Shamrock CRM – Salesforce.com Consulting, Implementations and Web Development

Lead Management – Sales Lead Definitions

The Salesforce.com marketing bloggers have written a few interesting posts regarding best practices for Lead Management within Salesforce.com. They describe the definition of leads, the interrelation of Sales and Marketing when it comes to Leads, the true definition of “qualified leads” and more:\

Definition of a Sales Lead:
A Lead is a name, an email address, contact details, etc of an employee, someone you have met, someone you have talked to that MIGHT…just might…be interested in possibly doing business with you.

Leads are acquired in all different manners. You could be provided a list of email addresses from a trade show that you had a booth at. All of these emails would be “Sales Leads.” You could have received a business card from someone that you met at Wal-Mart that is interested in your business. You could have received a simple email or web inquiry from your website asking for a quote or asking for your hourly service rates.

The commonality here is that you do not know THAT much about these individuals and you are not sure HOW interested they are in your product/service/offering. You might not know if they even have budget allocated to do business with you or not. Leads are not necessarily “serious” business YET. Leads are essentially “pre-opportunities.”

Leads also allow you to separate the “junk” contact information from you Customer data that consists of truly paying customers. It allows you to quarantine bad leads from your good customers.

There can be “hot leads” and “cold leads.” Hot leads would be Leads that you have a good feeling about and would like to actively pursue.

There are different Lead Statuses. A New Lead would be a fresh Lead that has never been contacted. Contacted would of course mean someone has reached out to the Lead. Unqualified would mean the person does not have budget, is not interested, has bad references, etc. “Unqualified Leads” are bad Leads NOW, but could be re-marketable at a later time. “Qualified” leads pass your own internal qualification process to determine if they could really buy what you are selling. This qualification could be as simple as “we provided a quote, the customer responded favorably and asked more questions, they are now qualified and can be converted into an Opportunity.”

The above topics and ideas are not related strictly to Salesforce.com. Every company has Leads, whether you call them Leads or not. Let me repeat that…ALL companies have Leads in some way or another. Lead Management is a business process in the CRM realm. This is simply mapped into Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com Marketing Best Practices

New “Quick Summary” of Shamrock CRM, like it?

I made a new “quick summary”, “about Shamrock Crm”, high level description page for our company.

Let me know your thoughts/likes/dislikes? The purpose is to catch your eye immediately and tell you exactly what we do and why we are good at it.

Take a look and let me know!
Salesforce.com Developers

About Salesforce.com

If you have been interested in trying out Salesforce.com for the first time, go ahead and set yourself up with a Free 30 Day Trial of Salesforce.com. You do not need to give any credit card details or anything.

Just click the button below that says “FREE TRIAL” and you will be good to go. Play around with the system and let me know what you think. Also, read through some of the details below related to Salesforce.com and its features.

Salesforce.com JavaScript to Override Buttons

This little snippet of code is written in JavaScript.  This piece of code is simply an example of what you can do by embedding JavaScript into a custom Salesforce.com button.

In this example, we have Opportunities and a related custom object called Shipments.  You sell a Product and you ship it, get it?

This button would be displayed on the “Shipments” related list on an Opportunity.  The button would be titled “New Shipment” and would replace the default button.

This button would check if a shipment for this Opportunity is currently “In Progress” and not “Shipped”.  If so, it will not allow the user to create a new shipment.  They should combine this new shipment into the existing one to save on transportation costs.

{!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/15.0/connection.js")} 

var result = sforce.connection.query("Select Id From Shipment__c where Status__c = 'In Progress' and Opportunity__c = '{!Opportunity.Id}' ");
var records = result.getArray("records"); 

//If there are no Shipments In Progress, redirect the User to the New Shipment page
if (records.length == 0){
window.parent.location.href="{! urlFor( $Action.Shipment__c.New, $ObjectType.Job__c,null,true)}&CF00N20000001B5jC_lkid={!Opportunity.Id}&CF00N20000001B5jC={!Opportunity.Name}";
}
//If there are Shipments In Progress for this Opportunity
else{
alert("There is a current job on the system - please complete this job prior to creating a new job");
}

Salesforce.com vs. GiftWorks? Which is better for Nonprofits?

Lately I have heard a lot of discussion from many different Nonprofit organizations as to whether to choose Salesforce.com or GiftWorks for their CRM needs (Donation/Grant/Revenue tracking, Donor/Volunteer/Constituent Management, Mailing Campaigns, Event Tracking, etc). I have used both tools and I have my own opinion (Salesforce all the way), but I found an Excellent post on the Web describing exactly what I feel about the differences between the two CRM systems.

“GiftWorks does not allow for much flexibility when it comes to injecting “business processes” in the way that SHOULD be in a CRM system. Leads, campaigns, donors, and contacts can be more effectively managed in Salesforce.com.

SFDC (Salesforce.com) does a much better job of building and managing relationships between contacts, organizations and donations. Also, Salesforce is scalable. It can grow with your organization to accomodate other business processes, such as expense management, HR and more. In addition, it allows for a relatively simple integration with other ERP systems such as Quickbooks, Paypal etc.

Another major plus for Salesforce is accessibility. GiftWorks is only now coming out with some type of remote administration capability but it is nowhere near close to Salesforce.com.

GiftWorks may be a good solution for some organizations right out-of-the-box, especially if you do not have the budget to customize Salesforce. But, if your organization is growing, and you are looking for a long term solution, I would take a serious look at Salesforce.com. Also, remember that if your organization is a 501(c)(3), you can most likely obtain a 10 license donation from Salesforce.”

So, if you would like to know more about how Salesforce.com works with other nonprofits, shoot me an email and we can chat!

Default values and tracking on Web to Lead forms

If you have ever wanted to set default values for certain fields when someone is filling out a Salesforce.com Web2Lead form on your website, you absolutely can.  For example, let’s imagine that you have 5 product pages on your website and you have a contact form on each page.  You could set a field called “Originating Web Form” to the value Product 1 or Product XYZ as seen below.  The user filling out this form would never see this field that is filled out behind the scenes, because it is a hidden field.

This allows you to set fields in Salesforce that might trigger different types of workflow rules or could be used for specific marketing tracking.  This is a great, easy way to prefill in data or track certain behavior.

The line below allows you to specify a hidden value that the user does not see.  This will default a field in Salesforce.com called “Originating Web Form” with the value “Product XYZ Page.”  This will let you know that the user filled in the form on this specific product page.

When and Why to use Territory Management in Salesforce

Ok, so in Salesforce.com you have Roles, Profiles, User Records, Sharing Settings, Organization Wide Defaults, Field Level Security, Page Layouts, Lists, Views, Reports, Folders and more to segment, hide or display data in different ways.  Confused yet with this massive interrelation of data management tools?  Well, time to introduce Territory Management into the mix.

Most small organizations might only have the need for a public security structure in Salesforce in which everyone see’s everything and can modify everything.  Fine.

Most medium sized organizations can survive simply with Salesforce profiles, roles and possibly sharing settings.  Great.

What happens when you are managing a Global organization with multiple product divisions, complex sales territories, difficult International legal requirements (German worker’s council, embargoed countries, etc) and varying visibility requirements per Sales Region, Mega Region and Global Regions?  This situation is much more complicated, but entirely doable in Salesforce.com using Roles, Profiles, Territories and Sharing Settings.

Imagine only North America.  Imagine that there are 3 product divisions selling to 5 different sales regions.  The 3 product divisions all sell to the same sales regions, but sell different products.  The product divisions need a Manager/Salesperson management concept within Salesforce.com where the Manager has delete/transfer access for all Salesperson data.  Certain sales people need to be able to cross sell multiple Products within one region.  The reporting structure needs to be done by division (upwards).  Sales people in one sales region should be able to view all Accounts belonging to one region (determined by groups of states), even if they belong to someone else in a different role (possibly managers).

This is a common scenario that can get much more complex in large, International corporations in multi-million dollar Salesforce deployments.

This is how this would be represented in Salesforce:
Roles - Hierarchy of roles represent the Product Divisions.  Each division is broken down into Sales Region roles representing both Managers and Sales People and possibly Sales Partners.  Partners and Sales People both report to the Manager role.  Reporting is primarily done by role, because VP’s/CEO’s for these Product Divisions typically only care about their own sales
Territories -  Hierarchy of territories that represent the Sales Regions.  An example would be: 1 – World, 2 – North America 3 – East N.A..  This can be as granular as necessary.  Rules will be defined that automatically associate Accounts with these territory “buckets.”  So, not East N.A. has a collection of Accounts in East North America that you can assign to any group that you would like.  It is best to provide the minimum sharing capability for these by default.
Sharing Settings –  Sharing Settings are what actually assign Territories to Roles in SFDC.  For example, for the Product Line 1, East North America role, you can assign the Territory and Subordinates for the associated Territory.  This will allow the users in this role to see everything within this region and also cross sell multiple products.  The divisional reporting structure still remains.

Contact me if you would like to know if this could be utilized for your organization.  I have worked with this a lot!

Adding Google Calendar to your Salesforce Homepage

Did you know that you can embed your shared Google Calendar directly on your Salesforce.com home page?  Well, this can easily be done and it is a GREAT feature.

First, go to your Google Calendar page and click the “Settings” link on the left.

Next, select the Calendar you are interested in…in my case, Consulting.

Next, you will see a section where you can receive code to “embed” your calendar on a web page.  Copy the code.

Now, go into Salesforce setup and go to the Home Page Component section.

Add another Home Page Component of type “HTML Area.”  Hit the “View in HTML” checkbox and paste in the code.  Save.

Now, add this home page component into a Salesforce.com Home Page Layout  and take a look at your system wide shared Google Calendar!

Watch Salesforce show you how to do this on video!

Customer Service and Support Process in Salesforce.com

Yesterday, I shared with you the Sales and Marketing Process Maps that Salesforce.com created.  Today, I will enlighten you with outstanding Customer Service and Support Process Maps that will help to refine and streamline your support process with Customers.

These support business process maps illustrate the flow of communication from customers to your support reps throughout all of the mediums, such as Online Inquiries, Telephone communication, Email Support and Call Sales.  A lot of this initial communication can be automated and tracked without any support rep intervention with the use of tools, such as Web-to-Case, Email-to-Case, CTI Integration with apps such as Skype from the Salesforce.com AppExchange and more.  All communication between customer support representatives using Salesforce.com and the customer can be completely tracked within the tool.  I can help you set this up for your company!

Of course, these process maps include recommended KPI’s and metrics for tracking your support center within SFDC.

Take a look at the following service process maps below in both PPT and PDF format.  Enjoy!

Download these process maps in PPT or PDF

Sales and Marketing Process Maps

This one is an oldie, but goodie.  I love the process maps that Salesforce released a while back.

These sales methodology process maps can be sliced, diced and used by any industry in some way.  Some portions might need to be removed and some terminology might need to be changed, but generally the marketing aspects and sales processes in thes process maps are universal across all businesses in some way.

These sales process and marketing process maps can be downloaded in full color in both PowerPoint and PDF formats.  They follow the process from Generating Leads to Optimizing Lead Flow to Closing More Deals within Salesforce.com.

Of course, each major stage in the process gives example metrics that you might like to record such as Lead Quality and Lead Source as well as Month to Date Sales Trending and Top Sales Reps.

One interesting point to note is that there are several stages in the game where you are following up possible sales in Salesforce.com:  Qualifying Leads, Following up on Opportunities and Re-Marketing to your existing Customer/Lead database.

Download the Sales Process Powerpoint or PDF.