Likelihood to Recommend It was not a good experience. Nothing was as advertised, from the user experience to the security of purchase. The address book was not able to be converted from the Leads module and the maps feature wasn’t able to connect from Leads. The mobile version has a lot of bugs and isn’t very functional. They have a tutorial, yet [I think they] aren’t proactive in distributing it to new users. Their focus is on sales. And it’s not a very salable product in my opinion. The worst aspect of this company is that they aren’t risk free. If you purchase a year software and decide after a few weeks it simply isn’t for your company, there are no refunds. I had to initiate a chargeback with my bank after being told that “unfortunately, due to the terms and conditions...” No customer wants to hear that. [I feel] they tried to bully me into keeping their software. There are far too many options in 2021 for CRM to be forced into one, especially one so difficult to use. When I asked about a feature that I needed, I was told, “Perhaps later this year...” Not what I need if I’m paying good money for a software. Their sales VP wouldn’t call me when I requested a call after being denied a refund. When I went through their main website again after my experience with Maximizer, I [felt] that everything they advertise is not in line with the product they put out. They say that there’s a free trial available. Not the truth [in my experience]. This maybe would have been a good CRM in say, 1999. [I think] it’s antiquated and didn’t serve the needs of my business. I used well-known CRM previously and didn’t find Maximizer to be better than the free version of that one. There was a disconnect in usage that wasn’t able to be overcome by myself or my employees in several weeks of trials.
Read full review Salesforce Sales Cloud is, in my experience, well suited to large B2B businesses who are driving demand and lead generation, and tracking customers through the funnel. It is a system we needed for a long time and has made a huge difference. However, I think it would have been more appropriate for a smaller business / a business who sets this up earlier on. There are great advantages to having historical data. It is really useful for allowing all commercial teams to work together, including sales, new business, marketing, client success etc. However, it relies too much too often on human error. If more things were automated and simpler, perhaps with AI queries, it could be easier to use
Read full review Pros Shared Calendar Customer Service cases Common database of customer information Len Masek Client Services, Mission Critical Solutions
Read full review Logging notes: SF makes it easy to log notes in the timeline or static notes that live in an easy-to-see spot for longevity. Logging activities: It's easy to post a call, text, email, etc. API data: Once connected, SF is critical to automation, such as website activity, login activity, pages visited, etc., which saves the Customer Success side time in understanding account activity. Custom fields: you can add custom fields to really personalize your experience. We use quite a few and it's brilliant. Read full review Cons Handling large data. Maximizer needs to improve on this. Add additional user-friendly shortcuts for the most frequently used functions in the web version. There is no mark for deletion option. They need to provide a way to delete without physically deleting records. Read full review I have hard-coded the auto-update of the phone number format and state format from some codes shared by the community, but I do not know where to do it. I cannot reset it either. It is unclear what functionalities each version has. We use the enterprise version, and it seems we can only have one design of the pipeline. But different business segments would have very different sales cycles, and hence, pipeline tracking would be different. It would be nice to have this available in our version. It seems I cannot create a report to pull notes logged at the account levels. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are heavily entrenched in Maximizer and trying to pull our data out and into another CRM, with the same amount of customization and workflow would take a lot of effort.
Read full review There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
Read full review Usability The CRM didn’t have the capability I expected
Read full review Salesforce has been designed on the basis of "Clicks, not code". So anyone willing to learn the Salesforce user interface (which is quite good as far as management software platforms go) is able to become a Salesforce user or even a Salesforce administrator. You don't have to know coding language to work in the Salesforce environment. Also, Salesforce has one of the best software training resources (Trailhead) that I have ever encountered. It is free to all, easy to use, and most importantly it is interactive. No scrolling through endless text in a user manual. There are hands-on modules and related videos interlaced and through it all you earn points and badges to display your level of learning.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
Read full review Performance Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day." Points per Salesforce - 1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs. 2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers. 3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years. 4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed. 5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale. 6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com. 7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements. 8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training. 9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
Read full review Support Rating The support staff are very knowledgeable and competent. Never really had an issue with them not knowing what they are doing.
Read full review The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
Read full review In-Person Training I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person. I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
Read full review Online Training I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training. We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
Read full review Implementation Rating Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We chose to go with
Microsoft Dynamics CRM over Maximizer because of the customization and marketing options that were associated with Dynamics. The ease of use with Maximizer, however, was far better than that of Microsoft Dynamics.
Read full review The thing that puts Sales Cloud above the top is its simple user interface, which is easy to interact with. The visuals and automation are also quite amazing. Given its attention to data and customer relationship management, Sales Cloud is tough to beat. Of course, Microsoft Dynamics integrates nicely with other Microsoft products, and Monday is a tool everyone is familiar with, so it is hard to compete with those.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
Read full review Scalability Salesforce sales cloud implementation can give you the desired outcome for your business. Its workflow, approval, sync, and file-sharing features help automate the process. The Macros feature helps business to shorten their sales cycle. Sales Cloud also allows businesses to make the right decision with its real-time business insights and analysis.
Read full review Professional Services Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
Read full review Return on Investment It allows us to maximize our service billing It is easy to generate service quotes It is easy to follow up on leads. Len Masek Client Services, Mission Critical Solutions
Read full review All tools we've implemented with Salesforce had a pretty quick positive ROI with the exception of CPQ & Billing. That was a very large project that I would only suggest for businesses with many SKUs that tend to be packaged together. Read full review ScreenShots Maximizer CRM Screenshots Salesforce Sales Cloud Screenshots