Salesforce.com For Dummies, 5th Edition (2014)

Introduction

Salesforce.com For Dummies, 5th Edition, is for users of Salesforce, including those users who have the Unlimited, Enterprise, Professional, Group, or Contact Manager Edition. It’s for Salesforce users who want to quickly know how to use this web-based application for sales, marketing, and customer service, all running “in the cloud,” also known as software-as-a-service (SaaS), just so you’re up to date on your enterprise application-speak. Don’t look in this book to find out how Salesforce works. Use this book to find out how you can manage your customers and your teams and close more business by using Salesforce.

· If you’re a sales rep, this book can help you use Salesforce to manage your leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities. Spend less time doing administrative work and more time focused on making money.

· If you’re a sales manager, find out how to use Salesforce to track team activities and pipeline, shorten the ramp-up time on new hires, and pinpoint key deals that require your involvement.

· If you’re in channel sales, we show you how to track your relationships with companies that are — or will be — your partners and all the deals they work for you.

· If you’re a partner, we show you the world of Salesforce and how you can improve your deal pipeline and win rate with your vendor.

· If you’re in marketing, you see how to use Salesforce to make an immediate and measurable impact on your sales organization. We cover how to manage campaigns, track leads, and use social media to interact with your constituents.

· If you’re in customer service, we show you how to manage customer issues, from creation to resolution. Support managers will see how to improve agent productivity and customer self-sufficiency.

· If you sit on the executive team, this book shows you how to use Salesforce for internal collaboration and to measure your overall business.

· If you’re an administrator or involved in your company’s customer relationship management (CRM) initiative, this book gives you practical knowledge for customizing, configuring, maintaining, and successfully implementing your solution. To start, we suggest that you flip through the sales, marketing, and support chapters in Parts III, IV, and V to understand how Salesforce is commonly used by end users. Then use that to guide you in administering Salesforce in Parts VI and VII.

Although this book applies to users of all Salesforce editions, be aware that not all portions of this book necessarily apply to your edition. Different editions have varying degrees of features and functionality. We make sure to point out the differences where relevant.

Updates to the Fifth Edition

This book, its fifth edition, has been revised to reflect the latest salesforce.com product and feature offerings as of the Winter 2014 release. Salesforce is an Internet-based service where new releases occur simultaneously for all customers, about three times a year, without your having to lift a finger (okay, except to just log in). Because of this model, salesforce.com can more quickly release several versions of its product than many traditional software vendors — and us! We did our best to update this book to the current version of the product, but please bear in mind that new versions of Salesforce are always in the works.

References to the product use the word Salesforce, and references to the company that makes the family of products, or the family of products as a whole, use the phrase salesforce.com. That’s a little detail, but we didn’t want you to think our eagle eyes had glossed over that.

Here’s a bare outline of the parts of this book:

· Part I: Salesforce Basics: Part I gives you the big picture on Salesforce. We show you the best ways to navigate the system, where to go for help, and how to personalize Salesforce. Since the last edition, Salesforce has debuted a new user interface and incorporated more collaborative elements into its standard feature set, among other subtle improvements here and there.

· Part II: Keeping Track of Customer Relationships: Part II shows you how to use Salesforce for the most common facets of your sales, marketing, and support processes. We get into more specifics about Chatter and how it can improve business interactions and internal communications to help sales, marketing, and support departments do their jobs better. We explain how you can use Salesforce for managing your existing business relationships, as well as those with key prospects.

· Part III: Driving Sales with Sales Cloud: Part III shows sales organizations how to use Salesforce to track sales, from lead to close and everything in between. We also discuss how channel managers and partners can use Salesforce Communities to work together to bring in more channel revenue.

· Part IV: Optimizing Demand with Marketing Cloud: If you’re in marketing, Part IV helps you navigate the continuously expanding marketing automation features. Marketing in Salesforce and your business has evolved to much more than just campaign management. You discover how to use Salesforce to manage your social media marketing campaigns, and we also discuss how to organize your sales collateral.

· Part V: Delighting Customers with Service Cloud: Part V shows customer support agents and managers how to use Service Cloud to more efficiently manage the customer issue life cycle. Agents see how to create, track, and resolve cases in Salesforce. Customer service managers will garner ways to increase their teams’ efficiencies by increasing the quality of service while decreasing case resolution time.

· Part VI: Measuring Overall Business Performance: Part VI shows every rep, manager, and senior executive how to use Salesforce to measure and analyze their business. This book doesn’t tell you how to improve your business (that’s largely up to you), but Part VI helps you place the data at your fingertips.

· Part VII: Designing the Solution with Force.com: Salesforce is great out of the box, but you can get more out of it when you customize it to meet your corporate objectives. Part VII is for system administrators and the CRM project team. You get to know the important steps for configuring and maintaining your system, as well as your options if you want to roll up your sleeves and do some more advanced customizations.

· Part VIII: The Part of Tens: In Part VIII, we give you lists meant for quick wins. Here, we review the best-but-sometimes-overlooked productivity tools and online resources. We also summarize some best practices for successfully implementing Salesforce.

We show you everything you need to know to manage the life cycle of your customer relationships in Salesforce, from qualifying leads to closing opportunities to handling service agent inquiries. Along the way, we share a laugh or two. And this book can expose you to useful features and functionality that you might not have even known existed.

How to Use This Book

This book is divided into parts and then chapters based loosely on three widely accepted pillars of customer relationship management: sales, marketing, and customer service. We organized the sections based on your function in the company and what you might want to know about Salesforce based on your role.

You can choose to read this book from front to back (although you’ll find no surprise ending in the last chapter). Or, you can use this book as a reference, similar to other For Dummies books. You can go to any topic in this book and know what to do with minimal leafing to other sections.

You can get the most out of this book if you’re using it while you’re logged in to Salesforce (and sitting in your favorite chair). The best way to know what to do, in our experience, is by doing it, and for that you need the salesforce.com website open, revved, and raring to go.

In this book, we provide you with the easiest or best way to perform a task in Salesforce. Like other easy-to-use applications, the method shown might not be the only way, and sometimes you might find another method that works better for you. That’s okay; we promise it won’t hurt our feelings.

Foolish Assumptions

Please forgive us, but we make one or two foolish assumptions about you, the reader. We assume these things:

· You have access to a high-speed Internet connection (not dial-up), have used a web browser, and have access to the most up-to-date web browser. If we assumed incorrectly, you have much more pressing problems than understanding the effective use of Salesforce.

· You have a Salesforce account and some interest in knowing how to use it, beyond the mere curiosity of reading our riveting prose.

· You have some business experience — at least enough to understand that winning deals is good, and losing deals is bad.

· You have at least a vague idea of what a database is, including basic concepts such as fields, records, files, and folders. (Imagine an organized filing cabinet and all its contents.)

Icons Used in This Book

To help you get the most out of this book, we place icons here and there that highlight important points. Here’s what the icons mean:

Next to the Tip icon, you can find shortcuts, tricks, and best practices to use Salesforce more effectively or productively.

Pay extra attention when you see a Warning icon. It means that you might be about to do something that you’ll regret later.

When we explain a juicy little fact that bears remembering, we mark it with a Remember icon. When you see this icon, prick up your ears. You can pick up something that could be of wide or frequent use as you work with Salesforce.

When we’re forced to describe something geeky, a Technical Stuff icon appears in the margin. You don’t have to read what’s beside this icon if you don’t want to, although some readers might find the technical detail helpful.

Beyond the Book

This section describes where readers can find book content that exists outside the book itself. A For Dummies technical book may include the following, although only rarely does a book include all these items:

· Cheat Sheet: There isn’t a test at the end of this book, so we don’t expect you to memorize it all. Instead we’ve provided you with a handy Cheat Sheet that tells you how to perform your day-to-day functions in Salesforce. There’s even an electronic copy available at

www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/salesforcedotcom

· Dummies.com online articles: If your boss wants you to justify buying this book or if you’re just in a rush, check out our online articles about Salesforce. We’ve provided some key points, useful lists, and more.

www.dummies.com/extras/salesforcedotcom

· Updates to this book, if we have any, are at

www.dummies.com/extras/salesforcedotcom

Where to Go from Here

If you’re just getting started with Salesforce, you may want to turn the page and start reading. If you’re an administrator and have a deadline, you may want to jump to Chapters 19 and 20. If you’re a manager, try reading about reports and dashboards in Chapters 17 and 18. Sales reps and service reps should start in on Chapters 14 and 15, respectively. Regardless of what you choose, we’re sure that you’ll find what you’re looking for.