Salesforce® is an essential and dynamic business tool. When used effectively, sales and marketing teams are met with significantly less challenges in their every-day operations. From visual dashboards to automations Salesforce is a CRM that works for its users. The platform brings efficient processes that allows you to focus on building an everlasting relationship with customers and optimizing daily schedules. 

To be competitive in current times, businesses need to transform the way they engage with customers. Salesforce collects important data that helps teams to build 1-to-1 customer journeys. However, it can only do so much. It is important to train stakeholders on the numerous features of Salesforce to utilize every benefit.

To have a successful CRM solution it is important to focus on important aspects of the tool. On the AdVic Salesforce Simplified podcast episode titled “How CRM Utilization Drives Sales Efficiencies,” with T-Mobile Business Sales Manager Kenneth Scott, we discuss how he leads his team every day in executing key business goals and how they can work for your company. 

Optimize Your CRM Platform Guide

As an everyday user of Salesforce, Kenneth is a go-to man on this topic. He manages his T-Mobile team and leads them to victory one automation at a time. In this guide, he offers his best practice tips to optimize your CRM platform.  

Create “War Reports”: “War Reports,” as he’s labeled them,” are unique to Kenneth’s team. Without having to micromanage or disrupt his team, he is provided with customized visual dashboards of his sales reps’ progress and task tracking, War Reports also display valuable metrics to managers and reps to set new strategies and to meet greater goals. Kenneth adds, “This also works for meeting ratios.” 

Trust Automation: Kenneth describes automated reports as “everything!” At the end of every day, he receives an automated report via email that provides him with gaps that need to be filled amongst his reps and frequent reminders of any unfinished tasks.

“Salesforce helps us execute our key initiatives is customer retention.”

Embrace Salesforce’s Flexibility: Salesforce eliminates tedious and manual tasks from salespeople, one being exporting leads from third-party databases directly to Salesforce. As Kenneth says, “This allows for salespeople to begin making calls immediately. Also, with the flexibility the platform offers, reps have access to their list on mobile, tablets and laptops. Lists can be cloned, categorized, and created in Salesforce as they would in Excel.” 

Favorite Salesforce Feature & Wins

Kenneth’s Favorite Salesforce Feature: Kenneth says his favorite tool is Opportunities. “That’s because then you are able to scale your business the way you want to from either going to discovery, to business needs, to proposal stage, to negotiation stage, and finally the commitment stage. And my favorite part of the Opportunity stage is how easy it is to maneuver through it. I also enjoy its easy talking points, too, especially when I’m speaking one-on-one with my reps asking about certain Opportunities. It’s all right there for us.”

Wins with Salesforce: Salesforce limits preventable leaks by tracking, managing and reminding reps of opportunities and tasks to stay on top of. Kenneth explains, “It helps us execute our key initiatives is customer retention, as far as keeping our customers. As we go through our system, we can see our active customer base.”

Adding a CRM can serve as a key driver of digital transformation for your company, and the Salesforce consulting team here at AdVic has years of experience implementing and integrating systems with great success. Perhaps we can help you make the case to your stakeholders about the benefits of a CRM? We’re excited to get you there! Next step? Let’s talk.

Related Resources:

Tracking People. Places and Things with CRM – Podcast

Turn Sales into Selling Machines with CRM, AI, and More – Podcast

How to Convince Your Stakeholders It’s Time to Get a CRM

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The post Driving Sales Efficiencies: A CRM Utilization Guide appeared first on Ad Victoriam Solutions.

As technology advances, so should your business. Digital transformations offer thorough advancement of technology and a positive effect on your operations. They should be met with clear objectives to enhance the customer experience and user adaptation internally to be successful. 

In a recent AdVic “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, Ali Davachi, CEO of Realware, spoke  about the risks, rewards and wins of taking on a digital transformation. Here are some highlights from that episode…

From your experience, why do digital transformation projects fail?

“I think across all the different industries that we’re involved in, the most common issue is not defining the outcomes clearly. Not technical outcomes, but the desired business outcomes, the ‘why’ of the project itself. You can pretty much draw a line from each of those failures to the lack of that clear understanding. If you have that outcome clearly defined, and you’re communicating that throughout your organization, then digital transformation or transformation of any kind, frankly, becomes far easier to implement and continue to use on a day-to-day basis.”

Bottom Line:

• Clearly define expected business outcomes.
• Know the “why.”
• Communicate throughout your organization.

“I think a lot of businesses today, particularly after the last year of the pandemic, have had a big struggle meeting customers where they are.”

When do you think that a business should consider a system upgrade or a digital transformation project?

“That’s a great question, because I feel that system upgrade and digital transformation are really not the same thing in many cases. I think you can actually execute a successful digital transformation without a system upgrade, but that all depends on what your outcomes are and what your total goals are to serve your customer base. For example, if you’re trending to a younger, more digitally savvy customer base, then you may need to do that upgrade because you need to meet your customer where they are.

“I think a lot of businesses today, particularly after the last year of the pandemic, have had a big struggle meeting customers where they are. We’ve helped a lot of businesses here in our area to make that transition through using additional digital tools and upgrading systems so that they can present an online presence or mobile presence to that customer and not force the customer into the presence that they want to have. 

“Separate the two first. Separate the digital transformation from the system upgrade. And then once you’ve defined what it means to transform your digital presence or to create even a digital presence, then you can start looking at your systems and decide where does that spend make sense, where does that upgrade make sense.”

Bottom Line:

• Cater to the needs of the customer. 
• Advance with technology. 
• Know the difference between digital transformation and system upgrades and when they make sense. 

Could you give four of the most important things that you think companies need to consider so that they make sure that their digital transformation project is a success?

“I think the first would be outcomes. 

“Number two, let’s say transparency. Be completely transparent, both internally and externally. Communicate with your customers. Let them know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. Let the internal folks know what they’re doing, why you’re doing it. Clear communications around all the steps that are going to be required, all the changes that are going to be required. Like you mentioned, change management; it’s really critical that everyone understands as the project starts, that they’re going to have an impact. It shouldn’t be a surprise three months down that some department is now impacted. You should really think through all of those things ahead of time, through your change management process.

“Number three is risk. Really, really focus on risk. What are the areas where even if you have a successful implementation and everything goes well on the technical side, where are the risk factors? Where’s the human risk factors? Training, adoption, convincing people that it’s the right choice to move forward.

“The last one I would say is, start easy. Don’t try to solve the big problems first start with the easy problems, the low hanging fruit, as people say, because you start to build that trust. You’ll get more goodwill when they see positive outcomes from the project, and then you can gain momentum there. And that momentum will serve you when you hit some rough spots. It’ll help you get through those rough spots that you’ll inevitably have. Look for the smaller bits that you can go after that can give some benefit to the clients, give some benefit to your internal teams and then go after the bigger items in your transformation. That’s a really important piece I think, to grow that trust”

Bottom Line:

• Be transparent. Share what and why you are undergoing a digital transformation or system upgrade internally and externally.
• Communicate how the transformation will impact day-to-day operations at work.
• Weigh the risks.
• Start “low” then continue to progress as momentum and trust from the team  propels you forward.

If your company is struggling with growth or it takes numerous team members to execute manual processes that could be solved with automation, it’s time to consider a digital transformation…and it doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Let AdVic show you how.

More Digital Transformation Resources:

Digital Transformation 101: Your Questions Answered

Five-Steps to a Successful Digital Transformation

Preparing for a Digital Transformation

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