Imagine getting high-quality sales leads for your business without working hard. It sounds impossible, but it can happen with the best small business CRM.
You can use Salesforce for a small business, and you can hire a Salesforce consultant for help. It doesn’t matter if you have a few employees or 30-40.
Keep reading to learn how to launch Salesforce and if you need a freelance Salesforce administrator.
Consider Your Goals
Before you set up and launch Salesforce for a small business, you should think about why you want to use it. Many companies need a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, but you can do a lot with Salesforce.
You can keep track of customer data and organize it all. And you can manage contact information.
Another benefit is that you can use Salesforce to help with your social media marketing. You can view customer social profiles right in Salesforce, so you can grow your online audience.
Salesforce also lets you provide customer service. And if you hire a freelance Salesforce administrator, you can have help with all of it.
Choose the Right Plan
Salesforce offers four different CRM plans that you can use for your small business marketing. The Essentials plan is great for basic sales and customer service tools, and it’s a good place to start.
If you have a bigger small business CRM budget, you can get the Sales Professional plan. It works well for sales teams of any size, whether you have a single employee or a team of 40.
The Service Professional plan has similar pricing to the Sales Professional plan, but this one is perfect for customer service You can use it with any number of employees in your small business.
If you want more marketing automations, you can use the Pardot Growth plan. It works with any size team and can support up to 10,000 contacts. You can hire a freelance Salesforce developer for more assistance on any plan.
Take Advantage of Training
If you want to use Salesforce for a small business, it can be hard to get started. Luckily, Salesforce created Trailhead, which is a free training website. You can use it to learn the basics of the CRM.
Then, you can understand how it works. Even if you decide to hire a Salesforce administrator, you should know the basics.
And since Trailhead is free, you can work through a few of the lessons or courses. Choose a couple that make the most sense for your business.
If you have questions, you can ask your freelance Salesforce consultant. Then, you can make sure you’re using Salesforce efficiently.
Document Your Processes
As you set up Salesforce for a small business, make sure you document each step you take. When you need to repeat those steps for new customers, you can follow those steps to streamline the process.
Your documentation doesn’t have to be long or have a ton of detail. But consider listing out any settings you change and what tools you use to organize and enter customer data.
If you ever forget the steps or need to have a part-time Salesforce administrator, the documents should provide the essential information. You can use a document or spreadsheet to log everything.
It can also help to document the process of setting up accounts for users. If you ever hire a new part-time Salesforce developer, you can use that document to create their profile.
Add Your Company Information
As you set up Salesforce for a small business, you should add some basic company information. Include your company name, address, phone, and email to your profile.
You can also add your timezone to help with your small business marketing. That way, you won’t send an email to your customers when they’re all asleep.
Adding your company’s fiscal year can also help you with contact management. If you only want to contact customers a certain number of times per year, you can use your fiscal year to track that.
Include as much information as you feel comfortable with in Salesforce. Then, you can use it for everything from social media marketing to customer service.
Verify Security Settings
Before you start using Salesforce for a small business, you should secure everything. You can use Health Check to verify that your passwords, networks, and sessions are as strong as possible.
To go to Health Check, go to Setup in Salesforce. Then, you can search for the feature and edit your settings.
Health Check will tell you which settings are the most vulnerable, such as weak passwords. You can change your password to something stronger to help.
Go through each of the options and make them more secure. Have your part-time Salesforce consultant and other employees do this with their passwords and settings as well.
Create a Sandbox
Another thing you should do when setting up Salesforce for a small business is to create a Sandbox. In Salesforce, a Sandbox is a copy of your production organization.
You can use the Sandbox to try new settings and features. Any changes you make in the Sandbox won’t affect the live version of your Salesforce account.
So if you make a mistake or don’t like your changes, you don’t have to worry about fixing them. If you do like what you changed, you can apply them to your production org when you are comfortable.
Set Up Reports
Salesforce is the best small business CRM because it offers a couple of different ways to create reports. First, you can use Power of One, which is a formula that can summarize data.
Case Safe ID is also a great formula, and you can use it to change record IDs in reporting tools that don’t recognize case-sensitivity. You can view the alpha-numeric record ID to more easily import and export data.
Using formulas can help you and your Salesforce consultant view reports and track your small business marketing. Then, you can make sure you reach all of your company goals.
Using Salesforce for a Small Business
If you want to improve your customer relations and contact management, you should use Salesforce for a small business. The CRM tool offers many benefits and features to help you.
Be sure to consider how to safely set everything up, though. You can hire a Salesforce consultant to help you through the process. Then, you can launch it without any problems.
Do you want to hire a Salesforce developer? Contact us today.