CRM? Client Database? Candidate Tracking System? Well, Salesforce is the man!Salesforce is a great tool in managing clienteles and candidates. It is great in terms of managing client and candidate relationship and gives the ambiance that they are talking to a real person without sacrificing too much time. You can also open it everywhere – on app, laptop or computer because all you need to do is to download the mobile version and you can access it using any browser.ProsSalesforce powers both our business development, sales, and recruiting efforts in our company. Salesforce makes it easy for us to know what is the last stage of a candidate, what are the next steps he needs to take in his candidacy for a single position, and also if he has already been talking to someone else in our company. Salesforce also makes it possible for us to know what was the last message we sent out to a single candidate or client. It is also great in terms of establishing relationship because we can customize HTML emails as if we are sending a tailor-fitted email to a single person even-though it is just an email blast. It is great as well in terms of driving sales and business development effort. We can keep track of the cadence of each possible client, and we can also indicate if they are set for a phone meeting or in-person meeting with our higher ops. The chatter is also great, and from time to time Salesforce gives us a snapshot of what we have done and what we are doing.ConsI really don’t have a lot of bad experience with regards to us using Salesforce. Maybe one thing they can improve on is how their technical support works. Sometimes they are not that helpful, and they are not that trained enough in resolving each person’s concern.
the Best CRM on the market10/10. The most complete CRM out there. We are only scratching the surface of what we can use SF for. ProsThere literally isn’t anything That Salesforce can’t do. We are even beginning to use their billing system. It is absolutely vital for sales engagement, pipeline management, forecasting, relationship management, etc….. ConsSometimes it feels like you need a degree in SF to do certain things. It can be hard to figure things out. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Streak couldn’t do what we needed as we scaled
Highly complex and customizable, with seemingly arbitrary limitationsComplex, confusing at times, lots of great documentation. Often though, if you want to do something that seems like it should be built in, you have to break out the Apex code or a Workflow, which is annoying. Users love the platform – I was able to move things around to their liking on pages, integrate DocuSign with it (that was a chore, making all of those templates) so they can send agreements. Overall I have a love/hate relationship with this software.ProsHighly customizable – an actual platform you can create your own apps on. Likely the largest product I’ve ever dealt with in terms of scope and being able to create your own things inside of it. ConsMany parts of the software are not able to talk to each other – for example, (I can’t recall exactly but) you can look up contacts on an account, but can’t look up accounts from a contact. You can only go a certain direction when you’re referencing parent / child relationships in the schema of salesforce. Also, there’s tons of little quirks that have been a problem for 7%2B years now, and they remain unchanged – like being able to run reports on the EmailMessage object. I get it – maybe some dev thought that it was too much stress on the system. Get some more servers and charge by the workload, then.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Telenotes is hilariously basic compared to Salesforce. We wanted something more robust.
The CRM worth buyingOverall, this app is something I’d definitely recommend as it has a very good system for organizing corporate activity, ease of use is very good, navigation wise it can be improved, load time is fast, and above all I haven’t experienced any downtime when I was using this CRM.ProsSalesforce is one awesome tool that is very useful and budget-wise that is already full of functionality to run daily tasks, organize tickets for support, reminders for important to do’s whether needing immediate attention or non-urgent ones. It is also great with integrations for easier management such as with calendar apps. It has your sort functions, filters for categorizing, labeling, and disposition tagging for at a glance view. The one thing I observed about this CRM is it doesn’t lag although a lot of users are already accessing the same interface, which means it has a stable platform and servers that can accommodate the bandwidth of multiple users. I can safely say that it allocates a significant storage to avoid the nuisance of pages loading slowly. Not only that, so far there are no reported issues of their database being breached or any intrusions which is very harmful for businesses and their trade secrets. It is vital since client data is the backbone of a business. I’m glad that they have established these safeguards well to make their product reliable and trustworthy.ConsThe only thing I noticed is it took a lot of clicks to get you to where you want to go in this CRM. For example, in opening a particular ticket, you’d have to open a preview page first before being able to open the ticket with the actual content itself. Although the site mapping was remedied internally to lessen the time of navigating from one page to another. So far that’s the only downside I’ve encountered.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Comparing Zendesk navigation with Salesforce, the latter was a little easier compared to the former. The higher ups had also previously used Salesforce that’s why it was the one being chosen as the company CRM.
Can you do without SaleForceMy experince with salesforce hasbeen great and awesome. I have no doubt that even a new user will definitely enjoy the benefits of its functionality and its capabilities. Thoughalot more investment in training is needed for new users. But all in all it has great features. The customer support is very responsive and the capabilities of the software is outstanding.ProsSalesforce is no longer just a piece of software but a must-have tool, that can be a game-changer in any business from huge organizations to small to medium enterprises. As a full-time consultant, i work with different organizations and companies.I have personally r3commendedit to different organizations and companies i have worked with to date because it is now a vital business solutions tool. It is a completely customizable and easy to use interface.ConsThere need to invest in a lot of training. For a new user, it is difficult to use.It should be designed to allow easy compatibility with other software that is handy to operations of other departments. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud It had moreproduct features than hubspot , and these seemed to match and fit in eith the requirements of my clients
SalesForce is astounding for the most part at what it does, however can be hard to adjust to specifiIt monitors our hopefuls and customers discourses over some stretch of time which causes us return from where the last discussion had finished. A decent record data also with 360-perspective on data. Devices work quite a bit of some acclaimed person to person communication destinations and could be considered as a simple exploring stage.ProsA stage that offers deals the board, client administration, showcasing robotization and accomplice relationship the executives. It is a c cloud-based CRM arrangement, Salesforce gives you anyplace, whenever, access to your business information, even from cell phones. This stage helped us streamline our procedure and logged our discussion with every one of our customers/applicants monitoring the discourse history and knowing where we left at. It has a decent contact the board framework that enables the clients to store significantly more data like record/customer subtleties, addresses, other accessible data which permits a decent record information review. The Dashboard is adaptable and can fit to what their customer needs and requires for the particular procedure. It’s a simple to explore programming particularly for the individuals who had been into cloud-based stage previously.ConsThe multifaceted nature of its highlights here and there are not being depleted/augmented by little scale organizations and could get overpowering now and again. Evaluating might be somewhat high for a little organization particularly on the off chance that they need something that is progressively adaptable. For our group, it took us some time to explore the stage completely and consider was on the most proficient method to tweak the stage dependent on our necessities. Recognizing what is as of now accessible for us and what can be considered for what’s to come is something that we get to profound plunge through the span of months and a great deal of cooperation and discussion with the group. Announcing issues may be somewhat hard as far as realizing who is responsible for certain specialized glitch if its Salesforce people themselves or some application that connects to it.
The most powerful CRM available hands down!ProsEvery aspect of Salesforce can be customized to maximize the efficiency of your sales and marketing teams. There are thousands of pre-built solutions that allow for rapid deployment and implementation of the features you need. Additionally you can customize user permissions to tailor access to your data to only those that require it. I highly recommend this CRM if you want a robust solution with room to grow.ConsSalesforce uses it’s own query and scripting languages which requires familiarity with their software. It is not cheap but it is worth every penny!Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud I needed to integrate with multiple proprietary backend databases.
Great productWe have deployed the system throughout the whole organization and now moving to the next level of client onboardingProsThe product has allowed us to better manage our client relationships and look for opportunitiesConsYou have to learn the Salesforce languageReasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud It was always slow in development and every time there was an update there was a cost
It does so much for so much! It is pricey, but you can get anything you want.I like all of the storage that is available for all of my client files.ProsI liked all of the data points that I could get and track with my customers and leads. It really gave a lot of information to track. If you didn’t get everything already installed, you can easily customize it yourself.ConsI didn’t like all of the screens that aren’t needed. It isn’t easy to customize your screens to show only the data you want to see. You have to wade through a lot of elements.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Because it had longevity in the marketplace and we were looking for wisdom and experience.
Greats software for CRM but expensive and hard to implimentMy overall experience was frustrating and the lack of support only clouded the quality of the product. When we ask for support we were told we had to go to a third party to get any help on our implementation. This was not clearly communicated when we were sold the software.ProsSaleforce is the standard for the industry and has a price tag to match. When we implements Sales force we had 2 sales people and 6 PM’s that used it. The customization and automation where fantastic features and of great benefit. The sales to customer success migration was also a valuable feature for us. ConsThe software was expensive and the sales person made licensing sales complicated and confusing. Once we were sold on the software our sales person disappeared and we had another rep who basically said deal with what you have. We wanted to change our model around but at the time Salesforce did not let us do this. We let the license expire and moved to another productReasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud The customization Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We wanted a more professional solution that would help both sales but also customer success
Salesforce the sure CRMOverall, I’d strongly recommend this app because it has a very good system for coordinating corporate operation, it’s very easy to use, the navigation could be improved, and the load time is fast.ProsSalesforce is an excellent tool that is very useful and budget-friendly, and it already has a lot of features to run regular tasks, arrange help tickets, and set reminders for important to-dos, whether they are urgent or not. It’s also useful for integrating with other software for easier management, such as calendar apps. It includes sorting, categorizing, and marking filters, as well as a search tool.ConsThe only thing I found was that getting to where you want to go in this CRM took a lot of clicks. To open a specific ticket, for example, you’d have to first open a demo page before being able to open the ticket with the actual material. Although the site mapping was improved internally to and the amount of time it took to navigate from one page to the next. So far, it is the only disadvantage.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce was a cloud-based CRM system, and it has since dominated the industry. It occurred to me that it was past time for me to join the cloud revolution.
Salesforce Get MeUsing Salesforce for many years has helped keep track of everything business. We use it to track and organize email, notes, files and reports on clients and employees. We use the dashboard feature and notifications to stay on top of needs and alerts. It makes us more efficient in our work and our planning.ProsI love the flexibility, the expandability, the collaboration I achieve with the entire organization has helped make us more efficient as a whole.ConsThe software is expensive yet they did give a non-profit discount that is appreciated. The buy-in from all users is also challenging just due to it being a new software.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Zoho CRM was rated as good but we needed something that has established itself as a leader in the industry and we just went for Platinum service. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud G Suite is good but it is not as durable and easily expandable to multiple needs as Salesforce.
Salesforce NPSP – Pricey, but will give you room to growGreat! If possible, I recommend ensuring you have someone in-house with at least 3 years experience before deployment. We contract a Salesforce Developer who aids non-profits specifically to aid in back-end matters.ProsI love that it has given our non-profit a space to grow into. Too often, non-profits find themselves barred by limits placed on the number of Contacts being retained. Most pricing is based around this figure which is tiresome when you are looking to gain momentum without having to have constant upgrades. Salesforce is massive and delivers in what it says it will do.ConsIt is challenging to learn. I would have appreciated options for non-profit teams to have discount pricing on trainings with use. This would have provided for shared trust in the CRM, rather than knowledge given to a few who then became internal advocates for the system. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud We desired the best. We understood NPSP was in its infancy stages, but were confident that this was the best choice for our own projections of donor base growth 5 years down the road- and we were right. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud eTapestry was not easy to grow with. Moreover; it didn’t provided the diversity of integrations we needed to expand our impact. Salesforce is the best in its field. I believe it has room to mature with Nonprofits. When they invest in that sector- they will be unrivaled.
Great CRM platform, but not always worth Salesforce’s continually increasing licensing costsWe used Salesforce to be our CRM and Professional Services Automation (PSA) system. We custom-built the PSA, but the CRM piece was mostly Salesforce out-of-the-box. Ultimately, if you can figure how to keep your licensing and other add-in costs in check, then Salesforce can be the right tool for you. Otherwise, you may find what we found, which is that Salesforce’s continual cost increases eventually cause the platform to lose its ROI. We ultimately switched from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics 365 after Salesforce continually and forcibly raised their costs beyond our ROI threshold. The system was functionally fine, but the annual costs had simply become too much.ProsAs a CRM platform, it’s everything you could ask for. Also, its AppStore is top notch. From a functionality perspective, you cannot go wrong with Salesforce. Also, as one of the biggest and most widespread platforms, there are plenty of Salesforce resources out there, so there is no shortage of help available should you need it. If you are a small non-profit particularly, Salesforce can be an incredible resource as your first 10 licenses are free (as long as you qualify as a non-profit with Salesforce)ConsIf you are a for-profit firm, be aware that Salesforce builds in an annual 7% licensing cost increase into it’s contracts. As a result, you will be continually negotiating and re-negotiating with them to keep licensing costs reasonable. Even then, Salesforce will continually look to increase your spend with them. Their sales teams/account managers can be very aggressive and a lot of things you may want or need will cost you extra. They’re also continually rotating their account managers. This can be very frustrating as a customer because just when you feel that you’ve built a good relationship with your account manager, Salesforce will switch people on you and then you have to work to rebuild a new relationship.
May the SalesFORCE be with you!Salesforce is a game-changer for our organization. We’ve reported out on items that previously we hadn’t in years. There’s very little manual effort now as we have so many triggers setup for automation.ProsWithout Salesforce our organization simply would not be able to function as quickly as we do now. We have so many automation processes and workflows setup that has saved us a lot of time. We use this platform across 15 departments in our organization, and it continues to grow. Everyone who sees the benefits of this great CRM… asks for User licenses… it’s that good. We love the Contact Management, Lead-> Opportunity tracking and most importantly the Reports and Dashboards!ConsSalesforce can be pricey especially as it grows within an organization, so that would be the one setup. However, they do offer a Non-Profit Starter pack that I’d recommend small non-profit organizations to look into.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce seemed to be the Enterprise leader and due to the open-API features, it was a no brainer to move forward. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce was true cloud based and has dominated the market. We felt it’s time for us to join the cloud movement.
Automation and Access to Customer DataAs mentioned before, my overall experience has been phenomenal. I’m confident enough to speak for the rest of my team by saying that Salesforce has benefited our organization to close more deals and build trust with our customers. ProsSalesforce gives our sales team the ability to review accurate customer information. We’re able to personalize each of our prospects/leads in order to optimize our overall close rate. I work directly with the internal marketing team. A crucial role of mine to create custom objects, build reports and dashboards, and updating or creating flows through process builder. Salesforce overall has been a tremendous support to our team in helping us bring our leads down the marketing funnel, stage by stage. ConsI have ran into errors and problems with Salesforce numerous times. However, I believe this is due to me being uneducated about the software. Whenever I’m stuck, I usually proceed to one of the following: 1. Open up trailhead to earn and learn one of the many badges they have on there. 2. Search for my problem on the trailhead community. They’re many experts on there! 3. Submit a case to Salesforce. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Affordable, cloud software, and efficiency.
Excellent Features, Wide-Ranging, Enterprise-Level CRMAs I always say, you get what you pay for and that’s certainly true with Salesforce. Adding Salesforce to your tech stack is a big investment, but one that will almost certainly pay for itself. ProsSalesforce is incredibly robust for automation and capturing data if you have a knowledgeable administrator at the helm of your business. Being able to create different sections (objects), fields, reports and rules in a matter of minutes makes it the best CRM I have ever used. ConsIn Salesforce, everything is connected, which can often times cause errors or minor issues when making a simple change/addition. The software is getting better at educating users and administrators, but it lacks the full ability to debug easily. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce had more to offer when it came to reporting and automation. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Dynamics was difficult to get a full picture of our business and the UI was not allowing our users to succeed. We needed a software that will continue to evolve and allow us to modernize our business processes.
Very functional productProsIndustry leading software Massive community support network High volume of add-ins and extensions Intuitive natural user interface (lightning) Easy reporting Highly customizableConsSome administration/development is quite complicated for newer admins Product support, even on premier, is frustrating. Had to explain the same issue to each tier of support. Often I resolved our issue on my own. Mobile app has been inconsistently working for both iPhone and Android for the last year or so. Some browser based issues & Mac v. PC Java based issues.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Pipedrive was not as powerful / customizable as we were accustomed to with Insightly. Apto is based on Salesforce but is highly tailored and not customizable as well. Ultimately, a system with the ability to customize workflows, designs/interfaces, and integrations was critical to our need. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Insightly was failing our organization for multiple reasons. The user interface was never the prettiest and the system took a lot to train users to use. However, the biggest sin was several API updates broke various integrations we had. After a few fatal API updates we decided to jump ship to another system.
Cost effective and very efficient CRM I helped in implementing corporate engagement plan for donation management. It has easily defined schema and took less time to customize the module.ProsEasily defined, fully connected and talking features. It is widely popular in each industry sector, market leader and radical in changing the whole ecosystem of CRM industry. SaaS or PaaS it has changed whole ecosystem. Every company which is on on Salesforce has saved tonnes of money and time while focusing on their potential. ConsToo many customizations lead to duplicate efforts. It releases so many versions so fast that sometime unnecessary update clients do. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud free 10 user for Non profit success pack by salesforce. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Sheets were not talking to each other. It was not easy to capture all the historical movements in the account.
Salesforce for forecasting and managing product portfolio and customer ordersSalesforce is probably the best forecasting tool out there. You can use the Stage and Probability to determine when to start buying parts and building your products. This helps shorten the lead time for customer orders. Sales can also use this to move the opportunity along based on the confidence and feedback they get from the customers. Salesforce also helps maintaining the product portfolio. By using the forecasting mentioned above, you can determine whether to end-of-sales a product (if the trend is down) or increase a product’s inventory (if the trend is up). You can set a criteria that only active products are available for Sales to use on their quotes to the customers.Pros– Stage and Probability fields to track confidence levels of an opportunity. – Award Date to designate Booking Date (when we receive the customer order or PO). – Date to designate Ship Date (when we shipped the customer order). – Multiple custom fields can be added to tailor to the company. – Approvals to move an opportunity from one Stage to the next in the workflow. – History to track the opportunity’s lifecycle. – Able to attach files to an opportunity. – Able to track quotes sent to the customer. – Easy to clone an opportunity so it saves time recreating similar data. – GUI is easy to follow and find information. – Easy to create reports. – Can integrate with other apps. – Able to mark a product as active, released, obsolete, etc. ConsThe web interface’s speed is dependent on the company’s IT infrastructure. If the server is slow, the network is slow, then Salesforce will run slow. Since Salesforce uses the web interface, it is affected by the same deficiencies of the web browser.
Salesforce – Marketing & Lead GenWe are using Salesforce to streamline new business leads and nurture leads into actual sales. We are able to analyze, vet, engage, and track the progress of the new leads we receive from our Facebook lead gen ads. Salesforce integrates directly into Facebook’s Business Manager and automatically imports new leads in real-time. We are also able to see the cost per lead acquired and other rich insights from our Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns that get directly populated into our dash. ProsSalesforce is one of the most powerful and sophisticated CRMs available. The onboarding process and demos with the reps were exceptionally helpful. The reps really took time to understand our CRM needs, our workflow process, and how we can best utilize/adopt Salesforce into our new business department to grow revenue and track progress. The tool is completely customizable and has very advanced marketing integrations within the cloud. The ability to track leads and history (who followed up and when) and add notes and assign leads to specific people makes the entire workflow so much more efficient. It’s worth the price tag if you take advantages of the features. ConsWe wish the marketing cloud add on wasn’t so expensive. There are many tools available that offer the same features such as Sprout Social and Hubspot. However, the price was a little steep for the %246,000. I also wish pricing was a bit more transparent. The discounts and contract lengths have been very inconsistent in our experience. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Great reviews and exceptional customer service/reps. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Much more advanced features for large scale lead gen needs.
Salesforce doesn’t lack the power, but suffers in process flow and visualsInteractions with Support at the time were forced. In terms of Ease of use: I believe the tool was fairly simple to follow when used consistently. The lead and contact managment elements of the tool were very strong and nuanced. From generating new leads, connecting them to an email campaign, nurturing the leads to the next stages of the cycle and then converting the leads into customers. For us, selling software, converting them to clients and then using Salesforce to track the implementation and consulting component was crucial. Salesforce did a wonderful job and reducing duplication. I definitely was able to handle more volume of prospects with Salesforce and direct my attention and activities to the highest value. And that is the point of the Sales side of a CRM.ProsSalesforce is a fantastic option for larger businesses that need powerful sales and service functionality within an integrated environment. I was just one team member of many, but I believe the tracking ability of a robust pipeline of prospects and the tools available to capture, recall, execute and update records through an elongated sales process allowed me to be more effective and efficient with my client time. Salesforce brags on its sales, marketing, and analytics toolset and in general these did not disappoint. The drill-down capabilities from the analytics dashboards were useful. Also, the ability to tie your email correspondence with prospects to quickly recall your last interaction was critical.ConsThe internal tools for messaging and communication appeared archaic to me and almost always circumvented in favor of our own favorited instant messaging and posting platforms. The design of the data input screens was oddly spaced and placed. It wasn’t the best flow when capturing info. However, admittedly, the platform allowed for great automation in the workflow and setup of custom fields. I don’t believe my company spent the time evaluating the best use of the tool. And so my advice is to get a good definition of your processes and standards so that you can utilize Salesforce to the fullest.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud My company was acquiring other companies and needed a larger platform with room to grow as well as a standard in which to demand throughout the organization.
Easy to UseWe can track all of our leads and opportunities from how they are coming from all the way to the final disposition of the leads and everything in between. We are very happy with Salesforce and can’t imagine ever using another CRM.ProsThis product was very easy to install and includes a cloud version. For most small, medium and some larger size businesses, this software will meet all of your Sales and Marketing needs. This software is a great overall value for the price point. Customer service is great!ConsThere is a slight learning curve as this software has so must functionality and is very robust. Other than that the possibilities for your sales team with this software are limitless. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud More functionality Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce is more compatible with the other software packages that we are using.
The number 1 CRM solution for very good reasonsI have been working with and enjoying Salesforce for 7 years now, Salesforce is constantly evolving and introducing new functionalities, and what is not available out of the box (so to speak) can be achieved either by custom development, or using the dedicated app store which allows vendors to tailor solutions to problems and offer them as bolt on solutions inside the salesforce system.ProsSalesforce is hugely customisable, as a consultant, I am always asked to customise the system to fit the needs of the client, and I have not yet found a requirement that cannot be met, it may take knowledge and expertise from multiple different types of people (admins, developers, specialists etc.) but with enough understanding the sky is the limit.ConsThere are certain limitations which may need to be overcome when setting up a new CRM system, if you are coming from a complex CRM previously, then achieving the same functionality is not always easy, but that is the reason you are switching systems, to gain benefits, not just to put a new interface on to the same solution.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud I found SAP CRM to be quite cumbersome at the time, I have not looked back into it since making the switch to Salesforce, so it may have improved by now. I know Salesforce certainly has.
Flexible, extensible, and powerful. Salesforce is incredible.Salesforce is terrific and only getting better. Adding to the existing strengths of incredible depth and flexibility, recent updates have streamlined some of the processes and made some high-use pages and interfaces easier to navigate quickly. It still takes a bit of work to learn how to effectively use the many, many tools available in Salesforce, but extensive documentation and free online training make it easier to do.ProsSalesforce can do (almost) anything and integrate with (almost) any other platform. The platform is incredibly deep and extensible. If there’s a thing you’d like a cloud-based database to do, Salesforce can do it. It also integrates well with a huge range of other platforms.ConsSometimes, the depth makes the interface a slog to navigate, or makes it challenging to figure out how to implement the customization you’re looking for. For administrators and developers, the learning curve can be steep. It’s also not always immediately apparent what you can do from within Salesforce, and what requires an additional integration.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud More functionality and depth for the price. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce offered us better functionality, more stability, and cloud/mobile access.
Saleforce is invaluable, if configured and used correctlyIt is an essential tool for medium to enterprise businesses, but it has to be designed well from the beginning. Implemented properly, the executive team, operations, sales leadership, inside sales, direct sales, marketing, and more will benefit.ProsHIGHLY customizable. All data fields can be pulled into reporting/dashboards. To implement properly, you have to reverse-engineer what metrics are important to your business. Once you have a comprehensive understanding of the reporting that you want to see then you can build fields, pick-lists, radio buttons, etc so you capture all relevant data. The beauty is that you are not at all limited to the out-of-the-box configuration (which is good, but generic). In the past I have built in lead sources and ROI, appointment setting quality grading, commission reporting, stack ranking, and many other highly customized reports. Start with the end in mind and then find a good implementation partner who can execute on your plan. ConsCost and support at the lower levels. Unless you have (pay for) their premium support, their customer service is not quick to act. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud It is far and away the leader. The insight provided is critical to effectively managing a business. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We had not purchased software assurance, and to buy a new box and upgrade, versus moving to the Cloud with all of the associated benefits, was a no-brainer.
This CRM Can Do AnythingI wish I had known about it’s capabilities a long time ago because we would’ve switched to it for onboarding much sooner. I didn’t realize you could create custom objects that could tie to an account record and setup virtually as many fields as you needed.ProsOur onboarding team uses Salesforce for onboarding new customers. It allows us to track communications, activities, mark task that have been completed and create reports and dashboards to show how accounts are progressing through the onboarding process. Salesforce is the best in class tool when it comes to customization and trackability. We can setup whatever fields we need and collect whatever data we need based on various workflows. You can also create automated tasks.ConsSalesforce is a bit clunky and slow at times. We had to have training by a Salesforce expert to implement the systems we needed, so I wouldn’t say it’s very user-friendly (but that’s expected when you have such a robust system).Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud We looked at Monday.com for project management, but due to the fields, workflows, automated tasks and overall functionality we were looking for, Salesforce was much more customizable for our needs. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We looked at Trello for project management for awhile, but it didn’t have the reporting and automated tasks we needed. Wasn’t very customizable.
To love it is to LIVE IN ITIts a CRM. Like all CRMs what you put into it is what you will get out. If you live in it day in and day out its a great program and the reason for their popularity and success.ProsThe fact that you can have access to your information anywhere is comforting.ConsConvoluted. There are lots of hoops you need to jump through in order to really have this software work for you. An GOD FORBID you have any issue because support is not great. At least in my experience. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Customization features and had someone in the office already working in it. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Needed something that was more user friendly and was able to be more customized.
Excellent tool but challenge to fully deployWe did not realize the capability to interface so with our manufacturing and accounting systems. While not exhaustive, the information which can be shared between the three systems had been invaluable to our sales engineering team. It’s also been a great help for sharing company wide project status for pipeline projects. One of the greatest benefits has been in sales planning. We’re no longer limited to running reports from 4 systems . Salesforce allows us to quickly create pipeline reports and create punch up reports for sales team members.ProsSince integration of SalesForce to our sales engineering team we have full visibility of quote, inquiry and sale pipeline activities. In previous systems these activities we’re silo functions which depended on spreadsheet analysis lots of discussions and sales person memory. Salesforce has proven a great central repository and clearing House for all of this information. The linking with Outlook was a critical piece of this which we purchased from a third party. ConsThe front end pricing seemed ok. BUT it took a LOT of customization to get the level of user friendly interface and process integration we needed. We ended up having to expand the customization scope twice after the initial contract. So the overall cost per user and startup was much higher than budgeted.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Installed product base Industry reputation Customization capabilities Net based App for remote access
The Premier CRM SoftwareSalesforce has been a lifesaver as a user and admin. I have used multiple programs in both roles, and Salesforce wins hands down. I can’t stress enough how much your future self will thank you by choosing the right CRM program the first time. ProsIn every company I have consulted for and worked for, we have used or switched to Salesforce. Once built out properly, it is an asset that is scalable and will continue to benefit your sales team. The functionalities are endless: Leads, Accounts, Opportunites, Metics calculators, pipeline management tables, Groups, and options to create products too! (This one was difficult to construct but I was more than ecstatic that I could use this for wholesale as well) Let’s talk about customer support: Very comprehensive. There is a whole website dedicated to tutorial videos, live chats, and Q&A boards. If you still can’t figure out the problem they do have a real human you can speak to who will help you out. ConsThe learning curve to set up your salesforce correctly is rough if you have not done any Salesforce admin work before. Starting off with a small group is easier, and the program is more forgiving when you have fewer accounts, leads, etc, but as your org grows, you will want to ensure that Salesforce is set up correctly. Errors with when you have a lot of data will take a long time to fix.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud The functionality was not there. I was not able to save notes correctly, maneuvering took way too many clicks, the layout was awful, and getting help was difficult.
Rapid Configuration and UpdatesWe were looking to update our CRM and wanted something cloud based and easy to reach for all users. It has been an excellent choice as we can make fast updates to our system without a lot of work or programming. People find it easy to use and onboarding new employees has been faster than before. ProsVery easy to use and setup customizations. There are a lot of options to customize the system to your needs without having to write code. Going from test to live in super fast and easy. It is updated three times a year that bring a lot of new features that improve what we can do in the system, Salesforce becomes more powerful each time. The ad hoc reporting is incredible to have.ConsThe price is pretty high for some who are not going to use it all. There are a lot of extras that would need to get bought for you to get everything you want from the system. It might not be clear what is an extra. It lacks some functions that you might expect from a system like conditional fields cannot be highlighted.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Cost and ease of support. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud The old one was hard to update, it required a programmer to make changes. Changes were slow to be developed. It required users to be on prem to use.
Industry StandardI have tried other tools, including Hubspot to use as a CRM and nothing compares to the functionality and reporting you receive from SFDC. ProsIt is a great tool to track and analyze all sales and marketing data. It has plenty of customization and integrations available. ConsSFDC has a mind of its own, you need to know what you are doing if you are an administrator, however that doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Currently, not all functionality is available in Lightnighting (we use lightning and I keep being sent back to classic to fix some stuff).Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud I have used SFDC for years now, and have yet to encounter a product that is as useful, organized, and effective as Salesforce.com is. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Hubspot was okay at best, but didn’t track nor show data as effectively nor efficiently as we needed.
Well-secured and helpful platformOverall, as I said this is one of the greatest software and I would recommend to everyone who needs marketing, sales, and service. It connects the customer and the client. The one thing that they should probably consider changing is the price because most people find it too expensive and for software like this that shouldn’t be the case.ProsSalesforce is one of the greatest software nowadays. It has a lot of data stored plus it’s very secure to use so you don’t have to worry about anything happening to your data. Also, it has a cross-platform which means you can use it for iOS, Android, phones, tablets, etc. This software also provides you with information about the client/candidate, is he hired by someone, what he should do next and so on. It creates a general relationship between you and the client. What you have done and what the client has done. Also, Salesforce offers you the first ten licenses for free if you are a non-profit person or company.ConsThe main thing that I dislike about Salesforce is the price. It’s quite expensive and every other license that you buy just gets more expensive, so because of that, you should probably ask someone more informed before purchasing. Another thing that I dislike is that they often change their managers. Imagine having one manager and making a good relationship with him and they suddenly change him. You need to start building a new relationship which in some cases can be frustrating. And last but not least, their customer service sometimes can be irritating because most of the people that are hired are not friendly and helpful.
Salesforce: A user-friendly CRM SystemThe non-profit organization that I work for, Interfaith Caregivers has been using Salesforce for a year. I’m so glad that we decided on this system because I have used it previously in other places of work. One of the reasons why we went with Salesforce was to manage a marketing/fundraiser campaign that we have every year. We were able to store our donor and board members and create a campaign just for them to use as a communication tool and to begin the fundraiser campaign for our annual gala. It was also very easy and much needed to track donor and fundraiser payments for the gala. We are able to store multiple templates which consist of donor thank you letters in the template field. This is a very helpful feature! ProsThe non-profit organization that I work for, Interfaith Caregivers has been using Salesforce for a year. I’m so glad that we decided on this system because I have used it previously in other places of work. One of the reasons why we went with Salesforce was to manage a marketing/fundraiser campaign that we have every year. We were able to store our donor and board members and create a campaign just for them to use as a communication tool and to begin the fundraiser campaign for our annual gala. It was also very easy and much needed to track donor and fundraiser payments for the gala. We are able to store multiple templates which consist of donor thank you letters in the template field. This is a very helpful feature! ConsIt is hard for me to dislike Salesforce. I appreciate the fact that we were able to get the nonprofit discount. Also we were able to use the 10 free licenses since we have 10 employees! I would say the only thing is that I look forward to seeing how Salesforce will continue to grow and evolve and offer other packages to improve the CRM experience. Currently I have not ran into any problems. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We were using a very old version of Careworks. Perhaps I believe a 2009 version and had minimum help with the administrator or a representative if anything went wrong with Careworks. Plus the Careworks version that we had was NOT user-friendly. If you were in a record to edit it, you had to after editing save each individual page. There were also many custom fields that were not needed for our organization and tracking the data that we needed. It was time to leave the stone age and get modern technology.
Salesforce reviewMy overall experience with Salesforce is that initially it is difficult to learn how to use. The user’s experience in learning how to implement and incorporate it is not pleasant. However, once you start playing around with it more and more, you get the hang of it and it does ease everyday tasks for members across all organizations within a company.ProsWhat I like most about this product is that my team and company was looking for a product in order to ease the customization of widgets and components, automate tasks for users that were tedious and time-consuming, and streamline the process of customer’s feedback to the customer support team to the implementation and design team. Salesforce was able to offer solutions in order to solve all those problems, all while allowing us to customize various apps and dashboards in order to meet our customers’ and business needs. ConsWhat I liked least about the software is the documentation and learning curve that came with incorporating and implementing using Salesforce. I was part of the team analyzing if Salesforce was right for my business, and documentation about customizing styling and allowing different users to have different roles within your corporate account were difficult things to find. After speaking with several people who work at Salesforce and swiping through pages and pages of online material, we were able to play around and find what works best for us. Definitely incorporate the learning curve into your business plan if you plan to use Salesforce.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Both of the other products we looked at had terrible customer service, were costly, and did not allow for the customization and wide breadth of options we were looking for. The learning curve for those were much greater and we didn’t get more out of them for our business needs. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud The main reason my company was looking for a switch was for more ability to customize while keeping the price low that we paid for the solution.
Salesforce is a Dream!I use it daily. I live in salesforce and I’m in marketing. I use it to keep up with my team and to try to use chatter to highlight what is working and showcase certain accounts. I also like to follow the wins and losses to try to get a feel for where we can improve. ProsEverything. I love salesforce. I love its ease of use, navigation, walk-me, training, integration, features, functionality, you name it. Chatter is my favorite feature and once adopted by organizations you see the whole organization migrate to making salesforce their homepage. I love the adaptation the teams have to it and that you can customize your dashboard so sales, marketing, integration, and other teams can all use it as they need to. ConsThe cost, and sometimes Salesforce does not do a good job of showing the interoperability it has. There are so many features that make it a one-stop-shop for companies large and small, but it seems if the product is sold as a sales tool, it remains that way instead of showing the integration options for marketing and other teams. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud I went to dreamforce and was sold! Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud features and functionality
Great CRM ToolOnce we started using Salesforce, we have increased our repeat business from our existing clients and our conversion rate from the leads and referrals we receive has skyrocketed. We are able to tailor our offerings to the prospects specific needs and their response has been overwhelmingly positive. We often get comments about how they feel like we understand them better than our competitors.ProsSalesforce is probably the most functional CRM tool on the market, and one of the easiest to set up and use. It worked right out of the box, and we have continued to expand the features we use. One of the best things are all the plugins available, which allow you to customize the environment to fit your business’ specific requirements. Our revenues have doubled consistently year-to-year and our customer satisfaction ratings have improved dramatically since we began using Salesforce. My team has threatened to revolt if we ever consider moving to a different platform.ConsThe licensing structure favors larger organizations, but the fees we pay are still reasonable for the value we get from the product.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud N/A Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Cost, and the reviews we read about Salesforce.
Salesforce is Most Capable PlatformOverall experience has been great. We have grown as a company at 30% percent since adopting. We launched on the Lighting UI and I highly recommend the same for anyone that is looking to launch the product. There are a ton of resources that will help with implementation which is great!ProsThe best part and worst part of being on the Salesforce platform is the ability to customize the tool to your needs. If you have a specific process, permission, security that you need to be able to accommodate, you will always have the ability on the platform. The mobile app is great and is used most of our users. There are some areas for improvement, but overall great. Salesforce also does a great job of implementing new features and changes based on their community feedback. The Ideaexchange is an amazing tool and SF does a great job basing their changes on wheat the people want. Finally, TrailHead is the best in the business. The ability to self teach is amazing and SF does a wonderful job keeping all the moduels up to date. ConsThe same thing why Salesforce is great with flexibility and customization also make things very difficult. The best way to describe this is Salesforce is a like a beautiful house on the outside. They give you the roof/doors/walls, BUT what you put in the house and how you arrange is all your own doing. This makes it difficult if you need a specific issue taken care of, you will need to reach out to a developer to accomplish unless you have one in-house. Also the App exchange although very great, can get very expensive. A lot of companies make a living taking a Salesforce idea and perfecting, then selling on the app exchange. This can come in handy, but also at a cost.
SalesForce %2B Pardot = Winning TeamMy current company had been using Constant Contact before I arrived, and it was poorly managed… a huge mess, even… partially due to the staff being unable to coordinate, and partially because the software was a bit clunky. I was brought on during the SalesForce onboarding process, and 36 months later, with very little management efforts from our marketing/BD staff, our data is standardized, uniform, and easily accessible. Emails are scheduled to go out once a week, months in advance, based on templates first developed by our onboarding process, and we have been able to shift our marketing staff to more analytical projects that have given us the edge we needed to be on track to make our profit-sharing bonus numbers for the first time in years.ProsThe ability to customize really makes SalesForce its own beast. I’ve worked for two companies that have used the software, and both looked very different, yet still intuitively the same. I like that if there isn’t currently a solution for you, there are add-ons and plug-ins that can be fitted into your experience to make it an extremely tailored solution for a wide range of companies. Not only that, the customer support staff have some great tools at their disposal that give you an even deeper dimension of control, should you be unable to quite round the edges for your perfect fit. I like the seamless integration with Pardot. In addition, with Pardot’s automation platform, you can literally save hours’ worth of work as contact/prospect data can sync in nearly realtime, depending on the rules you’ve set up. If all this sounds perplexing, don’t worry too much, as Salesforce has an amazing onboarding team that will work with your designated admin staff to utilize most of the software package from nearly any education/experience level.ConsThere are some frustrating limitations with reporting in Pardot, and sometimes SalesForce integration with plug-ins can be a bit of a hassle if they weren’t set up during the initial onboarding, but overall these are speedbumps at worst and don’t detract from the overall experience enough to really worry about.
SalesForce: very powerful, but make sure you’re ready!We’re a union, so we have a little bit of a different situation than a lot of businesses who use Salesforce, but it’s been incredibly helpful in allowing us to build an internal leadership structure where we can show the relationships between our members. It has also allowed us to track member activity & engagement in some very powerful ways, and to track the work of our organizers and representatives.ProsReally allows you to track your customers/clients/members/leads and see the arc of their interaction with your organization. If you also use something like Pardot to manage emails and online forms, it will give you a complete life timeline for the individual and how they have interacted with you. Allows you to create a journey & experience based on their interactions with you and to give quick follow-up when someone shows signs of life. The only caveat here is that you have to be ready to use it. That means more than just having people trained in how to use the interface, but making sure everyone is on board for how this kind of data can and SHOULD inform and change how you interact with your clientele. If you’re used to getting back to people within 24 hours, you need to be ready to shift that to 20 minutes. If you’re used to treating everyone the same, you’d better be ready to create drip/nurture programs based on behavior. If you aren’t ready to use it to its full capacity, it isn’t worth the investment, but if you are able to use it the way it’s meant to be used, it’s incredibly powerful.ConsIt has a steep learning curve. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and I know that I still have barely scratched the surface of what I could be able to do, but I don’t have time to devote to just learning SalesForce when it’s not my core job. Definitely recommended for larger orgs where you can have a team devoted to support. Also, I hate the way they continually try to sell you new add-ons to the core product.
CRM? Client Database? Candidate Tracking System? Well, Salesforce is the man!Salesforce is a great tool in managing clienteles and candidates. It is great in terms of managing client and candidate relationship and gives the ambiance that they are talking to a real person without sacrificing too much time. You can also open it everywhere – on app, laptop or computer because all you need to do is to download the mobile version and you can access it using any browser.ProsSalesforce powers both our business development, sales, and recruiting efforts in our company. Salesforce makes it easy for us to know what is the last stage of a candidate, what are the next steps he needs to take in his candidacy for a single position, and also if he has already been talking to someone else in our company. Salesforce also makes it possible for us to know what was the last message we sent out to a single candidate or client. It is also great in terms of establishing relationship because we can customize HTML emails as if we are sending a tailor-fitted email to a single person even-though it is just an email blast. It is great as well in terms of driving sales and business development effort. We can keep track of the cadence of each possible client, and we can also indicate if they are set for a phone meeting or in-person meeting with our higher ops. The chatter is also great, and from time to time Salesforce gives us a snapshot of what we have done and what we are doing.ConsI really don’t have a lot of bad experience with regards to us using Salesforce. Maybe one thing they can improve on is how their technical support works. Sometimes they are not that helpful, and they are not that trained enough in resolving each person’s concern.
the Best CRM on the market10/10. The most complete CRM out there. We are only scratching the surface of what we can use SF for. ProsThere literally isn’t anything That Salesforce can’t do. We are even beginning to use their billing system. It is absolutely vital for sales engagement, pipeline management, forecasting, relationship management, etc….. ConsSometimes it feels like you need a degree in SF to do certain things. It can be hard to figure things out. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Streak couldn’t do what we needed as we scaled
Highly complex and customizable, with seemingly arbitrary limitationsComplex, confusing at times, lots of great documentation. Often though, if you want to do something that seems like it should be built in, you have to break out the Apex code or a Workflow, which is annoying. Users love the platform – I was able to move things around to their liking on pages, integrate DocuSign with it (that was a chore, making all of those templates) so they can send agreements. Overall I have a love/hate relationship with this software.ProsHighly customizable – an actual platform you can create your own apps on. Likely the largest product I’ve ever dealt with in terms of scope and being able to create your own things inside of it. ConsMany parts of the software are not able to talk to each other – for example, (I can’t recall exactly but) you can look up contacts on an account, but can’t look up accounts from a contact. You can only go a certain direction when you’re referencing parent / child relationships in the schema of salesforce. Also, there’s tons of little quirks that have been a problem for 7%2B years now, and they remain unchanged – like being able to run reports on the EmailMessage object. I get it – maybe some dev thought that it was too much stress on the system. Get some more servers and charge by the workload, then.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Telenotes is hilariously basic compared to Salesforce. We wanted something more robust.
The CRM worth buyingOverall, this app is something I’d definitely recommend as it has a very good system for organizing corporate activity, ease of use is very good, navigation wise it can be improved, load time is fast, and above all I haven’t experienced any downtime when I was using this CRM.ProsSalesforce is one awesome tool that is very useful and budget-wise that is already full of functionality to run daily tasks, organize tickets for support, reminders for important to do’s whether needing immediate attention or non-urgent ones. It is also great with integrations for easier management such as with calendar apps. It has your sort functions, filters for categorizing, labeling, and disposition tagging for at a glance view. The one thing I observed about this CRM is it doesn’t lag although a lot of users are already accessing the same interface, which means it has a stable platform and servers that can accommodate the bandwidth of multiple users. I can safely say that it allocates a significant storage to avoid the nuisance of pages loading slowly. Not only that, so far there are no reported issues of their database being breached or any intrusions which is very harmful for businesses and their trade secrets. It is vital since client data is the backbone of a business. I’m glad that they have established these safeguards well to make their product reliable and trustworthy.ConsThe only thing I noticed is it took a lot of clicks to get you to where you want to go in this CRM. For example, in opening a particular ticket, you’d have to open a preview page first before being able to open the ticket with the actual content itself. Although the site mapping was remedied internally to lessen the time of navigating from one page to another. So far that’s the only downside I’ve encountered.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Comparing Zendesk navigation with Salesforce, the latter was a little easier compared to the former. The higher ups had also previously used Salesforce that’s why it was the one being chosen as the company CRM.
Can you do without SaleForceMy experince with salesforce hasbeen great and awesome. I have no doubt that even a new user will definitely enjoy the benefits of its functionality and its capabilities. Thoughalot more investment in training is needed for new users. But all in all it has great features. The customer support is very responsive and the capabilities of the software is outstanding.ProsSalesforce is no longer just a piece of software but a must-have tool, that can be a game-changer in any business from huge organizations to small to medium enterprises. As a full-time consultant, i work with different organizations and companies.I have personally r3commendedit to different organizations and companies i have worked with to date because it is now a vital business solutions tool. It is a completely customizable and easy to use interface.ConsThere need to invest in a lot of training. For a new user, it is difficult to use.It should be designed to allow easy compatibility with other software that is handy to operations of other departments. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud It had moreproduct features than hubspot , and these seemed to match and fit in eith the requirements of my clients
SalesForce is astounding for the most part at what it does, however can be hard to adjust to specifiIt monitors our hopefuls and customers discourses over some stretch of time which causes us return from where the last discussion had finished. A decent record data also with 360-perspective on data. Devices work quite a bit of some acclaimed person to person communication destinations and could be considered as a simple exploring stage.ProsA stage that offers deals the board, client administration, showcasing robotization and accomplice relationship the executives. It is a c cloud-based CRM arrangement, Salesforce gives you anyplace, whenever, access to your business information, even from cell phones. This stage helped us streamline our procedure and logged our discussion with every one of our customers/applicants monitoring the discourse history and knowing where we left at. It has a decent contact the board framework that enables the clients to store significantly more data like record/customer subtleties, addresses, other accessible data which permits a decent record information review. The Dashboard is adaptable and can fit to what their customer needs and requires for the particular procedure. It’s a simple to explore programming particularly for the individuals who had been into cloud-based stage previously.ConsThe multifaceted nature of its highlights here and there are not being depleted/augmented by little scale organizations and could get overpowering now and again. Evaluating might be somewhat high for a little organization particularly on the off chance that they need something that is progressively adaptable. For our group, it took us some time to explore the stage completely and consider was on the most proficient method to tweak the stage dependent on our necessities. Recognizing what is as of now accessible for us and what can be considered for what’s to come is something that we get to profound plunge through the span of months and a great deal of cooperation and discussion with the group. Announcing issues may be somewhat hard as far as realizing who is responsible for certain specialized glitch if its Salesforce people themselves or some application that connects to it.
The most powerful CRM available hands down!ProsEvery aspect of Salesforce can be customized to maximize the efficiency of your sales and marketing teams. There are thousands of pre-built solutions that allow for rapid deployment and implementation of the features you need. Additionally you can customize user permissions to tailor access to your data to only those that require it. I highly recommend this CRM if you want a robust solution with room to grow.ConsSalesforce uses it’s own query and scripting languages which requires familiarity with their software. It is not cheap but it is worth every penny!Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud I needed to integrate with multiple proprietary backend databases.
Great productWe have deployed the system throughout the whole organization and now moving to the next level of client onboardingProsThe product has allowed us to better manage our client relationships and look for opportunitiesConsYou have to learn the Salesforce languageReasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud It was always slow in development and every time there was an update there was a cost
It does so much for so much! It is pricey, but you can get anything you want.I like all of the storage that is available for all of my client files.ProsI liked all of the data points that I could get and track with my customers and leads. It really gave a lot of information to track. If you didn’t get everything already installed, you can easily customize it yourself.ConsI didn’t like all of the screens that aren’t needed. It isn’t easy to customize your screens to show only the data you want to see. You have to wade through a lot of elements.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Because it had longevity in the marketplace and we were looking for wisdom and experience.
Greats software for CRM but expensive and hard to implimentMy overall experience was frustrating and the lack of support only clouded the quality of the product. When we ask for support we were told we had to go to a third party to get any help on our implementation. This was not clearly communicated when we were sold the software.ProsSaleforce is the standard for the industry and has a price tag to match. When we implements Sales force we had 2 sales people and 6 PM’s that used it. The customization and automation where fantastic features and of great benefit. The sales to customer success migration was also a valuable feature for us. ConsThe software was expensive and the sales person made licensing sales complicated and confusing. Once we were sold on the software our sales person disappeared and we had another rep who basically said deal with what you have. We wanted to change our model around but at the time Salesforce did not let us do this. We let the license expire and moved to another productReasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud The customization
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We wanted a more professional solution that would help both sales but also customer success
Salesforce the sure CRMOverall, I’d strongly recommend this app because it has a very good system for coordinating corporate operation, it’s very easy to use, the navigation could be improved, and the load time is fast.ProsSalesforce is an excellent tool that is very useful and budget-friendly, and it already has a lot of features to run regular tasks, arrange help tickets, and set reminders for important to-dos, whether they are urgent or not. It’s also useful for integrating with other software for easier management, such as calendar apps. It includes sorting, categorizing, and marking filters, as well as a search tool.ConsThe only thing I found was that getting to where you want to go in this CRM took a lot of clicks. To open a specific ticket, for example, you’d have to first open a demo page before being able to open the ticket with the actual material. Although the site mapping was improved internally to and the amount of time it took to navigate from one page to the next. So far, it is the only disadvantage.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce was a cloud-based CRM system, and it has since dominated the industry. It occurred to me that it was past time for me to join the cloud revolution.
Salesforce Get MeUsing Salesforce for many years has helped keep track of everything business. We use it to track and organize email, notes, files and reports on clients and employees. We use the dashboard feature and notifications to stay on top of needs and alerts. It makes us more efficient in our work and our planning.ProsI love the flexibility, the expandability, the collaboration I achieve with the entire organization has helped make us more efficient as a whole.ConsThe software is expensive yet they did give a non-profit discount that is appreciated. The buy-in from all users is also challenging just due to it being a new software.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Zoho CRM was rated as good but we needed something that has established itself as a leader in the industry and we just went for Platinum service.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud G Suite is good but it is not as durable and easily expandable to multiple needs as Salesforce.
Salesforce NPSP – Pricey, but will give you room to growGreat! If possible, I recommend ensuring you have someone in-house with at least 3 years experience before deployment. We contract a Salesforce Developer who aids non-profits specifically to aid in back-end matters.ProsI love that it has given our non-profit a space to grow into. Too often, non-profits find themselves barred by limits placed on the number of Contacts being retained. Most pricing is based around this figure which is tiresome when you are looking to gain momentum without having to have constant upgrades. Salesforce is massive and delivers in what it says it will do.ConsIt is challenging to learn. I would have appreciated options for non-profit teams to have discount pricing on trainings with use. This would have provided for shared trust in the CRM, rather than knowledge given to a few who then became internal advocates for the system. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud We desired the best. We understood NPSP was in its infancy stages, but were confident that this was the best choice for our own projections of donor base growth 5 years down the road- and we were right.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud eTapestry was not easy to grow with. Moreover; it didn’t provided the diversity of integrations we needed to expand our impact. Salesforce is the best in its field. I believe it has room to mature with Nonprofits. When they invest in that sector- they will be unrivaled.
Great CRM platform, but not always worth Salesforce’s continually increasing licensing costsWe used Salesforce to be our CRM and Professional Services Automation (PSA) system. We custom-built the PSA, but the CRM piece was mostly Salesforce out-of-the-box. Ultimately, if you can figure how to keep your licensing and other add-in costs in check, then Salesforce can be the right tool for you. Otherwise, you may find what we found, which is that Salesforce’s continual cost increases eventually cause the platform to lose its ROI. We ultimately switched from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics 365 after Salesforce continually and forcibly raised their costs beyond our ROI threshold. The system was functionally fine, but the annual costs had simply become too much.ProsAs a CRM platform, it’s everything you could ask for. Also, its AppStore is top notch. From a functionality perspective, you cannot go wrong with Salesforce. Also, as one of the biggest and most widespread platforms, there are plenty of Salesforce resources out there, so there is no shortage of help available should you need it. If you are a small non-profit particularly, Salesforce can be an incredible resource as your first 10 licenses are free (as long as you qualify as a non-profit with Salesforce)ConsIf you are a for-profit firm, be aware that Salesforce builds in an annual 7% licensing cost increase into it’s contracts. As a result, you will be continually negotiating and re-negotiating with them to keep licensing costs reasonable. Even then, Salesforce will continually look to increase your spend with them. Their sales teams/account managers can be very aggressive and a lot of things you may want or need will cost you extra. They’re also continually rotating their account managers. This can be very frustrating as a customer because just when you feel that you’ve built a good relationship with your account manager, Salesforce will switch people on you and then you have to work to rebuild a new relationship.
May the SalesFORCE be with you!Salesforce is a game-changer for our organization. We’ve reported out on items that previously we hadn’t in years. There’s very little manual effort now as we have so many triggers setup for automation.ProsWithout Salesforce our organization simply would not be able to function as quickly as we do now. We have so many automation processes and workflows setup that has saved us a lot of time. We use this platform across 15 departments in our organization, and it continues to grow. Everyone who sees the benefits of this great CRM… asks for User licenses… it’s that good. We love the Contact Management, Lead-> Opportunity tracking and most importantly the Reports and Dashboards!ConsSalesforce can be pricey especially as it grows within an organization, so that would be the one setup. However, they do offer a Non-Profit Starter pack that I’d recommend small non-profit organizations to look into.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce seemed to be the Enterprise leader and due to the open-API features, it was a no brainer to move forward.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce was true cloud based and has dominated the market. We felt it’s time for us to join the cloud movement.
Automation and Access to Customer DataAs mentioned before, my overall experience has been phenomenal. I’m confident enough to speak for the rest of my team by saying that Salesforce has benefited our organization to close more deals and build trust with our customers. ProsSalesforce gives our sales team the ability to review accurate customer information. We’re able to personalize each of our prospects/leads in order to optimize our overall close rate. I work directly with the internal marketing team. A crucial role of mine to create custom objects, build reports and dashboards, and updating or creating flows through process builder. Salesforce overall has been a tremendous support to our team in helping us bring our leads down the marketing funnel, stage by stage. ConsI have ran into errors and problems with Salesforce numerous times. However, I believe this is due to me being uneducated about the software. Whenever I’m stuck, I usually proceed to one of the following: 1. Open up trailhead to earn and learn one of the many badges they have on there. 2. Search for my problem on the trailhead community. They’re many experts on there! 3. Submit a case to Salesforce. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Affordable, cloud software, and efficiency.
Excellent Features, Wide-Ranging, Enterprise-Level CRMAs I always say, you get what you pay for and that’s certainly true with Salesforce. Adding Salesforce to your tech stack is a big investment, but one that will almost certainly pay for itself. ProsSalesforce is incredibly robust for automation and capturing data if you have a knowledgeable administrator at the helm of your business. Being able to create different sections (objects), fields, reports and rules in a matter of minutes makes it the best CRM I have ever used. ConsIn Salesforce, everything is connected, which can often times cause errors or minor issues when making a simple change/addition. The software is getting better at educating users and administrators, but it lacks the full ability to debug easily. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce had more to offer when it came to reporting and automation.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Dynamics was difficult to get a full picture of our business and the UI was not allowing our users to succeed. We needed a software that will continue to evolve and allow us to modernize our business processes.
Very functional productProsIndustry leading software Massive community support network High volume of add-ins and extensions Intuitive natural user interface (lightning) Easy reporting Highly customizableConsSome administration/development is quite complicated for newer admins Product support, even on premier, is frustrating. Had to explain the same issue to each tier of support. Often I resolved our issue on my own. Mobile app has been inconsistently working for both iPhone and Android for the last year or so. Some browser based issues & Mac v. PC Java based issues.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Pipedrive was not as powerful / customizable as we were accustomed to with Insightly. Apto is based on Salesforce but is highly tailored and not customizable as well. Ultimately, a system with the ability to customize workflows, designs/interfaces, and integrations was critical to our need.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Insightly was failing our organization for multiple reasons. The user interface was never the prettiest and the system took a lot to train users to use. However, the biggest sin was several API updates broke various integrations we had. After a few fatal API updates we decided to jump ship to another system.
Cost effective and very efficient CRM I helped in implementing corporate engagement plan for donation management. It has easily defined schema and took less time to customize the module.ProsEasily defined, fully connected and talking features. It is widely popular in each industry sector, market leader and radical in changing the whole ecosystem of CRM industry. SaaS or PaaS it has changed whole ecosystem. Every company which is on on Salesforce has saved tonnes of money and time while focusing on their potential. ConsToo many customizations lead to duplicate efforts. It releases so many versions so fast that sometime unnecessary update clients do. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud free 10 user for Non profit success pack by salesforce.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Sheets were not talking to each other. It was not easy to capture all the historical movements in the account.
Salesforce for forecasting and managing product portfolio and customer ordersSalesforce is probably the best forecasting tool out there. You can use the Stage and Probability to determine when to start buying parts and building your products. This helps shorten the lead time for customer orders. Sales can also use this to move the opportunity along based on the confidence and feedback they get from the customers. Salesforce also helps maintaining the product portfolio. By using the forecasting mentioned above, you can determine whether to end-of-sales a product (if the trend is down) or increase a product’s inventory (if the trend is up). You can set a criteria that only active products are available for Sales to use on their quotes to the customers.Pros– Stage and Probability fields to track confidence levels of an opportunity. – Award Date to designate Booking Date (when we receive the customer order or PO). – Date to designate Ship Date (when we shipped the customer order). – Multiple custom fields can be added to tailor to the company. – Approvals to move an opportunity from one Stage to the next in the workflow. – History to track the opportunity’s lifecycle. – Able to attach files to an opportunity. – Able to track quotes sent to the customer. – Easy to clone an opportunity so it saves time recreating similar data. – GUI is easy to follow and find information. – Easy to create reports. – Can integrate with other apps. – Able to mark a product as active, released, obsolete, etc. ConsThe web interface’s speed is dependent on the company’s IT infrastructure. If the server is slow, the network is slow, then Salesforce will run slow. Since Salesforce uses the web interface, it is affected by the same deficiencies of the web browser.
Salesforce – Marketing & Lead GenWe are using Salesforce to streamline new business leads and nurture leads into actual sales. We are able to analyze, vet, engage, and track the progress of the new leads we receive from our Facebook lead gen ads. Salesforce integrates directly into Facebook’s Business Manager and automatically imports new leads in real-time. We are also able to see the cost per lead acquired and other rich insights from our Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns that get directly populated into our dash. ProsSalesforce is one of the most powerful and sophisticated CRMs available. The onboarding process and demos with the reps were exceptionally helpful. The reps really took time to understand our CRM needs, our workflow process, and how we can best utilize/adopt Salesforce into our new business department to grow revenue and track progress. The tool is completely customizable and has very advanced marketing integrations within the cloud. The ability to track leads and history (who followed up and when) and add notes and assign leads to specific people makes the entire workflow so much more efficient. It’s worth the price tag if you take advantages of the features. ConsWe wish the marketing cloud add on wasn’t so expensive. There are many tools available that offer the same features such as Sprout Social and Hubspot. However, the price was a little steep for the %246,000. I also wish pricing was a bit more transparent. The discounts and contract lengths have been very inconsistent in our experience. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Great reviews and exceptional customer service/reps.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Much more advanced features for large scale lead gen needs.
Salesforce doesn’t lack the power, but suffers in process flow and visualsInteractions with Support at the time were forced. In terms of Ease of use: I believe the tool was fairly simple to follow when used consistently. The lead and contact managment elements of the tool were very strong and nuanced. From generating new leads, connecting them to an email campaign, nurturing the leads to the next stages of the cycle and then converting the leads into customers. For us, selling software, converting them to clients and then using Salesforce to track the implementation and consulting component was crucial. Salesforce did a wonderful job and reducing duplication. I definitely was able to handle more volume of prospects with Salesforce and direct my attention and activities to the highest value. And that is the point of the Sales side of a CRM.ProsSalesforce is a fantastic option for larger businesses that need powerful sales and service functionality within an integrated environment. I was just one team member of many, but I believe the tracking ability of a robust pipeline of prospects and the tools available to capture, recall, execute and update records through an elongated sales process allowed me to be more effective and efficient with my client time. Salesforce brags on its sales, marketing, and analytics toolset and in general these did not disappoint. The drill-down capabilities from the analytics dashboards were useful. Also, the ability to tie your email correspondence with prospects to quickly recall your last interaction was critical.ConsThe internal tools for messaging and communication appeared archaic to me and almost always circumvented in favor of our own favorited instant messaging and posting platforms. The design of the data input screens was oddly spaced and placed. It wasn’t the best flow when capturing info. However, admittedly, the platform allowed for great automation in the workflow and setup of custom fields. I don’t believe my company spent the time evaluating the best use of the tool. And so my advice is to get a good definition of your processes and standards so that you can utilize Salesforce to the fullest.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud My company was acquiring other companies and needed a larger platform with room to grow as well as a standard in which to demand throughout the organization.
Easy to UseWe can track all of our leads and opportunities from how they are coming from all the way to the final disposition of the leads and everything in between. We are very happy with Salesforce and can’t imagine ever using another CRM.ProsThis product was very easy to install and includes a cloud version. For most small, medium and some larger size businesses, this software will meet all of your Sales and Marketing needs. This software is a great overall value for the price point. Customer service is great!ConsThere is a slight learning curve as this software has so must functionality and is very robust. Other than that the possibilities for your sales team with this software are limitless. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud More functionality
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce is more compatible with the other software packages that we are using.
The number 1 CRM solution for very good reasonsI have been working with and enjoying Salesforce for 7 years now, Salesforce is constantly evolving and introducing new functionalities, and what is not available out of the box (so to speak) can be achieved either by custom development, or using the dedicated app store which allows vendors to tailor solutions to problems and offer them as bolt on solutions inside the salesforce system.ProsSalesforce is hugely customisable, as a consultant, I am always asked to customise the system to fit the needs of the client, and I have not yet found a requirement that cannot be met, it may take knowledge and expertise from multiple different types of people (admins, developers, specialists etc.) but with enough understanding the sky is the limit.ConsThere are certain limitations which may need to be overcome when setting up a new CRM system, if you are coming from a complex CRM previously, then achieving the same functionality is not always easy, but that is the reason you are switching systems, to gain benefits, not just to put a new interface on to the same solution.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud I found SAP CRM to be quite cumbersome at the time, I have not looked back into it since making the switch to Salesforce, so it may have improved by now. I know Salesforce certainly has.
Flexible, extensible, and powerful. Salesforce is incredible.Salesforce is terrific and only getting better. Adding to the existing strengths of incredible depth and flexibility, recent updates have streamlined some of the processes and made some high-use pages and interfaces easier to navigate quickly. It still takes a bit of work to learn how to effectively use the many, many tools available in Salesforce, but extensive documentation and free online training make it easier to do.ProsSalesforce can do (almost) anything and integrate with (almost) any other platform. The platform is incredibly deep and extensible. If there’s a thing you’d like a cloud-based database to do, Salesforce can do it. It also integrates well with a huge range of other platforms.ConsSometimes, the depth makes the interface a slog to navigate, or makes it challenging to figure out how to implement the customization you’re looking for. For administrators and developers, the learning curve can be steep. It’s also not always immediately apparent what you can do from within Salesforce, and what requires an additional integration.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud More functionality and depth for the price.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Salesforce offered us better functionality, more stability, and cloud/mobile access.
Saleforce is invaluable, if configured and used correctlyIt is an essential tool for medium to enterprise businesses, but it has to be designed well from the beginning. Implemented properly, the executive team, operations, sales leadership, inside sales, direct sales, marketing, and more will benefit.ProsHIGHLY customizable. All data fields can be pulled into reporting/dashboards. To implement properly, you have to reverse-engineer what metrics are important to your business. Once you have a comprehensive understanding of the reporting that you want to see then you can build fields, pick-lists, radio buttons, etc so you capture all relevant data. The beauty is that you are not at all limited to the out-of-the-box configuration (which is good, but generic). In the past I have built in lead sources and ROI, appointment setting quality grading, commission reporting, stack ranking, and many other highly customized reports. Start with the end in mind and then find a good implementation partner who can execute on your plan. ConsCost and support at the lower levels. Unless you have (pay for) their premium support, their customer service is not quick to act. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud It is far and away the leader. The insight provided is critical to effectively managing a business.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We had not purchased software assurance, and to buy a new box and upgrade, versus moving to the Cloud with all of the associated benefits, was a no-brainer.
This CRM Can Do AnythingI wish I had known about it’s capabilities a long time ago because we would’ve switched to it for onboarding much sooner. I didn’t realize you could create custom objects that could tie to an account record and setup virtually as many fields as you needed.ProsOur onboarding team uses Salesforce for onboarding new customers. It allows us to track communications, activities, mark task that have been completed and create reports and dashboards to show how accounts are progressing through the onboarding process. Salesforce is the best in class tool when it comes to customization and trackability. We can setup whatever fields we need and collect whatever data we need based on various workflows. You can also create automated tasks.ConsSalesforce is a bit clunky and slow at times. We had to have training by a Salesforce expert to implement the systems we needed, so I wouldn’t say it’s very user-friendly (but that’s expected when you have such a robust system).Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud We looked at Monday.com for project management, but due to the fields, workflows, automated tasks and overall functionality we were looking for, Salesforce was much more customizable for our needs.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We looked at Trello for project management for awhile, but it didn’t have the reporting and automated tasks we needed. Wasn’t very customizable.
To love it is to LIVE IN ITIts a CRM. Like all CRMs what you put into it is what you will get out. If you live in it day in and day out its a great program and the reason for their popularity and success.ProsThe fact that you can have access to your information anywhere is comforting.ConsConvoluted. There are lots of hoops you need to jump through in order to really have this software work for you. An GOD FORBID you have any issue because support is not great. At least in my experience. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Customization features and had someone in the office already working in it.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Needed something that was more user friendly and was able to be more customized.
Excellent tool but challenge to fully deployWe did not realize the capability to interface so with our manufacturing and accounting systems. While not exhaustive, the information which can be shared between the three systems had been invaluable to our sales engineering team. It’s also been a great help for sharing company wide project status for pipeline projects. One of the greatest benefits has been in sales planning. We’re no longer limited to running reports from 4 systems . Salesforce allows us to quickly create pipeline reports and create punch up reports for sales team members.ProsSince integration of SalesForce to our sales engineering team we have full visibility of quote, inquiry and sale pipeline activities. In previous systems these activities we’re silo functions which depended on spreadsheet analysis lots of discussions and sales person memory. Salesforce has proven a great central repository and clearing House for all of this information. The linking with Outlook was a critical piece of this which we purchased from a third party. ConsThe front end pricing seemed ok. BUT it took a LOT of customization to get the level of user friendly interface and process integration we needed. We ended up having to expand the customization scope twice after the initial contract. So the overall cost per user and startup was much higher than budgeted.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Installed product base Industry reputation Customization capabilities Net based App for remote access
The Premier CRM SoftwareSalesforce has been a lifesaver as a user and admin. I have used multiple programs in both roles, and Salesforce wins hands down. I can’t stress enough how much your future self will thank you by choosing the right CRM program the first time. ProsIn every company I have consulted for and worked for, we have used or switched to Salesforce. Once built out properly, it is an asset that is scalable and will continue to benefit your sales team. The functionalities are endless: Leads, Accounts, Opportunites, Metics calculators, pipeline management tables, Groups, and options to create products too! (This one was difficult to construct but I was more than ecstatic that I could use this for wholesale as well) Let’s talk about customer support: Very comprehensive. There is a whole website dedicated to tutorial videos, live chats, and Q&A boards. If you still can’t figure out the problem they do have a real human you can speak to who will help you out. ConsThe learning curve to set up your salesforce correctly is rough if you have not done any Salesforce admin work before. Starting off with a small group is easier, and the program is more forgiving when you have fewer accounts, leads, etc, but as your org grows, you will want to ensure that Salesforce is set up correctly. Errors with when you have a lot of data will take a long time to fix.Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud The functionality was not there. I was not able to save notes correctly, maneuvering took way too many clicks, the layout was awful, and getting help was difficult.
Rapid Configuration and UpdatesWe were looking to update our CRM and wanted something cloud based and easy to reach for all users. It has been an excellent choice as we can make fast updates to our system without a lot of work or programming. People find it easy to use and onboarding new employees has been faster than before. ProsVery easy to use and setup customizations. There are a lot of options to customize the system to your needs without having to write code. Going from test to live in super fast and easy. It is updated three times a year that bring a lot of new features that improve what we can do in the system, Salesforce becomes more powerful each time. The ad hoc reporting is incredible to have.ConsThe price is pretty high for some who are not going to use it all. There are a lot of extras that would need to get bought for you to get everything you want from the system. It might not be clear what is an extra. It lacks some functions that you might expect from a system like conditional fields cannot be highlighted.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Cost and ease of support.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud The old one was hard to update, it required a programmer to make changes. Changes were slow to be developed. It required users to be on prem to use.
Industry StandardI have tried other tools, including Hubspot to use as a CRM and nothing compares to the functionality and reporting you receive from SFDC. ProsIt is a great tool to track and analyze all sales and marketing data. It has plenty of customization and integrations available. ConsSFDC has a mind of its own, you need to know what you are doing if you are an administrator, however that doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Currently, not all functionality is available in Lightnighting (we use lightning and I keep being sent back to classic to fix some stuff).Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud I have used SFDC for years now, and have yet to encounter a product that is as useful, organized, and effective as Salesforce.com is.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Hubspot was okay at best, but didn’t track nor show data as effectively nor efficiently as we needed.
Well-secured and helpful platformOverall, as I said this is one of the greatest software and I would recommend to everyone who needs marketing, sales, and service. It connects the customer and the client. The one thing that they should probably consider changing is the price because most people find it too expensive and for software like this that shouldn’t be the case.ProsSalesforce is one of the greatest software nowadays. It has a lot of data stored plus it’s very secure to use so you don’t have to worry about anything happening to your data. Also, it has a cross-platform which means you can use it for iOS, Android, phones, tablets, etc. This software also provides you with information about the client/candidate, is he hired by someone, what he should do next and so on. It creates a general relationship between you and the client. What you have done and what the client has done. Also, Salesforce offers you the first ten licenses for free if you are a non-profit person or company.ConsThe main thing that I dislike about Salesforce is the price. It’s quite expensive and every other license that you buy just gets more expensive, so because of that, you should probably ask someone more informed before purchasing. Another thing that I dislike is that they often change their managers. Imagine having one manager and making a good relationship with him and they suddenly change him. You need to start building a new relationship which in some cases can be frustrating. And last but not least, their customer service sometimes can be irritating because most of the people that are hired are not friendly and helpful.
Salesforce: A user-friendly CRM SystemThe non-profit organization that I work for, Interfaith Caregivers has been using Salesforce for a year. I’m so glad that we decided on this system because I have used it previously in other places of work. One of the reasons why we went with Salesforce was to manage a marketing/fundraiser campaign that we have every year. We were able to store our donor and board members and create a campaign just for them to use as a communication tool and to begin the fundraiser campaign for our annual gala. It was also very easy and much needed to track donor and fundraiser payments for the gala. We are able to store multiple templates which consist of donor thank you letters in the template field. This is a very helpful feature! ProsThe non-profit organization that I work for, Interfaith Caregivers has been using Salesforce for a year. I’m so glad that we decided on this system because I have used it previously in other places of work. One of the reasons why we went with Salesforce was to manage a marketing/fundraiser campaign that we have every year. We were able to store our donor and board members and create a campaign just for them to use as a communication tool and to begin the fundraiser campaign for our annual gala. It was also very easy and much needed to track donor and fundraiser payments for the gala. We are able to store multiple templates which consist of donor thank you letters in the template field. This is a very helpful feature! ConsIt is hard for me to dislike Salesforce. I appreciate the fact that we were able to get the nonprofit discount. Also we were able to use the 10 free licenses since we have 10 employees! I would say the only thing is that I look forward to seeing how Salesforce will continue to grow and evolve and offer other packages to improve the CRM experience. Currently I have not ran into any problems. Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud We were using a very old version of Careworks. Perhaps I believe a 2009 version and had minimum help with the administrator or a representative if anything went wrong with Careworks. Plus the Careworks version that we had was NOT user-friendly. If you were in a record to edit it, you had to after editing save each individual page. There were also many custom fields that were not needed for our organization and tracking the data that we needed. It was time to leave the stone age and get modern technology.
Salesforce reviewMy overall experience with Salesforce is that initially it is difficult to learn how to use. The user’s experience in learning how to implement and incorporate it is not pleasant. However, once you start playing around with it more and more, you get the hang of it and it does ease everyday tasks for members across all organizations within a company.ProsWhat I like most about this product is that my team and company was looking for a product in order to ease the customization of widgets and components, automate tasks for users that were tedious and time-consuming, and streamline the process of customer’s feedback to the customer support team to the implementation and design team. Salesforce was able to offer solutions in order to solve all those problems, all while allowing us to customize various apps and dashboards in order to meet our customers’ and business needs. ConsWhat I liked least about the software is the documentation and learning curve that came with incorporating and implementing using Salesforce. I was part of the team analyzing if Salesforce was right for my business, and documentation about customizing styling and allowing different users to have different roles within your corporate account were difficult things to find. After speaking with several people who work at Salesforce and swiping through pages and pages of online material, we were able to play around and find what works best for us. Definitely incorporate the learning curve into your business plan if you plan to use Salesforce.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud Both of the other products we looked at had terrible customer service, were costly, and did not allow for the customization and wide breadth of options we were looking for. The learning curve for those were much greater and we didn’t get more out of them for our business needs.
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud The main reason my company was looking for a switch was for more ability to customize while keeping the price low that we paid for the solution.
Salesforce is a Dream!I use it daily. I live in salesforce and I’m in marketing. I use it to keep up with my team and to try to use chatter to highlight what is working and showcase certain accounts. I also like to follow the wins and losses to try to get a feel for where we can improve. ProsEverything. I love salesforce. I love its ease of use, navigation, walk-me, training, integration, features, functionality, you name it. Chatter is my favorite feature and once adopted by organizations you see the whole organization migrate to making salesforce their homepage. I love the adaptation the teams have to it and that you can customize your dashboard so sales, marketing, integration, and other teams can all use it as they need to. ConsThe cost, and sometimes Salesforce does not do a good job of showing the interoperability it has. There are so many features that make it a one-stop-shop for companies large and small, but it seems if the product is sold as a sales tool, it remains that way instead of showing the integration options for marketing and other teams. Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud I went to dreamforce and was sold!
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud features and functionality
Great CRM ToolOnce we started using Salesforce, we have increased our repeat business from our existing clients and our conversion rate from the leads and referrals we receive has skyrocketed. We are able to tailor our offerings to the prospects specific needs and their response has been overwhelmingly positive. We often get comments about how they feel like we understand them better than our competitors.ProsSalesforce is probably the most functional CRM tool on the market, and one of the easiest to set up and use. It worked right out of the box, and we have continued to expand the features we use. One of the best things are all the plugins available, which allow you to customize the environment to fit your business’ specific requirements. Our revenues have doubled consistently year-to-year and our customer satisfaction ratings have improved dramatically since we began using Salesforce. My team has threatened to revolt if we ever consider moving to a different platform.ConsThe licensing structure favors larger organizations, but the fees we pay are still reasonable for the value we get from the product.Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud N/A
Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud Cost, and the reviews we read about Salesforce.
Salesforce is Most Capable PlatformOverall experience has been great. We have grown as a company at 30% percent since adopting. We launched on the Lighting UI and I highly recommend the same for anyone that is looking to launch the product. There are a ton of resources that will help with implementation which is great!ProsThe best part and worst part of being on the Salesforce platform is the ability to customize the tool to your needs. If you have a specific process, permission, security that you need to be able to accommodate, you will always have the ability on the platform. The mobile app is great and is used most of our users. There are some areas for improvement, but overall great. Salesforce also does a great job of implementing new features and changes based on their community feedback. The Ideaexchange is an amazing tool and SF does a great job basing their changes on wheat the people want. Finally, TrailHead is the best in the business. The ability to self teach is amazing and SF does a wonderful job keeping all the moduels up to date. ConsThe same thing why Salesforce is great with flexibility and customization also make things very difficult. The best way to describe this is Salesforce is a like a beautiful house on the outside. They give you the roof/doors/walls, BUT what you put in the house and how you arrange is all your own doing. This makes it difficult if you need a specific issue taken care of, you will need to reach out to a developer to accomplish unless you have one in-house. Also the App exchange although very great, can get very expensive. A lot of companies make a living taking a Salesforce idea and perfecting, then selling on the app exchange. This can come in handy, but also at a cost.
SalesForce %2B Pardot = Winning TeamMy current company had been using Constant Contact before I arrived, and it was poorly managed… a huge mess, even… partially due to the staff being unable to coordinate, and partially because the software was a bit clunky. I was brought on during the SalesForce onboarding process, and 36 months later, with very little management efforts from our marketing/BD staff, our data is standardized, uniform, and easily accessible. Emails are scheduled to go out once a week, months in advance, based on templates first developed by our onboarding process, and we have been able to shift our marketing staff to more analytical projects that have given us the edge we needed to be on track to make our profit-sharing bonus numbers for the first time in years.ProsThe ability to customize really makes SalesForce its own beast. I’ve worked for two companies that have used the software, and both looked very different, yet still intuitively the same. I like that if there isn’t currently a solution for you, there are add-ons and plug-ins that can be fitted into your experience to make it an extremely tailored solution for a wide range of companies. Not only that, the customer support staff have some great tools at their disposal that give you an even deeper dimension of control, should you be unable to quite round the edges for your perfect fit. I like the seamless integration with Pardot. In addition, with Pardot’s automation platform, you can literally save hours’ worth of work as contact/prospect data can sync in nearly realtime, depending on the rules you’ve set up. If all this sounds perplexing, don’t worry too much, as Salesforce has an amazing onboarding team that will work with your designated admin staff to utilize most of the software package from nearly any education/experience level.ConsThere are some frustrating limitations with reporting in Pardot, and sometimes SalesForce integration with plug-ins can be a bit of a hassle if they weren’t set up during the initial onboarding, but overall these are speedbumps at worst and don’t detract from the overall experience enough to really worry about.
SalesForce: very powerful, but make sure you’re ready!We’re a union, so we have a little bit of a different situation than a lot of businesses who use Salesforce, but it’s been incredibly helpful in allowing us to build an internal leadership structure where we can show the relationships between our members. It has also allowed us to track member activity & engagement in some very powerful ways, and to track the work of our organizers and representatives.ProsReally allows you to track your customers/clients/members/leads and see the arc of their interaction with your organization. If you also use something like Pardot to manage emails and online forms, it will give you a complete life timeline for the individual and how they have interacted with you. Allows you to create a journey & experience based on their interactions with you and to give quick follow-up when someone shows signs of life. The only caveat here is that you have to be ready to use it. That means more than just having people trained in how to use the interface, but making sure everyone is on board for how this kind of data can and SHOULD inform and change how you interact with your clientele. If you’re used to getting back to people within 24 hours, you need to be ready to shift that to 20 minutes. If you’re used to treating everyone the same, you’d better be ready to create drip/nurture programs based on behavior. If you aren’t ready to use it to its full capacity, it isn’t worth the investment, but if you are able to use it the way it’s meant to be used, it’s incredibly powerful.ConsIt has a steep learning curve. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and I know that I still have barely scratched the surface of what I could be able to do, but I don’t have time to devote to just learning SalesForce when it’s not my core job. Definitely recommended for larger orgs where you can have a team devoted to support. Also, I hate the way they continually try to sell you new add-ons to the core product.