There is a sign at my hairstylist that says: “We fix $6 haircuts.” Sometimes I feel the same way when I get a call that goes something like this: “We tried setting up Salesforce ourselves a while back, and well, it didn’t go anywhere.” It’s uncanny that I usually get these calls right after the…
Strong user adoption has to be one of the key focus items when implementing Salesforce.com. If you fail in this area, the chances of having a successful implementation are slim to none – it’s that important. When launching your CRM be sure to get your organization off to the right foot with these tips on…
We work with a lot of small businesses here in the Dallas area that have chosen Salesforce to help them manage some key part of their business. For many, moving into Saleforce.com is their first endeavor into a CRM and a trap that I see often is the client trying to do too much on…
I received my welcome email from Erica Kuhl, Community and Social Media Manager at Salesforce, Thursday night this past week. It had been yet another whirlwind day starting at 5am talking with clients, working on projects and running my Salesforce consulting practice. I had started to settle in with the family that evening when I…
As we’ve highlighted before in a previous blog post, small and medium businesses get the exact same platform with Salesforce.com as enterprise clients. Unfortunately small and medium businesses face unique challenges implementing a CRM, and even with the best intentions, sometimes fall short. Below are our top 5 Salesforce features that, as we like to…
This year Salesforce.com, at their annual Dreamforce conference, had a dedicated keynote just for small and medium businesses. We are reminded in the video at the bottom of this page that Salesforce didn’t become successful initially by landing large enterprise customers. Quite the contrary, their success started by establishing a beachhead with small and medium…
Since 2005, I’ve personally helped 100+ businesses migrate to Salesforce. Along the way I’ve learned that small and medium businesses face some unique challenges. In no particular order, here are my top five challenges facing SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) when implementing a CRM. #1 SMBs are time constrained Small business owners and their team…
We were recently asked by one of our Dallas clients to help them get a new inside sales group off the ground. They wanted us to provide some best practices on how to setup and mange this new team using Salesforce. This group would be selling primarily on the phone looking for new business and…
There are a handful of fields that I want in the same place at the top of every record for consistency. I’ll call this the record “header.” In the Left column I prefer: Record Owner Link to Parent (e.g. Account “Parent Account” or Contact “Reports To”) Record Name Picklists that help categorize the record (e.g….
In our previous post we discussed why Usability is important. In this installment let’s get started configuring Salesforce with Usability in mind. First stop – the Home Tab! Salesforce out-of-the-box likes to put a lot of noise on the Home Tab. Again, my preference but I like to turn a couple of things off. Remove the Dashboard…
