Discover what Salesforce is, much more than a CRM
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2024 6:55 am
No one doubts that Salesforce is currently one of the most common technologies in the business ecosystem, from micro-SMEs to large corporations are betting on the leading platform for customer management. In this article we are going to explain what Salesforce is and how it has evolved from its beginnings as a CRM to what we know today as the Salesforce economy. After reading this, you will be able to conclude that Salesforce is much more than a CRM program.
Salesforce CRM
Almost everyone knows Salesforce as a latvia phone number library CRM, but the reality is that it is much more than a customer management tool. However, Sales Cloud (the commercial name for Salesforce's CRM) remains the company's main focus. To fully understand what Salesforce is, it is important to first know what a CRM or Customer Relationship Manager is: its acronym gives a very clear idea that it is a tool responsible for managing commercial relationships with customers , supporting all acquisition and negotiation processes. Salesforce divides CRM into two modules, on the one hand we have acquisition and on the other negotiation, both linked by monitoring and reporting functionalities. It must be stressed that Salesforce was born as a B2B CRM and its process is highly optimized for this type of business, although today it has perfectly adapted to B2C models .
Salesforce CRM is built on a relational data model, tables of data linked together that support a business process and which in Salesforce are called objects. But objects, in addition to being data tables, also incorporate a set of automations and rules that generate a series of specific functionalities to cover a series of business needs. Some of the standard Salesforce CRM objects are:
Leads or customer acquisition
The operating model proposed by Salesforce begins with the acquisition of potential clients or leads, a task that is normally managed by marketing teams. Once these potential clients have been acquired, these potential clients must be evaluated and qualified so that the sales force can begin to deal with them. To do this, they offer a range of functionalities that allow the lead generation and lead management processes to be optimized.
Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities or negotiation with clients
When a lead is qualified by marketing, it means that it is ready to enter a sales process. The Salesforce model involves converting the lead into an account, customer, and opportunity . The data that was previously in a single data table or object is now in 3 tables or objects. In this way, we enhance the relational data model, avoiding typical problems of organization and duplication of information.
salesforce lead conversion
The Account is the master object in the sales application or CRM, it is the object that contains all the company data: fiscal, headcount, billing, industry, etc.
Companies are made up of workers and collaborators, this is recorded at the Contact object level and contains all the identity and contact data: gender, first name, last name, phone number, email, position, seniority, etc. Therefore, on an account record we link several contacts.
Finally, we had mentioned that a qualified lead is ready to be managed by the sales force, therefore the lead contains business negotiation data that in the conversion process is passed on to the Opportunity . One of the keys to the opportunity is that it includes all the stages or milestones that a negotiation goes through. An opportunity is related to a single account and can be related to one or several contacts, those who intervene in the negotiation process that reflects the opportunity.
Campaigns or management of marketing actions
To support marketing or sales actions, both for acquisition and loyalty, Salesforce has the campaigns object. Campaign members are related to campaigns, which refer to both leads and contacts. In addition, campaigns also allow for relationships to be made with opportunities in different ways, which helps to properly measure the ROI of each campaign.
salesforce campaigns
Activities or follow-up
A CRM is a sales productivity tool and one of the key elements is the activities, which help manage the agenda and tasks of the salespeople. The big difference with an activity manager from any calendar is that each activity we record in Saleforce is linked to the relevant contact, account,
Salesforce CRM
Almost everyone knows Salesforce as a latvia phone number library CRM, but the reality is that it is much more than a customer management tool. However, Sales Cloud (the commercial name for Salesforce's CRM) remains the company's main focus. To fully understand what Salesforce is, it is important to first know what a CRM or Customer Relationship Manager is: its acronym gives a very clear idea that it is a tool responsible for managing commercial relationships with customers , supporting all acquisition and negotiation processes. Salesforce divides CRM into two modules, on the one hand we have acquisition and on the other negotiation, both linked by monitoring and reporting functionalities. It must be stressed that Salesforce was born as a B2B CRM and its process is highly optimized for this type of business, although today it has perfectly adapted to B2C models .
Salesforce CRM is built on a relational data model, tables of data linked together that support a business process and which in Salesforce are called objects. But objects, in addition to being data tables, also incorporate a set of automations and rules that generate a series of specific functionalities to cover a series of business needs. Some of the standard Salesforce CRM objects are:
Leads or customer acquisition
The operating model proposed by Salesforce begins with the acquisition of potential clients or leads, a task that is normally managed by marketing teams. Once these potential clients have been acquired, these potential clients must be evaluated and qualified so that the sales force can begin to deal with them. To do this, they offer a range of functionalities that allow the lead generation and lead management processes to be optimized.
Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities or negotiation with clients
When a lead is qualified by marketing, it means that it is ready to enter a sales process. The Salesforce model involves converting the lead into an account, customer, and opportunity . The data that was previously in a single data table or object is now in 3 tables or objects. In this way, we enhance the relational data model, avoiding typical problems of organization and duplication of information.
salesforce lead conversion
The Account is the master object in the sales application or CRM, it is the object that contains all the company data: fiscal, headcount, billing, industry, etc.
Companies are made up of workers and collaborators, this is recorded at the Contact object level and contains all the identity and contact data: gender, first name, last name, phone number, email, position, seniority, etc. Therefore, on an account record we link several contacts.
Finally, we had mentioned that a qualified lead is ready to be managed by the sales force, therefore the lead contains business negotiation data that in the conversion process is passed on to the Opportunity . One of the keys to the opportunity is that it includes all the stages or milestones that a negotiation goes through. An opportunity is related to a single account and can be related to one or several contacts, those who intervene in the negotiation process that reflects the opportunity.
Campaigns or management of marketing actions
To support marketing or sales actions, both for acquisition and loyalty, Salesforce has the campaigns object. Campaign members are related to campaigns, which refer to both leads and contacts. In addition, campaigns also allow for relationships to be made with opportunities in different ways, which helps to properly measure the ROI of each campaign.
salesforce campaigns
Activities or follow-up
A CRM is a sales productivity tool and one of the key elements is the activities, which help manage the agenda and tasks of the salespeople. The big difference with an activity manager from any calendar is that each activity we record in Saleforce is linked to the relevant contact, account,