re: Customer relationship management (CRM) software

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If our sales team isn't going to use Salesforce they don't get paid. Most companies follow some kind of similar carrot approach. If it's not in Salesforce how do we know what you sold.

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because I got a PO from the customer, got the company paid, and delivered whatever I was selling. How would i track that without salesforce?

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I currently use salesforce and I use it to keep myself organized and send quotes and as an information hub. Our activities are not tracked, and it does definitely benefit me.

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+1

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Getting sales people to pay attention to software training is like getting 5 year olds to watch a documentary.

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+1

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Customer relationship management (CRM) software

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I really don't know what all these CRM's do, but is this how the sales reps remember what all sports my kids play? What else do they do?

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I really don't know what all these CRM's do, but is this how the sales reps remember what all sports my kids play? What else do they do?

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I could tell you needs from a one time customer 8 years ago, his hobbies and full name but couldn’t remember the name of any parent from kids school despite going to birthday parties all the time

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I can’t live without Hubspot and Asana. Too much shite to remember.

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Are these programs transcribing and storing this information automatically?

I had a past sales manager tell me more than a few times - if its not in Salesforce, then it did not happen. Then every sales meeting was 3/4 talking about every salesperson's sales activity tracking.
I use it now in my current position every day. But - as others have said - it needs to be customized - which ours is. Keeps my quotes organized, my contacts, contact history to create a pattern, opportunities, projects, etc.

Truth! I hate it as it takes way too much time to fill out correctly when you should be doing productive activities.

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Are these programs transcribing and storing this information automatically?

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On a side note, I went into the office this week and Ring Central installed an AI notes/summary function for free. I imagine that's coming to all of these apps sooner rather than later.

Although I think I have to disable it. I need to learn more.

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On a side note, I went into the office this week and Ring Central installed an AI notes/summary function for free. I imagine that's coming to all of these apps sooner rather than later.

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zoom has it enabled as well. I've yet to get a note summary from our meetings, but usually it's our vendors that have it in the meeting.

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3nout: Did you uncheck and check leaving and new customers on the 'current customers" custom button that i made for you after you requested i make that for the reports that only listed current customers as we had or missed transactions this last year?

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Speaking as a salesperson, this is the kind of thing that becomes infuriating about Salesforce.

Obviously I don’t know the details of your specific example, but at first glance it seems to fit a pattern I’ve seen at multiple companies:

Management gets sold on the idea of Salesforce as this infinite well of data that can be filtered and sorted any way that they can imagine. As time goes on, someone realizes that the report they want requires another drop down box. Someone else needs a check box for their report. Someone else needs users to fill in a text field. These fields are “mandatory,” but they can’t be marked as required because they only apply for a certain division of the company.

Meanwhile every other division has their own “mandatory” fields cluttering up the UI. Not to mention other countries. (Why the frick am I being forced to enter the country, for reporting purposes, when the account literally has an address in Salesforce?) Then someone decides it would be even better if Salesforce were integrated with other tools that the business is using.

Before you know it, you have a maze of “mandatory” (but not required) shite you have to remember to enter, pages you have to jump between, loading screens, etc. to navigate - on top of being expected to log all kinds of sales activities in various different places - just to respond to a damned request for quote.

I don’t usually bitch about Salesforce, but it really is tiresome spending so much of your time literally checking boxes instead of dealing with real-world problems and opportunities. As a simple tool to track leads, contacts, and opportunities, Salesforce is great. It’s all of the crap that gets added in the name of reporting that makes it tedious.

Of course, the people making the decisions don’t generally care about the inconvenience because to them it’s always the incremental “one little check box.” But it all adds up, until salespeople start forgetting some of the steps and then get labeled as uncooperative, lazy, or incompetent (often by folks who are disconnected from the actual core business / value chain).

Again I’m not saying this applies to your specific example, just trying to offer some insight based on personal experience.