How to use Salesforce CRM to get more done

Imagine finding a penny on the ground, turning it over, and seeing nothing. That would be unusual — there are two sides to every coin, after all.

In business, you can have the best idea in the world, but you’re not going to make an impact — or money, for that matter — without customers. Clients or customers are the flip side of your company coin.

Attracting, managing, and keeping customers is the foundation of any good business. And to do that, you’ll need tools to work on outreach to your clients. That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) comes in.

CRM refers to anything that helps you improve your relationships with your customers. Among the best CRM platforms is Salesforce, which helps you get new business, communicate with your teams, and improve efficiency. But before you go headfirst into the platform, it’s important to understand how to use Salesforce and exactly what it offers you as a business tool.

Here’s what you need to know about Salesforce and how it can help you accomplish more.

Your data, anywhere

Salesforce is cloud-based software. This means that you can access information related to your business, clients, and sales figures on the go, wherever you are. It’s completely secure, and you won’t have to invest time or resources installing software across your entire company system.

There’s nothing worse than sitting down for a meeting and not being able to pull up a specific piece of information. Salesforce eliminates these worries with its ability to organize your sales leads, opportunities, account details, and customer information.

Plus, having all this centralized data allows you to break it down and organize it to aid in specific campaigns. If you want to present figures to a client in a similar field to one you already work with, that data is easily accessible.

Meet your customers where they are

If your customers think that you’re not up to speed with their financials and the way they operate, they’re going to lose confidence in you. Salesforce’s different software capabilities allow your marketing team, sales team, and service team to address questions quickly and in depth.

The quicker you coordinate with your clients, the happier they’ll be and the more likely they’ll be to continue their business — or even recommend you to others.

Plan your business future

With all your information in one place, it’s easier to take stock of your business and where it’s going. If you’re putting together a five-year plan, it’s a lot simpler to research your company’s makeup from a centralized data source, rather than having to pull from different sources. Of course, there are several different things you need to focus on day to day to run your business, so having the ability to easily streamline a big-picture task is a huge luxury.

What’s more, easy access to data can save you a lot of time in the research phase of this project, and you can even use Salesforce’s communication software to touch base with each of your teams to get their input on how you’re doing and how to proceed. Salesforce also allows you to identify your best accounts, so you can take a look at what works with these companies and use what you learn to develop plans for the future.

Improving efficiency

While you’re learning how to use Salesforce, you can rest assured that it will be worth the investment. According to the company’s website, businesses that use Salesforce see an average increase of 27 percent in sales revenue and 32 percent in sales leads converted, as well as a 34 percent increase in customer satisfaction.

And that makes sense. If you’re doing everything you can to understand your clients — what they like and don’t like, and how that affects your overall revenue — you’ll become a better, smarter business. When everyone on your team has the same information, you can reduce the amount of time spent on organizing and finding data. For example, if your marketing department is working on a new campaign on customer renewals, they’ll have access to sales figures put together by your sales team to help inform their decisions.

Bringing everything together

Salesforce is second to none as an integration tool. You can import company email servers and install third-party apps that help with workflow. Plus, with Jotform’s easily transferable forms, you can import company information into Salesforce and let the platform do its magic.

Salesforce’s Jotform compatibility allows you to break down your business practices into detail and see how you’re performing. Even better, you can organize and categorize your business, and add leads and new accounts. This way, you’ll spend less time on data entry and more time out in the field growing your business.