Salesforce Setup

Salesforce.com is a powerful CRM that has become a standard for many businesses seeking to grow. You can design and build a business system that supports your processes and workflows.

To think through how to set up Salesforce.com to grow your business, you can use these questions below to frame how to design and customize Salesforce.com. They can help you think through the overall strategy.

Setting Up Salesforce.com

While Salesforce.com can be customized to an unlimited extent, it can also be unuseful if the design of the system is complicated and cluttered. This is a common occurrence and creates a problem for user adoption.

Here’s a framework as a resource to set up and design Salesforce.com to get business results:

• Establish key metrics. Get extremely clear on what matters to your business goals and what does not. Revenue by quarter? Forecasting by salesperson? Number of  new qualified leads per month? What moves the needle?
• Define the processes. What steps are required and where does the information have to be captured to support the key metrics? There are different record types – Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Cases, etc. which should house the information your process requires.
• Define the roles. Who does what? How does your team work together and what permissions need to be considered across geography, deal size, industry, etc.?
• Define milestones. The stages in Opportunity records, the status of Leads and the status of Cases need to be considered. What does each stage or status mean and what are the business rules to constitute a change in a record?
• Create relevant activities. What are the known, repeatable activities that need to be recommended and executed repeatedly to lead to the key metrics you desire? Number of meetings? Number of calls? Set of follow-up emails? If a person consistently does the activities that matter, do you get the key metrics you seek?

Your system should create business results from the right people doing the right things that lead to your desired outcomes. Thinking about what you want and ensuring your database is set up to encourage and support the flow and process for the outcomes you want should be a strategy set up from the beginning.

Then you can measure the outcomes by monitoring the reports and dashboards which oversee the business processes you enabled within Salesforce.com.

If you want to read more about strategies and approaches, you can read some key articles from below:

What you read can help you understand the strategies that I have used to help my clients become successful. If you would like to discuss your own needs, let’s talk. You can fill out the form above and checkbox the request for help at the bottom of the form.

It Really is About Success Not Software

The mantra that started at the turn of the century was “Success Not Software” to emphasize the agility of the cloud.

However, since those days, Salesforce.com has become much more complicated. It is software at the end of the day, albeit extremely powerful software.

You can run an enterprise on it or build a framework for growth for a startup for years to come.

It’s About Salesforce Strategy

It comes down to what strategy will support the most streamlined design of the system.

The relationships of your data to one another and how your users will interact with the system is critical.

The data you want out of the system and know on a real-time basis will help you make decisions quickly.

The ability to integrate with other applications or building your own applications to run on top of Salesforce.com allows for endless possibilities for automation and workflows.

Salesforce Consulting Remotely or Locally

I have worked remotely for many years with clients all over the world on business processes and systems. My Salesforce.com consulting work is disciplined, efficient and clear and employs my work style you can find here.

I have meetings with clients using screen sharing to clarify requirements and work within their Salesforce.com system for them and document the work for reference and training.

Furthermore, I can meet you at your office for the following locales and service for the frequent onsite travel I do to these cities working locally and there is not any management consulting fees for travel and expense (T&E) because I have a local presence and I am committed to these cities from working there over the years as a consultant:

Salesforce consulting in Denver, CO where I office at the efficiently located 1550 Wewatta ST, Denver, CO 80202

Salesforce consulting in Dallas, TX where I office at the fast-paced 1920 McKinney Ave, Dallas, TX 75201

Salesforce consulting in Austin, TX where I office on beautiful 600 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 78701.

Salesforce consulting in San Diego, CA where I office at the convenient downtown 600 B Street, Suite 300, San Diego, CA 92101

Salesforce consulting in Nashville, TN where I office at the hospitable One Nashville Place, 150 4th Ave N, Nashville, TN 37219

We can meet at the offices listed or I can visit with you and your team at your offices.

Making Salesforce Work

Thinking through how you will design and managing the input and review of information takes strategy. If you overcomplicate Salesforce.com, it will become unusable and your users will not adopt the system.

Furthermore, understanding how you want data relationships, information management and reporting to work, will be valuable in efficiently creating a path to grow your business with real-time, accurate information to make decisions.

Be sure to think systemically for the future in your design and implementation.