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If you've outgrown your current customer relationship management (CRM) software, Salesforce has you covered. The software has many features and customization options for businesses that need a robust CRM. Read on for a complete review of what Salesforce offers.
Starter Suite: $25/user/month
Professional: $80/user/month
Enterprise: $165/user/month
Unlimited: $330/user/month
Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month
If you're looking to completely customize a CRM to meet the unique needs of your business, you'll never have to look beyond Salesforce. However, one drawback you should consider is the software's steep learning curve. It will take a long time for you to learn and train your team members, which also has associated costs.
Praising Salesforce, legendary stock analyst Jim Cramer tweeted: "When the best clothier in the world and the best auto company in the world both use Salesforce you have to wonder why everyone doesn't use Salesforce, which is a big reason why I have been recommending the CRM for a decade."
Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) software that provides a vast assortment of sales and marketing solutions. They have many different services that all come under the Salesforce umbrella.
Within the first few seconds of landing on the website, you'll find yourself inundated with a grocery list of services including but not limited to:
The most significant components of the Salesforce portfolio are lead management, marketing automation, and sales data management. The goal of their software is to help improve your sales team's productivity and organize your data.
If you're anything like me, this all sounds fine and dandy, but you want to know how it will help you generate more revenue and close more sales, right? Let's take their long list of benefits and see how they might impact the bottom line.
Salesforce's platform is well-suited for companies that depend on large sales teams, customer service teams, and marketing departments to grow their business. The level of customization that Salesforce offers and the detailed systems built into the software are best for businesses that have a large or growing customer base and need sophisticated ways to track them.
Because of its relatively high costs, companies with smaller budgets may not benefit as much from Salesforce. But if your company has the money to spend and needs customizable customer relationship management, Salesforce is one of the best products available.
Salesforce has far too many features to evaluate in just one review, but some stand-out ones are worth taking a closer look at. Here are seven that your business may benefit from across the software's three main focus areas: Sales, marketing, and customer service.
Businesses can easily keep track of their sales leads and statuses with Salesforce. For example, you can designate in Salesforce's "leads" section whether a contact is new, in the "nurturing" stage, or has been converted into a customer.
Additionally, sales teams can track call logs with prospects, view marketing campaigns sent to the contact, and schedule upcoming tasks with reminders to follow up with clients.
Having many customers is great, but keeping track of which people in your company have connected to them can be difficult. Thankfully, Salesforce's task management system lets you do it all in one place.
Salesforce's task tool lets you keep track of upcoming and overdue tasks, see who the task is assigned to, set its priority status, and add specific notes. With this task management tool, all your employees can see actionable steps that need to be taken with each customer.
This is where all of the primary information about current customers is stored, and it gives users an overview of your company's accounts while also allowing you to dive into the details.
For example, the account management tool can show you which marketing campaigns have been targeted to that account, how many potential opportunities are in the works, how many contracts they currently have, and so on.
You'll love Salesforce's campaign management tool if you have events or large marketing campaigns to attract new customers. You can keep track of the events where your company talked to potential customers, add notes about the campaign, and find out if a customer responded to an emailed event invitation.
By keeping track of specific campaigns, like a conference, webinar, or email invite, your company can see which accounts are actively engaged with your marketing campaigns.
This can be a powerful tool for sales representatives to predict and track potential revenue. You can add potential revenue from accounts, their stage of the sales cycle, and even the probability that the deal will close.
For example, your sales team could enter an account that's worth an estimated $20,000, designate if the contract is currently under negotiation, and note that there's a 90% probability your company will close the deal. This can help everyone on your team see what's currently in the sales pipeline and what areas need extra attention.
When you're integrating sales, marketing, and customer relationship management all into one program, it creates lots of information to sift through. This is where Salesforce's customizable dashboards come in handy.
You can view dashboards for everything from marketing to sales, to key performance indicators and services. For example, you can view your company's average deal opportunity size or how many opportunities are in the pipeline. The sales dashboard provides you with all this information in easy-to-understand graphs and charts.
Every business can benefit from a detailed view of its sales, marketing, and services teams' performance. Salesforce's customizable reports allow companies to create reports in just seconds.
For example, let's say you're interested in where your marketing leads came from in the latest quarter, because you're putting together a new marketing campaign. You can use Salesforce's reporting tool to create a bar chart of the newest marketing leads, showing which ones came from advertising, your company website, a referral program, or a specific event.
Many Salesforce tiers are available, with varying pricing levels. It's worth mentioning that these prices are per user and billed annually, and adding additional features can increase the cost.
|
Cost per Month Features |
Starter Suite $25/user | Professional $80/user | Enterprise $165/user | Unlimited $330/user | Einstein 1 $500/user |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Forecast and Pipeline Management | -- | -- | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sales Engagement and Conversation Intelligence | -- | -- | Available | Yes | Yes |
| Premier Success Plan | -- | Available | Available | Yes | Yes |
| Generative AI | -- | -- | Available | Available | Yes |
| Unified Data | -- | -- | Available | Available | Yes |
| Sales Planning, Programs, and Collaboration | -- | -- | Available | Available | Yes |
Salesforce says users will get a simplified setup and onboarding process with the Starter plan. This plan includes core features like lead management, account management, opportunity management, and email integration.
But more robust features aren't included and aren't available for purchase. This tier may be best for companies testing the CRM waters or smaller businesses needing a great CRM without all the bells and whistles.
The Professional plan includes everything from the Starter plan but adds important features, including forecast management, customizable reports, and dashboards. You'll also gain contract management and quoting features. This plan also allows you to add the available Premier Success plan for expanded customer support if you want it.
The Enterprise plan builds on the Professional plan by including advanced pipeline management and deal insights. It also includes territory management and planning, as well as workflow and approvals automation.
The Unlimited plan includes all of the features from the previous plans but adds artificial intelligence features, conversation intelligence, and sales engagement tools. It also includes Salesforce's Premier Success plan for customer support, developer support, and a full sandbox for testing features.
This version is for businesses with large budgets and that want some of the most sophisticated Salesforce features. With Einstein 1, you'll get even more artificial intelligence features, performance management, sales programs, and team collaboration with Slack. You can also connect and unify your data with Saleforce's data cloud and revenue intelligence features.
Salesforce offers extensive customer support options that include 24/7 access via phone or online chat. It's worth mentioning that all customers have access to phone support only for business-critical issues. This could include problems with the software that could stop your business from functioning and there's no workaround, an imminent threat to your business, or something that involves a financial risk, as defined by Salesforce.
If you want phone support for anything else, you'll need a Salesforce Success Plan. Customers can also submit tickets through the Salesforce platform for assistance. You can also find helpful articles and tutorials on the company's Trailhead learning platform.
Salesforce's software has a steep learning curve. The platform's benefits include being customizable, handling lots of data, and offering robust features. However, that also means it's time-consuming to learn how to use all of the tools.
Salesforce offers more features and customization than other CRMs. That's great for large businesses that can benefit from maximum customization, but it could be overkill for smaller companies. Salesforce is also more expensive than its competitors, making it a pricey option for some businesses that need a CRM but don't have a large budget.
It's easy to get started using Salesforce. You can sign up for a free account (no credit card required) and get a 30-day free trial to test the CRM. The software is cloud-based, so you don't have to download the program.
Once you've set up the account and logged in, you'll see sample data populated in many fields to help you understand how to use the features. There are also helpful pop-up information boxes highlighting some of the top features. You can find additional information on how to use Salesforce through the company's Trailhead learning platform, directly through the Salesforce platform.
If you're a small business owner looking for a simple CRM solution to manage your accounts, Salesforce isn't your best option. It will likely offer far more features than you need and be more complex and expensive than you want. On the other hand, if you're looking for a highly customizable CRM platform and have the money and time to build detailed processes for large teams, then Salesforce offers everything you need.
You won't find a more robust customer relationship management platform than Salesforce. The company has been a leader in the CRM market for many years because it offers the most detailed and customizable platform. However, Salesforce's software probably isn't for you if you have a small business with a small team of employees. Many of the tools and features will be far more than what smaller companies will need and will likely be too expensive for companies with limited budgets.
Salesforce is most popular among computer software companies in the United States. These companies generally have between 10-50 employees and pull in between one and 10 million in revenue. On their website, they state that companies like T-Mobile, TransAmerica, and Unilever use the CRM.
The majority of it uses Java.
As of right now, it doesn't appear that Salesforce has tools for Mac or Apple operating systems.
Salesforce charges per user. The Starter Plan costs $300 annually/per user, the Professional Plan is $960 annually/per user, the Enterprise Plan is $1,980 annually/per user, the Unlimited Plan is $3,960 annually/per user, and the Einstein 1 Sales plan costs $6,000 annually/per user.
Salesforce is best for large businesses with many accounts that need sophisticated tools for lead management, marketing, and sales. Smaller companies with limited budgets may not be able to afford the broad spectrum of Salesforce's services.
Yes, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial of Salesforce without providing any credit card information.
Salesforce may be more time-consuming and complicated to set up and use than other CRMs. This is because Salesforce offers more tools and features than its competitors, which may require more time to learn.
Salesforce is more expensive and complex than its competitors. If you're looking for a simple CRM that fits your small business budget, Salesforce may not be the best option.
There are many CRM alternatives to Salesforce, including Freshsales, Zoho CRM, Zendesk, Insightly, Monday.com, and HubSpot.
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