What’s in it for me? How Sales Reps can benefit from using Salesforce
What’s in it for me?
It’s a common, and all too relevant question that arises naturally in any business software implementation. Ultimately, people don’t want to change, and using a new software (or using it in a different way) is often met with resistance as in the short term, the changes being asked may slow the team down as they learn and adjust to different work processes and software. As both a business user, and now consultant in the Salesforce world I’ve come upon this question many times and have learned the importance of ensuring that the project stakeholders all understand the answers to this question relative to their role in their respective organizations.
In this series I share my thoughts on this topic, today starting with the core user of Salesforce --- the Sales Representative.
The face of the organization and perhaps the biggest day to day stakeholder in Salesforce is the Sales Rep. This, ironically is also perhaps the most difficult role to sell on the value of really leveraging Salesforce to the extent of it’s capabilities. Sales people like to sell, hit their goals, and maximize their bonuses. They typically don’t see much value in the data entry and sales pipeline tracking that might be asked of them in an organization that runs on Salesforce (or any other CRM for that matter). It’s not that the average Sales Rep doesn’t have a system, it’s more that they likely all have different systems that they use, and that system typically lives in their notebooks, excel sheets, sticky notes, etc.
Back when I first started out using Salesforce, we were building a sales team from scratch and hiring our first inside Sales reps. One of our star Sales reps that joined the team was named Jean. Jean was a GREAT sales rep. She was hyper-competitive and worked hard to reach and exceed her goals. She had a battle-tested system of tracking her outreach on an excel spreadsheet that was thoughtfully color coded, sorted, filtered, and organized to find out who to call, and what to say. Because Jean already had a system that worked so well for her, she had to be dragged kicking and screaming into using Salesforce to track her outreach and pipeline. Fast forward 3 years later, and Jean had moved on to another company and after seeing their Salesforce implementation, was calling me to come to her new company and help fix their system. That was my first job as a consultant.
So how exactly was I able to turn Jean from my biggest challenge trying to get an end user to adopt Salesforce, to an advocate who pushed for best practices and system adoption at other companies later in her career? What exactly is the value to a sales rep of having a well implemented Salesforce system as a tool?
Let’s break it down:
360 Degree Customer Profile: Knowing your customer is key in the world of sales. Whether you are out prospecting, researching someone before you attempt to make contact, or managing an existing account that you are trying to grow, all sales reps know the value of truly understanding who they are talking to, and how best to serve them. As the #1 CRM in the market, Salesforce is built to provide a detailed profile of any and all customers with data from past activities, 3rd party platforms like Linked in, and even other company systems all in a single pane of glass.
Track and Measure: As goal and bonus oriented sales people, everyone wants to know where they stand relative to their goals, and how much they can earn in bonus pay. Being able to display this data in real time to all of your Sales reps, isn’t just motivating, it keeps both reps and managers aware of how they are tracking so that they can assess if they are on track, and if not, have the time and info to drive tactics to close any gaps to plan. Are you tracking your goals in Salesforce?
Surface Outreach Targets Proactively: The features and functionality in Salesforce can help a rep transition from a world where they might spend 30-50% of their time trying to figure out who to call, to a world where Salesforce pro-actively queues up work tasks that keep a sales pipeline moving along smoothly. The Sales Engagement features and functionality can be truly groundbreaking in building simple, scalable workflows that ensure no follow up gets missed, and no opportunity gets ignored. The rep can take that time back and use it to drive value with more quality connections.
Make Data Entry Easy: We mentioned earlier that nobody likes data entry, especially a busy salesperson. However, with Salesforce, you can have your phone, email, text, and social interactions seamlessly link to the proper contact in Salesforce through simple, out of the box integrations. You can even integrate with Zoom and take advantage of custom meeting organization capabilities and sentiment and data analysis from your recorded calls. Instead of jumping around from tool to tool and then tracking what you did or learned in a spreadsheet or note-pad, Salesforce brings everything you need into one place where you track what you do in the natural flow of your daily tasks.
Automation and Custom Workflows: The use cases are different across businesses but every organization has processes and workflows beyond the sales cycle that cause bottlenecks and require manual steps by the sales and back-office teams. The Salesforce platform allows you to build simple, streamlined solutions that make these processes more efficient and in some cases automated saving everyone valuable time and money all the while ensuring consistency and transparency in business operations. The little known fact about Salesforce is that it is a PERFECT tool to automate and manage your back office along side your customer data.
So what do you think? If you were a sales rep that was being asked to adopt Salesforce, do those bullet points make you excited to use the platform? Do you think the features and capabilities mentioned can help you work more effectively and efficiently ultimately leading to hitting your goals?
At Optevo we specialize in connecting Salesforce features and functionality to real business needs, goals and pain points. We partner with our clients on a long term, strategic basis to help guide you through your journey towards operational excellence and ultimately commercial success.