Item: Salesforce Sales Cloud
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Salesforce is used by our revenue teams to manage customer and prospect information. It is used from the beginning of the sales funnel to manage leads all the way through to customer success and managing existing customers.

It solves the problem of keeping all the prospect/customer data in a single location. For Sales, it allows them to manage their funnel and work deals through the entire sales cycle. Not only do we use it as a CRM but it's our central location for data and reporting. We do some reporting directly in Salesforce reports, but we have also built Tableau dashboards in Salesforce for the Sales team to quickly view their KPI and view their funnel.

Pros and Cons

Salesforce can basically do anything you need it to do. If you know how to use it and possibly have a Salesforce admin, you can customize it to meet your business's specific needs without trying to build a homegrown CRM from scratch.
When it comes to data, Salesforce is exception[al]. The Salesforce reports are decent, but basically any BI tool should connect to it and you can pull vast amounts of data using SOQL.

It does take some work to get stood up. This isn't a plug and play CRM.
Sometimes search can be difficult. It's alright for the most part, but they could definitely enhance it.

Return on Investment

It will allow your Sales team to better manage their funnel so things don't fall through the cracks. This will directly impact your ROI.
You will have increased visibility from an executive level to allow you to make quicker and more accurate decisions.
Customer followup and status tracking will improve.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM and Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Microsoft Dynamics CRM)

Salesforce is just better... It's so nice working for a company that uses Salesforce well. It doesn't come cheap, but it's well worth it. HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics are pretty solid, but HubSpot is very basic and Dynamics just didn't work very well and requires a ton of work to manage and maintain.

Key Insights

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

Yes

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?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Salesforce Sales Cloud again?

Yes

Usability

I think their Lightning update has been a long road, but it's solid now. In terms of usability, it's decent. It does take some getting use to how to navigate it and every business seems to use it differently so it can take some time picking it up at a new company, even if you've used it before.

Support Rating

I haven't needed support directly from Salesforce in any of my roles. However, we have always had a Salesforce admin and they have been able to manage Salesforce really well. Sometimes it does take a while for them to implement changes/improvements but nothing too crazy. The important thing is that they are actually able to do what we request.

Likelihood to Recommend

Salesforce likely isn't going to be your first CRM. However, if you have a Sales team and are looking for a more advanced and possibly customizable way to run your funnel from Sales to Customer Success, you can't go wrong with Salesforce. It truly is the industry standard.

Still the King of the Hill

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce.com