Updated with contributions from my friends at toptal
Salesforce is a software application that is used in customer relationship management (CRM).
Customer relationship management (CRM) are the principles, practices, and guidelines that an organization follows when relating with its customers.
A CRM software application is used by all the departments in an organization such as marketing, sales, commerce, and service to view all the customer activities. These activities include sales orders, sales invoices, inquiries and responses.
What are the advantages of using Salesforce ?
Salesforce has numerous features which makes it one of the preferred CRM software and these features include the following :
- Help the organization understand the customer’s needs and concerns and identify any gaps that become potential market segments.
- Reduces administrative work by automating repetitive tasks.
- Reduces data entry errors and duplication of efforts by centralizing customer’s data entry.
- It helps the marketing team create engaging marketing campaigns by centralizing the data and keeping track of the customer responses.
- It can be used to send targeted and personalized messages to the customers which helps improve sales.
- Automatic messages can be set up to be sent based on the customers actions. For example, if a customer sends an inquiry based on a marketing campaign then a follow up email can be automatically sent to that customer which would include details on the campaign.
- It can incorporate data from numerous sources and use that information to build reports and dashboards that can be used for analysis.
- It helps improve customer’s engagement so that the organization would see an increase in productivity and revenue.
So how does Salesforce work ?
Salesforce is designed to be user friendly and intuitive. The home screen has information such as reports and dashboard that provide customer information in a single glance. The home screen can be personalized to fit in with the user’s requirements.
The functionalities in Salesforce are groups in tabs and some of these tabs are :
- Contacts : this tab is used to create and view new customer information. The contacts tab has reports and dashboards that users can click on and view their information.
- Opportunity : this tab is used to keep track of client meetings and interactions.
- Campaign : this tab is used in marketing campaigns. It contains functionalities that help the marketing team keep track of the campaign progress and make strategic decisions based on the results.
- Leads: Leads are potential customers that can be converted into accounts, opportunities, or contacts. This tab is used to track of these sales leads from the initial contact to the conversion to customers.
For more information on Salesforce, check out this Salesforce guide.
