For Financial Services clients looking to generate leads, re-engage existing clients or tackle complex business logic or data migrations, the ShellBlack team can help organizations simplify and succeed with Salesforce. Our engagements vary in size and scope from a single department to “wall to wall” — across hundreds or even thousands of employees.
Long before ShellBlack earned a reputation as one of the nation’s premier Salesforce consulting firms, our namesake was earning his stripes as a thought leader and highly sought-after problem solver. In this video profile, Shell discusses the company’s origins, the often-untapped potential of Salesforce, and the team’s passion for helping financial services clients achieve more.
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the concept of Leads, Accounts and Contacts and how they differ in Salesforce data model. Shell discusses the best practice for dealing with companies with multiple locations and the importance of nesting Contacts under the Accounts. Additionally Shell touches on how to use the Account Site field and how Salesforce is an “Account Centric” database.
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the concept of the Lead Status field, Lead Qualification and Conversion. Shell discusses the necessity of determining “fit” for your products or services and whether a Lead is “Qualified” or “Not Qualified.” Additionally Shell discusses the timing of converting a Lead record (early vs late). Shell talks though some scenarios in which you might want to convert a Lead besides being qualified, and the ability to de-dupe a record during the conversion process. Lastly Shell answers the age-old question — do you have to use Leads with Salesforce.com?
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell gives some best practices and considerations when setting up Lead or Case Assignment rules in Salesforce.com. Shell touches base on Queues, Round Robin rules, and emphasizes how the order of your rule entries determines how records are assigned in the database. Additionally, Shell discusses how Lead Assignment Rules can be leveraged when using the native Lead Import Wizard or the Data Loader (API).
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the major areas in “setup” that impact record access – Record Ownership, the Role Hierarchy, Organizational Wide Defaults (OWDs), and Sharing Rules. Shell highlights how the Role Hierarchy differs from your organizational chart and how it allows managers to see records for owned by their subordinates. Additionally Shell provides some tips on how to troubleshoot security and access in your org and the “Perils” of setting an object’s OWD as “Private.”
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell illustrates how to setup security by taking us through a set of security requirements for a fictitious company. Shell uses different use cases to illustrate how you can leverage the Role Hierarchy and Sharing Rules to grant record access in Salesforce.com. Shell touches base on sharing rules based on Roles, Groups and Criteria.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell walks you through how Validation Rules in Salesforce can help you enforce data quality to ensure users cannot enter conflicting information, save a record that is missing key fields, or enter data that is not in a standardized format (to help downstream with reporting). Shell takes you through multiple examples to understand the formula syntax you’ll need to learn when writing a Validation Rule.
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell looks at the options available to send mass email to your Leads and Contacts. First he covers what you can do natively (for free) using the mass email wizard in Salesforce – the volumes limitations, reporting available, and how to handle opt outs to be CAN SPAM compliant. From there Shell discusses the vast world of Email Service Providers (ESPs). ESPs provide greater flexibility over what’s included in Salesforce – and most importantly, they can handle very large volumes of email. Lastly, Shell talks about Marketing Automation Platforms. These solutions can do much more than just send email. They allow you to create marketing campaigns outside of Salesforce that interact with your customer data.
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the topic of Workflow Rules. In this first installment of a two-part segment, Shell explains how Workflow can help accelerate your business processes by automating activities like creating tasks, sending emails and updating a record. He also covers what Workflow cannot do — trigger off information in a related list or create a new record. Shell then talks about when Workflow will evaluate a record (the timing) and how you setup the rules (the criteria) that determine if Workflow needs to perform an associated action.
In this episode of the ShellBlack Whiteboard, Shell introduces the topic of Workflow Actions. In this second installment of our two-part series on Workflow, Shell explains the four different actions that can result when a Workflow rule fires. You can (1) update a field, (2) send an email, (3) assign a task to a Salesforce User, or (4) send an outbound message. Shell then covers how you can create a series of time dependent (or delayed) workflow actions from a single rule that fire before or after a specified date. Lastly, Shell tells you where to look in Salesforce to see if there any time delayed workflow actions pending.
In this first installment of our two-part segment on Campaigns, Shell provides examples of marketing initiatives that could be represented as Campaign records in Salesforce. He explains how Campaigns are like any other tab or standard object (in that you can have custom fields, multiple page layouts, record types, validation rules, and workflow), but they also have unique summary fields to know things like response rates, conversion rates and ROI (Return on Investment). From there Shell walks through the native fields used when creating a new Campaign record. Used correctly, Campaigns can tell you which marketing initiatives are performing well – in either creating new Leads, generating response rates and Opportunity revenue!
In this second installment of our two-part series on Campaigns, Shell tackles the subject of Campaign Members – the method in which we tie Campaigns to people (Leads and Contacts) in Salesforce. He walks through how to setup Member Status to track response rates and then highlights the multiple methods you can use to associate a Lead or Contact to a Campaign (Manage Members button, from a View, running a Report, Manually, and using the API with a tool like the Data Loader). Lastly Shell covers ROI (Return on Investment) reporting, which helps you determine the effectiveness of each Campaign (i.e. which Campaigns are delivering the best bang for the buck).
In this first installment on our series on Salesforce Opportunities, Shell dives in and explains what is an Opportunity, how they are used and where they fit in the database. He goes over the key fields on Opportunities such as Amount, Close Date, Stage, Probability, etc. Shell then covers the importance of having a consistent naming convention for Opportunities as they are used downstream on Reports, Views and Dashboards. There are also a few fields on the Opportunity that are set on Lead Conversion such as Lead Source, Close Date and Primary Campaign. Lastly Shell discusses “Other Fields To Know,” such as Expected Revenue, Quantity and the Forecast Category field.
In this second installment on our series on Salesforce Opportunities, Shell discusses how to create a Sales Process. Using an example Sales Process, Shell discusses the required fields Stage, Probability and Forecast Category and provides some best practices on defining your Opportunity Stages. He then goes into what is considered an “Open” or “Closed” Opportunity from a reporting standpoint. Lastly, Shell covers whether using forecasting is a good fit for your sales organization.
In this installment on our series on Salesforce Opportunities, Shell dives into Opportunity reporting — a common task for Salesforce Administrators and folks in Sales Operations. First he looks at some of the unique fields that we have available with Opportunity Reporting such as Stage Duration and Age. Then Shell gives some tips about how you can report on the average number of days between each Stage, calculate the average number of days to close an Opportunity, as well as how to derive your win rate. Next he covers some of the “out-of-box” reports available to you as a System Administrator and how to leverage the Role Hierarchy along with the “Running User” on Dashboards to efficiently write reports on sales teams without having to hardcode the names of specific Users. Lastly Shell discusses some helpful reports to identify Opportunities that need to be updated (i.e. require maintenance).
In this final segment on Salesforce Opportunities, Shell dives into two related lists: Stage History and Contact Roles. He goes over what is tracked in Stage History (Stage, Amount, Probability, and Close Date), and how you can use this information to see how an Opportunity has been progressing through the sales process (or not!). He then looks at Contact Roles — where we identify all the players on a particular deal. Shell highlights through various scenarios how Contact Roles can change Opportunity by Opportunity, that the Contacts can be from different Accounts, the purpose of the primary checkbox, and the importance of defining the values in the Contact Role picklist for your organization. Also covered are the instances when Contact Roles are created for you automatically (e.g. during Lead Conversion).
In this ShellBlack Whiteboard episode we dive into Opportunity Products and Pricebooks. Shell starts by defining what can be a product (a physical item or a service) and that when Products are added to an Opportunity they start calculating and driving the Opportunity Amount field. He then goes over the standard fields on Products and how they are used, and gives examples of what could be a custom field. Shell then tackles Pricesbooks, which are subsets of your entire product catalog, and why they can be helpful to your users. Through an example using four Pricebooks, Shell illustrates how they contain subsets of Products, and that if needed, you can have unique Product pricing by Pricebook. Lastly he covers how the Active checkbox is used on both Products and Pricebooks and when working with an Opportunity, you can only use Products from a single Pricebook.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we look at the two types of Product Schedules: Product Schedules and Revenue Schedules. These schedules are sets of dates that differ from the Opportunity Close Date. In the case of Product Schedules, it’s the date you shipped, fulfilled or delivered a specific product, or in the case of Revenue Schedules, it’s the date(s) you recognized the revenue (billed, invoiced or when paid). Shell uses multiple customer scenarios to explain each type. Shell then walks though how you can run a Product Schedule report across multiple Opportunities and Products to see your totals by period (e.g. schedule month). Lastly, he explains how to create a Product Schedule from an Opportunity Product using the wizard, and that you can always adjust your schedule as well as check your totals.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we look at Quotes and how they are used in conjunction with Opportunities and Products. Quotes can be thought of as a “presentation layer” of an Opportunity in that a User can create a PDF of the Quote and email it to a Contact straight from Salesforce. Shell covers the data relationships involved between Quotes, Opportunities and Products, how you can have multiple versions of a Quote against a single Opportunity, and what it means to “Sync” a Quote. He then covers the standard fields available on Quotes and suggests some possible custom fields. Shell then walks through adding Quote Line Items (Products) to a Quote and how discounts are applied and calculated. Finally he shows how Tax and Shipping amounts are applied to a Quote to create your Grand Total.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we discuss Quote Templates. We start by providing a few use cases where you might want to create a library of Quote Templates for your Users, and then discuss some of their limitations. Shell provides an overview of the page layout components that make a Quote Template and how they can be used. Finally Shell touches base on a few popular third party AppExchange products that work with Quotes to extend its capabilities, such as CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) tools and E-Signature.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we introduce Records Types – a way not only to segment pick list values for different “flavors” of records, but also how they work with page layouts to further tailor the user experience. We discuss what happens when a Profile has access to more than one Record Type when you create a new record. Shell then walks though an example using Record Types with Opportunities. Finally Shell wraps up with “Things To Know” – such as how Record Types come into play with Lead Conversion, using the Data Loader, displaying the Record Type field on the page layout for users, and how Workflow can set the Record Type via a Field Update action.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we introduce Custom Objects – a way to extend the Salesforce database and track information that is not a good fit for Standard Objects. Though covered in more depth in other episodes, Shell goes over how you leverage a lookup field to relate or tie a custom object to other objects in either (1) a “one-to-many” relationship or (2) a “many-to-many” relationship. Lastly he goes over how licenses determine the number of Custom Objects you are able to create in your Salesforce org.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we dive further into custom objects, and more specifically, custom objects in a “master-detail” data relationships. Shell walks us through an example of a master-detail relationship using an Expense Report. Because of this data relationship, records can be tabulated using Roll-up Summary fields. This can be very helpful in many situations for System Admins. Then he gets into a section called “Things to Know.” When we have a master-detail relationship what happens when you delete a record? What kind of object can be the master? How is security determined? What is the impact to Record Ownership? Can you re-parent child records?
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we finish up our series on custom objects with a “many-to-many” data relationship. Shell walks us through an example of registering for Dreamforce to illustration how a custom object with two lookup relationships becomes a “join” object in the database.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we discuss what is an “App” in Salesforce – which is simply a collection of tabs that are assigned to users through their Profile. Shell walks through how to create a custom App in “Setup” and add a custom logo. Lastly Shell covers how licenses and Salesforce editions come into play in determining how many custom Apps are available to your Salesforce users.
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we look at the Household Data Model – a method you can use to leverage traditional Accounts and Contacts in Salesforce to sell B2C (Business to Consumer). I briefly cover other options that are available from Salesforce to support B2C selling such as Person Accounts and FSC (Financial Service Cloud). I walk through an example Household to illustrate and explain the relationships you can create and how they work together.
In this episode we look at Cases – the core object of the Salesforce Service Cloud. We start by covering how you can use Cases to track issues, questions or requests to resolution. We discuss some of the special features that are only available in Cases as well as the different methods you can use to create a Case. Lastly we wrap up with a review of the key standard fields you need to know.
In this episode we look at Assets and explore the common use cases of how they can be used in Salesforce by sales, customer service or your back office. We cover the Asset Hierarchy and how the Status field controls the lifecycle of an Asset. What should you consider when deploying Assets in Salesforce? Should you use the Asset Standard Object, or build your own with a Custom Object so you can take advantage of Roll-up Summary Fields? We wrap up our discussion by covering the standard fields available with Assets.
In this episode we explore the brief history of the Lightning User Interface (UI), sometimes referred to as the Lightning Experience (LEX). Through this brief timeline we tackle the tough decision point – if I’m new to Salesforce, do I start in LEX or Classic? If you are on the Classic UI today and interested in migrating to Lightning, how do you make the business case to switch? There are real costs associated with implementing LEX so how do you evaluate the ROI (Return on Investment) on such a migration project?
In this episode of ShellBlack Whiteboard we dive into Orders – what are they, how are they created, when are they used, and what makes them different from Opportunities? Shell discusses how using Orders can help you preserve what’s been sold (for forecasting and commissions), versus what’s been delivered to your customers. As you’ll see, if you are familiar with using Opportunities and Products, the concepts of working with Orders and Order Products are very similar. Shell highlights some key fields you should know as well as the need to configure security around Orders.