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help you get the most out of this book, we place icons here and there that highlight important points. Here’s what the icons mean:

      

Next to the Tip icon, you can find shortcuts, tricks, and best practices to use Salesforce more effectively or productively.

      

Pay extra attention when you see a Warning icon. It means that you might be about to do something that you’ll regret later.

      

When we explain a juicy little fact that bears remembering, we mark it with a Remember icon. When you see this icon, prick up your ears. You can pick up something that could be of wide or frequent use as you work with Salesforce.

      

When we’re forced to describe something geeky, a Technical Stuff icon appears in the margin. You don’t have to read what’s beside this icon if you don’t want to, although some readers might find the technical detail helpful.

Beyond the Book

      In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that tells you how to perform your day-to-day functions in Salesforce. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type Salesforce.com For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

      If you’re just getting started with Salesforce, you may want to turn the page and start reading. If you’re an administrator and have a deadline, you may want to jump to Part 6. If you’re a manager, try reading about reports and dashboards in Part 7. Sales reps and service reps should start in on Parts 8 and 4, respectively. Regardless of what you choose, we’re sure that you’ll find what you’re looking for!

      Part 1

      Introducing Salesforce

      IN THIS PART …

      Understand more about customer relationship management and the life cycle of a customer.

      See how Salesforce can improve various parts of your sales process.

      Get the highlights of Salesforce’s primary product lines.

      Chapter 1

      Customer Relationship Management at a Glance

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      Looking at the fundamentals of customer relationship management

      Understanding how customer relationship management helps you manage your business

      You may not realize it yet, but every time you log in to Salesforce, you’re accessing an extremely powerful lever of change for you, your group, and your company.

      Sounds like a tall order, but consider this: What value do you put on your customer relationships? Your partner relationships? If you’re a sales rep, it’s your livelihood. And if you’re in management, you have fewer assets more valuable than your existing partner and customer base. What if you had a tool that could truly help you manage your partners and customers?

      That’s where customer relationship management software comes in. Customer relationship management (CRM) is an umbrella term for the parts of your business that are “front office,” also known as those that have direct interactions with your customers and prospective customers. The CRM life cycle encompasses business processes and associated applications that help businesses better track their leads, manage customers, track opportunities, resolve cases, and more.

      The more you and your team adopt a CRM system into your work, and you determine how you want your business process to be reflected within the technology, the more information you’ll have at your fingertips to deepen customer relationships and improve your overall business.

      In this chapter, we establish a common understanding of the CRM life cycle. Then we describe areas where a CRM system can improve your business.

Introducing the Customer Relationship Management life cycle

      Within the world of CRM exist additional processes focused on specific areas of the life cycle. You may hear the phrases marketing automation, sales force automation, and service and support. These are front-office areas of your business that vendors (like Salesforce.com!) work on to make your front-office teams more efficient and productive.

       Understanding your customer’s customer

      How can you sell to and retain customers if you don’t understand their needs, key contacts, and what account activities and transactions have taken place? A CRM system allows you to track all your important customer interactions and data so that you can develop solutions that deliver real value to your customers, which in turn should mean higher customer satisfaction with their customers. Whether people are in marketing, sales, or customer support, they should all have the ability to access the same source of truth about your customer. After all, how can your company serve its customers well if you’re not familiar with how your products and services help improve your customers’ customers’ (no, that’s not a typo) experience?

       Centralizing customer information under one roof

      How much time have you wasted tracking down a customer contact or an address that you know exists within the walls of your company? What about trying to find out which sales rep owns the relationship with a subsidiary of a global customer? A good CRM system lets you quickly centralize and organize your accounts and contacts so that you can capitalize on that information when you need to.

Looking to Customer Relationship Management to Solve Critical Business Challenges

      We could write another book telling you all the great things you can do with Salesforce, but you can get the big picture about CRM systems’ benefits from this chapter. We focus here on the most common business challenges that we hear from sales, marketing, and support executives – and how a CRM system can overcome them.

       Expanding the funnel

      Inputs and outputs, right? The more leads you generate and pursue, the greater the chance that your revenue will grow. So, the big question is, “How do I make the machine work?” A CRM application helps you plan, manage, measure, and improve lead generation, qualification, and conversion. You can see how much business you or your team generates, the sources of that business, and who in your team is making it happen.

       Consolidating your pipeline

      Pipeline reports give companies insight into future sales, yet we’ve worked with companies in which generating the weekly pipeline could take more than a day of cat herding and guesswork. Reps waste time updating spreadsheets. Managers waste time chasing reps and scrubbing data. Bosses waste time tearing their hair out because the information is old by the time they get it. The prevalence of cloud computing makes this traditional method of siloed data collection obsolete (or pretty darn inefficient). A good CRM system helps you shorten or eliminate all that pulling and pasting of data across multiple sources. As long as reps manage all their opportunities in one place that’s always available, managers can generate updated pipeline reports with the click of a button.

       Collaborating effectively with your colleagues

      Remember when you were the new person at the company, and you had to find out who knew everything about a particular customer, process, or product? Even at smaller companies, it takes time to discover who possesses that extra bit of historical knowledge that could help you close that important deal or resolve a support issue. Other times, you may be so busy that you’re out of the loop on certain key company updates, even when departments try to keep you informed. What if you could harness the insights from others within the company, yet not be overwhelmed

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