Introduction
All companies have a sales system to monitor and manage their leads and future opportunities. Some companies have simple systems including spreadsheets or even, old school, black books. Other companies have, or plan to have, a sales force automation (SFA) tool like Salesforce. Once you have purchased the Sales Cloud platform from Salesforce, regardless of whether you have a Professional, Enterprise or Unlimited Edition, you will need to focus on three main areas prior to implementing it:
- Knowing future business processes
- Monitoring and maintaining
- Scaling for growth
These three elements will form the basis for the Sales Cloud project and allow the team the background to make it a success.
Knowing your future business processes
Regardless of whether you are a mattress company or a tech start-up, your executive team and your project team may intimately know how leads are processed and how business is won. Knowing that is only the first step in making a move to Sales Cloud, as you will need to understand the benefits of cloud-based tracking and reporting. As such, the team needs to focus on what the future could look like and plan the solution around it. For example, if your sales team is currently tracking contacts and leads through Microsoft Office, but in the future you want all emails to be saved in Salesforce, you will want to look at Salesforce for Outlook. Another example occurs when the business has strategic and tactical companies and wants to move to a model where companies are tiered based on how much business is done. For this, the business needs to redesign their current view of companies and move to a more organized and detailed model.
Knowing what you want to monitor
A well-worn management phrase “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” is as true today as it was when it was first recognized. Reports, dashboards, and the fields that are used to track the business are the lifeblood of any Sales Cloud implementation. The business must know what information is essential to running the business and what is nice to have for either future requirements or general business monitoring. The essential information should be recognized early and made required in the new system. Leveraging required fields will allow the business to report efficiently on the data being collected.
Knowing how you are going to scale your business
Salesforce is not just a tool for your current business or even your future business in 2-3 years’ time. A properly created Sales Cloud for your business needs to be relevant for when your hundred thousand dollar business is now making millions (or even billions!)
By working closely with both the executive team and the project team, key aspects of the solution can be identified as areas for future growth. The areas can be made to scale based on a future business model and include:
- Opportunity values with enough space for larger deals
- Account Details that provide insights into strategic or platinum tier companies
- Leads with sufficient information to be easily processed by an inside sales team
- Reports and dashboards that allow for territory management and geographic growth
Conclusion
After reading this, many readers will think this is entirely straightforward. However, take some time to meet with the entire management team, and, if possible, include your implementation team to ensure that everyone understands the vision, the processes, and the detail to make the project a success. Sales Cloud is one of the most essential tools built to support and monitor your sales performance. However, it must be done carefully and with an intentional focus on the company’s future.
