Selling your product or service is hard. You need to know just what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. But sometimes you don’t have the time for all of that. Especially if you’re a small business owner.
Customizing Salesforce can save time by automatically sending out those emails and messages you would otherwise have to manually send out every day. It also saves money by providing better customer service and increasing sales.
Here are six best practices for customizing Salesforce.
1. How to get started.
For many small businesses, one of the biggest roadblocks to going all-in on Salesforce is the initial learning curve. It takes some practice and a good understanding of how everything works to make customizing Salesforce easier. After this article, you may want to consider consulting experts on Salesforce customization to truly get the most out of the platform
When you start to modify a part of the program, you should take a moment to figure out which API you need to access it. For example, if you’re using the PowerApps web portal for Salesforce, then the PowerApps mobile app is likely the right API for you. It will allow you to start testing your data immediately rather than copying and pasting data in your browser.
In most cases, the APIs available on the Salesforce app directory will work with the Salesforce Data Source interface for Salesforce. However, sometimes it can be necessary to modify the RESTful API interface that Salesforce offers.
2. Customize your sales process.
A key element of the Salesforce program is the activity that each person in a company takes within Salesforce to take action on the data. In the same way that you develop processes within your business, you should have a process for developing contacts and following up on leads, which includes creating, compiling, and sending emails.
The best place to start with customizing Salesforce is to connect each step in your sales process with a corresponding trigger that is either a JSON object, a scheduling event, or a Google Analytics tag. It’s better to have triggers around each step of the sales process to make it easy to track the different actions that have been taken.
You can create a relationship with a person’s individual Salesforce record with the use of the filter connector.
You can also create the flow in your email and alert emails. For example, you can determine if the email contains a special trigger or if it’s a scheduled message. The presence of a given tag or a specific date (provided by Google Analytics) can also be used to determine whether the email was sent out or not.
3. Automate your emails and messages.
The next step is to create a contact profile that contains all of the information needed to personalize the user experience in the Salesforce app. Salesforce makes this easy by including the contact information, and the associated emails and calendar entries for every customer.
You can make the contacts a bit more personal by customizing each of the fields. For example, you can make a user’s profile title bold if they are very active on the site, you can add their Twitter handle to their profile if it’s listed, or you can add a Facebook ID to contact people who connect with you on Facebook.
Each of these fields can be modified with a few different tools. For example, you can add custom fields with the use of custom fields in the contact table within the Salesforce app. You can also modify a contact’s name, profile picture, email, and profile description with the use of the custom fields in the Salesforce interface.
4. Leverage lead intelligence.
The final step in getting more out of your data is to use it to further optimize your marketing efforts. For example, you can leverage the API to pull in the customer’s email, phone number, customer support tickets, social profile information, or GitHub repository information into your CRM. Salesforce can also connect with Google Analytics for individual searches or locations.
This is a step that will help you get even more out of your data. Just because you have a contact in Salesforce doesn’t mean you have all of their information. Using the leads, engagement, and other content that you’ve collected through the CRM, you can find new ways to engage the leads to get them to take action.
