(Update July 2017: Joe’s Web Geeks is offering help with Salesforce Management and other CRMs. If you want to use one, but can’t make heads or tails of it, be sure to call us at 800-241-0341).
As we always say on the air, our goal at the Being Found Help Center is to teach the rules and the tools of the internet that businesses need to know. So I spoke with Michelle Tazelaar of Anchored Insights about a tool that is of great value, but which is often overlooked by small companies. That tool, of course, is the Big S itself – Salesforce.
“Salesforce is a customer relations management tool or CRM,” Michelle explains. “It basically allows you to grow or maintain a customer base and build a relationship with your customers, so they don’t fall off your radar. And they’re able to make your back-end processes more efficient through automation. So it’s kind of an all-encompassing system for businesses small and large who want to be more efficient, and who also want to have a steady relationship with their customers, while also growing their sales and support teams and making them as efficient as possible.”
Michelle’s company is dedicated to Salesforce consulting – she helps businesses implement their Salesforce systems professionally. Naturally, she knows the program like the back of her hand, and she knows its benefits.
The Benefits of Salesforce
Of course, there are many CRMs on the market. Zoho and Hubspot spring to mind. However, as Michelle points out, Salesforce is unique in many ways. First, as she says, “Salesforce is by far the the largest CRM – it has the biggest share in the market. And for good reason. It is the most robust platform you could dream up in terms of a CRM because it doesn’t give you the tools to succeed – it gives you a whole platform you can use to make your own tools.”
“Some of my clients require specific processes that they want to include in their situation that Salesforce doesn’t include just out of the box,” she continues. “So I would just go in and custom-build tools and automation for them. Which is really what sets Salesforce apart from the others – you can build whatever you want on it.”
Of course, many business owners may question why they need a CRM at all – choosing to manage their custom relations and other organizational challenges using a patchwork of other apps, all of which may be simple and efficient on their own. But such an approach generally leads to terrible inefficiency when attempting to accomplish tasks that could be completed quite easily using Salesforce.
“A lot of companies siloed software solutions that don’t really talk,” she explains, “Eventually, you hit a point where you can hardly fill out a report without taking a month to organize all of your information in excel. The goal of Salesforce is to allow you to run your businesses using a single application. It frees up a lot of time.”
In fact, it frees up so much time that Michelle estimates her clients have seen an average increase of 60-75% in overall efficiency since adopting Salesforce, though she does admit that this precise number depends on how efficient the clients were before they adopted it.”
“Pretty much every industry uses them,” she adds. “There’s no ‘niche market’ for Salesforce.”
Slightly in the dark
Still, despite the virtues of the software, and it’s clear track record of results, Michelle reports that businesses in the area are not just reluctant to adopt CRMs, but totally ignorant of the existence of the technology. She says, “About 50% of the time I mention the word Salesforce, if I’m talking to a business owner, they won’t know what it is. The other 50% have heard about it – but still have no idea what it is. So in general Shasta County is slightly in the dark when it comes to Salesforce, which is a big shame because it could really help a lot of companies.”
Michelle does not know why exactly this is, though she does believe that perhaps some companies believe they are small enough that they don’t need to bother with efficiency software that large companies use. “Because it’s such a big company it can be perceived as something a small business doesn’t need,” she remarks. “Which is maybe why a lot of small businesses in this area haven’t gone with Salesforce, or even a CRM in general. But really, once you test it out, when you see the value that it would add to your business, it’s a no-brainer. Any company that has a customer, or two, or more, could use Salesforce and would benefit greatly from Salesforce.”
“A lot of people don’t know,” she adds, “that Salesforce has a free trial version that is limited to two-users, but isn’t very limited in features otherwise. It can actually be cost-effective for very small companies.”
Asked what she would say to business owners intrigued by Salesforce, Michelle responds, “you really owe it to yourself to find more information. Any business is at a disadvantage if they’re not using a CRM, and Salesforce is the best one out there, so why not give it a shot?”
To this end, Michelle Tazelaar may be teaching a class on Salesforce with Cloud Wise Academy in the future. “I’m definitely interested in doing that, so I could have people to hire afterwards,” she laughs. “I am excited about it.”
