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

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used Salesforce Sales Cloud on both the Customer Success and sales sides. On the CS side, we used it to review sales notes and timelines, add tasks for onboarding and post-OB follow-ups, and note any big changes to the account, conversations, etc. On the Sales side, we used it to post information such as software they are coming from, others they are evaluating, what they like/dislike about our product, what are the main drivers for switching, their proposed ARR, any discounts that might be applied, and any referrals (who they were referred from, who they have referred).

Pros and Cons

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.

It's robust: it's not an out-of-the-box solution. It can be, but you won't get the level of detail that is useful to most orgs unless you have an SF developer or someone who can figure it out.
Because it's a behemoth, Salesforce is slow to modernize. Some aspects are visually old, but that's expected when you're as big as Salesforce. It can make some workflows a bit cumbersome, but not enough to impede productivity.
As a standard user, you need some training or a good chunk of time to figure out how to customize views and other things to your liking. Once you 'get it,' creating custom views is a breeze, but it's not intuitive.
Their Help Center is massive, with loads of helpful information, making it challenging to find precisely what you're looking for. Sometimes, four articles answer your one question. Sometimes, you're lucky enough to find the answer you want in a single article you found right away.

Return on Investment

Higher productivity.
Better visualization of the pipeline for the sales team and fewer missed opportunities within SLAs.
Higher sales revenue due to tracking of products (ARR) and targets, where sales team members are about their targets and other team members.

Scalability

Salesforce SC worked for our Sales Team of 1 and has grown to a Sales Team of 5. While that might be small in terms of other sales orgs, it has allowed us to optimize our workflow and scale the team in preparation for more significant growth. Having a developer has been vital in helping us get there for custom views in terms of territories and dividing up leads based on other criteria. It's been critical in helping our team stay organized through our growth phase.

Customer Data Management

We can easily see what prospects are searching for on our website and auto-generate leads based on specific criteria. Our team can then better work these leads by seeing a clearer picture of their activity by better targeting our conversations based on on-site data and other data they've supplied in our chat (e.g., team size, essential features, what's driving them to our site, etc.).

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

It was a no-brainer: Salesforce was the number 1 option. SF was by far the clear winner from the beginning, with the CEO having used it in a prior organization, his development knowledge, and knowing that it is the best product on the market, we only evaluated a second option to cover our bases and make 100% sure of our choice.

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?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

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

Likelihood to Recommend

SF Sales Cloud is well suited for teams with experience using robust CRMs and, ideally, a dedicated Salesforce developer to customize the product to what your specific team (or a subset of the team) needs to be productive. Without the latter, you'll find Salesforce to be more complicated than it needs to be, and at that point, it's probably not the best solution for your team. It is less appropriate for teams who need a simple, out-of-the-box solution without much of a need to customize. Ultimately, no one ever got fired for choosing Salesforce, so it's worth giving it a shot. If it doesn't work, you can always find something else. It'll do its job straight out of the box, but you won't be able to optimize the way you might want should you not have someone capable of developing custom aspects.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a clear winner. If you have a sales org, this is the product to use.

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Sales Cloud