Boost Sales Productivity with Sales Cloud CRM

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you'll be able to:

Define CRM, Salesforce, and Sales Cloud.
Recognize when Sales Cloud is right for you.
Describe how Sales Cloud can help you grow your business.

First, the Basics. What Is Sales Cloud?

If you're thinking, "Sales Cloud? I thought we were talking about Salesforce," fear not. You're in the right place to get your questions answered. Here are a few basic definitions to get started:

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It's a system that keeps your customer information in one place, so your team can manage your contact with your customers with this full history in mind. This makes for happy customers.
Salesforce is the first company that took CRM to the cloud, enabling companies to access all of their customer information online, from any device, anywhere in the world, 24/7.
Sales Cloud is part of the CRM system that Salesforce offers. Sales Cloud is created especially for salespeople. Because it's our most popular product, many people say Salesforce when they actually mean Sales Cloud. Now you know!

How to Know That Sales Cloud Is Right for You

At a very high level, you're acquainted with what Sales Cloud is—but how do you know if you really need it? Think about the way you do business, and look around your office. Do you see any of these classic signs that you need a better way to track customers?

Your customer info is all over the place. There's customer info on sticky notes, in Excel spreadsheets, and in your email-marketing system, making it really hard to see the complete picture. Growth is blocked when you're not prepared for customer conversations or able to fully track your business.
You're losing critical information. When customer data is in different places, or just in reps' heads, important details go missing and collaboration breaks down. Worse, when reps leave the company so does your customer data!
You don't have a plan to scale fast. What happens when demand surges or your team grows fast? First, do a celebratory dance at your desk, but next ask yourself: Will your current sales processes scale? Make sure you have systems in place that scale as fast as your business grows.
Running reports is a painful and tedious process. You want to analyze your sales team's monthly progress against its quota, but who has the time to do it manually? You have questions about how effective your selling process is, but you don't have the tools to find answers. When you're starting to avoid reporting like the plague, it's time for a change.
You have to sit down at a desk to push a deal forward. As we all know, sales people carry floppy discs, work from 9 to 5, and do 100% of their work on a desktop computer. Wait, it's not 1999? Mobile is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Modern sales reps share data, get approvals, and push deals forward on their smartphones.
You're stuck with the status quo. Your business has unique needs so you need a system that can flex with you—something you can customize to your processes, your customers, and your team.

If these signs sound familiar, don't despair, you're in good company. These problems are exactly what Sales Cloud was built to solve.

How Sales Cloud Can Help Boost Your Sales

There are only so many hours in a day, and your reps time is best spent selling.

On average, sales reps spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks. — Second Annual State of Sales by Salesforce Research

Sales Cloud puts all your customer information in one place, giving you rich customer insights and even intelligent alerts about the best leads. You can see real-time reports of how the business is doing, and the intuitive workspace helps you be productive.

Just imagine how all those cool functions can help your reps sell more. And when those increased sales lead to explosive growth in your company, you'll have the infrastructure in place to support you as you scale. Another way to think about it: Sales Cloud can help you sell smarter, faster, and the way you want.

Resources

Your Complete CRM Handbook
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