Item: Salesforce Sales Cloud
Rating: 10
Author: Michael Whited Jr.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Salesforce as our source of truth for all of our operational data. This includes product data, marketing analytics, customer data, billing data, sales activities and deal pipelines, along with some other sources. Sales cloud allows us to to connect all of the dots that we need to create a wholistic picture our employees performance, our services performance (SLAs), and as well as how our clients choose to interact with us and our service. By having one source of truth it makes it very easy to drive alignment across department heads and spot trends in the business that may result in leadership wanting to make a pivot. No don't get me wrong, there are many ways to do this, but Salesforce strikes a great balance of powerful software with elegant design for your end users. And when it comes to driving optimization via automation and design, Salesforce has a very intuitive back-end, which can allow you to hire more of a BA background rather than need a true Engineer or DBA to manage it.

Pros and Cons

Automation
Configuration
Ease of Use
Integrations galore

Reporting
Speed of Lightning Platform

Return on Investment

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.

Usability

I think it's relatively easy to use and has a nice UI. But performance can be a slow at times and their out of the box reporting leaves a bit more to be desired.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Hubspot if great for that SMB company, but it just has so many limitations for enterprises as compared to Sales Cloud. It is very rare that you "can't" do something in Salesforce, which is why I always prefer it over any other CRM.

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?

Yes

Would you buy Salesforce Sales Cloud again?

Yes

Other Software Used

DocuSign, Gong, Mixmax

Likelihood to Recommend

Salesforce is great for any business that is building to scale YoY; even with a very low spend amount you can get so much out of the tool and really tailor it to your liking. Any business that's GTM strategy includes a dedicated Sales team and Marketing team should utilize Salesforce in some capacity. However, Salesforce can work for small businesses, but the marketplace has became so fragmented with easy to use industry specific CRMs that are lightweight and built for an exact purpose. The downside to Salesforce is the initial lift and to configure it how you want it....it's not the most difficult thing out there, but it definitely takes time and thought, typically more than a smaller business owner would be willing to put it for a business with sub 15 employees or so.

Can do whatever you need it to, just need to know how, or hire for it

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Sales Cloud