM processes and solutions. So why is implementing best practices within a good CRM solution so critical? Here are three main reasons why we think CRM is the most critical business process within your company and also why it’s important to have a good solution in place to manage these important business processes.
If CRM is Broken, Your Company is Broken (more…)
by Nikki Francisco | Feb 2, 2016 | Business, Sales, Software, Technology
Salesforce is a highly flexible, versatile solution that can help any organization manage their entire business from sales and marketing to customer support to client retention, and so on. Having so many use cases and so many features, implementations can seem overwhelming and too complex.
Here are 3 keys to implementing Salesforce to maximize the benefits of the solution while increasing adoption and success.
1. Learn to crawl before you run. (more…)
