Item: Salesforce Sales Cloud
Rating: 3
Author: Jason Carlage

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

[Salesforce.com] is used as the CRM to track leads and close deals. Account executives use it to qualify leads, input customer data, move them through the sales pipeline and to close opportunities. It is also used to see at a glance how an account exec is performing at particular accounts, regions, comparisons to other reps, etc. Management frequently utilizes the reporting and analytics that it offers.

Pros and Cons

Reporting. The reporting functions are valuable to see how particular accounts have done over time, to see how reps are tracking to goal, and to see how reps compare to other reps in the organization.
Analytics. There are a variety of tools that management can use to determine how individual reps are performing and how the entire sales organization is tracking to goal, and how that compares to previous years.
Customization. Field can be customized to help an organization create a CRM that is tailored to their particular industry and company.

Error messages. When there is an error message it is no help at all to the typical user. It is a string of letters and numbers, often a paragraph, and there is no way to decipher this without going to the SalesForce experts on staff. This can be extremely frustrating as you made adjustments but still get the same error message.
Too many clicks. When closing out an opportunity there are often several different fields and a few different locations where you have to fill out fields and information, making it easy to miss steps along the way.
Lack of instruction or help items. Since there are so many places to make a misstep, it would be very useful to have some kind of help message pop up, indicating what else needs to be done.

Return on Investment

It's had a positive return for the company in that they can dive into individual rep accounts to improve the quality of conversations about opportunities
The reporting and analytics it provide have been positive and allow the company to better forecast, improving the ability to properly budget and plan
Salesforce requires a certain level of expertise on staff, so in addition to the cost of Salesforce there are payroll and training expenses required

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive, Insightly, Zoho Assist and SharpSpring

I wasn't involved in the decision to choose [Salesforce.com] but I know that in at least one of the organizations I worked in that chose it, the analytics and reporting functionality it provides a large sales organization are second to none. It also allows for a wide variety of customizing fields, making it a fit for any large sales organization. However, all four of the other CRM's I have used (Pipedrive, Insightly, Zoho Assist, and SharpSpring) with previous, smaller sales organizations are all far more easier to use, more forgiving in terms of the ease of use and instruction provided, and don't require the additional expertise on staff for users to be able to navigate the CRM, enter opportunities, close opportunities and run reports.

Key Insights

Do you think Salesforce Sales Cloud delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Salesforce Sales Cloud's feature set?

Yes

Did Salesforce Sales Cloud live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Salesforce Sales Cloud go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Salesforce Sales Cloud again?

Other Software Used

SharpSpring, Mailchimp, Insightly, Zoho Assist, Pipedrive, Slack, Google Drive

Usability

Salesforce's error messages are entirely unclear and offer the standard user no insight into what's happening and how it can be fixed. This can be extremely frustrating, as the people who are experts in Salesforce at organizations are typically very busy, and I would much rather be able to trouble shoot on my own. In all other CRM's I've used, there have been some error messages that aren't garbled paragraphs but are actually helpful, and there are far few error messages to begin with. There are also multiple places to go wrong and sometimes very simple choices can result in a long error message.

Support Rating

I've used Salesforce in large sales organizations where there were people on staff who were trained in Salesforce, and I was instructed to contact them. They did know exactly what to do and how to resolve issues, but with a big Saleforce they were often very busy. I would have preferred to contact Salesforce's customer support, but I'm not sure if that is possible since each company's version of Salesforce can be customized so much.

Likelihood to Recommend

For large sales organizations the analytics and reporting must be so valuable that it overshadows the difficulty of the end user to use the product. I've used several CRM's that are simple to navigate, easy to use and much more forgiving in terms of being able to make a mistake and quickly learn how to correct it. [SalesForce.com] does not fit into that category. I've used it at two organizations now and had the same experience. I do like that it has a clean look and I like the visualization elements in terms of tracking to goal.

Salesforce needs to improve user friendliness

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce.com