It’s no easy feat to grow and expand business. Increasing sales is more than simply selling a product or a service to current and potential customers. A business can only be successful if it has a method of efficiently collecting leads that can be converted to loyal customers. This necessitates the use of a proven CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
A good CRM software enables your business to better manage customer interactions, provide support, and maintain relationships through reliable systems and processes. It also integrates organizational processes across marketing, sales, and customer service with functionalities and features that can strategically serve key initiatives across departments.
There are several available systems that enable businesses to manage customer relationships seamlessly. One of the best-known CRMs available today is Salesforce. There are several reasons why Salesforce has a large fan following since its inception in 1999.
Why is Salesforce preferred by so many companies?
While most of the other CRMs available today excel in one or two categories, Salesforce is a robust platform with well-developed capabilities that cover all bases. These characterisitics and capabilities have been critical to success of many small and large organizations from a variety of industries.
What’s Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM application that helps businesses run more efficiently and profitably by lowering the cost of owning hardware infrastructure. It has a wide range of features across all of an industry’s functional departments.
For instance, Salesforce Marketing Cloud aims to help businesses improve their marketing campaigns by providing the features necessary to gather customer data, manage and create email or social media campaigns, run ads on various platforms, etc.
On the other hand, the Commerce Cloud is designed to handle everything related to eCommerce, from inventory management to order fulfillment, dealing with payments, customer service, and more.
Nevertheless, the Sales Cloud, is Salesforce’s core product. This platform is well-known amongst business owners for a variety of different reasons.
What makes Salesforce the CRM of choice for every business?
1. Wide range of features
Sales Cloud’s complete set of features include quotes, leads, contacts, channels, opportunities and territory management, sales forecasting, quote to cash, and more.
Sales Cloud’s feature list further expands with Salesforce’s other products, like Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Tableau Analytics, which integrate seamlessly with the CRM solution.
Moreover, Salesforce offers a mobile application letting users access CRM data from anywhere at any time. It also provides offline information updates.
Most importantly, Many businesses love Salesforce’s automation capabilities. For instance, business owners can streamline their quote management with the CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) system. It allows users to set accurate price quotes for configurable products automatically. Therefore, you won’t have to dig through countless spreadsheets when creating price quotes.
2. Scalability
Any business, regardless of size, can use Salesforce platform effectively and provide an optimized user experience. You can seamlessly integrate its CRM with Salesforce’s other products, like Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud, allowing you to expand the platform’s functionality and bring customer data to one place.
Not only is Salesforce scalable, but it can be customised to fit the unique needs of a business. According to Salesforce statistics, 86% of consumers admit to personalisation playing an important role in purchasing decisions.
3. Multi-tenant Architecture
Think of a storage unit complex. Multiple people share a common space to store their items, while the area is clearly defined into numerous spaces to ensure the privacy of each user. Moreover, each user benefits from the same level of security and access to the same resources.
Multi-tenant systems store data from multiple companies on the same server. The same thing goes with Salesforce. All users share the same infrastructure, yet that infrastructure is partitioned, giving each user access to maximum security. Additionally, multi-tenant systems allow for seamless automatic updates for all of its users.
4. Customizability
Salesforce is the best for providing basic and advanced customization options. From customizations as simple as tweaking the User Interface, changing UI colors, logos, graphics, etc. to make the software sit in line with your brand guidelines, to more complex tweaks in workflows, notifications, dashboards, fields, objects, and more to better align Salesforce with your business processes, or a multistep processes from scratch, like tax assessment processes, content reviews, approvals, etc., Salesforce can do it all.
5. Excellent Customer Service and Support
Salesforce’s top notch customer support is very responsive and helpful. Salesforce also provides plenty of documentation on making the most out of the platform, solving potential issues, and insights into managing and marketing your business more effectively.
With Salesforce’s Trailblazer, you can connect with other Salesforce users to exchange ideas, get help, and find courses made by certified experts.
6. In-depth Analytics
The Sales Cloud includes in-depth, customizable reports that allow you to track the metrics which matter to your business the most. With Tableau CRM Analytics, an optional add-on to the Sales Cloud, Salesforce takes the analytics to the next level.
What makes Tableau CRM Analytics stand out is Einstein AI. This platform uses Machine Learning technology to connect with your CRM data, automatically deliver custom reports, and provide predictions and recommendations for faster and more accurate decision-making.
Moreover, the platform allows you to build predictive ML models with no coding skills required. As a result, you’ll get valuable insights without relying on data science teams.
7. AppExchange
Through Salesforce’s AppExchange, users can download or create custom-built applications to enhance the platform’s functionality. With over 3400 applications available, AppExchange provides solutions for all of Salesforce’s products.
The apps are split into four categories:
a. Native Apps :- Created directly in Salesforce
b. Non-Native Apps :- Created outside Salesforce and integrated via Salesforce API
c. Managed Packages :- Ready-made collections of apps and components built by Salesforce developers. The developers are responsible for handling updates and optimizations, so customers only need to download it.
d. Unmanaged Packages :- These are open-source applications where developers can modify the installments according to their needs and integrate them into their organization.
8. Versatility
Salesforce offers a variety of other products that are designed to fulfill specific needs. Some of Salesforce’s product offerings include.
a. Marketing Cloud – for personalized campaigns, visualizing customer journeys, and more
b. Service Cloud – for streamlining customer service and support
c. Commerce Cloud – for inventory management, order fulfillment, and eCommerce marketing
d. Experience Cloud – creating landing pages, apps, storefronts, customer portals, etc.
These software solutions integrate seamlessly with one other, giving businesses access to a broader feature set without needing to rely on other platforms. Salesforce offers products designed explicitly for niche industries, like healthcare, communications, education, manufacturing, etc.
For instance, the Nonprofit Cloud helps charities and other philanthropic organizations by providing all the tools necessary for marketing, fundraising, grant management, and more.
Conclusion
Overall, Salesforce is the winner in the CRM game due to it’s versatility, customer support and sustainable feature set for large and small businesses alike.