Salesforce Review

I managed a $400M program for _______ ( shall remain nameless). And Salesforce literally saved my program. While I had a good grip on what was going on in the market (in general), we were challenged with gauging our share of a $2.4B market. After working with our internal and Salesforce engineers, we were able to come up with a promotional codes and a very advanced tracking system that allowed us to forecast future revenues and actual bookings. This was a huge "win" for us. I was fortunate to have also worked as an account manager who plugged in the data to be leveraged by my program at a future date. Between the incredible work of the engineers and my past experience, we were able to track our annual revenues going forward (but going back as far as 2 years and projecting years into the future).

Sometimes, Salesforce does not interoperate with other programs. But there are now other APIs and other software that help to bridge those gaps. Those did not exist back in 2010 when I first started this huge initiative.

Not sure. It was funded by the nameless company.

In my previous life as an sale rep for of the "big corps", I used Salesforce every single day. That included creating email marketing campaigns. Managing and emailing a customer base of 3000+ businesses could have been a daunting tasks. With Salesforce as both a CRM and email marketer, it was simple to set reminders and set filters to identify my target prospects for daily/weekly email marketing campaigns. Everything was managed from SalesForce. Although I do not use Salesforce in my business (at the moment), I will be considering it when my prospective and current client base warrants such an investment.

None. I do not recall having any issues.

At $25-300/mo, it really depends on which price corresponds with my business needs. Since I have not spoken with a sales rep, I cannot speak on the price. But $50-100/mo would seem like a good price.

I used Salesforce in my former life as a sales rep for one of the "big corps". Emailing marketing, tracking all of my sells activities, setting followup reminders, etc were some of the features I appreciated the most. Soon, having a CRM will be essential to managing my forever growing prospective and current list of clients. Salesforce may be an option, if the price is right.

$25-300/mo is a huge disparity in price. But I am certain I would fall within the lower range (based on my current pipeline) in which case the return would certainly justify the cost.

TBD

Great for managing leads and working cross-teams. Great interface. Enjoying using the UI and using the data to optimize marketing performance.

Depending on the size of the business, it may be too costly. It may take expensive technical resources. Overall a great product though.

Good value!

I have used Salesforce significantly to observe the activities of my customers and to analyze potential sale options. I really enjoy the variety of tools available for organizing and utilizing data as well as the diversity of the data. Both in my experience and in the broader marketing sphere, Salesforce is known for its accurate and reliable data. Salesforce is also useful for mobile applications.

The tools it offers can be a bit complicated and somewhat difficult to learn quickly. Most companies will opt to hire an SFDC admin to manage Salesforce within the company in order to use it most effectively. However, the cost of paying for that manager as well as the cost for more Salesforce licenses can quickly add up to a hefty sum that can be difficult for many businesses to swallow.

The value is so so. Large companies may find it worth the cost, but it can be a pain for smaller companies.

As an account manager, I have used Salesforce exensively to keep track of customer leads, activities, and sales opportunities. It is the industry standard at most large companies, and the reporting, dashboards, and sheer amount of things you can do with the data is immense. It is also typically viewed as the source of truth for account records and is a one stop shop for client data. Great mobile capabilities.

Not easy to learn overnight- actually one of the more complex tools out there. Its not surprising that you need to hire a specialized SFDC admin to run Salesforce internally within companies. Additionally, things get expensive as your license count goes up- its not really priced well for startups (or Enterprises for that matter), but companies with more money tend to be able to justify the cost.

Not that great- there are some enterprise discounts available but its not well priced for small companies.

I used Salesforce in my first online customer service job. I thought it was incredibly effective for keeping an entire team of support and sales team members organized as we helped hundreds of customers every day. It keeps track of everything, which makes it pretty quick and easy to reference the last interaction a customer had with one of our team members, whether that was 1 week or 6 months ago. So rather than trying to reach out to a team member and ask about a conversation they had months ago, I can quickly pull up all previous conversations this customer had with us to figure out how to best help them. I also appreciated how my daily queue of responses were organized (or can be adjusted) to ensure I got to the highest priority items first. Plus, you can easily switch dashboard layouts to suit your preferences and boost productivity.

There wasn't much I didn't like about Salesforce. When something wasn't working properly, our development team was able to "make things work better" for our particular needs, so I believe there is room for customization.

When your team is growing, and the amount of customers you help daily is in the 100's, Salesforce is incredibly worth it. We solved problems quickly for lots of upset customers which means money keeps coming in.

Great CRM database that helps teams keep transparency around their outreach and account management status. Good reporting and easy to see information and progress with in specified time ranges.

Hard to build out of the box solutions to suit your specific business with out paying a third party consultant.

Good value for the money if you are large enough to take advantage for all of the features.

Great, dedicated team of growth-minded demand gen marketing experts!

None really

Great!

The gold standard for Sales and Marketing activity. Being able to update lead info on the fly and view revenue reports all in one place is a definite pro. Understanding how lead score correlates with purchase power is invaluable.

If you've ever had to do or are responsible for syncing data, you know the heartache and stress this can cause. If you don't have a dedicated Salesforce Admin helping you out, be prepared to reach out to Customer Support. Syncing with systems like Marketo are totally possible, just a little nervewracking at first.

Because the alternatives aren't as robust and/or don't do exactly what Salesforce does, the value is definitely there. You kind of have to have it.

excellent data visualisation

It can be complicated to learn how to navigate the platform and customize it to your needs.

worth the price

Salesforce is a very sophisticated tool for CRM management that can be customized specifically to your business needs. I've seen it used by small businesses and large corporations alike. It's great for use with teams to organize and visualize data about customers, sales activities and revenue. It's a great way to keep track of your pipeline of potential and closed deals.

It can be complicated to learn how to navigate the platform and customize it to your needs.

Salesforce is worth the price in that it does become the centralized hub and source of truth for your business, but there may be cheaper solutions.

Salesforce is one of the most powerful tools on earth! There's a reason it's a public company and worth $100+ billion. It's scaleable. Your company of 10 can use Salesforce and it scales to when your company hit's 10,000 people! It's flexible. It's easy to get your whole team on it and relatively easy for them to learn how to manage their leads and leave breadcrumbs for every customer interaction. It integrates with nearly every tool.

Salesforce's flexibility is its biggest downfall. Because it's so flexible and adaptable to every business use case, it can get quite complicated. To get it to work properly for your business, it may take expensive technical resources. The user interface also isn't perfect for such a mature product.

5/5. It's expensive as heck, but for enterprise companies it's often the best solution.