If you are a small business owner, there is a good chance that you have heard of Salesforce. But if not, Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) software that is valuable for small businesses. So this article will look at what Salesforce is and its use cases for small businesses.
What Is Salesforce?
Salesforce is an integrated CRM solution that brings companies and customers together. It is one integrated customer relationship management platform that gives all your departments, including marketing, sales, commerce, and service, a single, shared view of every customer. Salesforce has the following benefits:
- Stay close to customers.
- Improve productivity across sales teams.
- Align marketing and sales.
- Boost call centre efficiency.
- Serve customers better with AI and automation, etc.
What Are Its Use Cases For Small Businesses?
Many small businesses wonder how they can interact with Salesforce and its products. As long as the goal of your business is to make a profit and make that process seamless, then Salesforce is for you. Here are some of Salesforce use cases for small businesses;
1. Track Your Sales Pipeline
There are several ways that you can use salesforce to track your pipeline as a small business just starting up. Salesforce provides basic lead tracking but isn’t as robust or flexible as other tools like Assembla or Pipedrive. As a small business, Salesforce offers expansion and accessibility to your business’s various platforms.
Your sales team will use Salesforce daily to track leads and opportunities and for internal reporting. Empowering them with a tool that helps them manage their time efficiently and accurately is critical to success. Salesforce is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses manage their sales, service, marketing, and commerce needs.
Companies of all sizes and industries use it to track leads and opportunities, manage customer relationships; build marketing campaigns; track product performance in real-time; collaborate on documents; run reports across various departments or individuals within the company.
Salesforce comes with a free plan that allows users to create up to five dashboards or public pages per user account within their accounts tab at any time. Suppose you are looking for more flexibility than what the free tier provides, though, like having multiple tabs per user or being able to create custom apps.
In that case, Salesforce also has an enterprise edition available, which costs $5/user/month or $50/user/year.
2. Manage Your Relationships
Relationships are a vital part of small businesses. They’re how you connect with customers, prospects, and partners to build connections that last over time. While it may seem like a one-way street (the customer has all the power), your ability to manage those relationships can help you close more deals and ultimately make more money.
In Salesforce, there’s an easy way to manage your relationships: add them; To do this, go into Setup > Setup Users & Groups > Users & Groups > Add User Or Group. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build trust and grow the relationship. With Salesforce, you can store all of these interactions in one place for easy access so your company can deliver fantastic customer service every time.
Customer service is critical to business success. It can be a key differentiator that sets your company apart from its competition, and it’s an area where you can significantly impact the customer experience by automating repetitive tasks and giving customers personalised attention.
Salesforce allows you as a small business to capture every interaction with your customers in one place so that you can meet their needs in grand style.
3. Keep Your Finger On The Pulse Of Your Business
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM that allows you to track the performance of your business and make informed decisions. It’s also among the most popular CRMs on the market, with over half a million users using its software monthly. With Salesforce, small businesses can easily integrate their existing systems with sales channels like email marketing or social media campaigns to help them get more out of each customer interaction.
Also, with Salesforce, you can build a dashboard that provides fast and reliable insights into how your business is performing so you make better decisions faster.
4. Connect Everything In Real-Time Across Different Departments
Salesforce is an excellent tool for small businesses because it lets you connect everything in real-time across different departments. For example, when one of your salespeople contacts a customer, they can be automatically added to an email or lead nurturing campaign for that particular customer.
This saves time and reduces errors thanks to the integration between Salesforce and other systems like Gmail or Outlook. You can also import data from other systems into Salesforce to integrate your sales processes correctly. You might want something like this if you have multiple teams working on different projects at once.
Or if there are people who do not work directly but still need access to information from one another’s workflows, such as project managers. Integrate Salesforce with other applications like QuickBooks or Xero to share information between systems, ensuring everyone in your company has access to the most critical data quickly and reliably in real-time on any device.
Suppose your business relies on cloud technology like Salesforce but doesn’t have access to an online office suite like Google Docs or Dropbox (or even if those options aren’t available); consider adopting the free Microsoft Office Online app instead. In that case, it works just like its full-featured counterpart but requires no subscription fees.
5. Market Smarter By Sending Personalized Messages At Just The Right Time
Send personalised messages to customers at just the right time. In the age of AI (artificial intelligence), you can use machine learning to tailor your messages based on customer behaviour and preferences. Every time customers open up a conversation with you, they will get an automated message tailored specifically for them, and it will be right when they need it.
Use Salesforce Marketing Cloud with built-in AI marketing to send email or SMS text campaigns across multiple channels for a truly omnichannel experience for customers. When you use Marketing Cloud, you can connect with customers and prospects appropriately based on their needs, interests, and behaviours.
6. Connect To Customer
The best way to stay close to customers is by staying in touch with them. You need to know what they need, provide them with a great experience, and keep them engaged. This can be done by sending out emails or posting on social media, but there are other ways.
For example, if you have an event that your customers might want to attend, like a conference, make sure they know about it early so they can register for tickets.
Conclusion
You don’t have to be a large enterprise to benefit from using Salesforce. Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM software that is ideal for small businesses. It can manage sales, marketing, and service operations as long as it makes your business grow and operations smooth. With the use cases mentioned, jump on this fantastic tool and watch your small business grow and flourish.
Although it can be intimidating initially, your entire workforce will quickly get the hang of things with a bit of practice and patience. Remember, this isn’t something you have to do overnight or in one sitting. It takes time before any change takes root in your brain or habits, but if you try every day, it will eventually get easier.