How a Salesforce Consultant Can Help Upgrade Your CRM
Learn how Salesforce consultants can upgrade your CRM, boost productivity, and achieve your business goals through expert customization and support.
Salesforce CRM provides businesses and their sales team with a competitive advantage when it comes to qualifying leads and automating the sales process. Sales representatives can quickly sort through numerous prospects, follow them as they move through the sales funnel, and identify key moments to contact these prospects to increase the potential for bringing in additional sales.
However, unlocking the complete potential of the Salesforce platform can be a challenge for businesses without a dedicated Salesforce expert. Salesforce consulting companies can help clients overcome limitations, unlock the CRM’s full potential, and enhance Salesforce’s out-of-the-box functionality.
A talented consultant can help businesses perform day-to-day maintenance and get the most out of a Salesforce investment. A consultant can provide guidance and support—such as determining what upgrades and customizations will make your organization more productive across your business processes. Their problem-solving skills and ability to troubleshoot through Salesforce can help your team overcome unique challenges and find solutions that will help your business thrive.
We’ll walk you through what you need to know about taking your Salesforce function to the next level with the help of a Salesforce consultant.
What is a Salesforce consultant?
A Salesforce consultant has extensive experience and expertise in this popular customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Because this is the professional’s area of expertise, they’ll stay current on the latest product changes and applications, so they can deliver gains in quality, productivity, or costs.
Salesforce consulting services go beyond the basic functions of the platform and can help manage integrations, create custom tools, and otherwise leverage the platform’s full capabilities. Nearly any industry can take advantage of these optimizations, from nonprofits to financial services to businesses in the health care sector, and more.
Why should you hire a Salesforce consultant?
Working with a Salesforce consultant can help you take full advantage of the platform. You can better connect with customers and provide customized experiences for your clients and prospects. The information stored in the Salesforce marketing cloud can help your teams better transition leads from one stage to the next, boosting your return on investment (ROI) and conversion rate.
As a team, you’ll also be better equipped to provide faster support services and work with customers through their challenges and questions. Salesforce solutions can help you track the customer experience and improve your services.
Overall, a Salesforce consultant can help you better manage your interaction history with customers so you can track how they move through the sales funnel and progress toward becoming customers.
Top benefits of hiring Salesforce consultant
The key benefits of working with a professional dedicated to maximizing the potential of Salesforce enable improvements in specific business functions.
Migrating to Salesforce from other CRM platforms
If you haven’t used Salesforce in the past, you need to get all of your data up and running on the platform. This might entail setting up a CRM for the first time or bringing in your data from an outside source. A professional can help you get your system set up efficiently by managing the migration from start to finish.
Working with a professional through the migration step will ensure that each component is handled optimally. Your consultant can help you keep your data clear and well-managed so you can sort through it and maximize your functionality. They can also help you capitalize on the best Salesforce products so you can fully integrate within the platform’s ecosystem.
Setting up customized dashboards and helping with analysis
Dashboard customization needs to be the cornerstone of getting the most out of your CRM. Salesforce offers a wealth of options when it comes to creating customized dashboards for your unique business needs. However, creating dashboards in Salesforce can be quite involved. It often requires custom fields to accommodate the specific calculations and tools your team needs to find quality leads and close deals.
A professional Salesforce consultant can help you design dashboards to maximize your data analysis and boost your business. The dashboards can make it easy to filter your data, find information you need quickly, and better track your prospects.
Your Salesforce consultant can help you identify your business’s main pain points when trying to capitalize on your Salesforce data. This empowers them to create a user-friendly data system so Salesforce better compliments your business.
Providing training and support
Like other platforms and services, Salesforce often has updates and upgrades that can make the platform more valuable. However, many businesses struggle to keep up with these changes, or they might not know which upgrades will have the biggest benefits for them as an organization.
Your consultant can help you manage the necessary upgrades and updates. The professional will ensure you know which updates will best benefit your unique organization and increase productivity.
This type of assistance can also extend to teaching your team. Not only do you need the data to be easy to use, but you also want to make sure team members know how to access the information and feel fully capable as they navigate the platform.
Your consultant can help you provide training for a better user experience, empowering your team to close more deals and bring in more customers. A thorough Salesforce implementation and training across your organization can help everyone work more effectively.
Finally, you’ll find the support you receive through your consultant can reduce the number of questions you have about the system. The expert can provide you with help and support, which means you don’t have to worry about submitting as many help tickets. You have your own expert who can answer your questions and provide training and information when problems arise.
Keeping your system organized
Periodically organizing data from sales reps needs to play an important role in maintaining the functionality and usefulness of your Salesforce platform. Some companies abandon their Salesforce integrations when their data gets disorganized and unmanageable. Unfortunately, this disorder can easily happen when numerous sales reps log in at the same time and enter their records inconsistently.
Fortunately, your Salesforce consultants can help. They can periodically go in and audit the records, preventing the buildup of unusable records. A cleanout can also keep the overall dataset more usable and helpful.
As the Salesforce consultant helps sort data, they can take steps to prevent the buildup of problems in the first place. Specifically, they can help you create custom wizards that guide reps through their data entries, creating consistency and uniformity within the data entry—regardless of which reps create the entries.
Custom wizards can also help streamline the Salesforce quoting process, which typically requires multiple steps and doesn’t guarantee consistency.
Improving your ability to find leads and customers
You want your sales representatives to collaborate easily—regardless of physical location—and work together to bring in as many new customers as possible. Salesforce can increase communication skills within teams, boosting productivity and the ability to find leads.
Your Salesforce consultant can help you set up systems that make it easy for your sales reps to collaborate. They can create collaboration checklists that allow people from multiple locations to work together.
For example, if you have large accounts that might span a few different business locations, you can use checklists to ensure everyone is on the same page. Your checklists can help personnel see how the other sales representatives perform and create a global strategic picture for the large accounts. Strong coordination means your service and marketing efforts will be cohesive, enhancing your business reputation. Helping your teams work together can make project management related to larger accounts easier.
Salesforce consultants can also make it easier for you to motivate your internal sales consultants. You can provide transparency and competition among your sales representatives through gamification. Consultants can help you create leaderboards based on key metrics from the CRM so all your sales consultants can see each other’s results and the leaders in different categories.
Working with a Salesforce consultant can help you improve your ability to pull in leads and customers in other ways. Better data makes it easier for sales representatives to do their jobs, and integrations with other popular platforms can increase the data available to your team. Consultants can help you manage integrations with other popular platforms like Marketo and Hoopla, providing your team with more customer information.
You can also receive advice regarding which add-ons will most benefit your organization. Many businesses want options like Pardot, which can help with email campaigns and lead management.
Boosting your business productivity and performance
Business productivity is a key element in business success. You don’t want sales reps wasting time sorting through data to find the information they need to close a deal. A Salesforce consultant can help you better manage this information so productivity improves and your team is empowered to work more efficiently.
Your consultant can help you track records across the Salesforce system to see how the data is entered and used. You and your team will become more adept at using the platform, allowing your team to find the information they need faster.
Similarly, your consultant can help you better manage your integrations and ensure the information passes through the system smoothly. If it doesn’t work as intended, they can help you troubleshoot the problem and improve the outcome.
Part of getting the most out of Salesforce means taking advantage of automation and tools that can help you eliminate tedious tasks from the past. Through the Salesforce service cloud, users can take advantage of features like automation and create more streamlined workflows. Salesforce consultants can help build tools like a balanced business plan (BBP) using Apex triggers, Salesforce’s Process Building, and customer Visualforce pages, which convert a largely Excel-based manual process to one that’s intricate and interactive with live Salesforce data.
Similarly, consultants can help you with Salesforce customization by creating tools that bring together data from your system and automate processes triggered by certain actions, which helps save time. Automation can also help with updating account contacts.
Improving and tailoring the reports you deliver
Reports provide you with a means of digging into your data, but out-of-the-box reports may not always deliver the insights you need. You want quality reports that answer key questions for the people reading them, and often they need to include some polish and quality formatting. Consider a CEO who wants a report to help them design the annual plan. Meanwhile, an account executive might want a report to guide them through the day’s calls.
Your Salesforce consultant can create systems that allow you to build custom reports. These reports can include the calculations and values relevant to the roles and responsibilities of the people reading them.
With this insight, Salesforce becomes less about a place to store data and more about a platform that allows you to extract valuable insights to leverage for business success. Your CRM solutions can take your customer cultivation to the next level.
Salesforce CRM consulting FAQ
We answer some frequently asked questions about hiring a salesforce consultant.
How can a Salesforce consultant help my business?
A Salesforce consultant can help your business in various ways:
- Customizing the Salesforce platform to fit your specific needs
- Providing training and support for your team
- Optimizing your sales cloud and marketing campaigns
- Improving data management and reporting
- Assisting with digital transformation initiatives
- Helping you achieve your business goals through effective CRM use
What services do Salesforce consulting firms typically offer?
Salesforce consulting firms typically offer a range of professional services. These include Salesforce implementation and customization, data migration and integration, user experience design and optimization, and managed services for ongoing support and maintenance.
They also provide training and change management, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud configuration, custom app development, and business process optimization.
How do I choose the right Salesforce consultant for my business?
When choosing a Salesforce consultant, consider their experience in your industry-specific sector and the range of services they offer. Look at their track record of successful implementations and client testimonials.
Evaluate their approach to understanding your specific business needs and their ability to provide ongoing support. Don’t forget to check their certifications and partnership level with Salesforce.
How long does a typical Salesforce consulting project take?
The duration of a Salesforce consulting project can vary widely depending on the scope and complexity of your needs. A basic implementation might take a few weeks, while a complex, enterprise-wide digital transformation project could take several months or even a year. Your consultant will provide a more accurate timeline based on your specific requirements.
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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.