Successforce Blog
AppExchange 101 Webcast: Everything You Need to Extend Your CRM Implementation
Join us for a FREE AppExchange Webinar — Live on June 14, at 11:00 AM PST. AppExchange is the first and only online marketplace for sharing applications. It makes finding and deploying new on-demand apps easy. Many of the apps in the AppExchange are free and all are pre-integrated with Salesforce. There are more than 250 apps to choose from including applications for every department like sales, service, HR, finance —and more. Find everything from project management to recruiting to email marketing and beyond. Learn what you need to know to get started with AppExchange. Plus, get all your questions answered in a live Q&A. Register for our free AppExchange 101 Webcast now.
AppExchange 101 Webcast: Everything You Need to Extend Your CRM Implementation
Join us for a FREE AppExchange Webinar — Live on June 14, at 11:00 AM PST. AppExchange is the first and only online marketplace for sharing applications. It makes finding and deploying new on-demand apps easy. Many of the apps in the AppExchange are free and all are pre-integrated with Salesforce. There are more than 250 apps to choose from including applications for every department like sales, service, HR, finance —and more. Find everything from project management to recruiting to email marketing and beyond. Learn what you need to know to get started with AppExchange. Plus, get all your questions answered in a live Q&A. Register for our free AppExchange 101 Webcast now.
Salesforce.com on iTunes
Today we officially launched Salesforce.com on
iTunes, with over 75 sessions of downloadable audio content. Users will find a wide variety of tracks including customer
best practice sessions, roundtable discussions, and presentations by well know
thought leaders.
The goal is to connect customers with product
experts and peers working on similar business initiatives. With Salesforce.com
on iTunes you can browse through a catalog of tracks sorting them by date, topic,
or speaker, just like managing your own music library. While many people will
choose to listen to these sessions at their desk, you can also download them to your iPod.
If you’ve got a long commute or are traveling on business, load a couple up and
see what you think.
Here are a couple of sample sessions.
Salesforce.com on iTunes
Today we officially launched Salesforce.com on
iTunes, with over 75 sessions of downloadable audio content. Users will find a wide variety of tracks including customer
best practice sessions, roundtable discussions, and presentations by well know
thought leaders.
The goal is to connect customers with product
experts and peers working on similar business initiatives. With Salesforce.com
on iTunes you can browse through a catalog of tracks sorting them by date, topic,
or speaker, just like managing your own music library. While many people will
choose to listen to these sessions at their desk, you can also download them to your iPod.
If you’ve got a long commute or are traveling on business, load a couple up and
see what you think.
Here are a couple of sample sessions.
Partner Recruitment Mash Up with Google Maps
One of Salesforce's Partner Management subject matter experts, Todd Janzen, has created a day in the life for a channel manager trying to recruit more partners. (Thanks Todd!) This demonstration is available for you to review. Click here to access the demonstration. Besides the business value of being able to more effectively and efficiently recruit more partners using Salesforce, Todd has creatively enabled a real cool feature. 
He's created a channel map showing the number of partners that have submitted an application to become a partner. How many of you have wished you could easily create a channel map or white space analysis? He created the channel map using Google Maps. Here is an example of how new partner prospect registrations show up on a Google Map. Visit the Partner Management feature page for full details on Salesforce.com's Partner Management and Partner Portal solution.
Partner Recruitment Mash Up with Google Maps
One of Salesforce's Partner Management subject matter experts, Todd Janzen, has created a day in the life for a channel manager trying to recruit more partners. (Thanks Todd!) This demonstration is available for you to review. Click here to access the demonstration. Besides the business value of being able to more effectively and efficiently recruit more partners using Salesforce, Todd has creatively enabled a real cool feature. He's created a channel map showing the number of partners that have submitted an application to become a partner. How many of you have wished you could easily create a channel map or white space analysis? He created the channel map using Google Maps. Here is an example of how new partner prospect registrations show up on a Google Map. Visit the Partner Management feature page for full details on Salesforce.com's Partner Management and Partner Portal solution.
Suggested Documents using Custom Formula Fields
“Do your reps ever complain that it’s hard to find documents in the document library? Do you want to cut down on training? Leverage custom formula fields to suggest resources based upon fielded information in the contact, opportunity, or account record.”
Now you can deliver different content for your sales force based upon the different stages of their opportunity.
Suggested Documents using Custom Formula Fields
“Do your reps ever complain that it’s hard to find documents in the document library? Do you want to cut down on training? Leverage custom formula fields to suggest resources based upon fielded information in the contact, opportunity, or account record.”
Now you can deliver different content for your sales force based upon the different stages of their opportunity.
Partner Portal Demo
PRM and Salesforce's Partner Portal enables
companies to cost effectively and easily increase revenues driven through
partners. Companies can share leads and
opportunities, enable deal registration programs, co-market, and communicate
rebates and incentives to partners through the Salesforce Partner Portal. Channel Managers gain visibility to partner
performance and sales executives finally have a consolidated pipeline
representing both direct and indirect opportunities and deals.
This presentation is available in Breeze (5 mins).
Partner Portal Demo
PRM and Salesforce's Partner Portal enables
companies to cost effectively and easily increase revenues driven through
partners. Companies can share leads and
opportunities, enable deal registration programs, co-market, and communicate
rebates and incentives to partners through the Salesforce Partner Portal. Channel Managers gain visibility to partner
performance and sales executives finally have a consolidated pipeline
representing both direct and indirect opportunities and deals.
This presentation is available in Breeze (5 mins).
Build your own PRM program using Custom Objects?
Many of our customers today are leveraging custom objects to build PRM applications to manage, track and measure their partner programs. Companies engage with their partners through sharing of Leads and joint selling with Opportunities. This part is straightforward and already managed through core Salesforce SFA and Partner Portal. Other companies are also enabling partner management processes through Salesforce’s Custom Objects. Some types of partner management applications needed by channel managers worldwide include: co-marketing funds, special pricing authorizations, certification tracking, deal registration, certifications, and channel account planning. The Dashboard inlcuded in this post shows how Custom Objects have been designed to support rebates, market development funds (MDF), and coop. 
The dashboard is presented on top of marketing request and claim objects modeled against best practice PRM processes.
Now channel managers, inside of Salesforce, can easily track the marketing requests and claims submitted by their partners. These objects are easily exposed to partners using Salesforce’s Partner Portal Toolkit. Have you created PRM processes using these objects? Have you exposed these objects to partners? Share your PRM successes and questions.
Build your own PRM program using Custom Objects?
Many of our customers today are leveraging custom objects to build PRM applications to manage, track and measure their partner programs. Companies engage with their partners through sharing of Leads and joint selling with Opportunities. This part is straightforward and already managed through core Salesforce SFA and Partner Portal. Other companies are also enabling partner management processes through Salesforce’s Custom Objects. Some types of partner management applications needed by channel managers worldwide include: co-marketing funds, special pricing authorizations, certification tracking, deal registration, certifications, and channel account planning. The Dashboard inlcuded in this post shows how Custom Objects have been designed to support rebates, market development funds (MDF), and coop. The dashboard is presented on top of marketing request and claim objects modeled against best practice PRM processes.
Now channel managers, inside of Salesforce, can easily track the marketing requests and claims submitted by their partners. These objects are easily exposed to partners using Salesforce’s Partner Portal Toolkit. Have you created PRM processes using these objects? Have you exposed these objects to partners? Share your PRM successes and questions.
New Process Maps: Events, Customer Acquisition, Account Management
Richard
Hind, a Salesforce.com Sales Engineer from the UK created three new process maps. One
for event management, one for customer acquisition, and one for account
management. These are great to reference when mapping your processes to
salesforce.com and training the team.
These maps are availabe in PDF and PowerPoint .
New Process Maps: Events, Customer Acquisition, Account Management
Richard
Hind, a Salesforce.com Sales Engineer from the UK created three new process maps. One
for event management, one for customer acquisition, and one for account
management. These are great to reference when mapping your processes to
salesforce.com and training the team.
These maps are availabe in PDF and PowerPoint .
PRM: Partner Portal in action
Companies today are realizing the benefits of PRM (Partner Relationship Management) by consolidating their direct and indirect sales and marketing activities. Companies are using salesforce.com to manage partners while they’re extending their deal data and sales tools to share with their partners
through salesforce.com’s Partner Portal. To the right is an example of a Partner Portal. The company is fictitious to protect the innocent but the message is clear. Branding is easily customized to match corporate guidelines and corporate style sheets. The experience is tailored to meet the needs of the partner community. Leads, opportunities, documents and custom objects are shared for collaboration. A custom object was designed and launched to model the Market Development Funds (MDF) business process. There are many customers tare extending the benefits of salesforce.com to their partner communities. Share your PRM successes here.
PRM: Partner Portal in action
Companies today are realizing the benefits of PRM (Partner Relationship Management) by consolidating their direct and indirect sales and marketing activities. Companies are using salesforce.com to manage partners while they’re extending their deal data and sales tools to share with their partners through salesforce.com’s Partner Portal. To the right is an example of a Partner Portal. The company is fictitious to protect the innocent but the message is clear. Branding is easily customized to match corporate guidelines and corporate style sheets. The experience is tailored to meet the needs of the partner community. Leads, opportunities, documents and custom objects are shared for collaboration. A custom object was designed and launched to model the Market Development Funds (MDF) business process. There are many customers tare extending the benefits of salesforce.com to their partner communities. Share your PRM successes here.
PRM with Salesforce.com
I get asked all the time: how does Salesforce.com handle complex channel sales models and how does Salesforce.com enable PRM (Partner Relationship Management)?
The answer to these questions resides in understanding your partner requirements and business needs. Segment your partner community to find out what's most important to each partner group. While all partners are important, there are some that are more strategic than others. Consider your partners' buying relationship; channel tier; geography; product specializations; certifications, etc when categorizing. How easily can you segment your partner community today and what tools do you have in place to track the segmentations?
PRM with Salesforce.com
I get asked all the time: how does Salesforce.com handle complex channel sales models and how does Salesforce.com enable PRM (Partner Relationship Management)?
The answer to these questions resides in understanding your partner requirements and business needs. Segment your partner community to find out what's most important to each partner group. While all partners are important, there are some that are more strategic than others. Consider your partners' buying relationship; channel tier; geography; product specializations; certifications, etc when categorizing. How easily can you segment your partner community today and what tools do you have in place to track the segmentations?
Lead Scoring for Increased Sales Efficiency
Lead Scoring associates a value to each lead based upon a weighted
criteria. For example, a prospect that fills out a web form might have a higher
score than purchased list. By giving a numerical value for each lead, reps can
better prioritize their lead lists and focus on those opportunities with the
greatest potential value.
To add a
lead scoring field, create a custom calculated field on the lead page layout. There
is a sample below but you’ll want to adjust it to fit your business.
Lead Scoring for Increased Sales Efficiency
Lead Scoring associates a value to each lead based upon a weighted
criteria. For example, a prospect that fills out a web form might have a higher
score than purchased list. By giving a numerical value for each lead, reps can
better prioritize their lead lists and focus on those opportunities with the
greatest potential value.
To add a
lead scoring field, create a custom calculated field on the lead page layout. There
is a sample below but you’ll want to adjust it to fit your business.
Sales Process Map - Campaign to Customer
The sales process map is designed to show you how a typical two tier
sales process might map to salesforce.com. This is a very useful tool
to help document your own internal processes and ultimately train your
team.
This presentation is available in PDF.
Sales Process Map - Campaign to Customer
The sales process map is designed to show you how a typical two tier
sales process might map to salesforce.com. This is a very useful tool
to help document your own internal processes and ultimately train your
team.
This presentation is available in PDF.
Create Groupings Using Custom Formula Fields
The
Summer ’05 release has already started to change the way I analyze data in
salesforce.com, bringing forward trends that were once hard to distinguish.
The first
formula I’ve started using is a simple average calculation. For example, you
might want to divide the number of employees by the number of users to
calculate your penetration in an account.
{!Number_Users}
/ {!Number_Employees}
Note that that you'll have to substitute your custom fields when building this formula but it shows you the basic design pattern.
This
calculation is very similar to the way analysts do a Price/Earnings ratio so
that they can get an apples to apples comparison.
I’ve also
found that I’m using custom formula fields helps with categorization. For example,
on the account record you might have the number of employees but for reporting purposes you want to create buckets. To do so you can create a nested if
statement that looks something like this.
IF({!Employees}
= 0, "",
IF({!Employees} <50, "Tier 1",
IF({!Employees} <= 200, "Tier 2",
IF({!Employees} <=500, "Tier 3",
IF( {!Employees} <= 1,000, "Tier 4",
With these two data points you can create a report to measure penetration at different tiers. I’ve left the stage, summary fields, and tier
thresholds blank but it should be enough to spark some ideas for your
organization.
To learn more about how custom formula fields work, I highly recommend Getting Started with Custom Formula Fields presentation and the Custom Formula Field Blog.
Create Groupings Using Custom Formula Fields
The
Summer ’05 release has already started to change the way I analyze data in
salesforce.com, bringing forward trends that were once hard to distinguish.
The first
formula I’ve started using is a simple average calculation. For example, you
might want to divide the number of employees by the number of users to
calculate your penetration in an account.
{!Number_Users}
/ {!Number_Employees}
Note that that you'll have to substitute your custom fields when building this formula but it shows you the basic design pattern.
This
calculation is very similar to the way analysts do a Price/Earnings ratio so
that they can get an apples to apples comparison.
I’ve also
found that I’m using custom formula fields helps with categorization. For example,
on the account record you might have the number of employees but for reporting purposes you want to create buckets. To do so you can create a nested if
statement that looks something like this.
IF({!Employees}
= 0, "",
IF({!Employees} <50, "Tier 1",
IF({!Employees} <= 200, "Tier 2",
IF({!Employees} <=500, "Tier 3",
IF( {!Employees} <= 1,000, "Tier 4",
With these two data points you can create a report to measure penetration at different tiers. I’ve left the stage, summary fields, and tier
thresholds blank but it should be enough to spark some ideas for your
organization.
To learn more about how custom formula fields work, I highly recommend Getting Started with Custom Formula Fields presentation and the Custom Formula Field Blog.
Neff Rental Success Story
Steve Settlemayer, the VP of Sales and Marketing at Neff
Rental, shares the steps the company took for successful user adoption - from
first obtaining senior management endorsement, to involving top performers
during the creation of the functional process, to building and communicating the value
proposition for his reps.
- Company Profile: Neff Rental
- Life Before Salesforce.com
- Why We Selected Salesforce.com
- Our Project Plan
- Current Status
- Lessons Learned
Neff Rental Success Story
Steve Settlemayer, the VP of Sales and Marketing at Neff
Rental, shares the steps the company took for successful user adoption - from
first obtaining senior management endorsement, to involving top performers
during the creation of the functional process, to building and communicating the value
proposition for his reps.
- Company Profile: Neff Rental
- Life Before Salesforce.com
- Why We Selected Salesforce.com
- Our Project Plan
- Current Status
- Lessons Learned
Peer Performance Dashboard
At
salesforce.com we have a two tiered sales team, one which qualifies leads and
the other which closes business. One challenge with this model is finding a
good metric to compensate the inside sales team or the team that qualifies the
lead. In this dashboard you can se that we track three numbers. The number of
converted leads which reach 20% provides a leading indicator to make sure the
rep is on track and building enough pipeline. The next is the number of closed
deals which creates incentives to work all leads and do what they can to build
momentum. And finally, the amount of closed revenue which makes sure they work
the big leads more aggressively than the small leads. The second goal of this
dashboard is to help the sales manager compare apples to apples. Each rep takes
time to get up to speed yet most of the reports that are run don’t take that
into account. For each incoming class of reps we have created a peer
performance dashboard. This gives me some sense of how long it takes for reps
to ramp and it shows which reps are most deserving of being promoted.
Peer Performance Dashboard
At
salesforce.com we have a two tiered sales team, one which qualifies leads and
the other which closes business. One challenge with this model is finding a
good metric to compensate the inside sales team or the team that qualifies the
lead. In this dashboard you can se that we track three numbers. The number of
converted leads which reach 20% provides a leading indicator to make sure the
rep is on track and building enough pipeline. The next is the number of closed
deals which creates incentives to work all leads and do what they can to build
momentum. And finally, the amount of closed revenue which makes sure they work
the big leads more aggressively than the small leads. The second goal of this
dashboard is to help the sales manager compare apples to apples. Each rep takes
time to get up to speed yet most of the reports that are run don’t take that
into account. For each incoming class of reps we have created a peer
performance dashboard. This gives me some sense of how long it takes for reps
to ramp and it shows which reps are most deserving of being promoted.
Data Quality Dashboard
One
critical element of managing a team is watch over workload and data quality.
The
second dashboard depicts open tasks. It’s very easy for reps to get in the
habit of setting tasks and never closing them out. This hurts collaboration in
a significant way because when a task list becomes unrulely it’s very likely a
rep will miss a new task assigned to them. It also means that someone at some
point in time is going to have to delete the task for them. In any event, that’s
why we decided to crack down and put in place a policy where in there should
never be more than 100 overdue task.
Data Quality Dashboard
One
critical element of managing a team is watch over workload and data quality.
The
second dashboard depicts open tasks. It’s very easy for reps to get in the
habit of setting tasks and never closing them out. This hurts collaboration in
a significant way because when a task list becomes unrulely it’s very likely a
rep will miss a new task assigned to them. It also means that someone at some
point in time is going to have to delete the task for them. In any event, that’s
why we decided to crack down and put in place a policy where in there should
never be more than 100 overdue task.
Team Challenge
When I
was working with our inside sales team it quickly became apparent that there
was a big gap between the top of the class and the bottom. With a large group
of reps to manage I realized that the fast way to turn things around was
through competition, peer pressure, and team mentoring.
I paired up two senior reps
who were consistently hitting their number with one junior person who was
struggling. I then created a dashboard with all six teams and put in place a
small spiff for the two teams who finished on top. With five sales days left in
the month, all of the junior reps have made dramatic improvement. We’ll give it
a try again next month and see if we continue to see progress.
Team Challenge
When I
was working with our inside sales team it quickly became apparent that there
was a big gap between the top of the class and the bottom. With a large group
of reps to manage I realized that the fast way to turn things around was
through competition, peer pressure, and team mentoring.
I paired up two senior reps
who were consistently hitting their number with one junior person who was
struggling. I then created a dashboard with all six teams and put in place a
small spiff for the two teams who finished on top. With five sales days left in
the month, all of the junior reps have made dramatic improvement. We’ll give it
a try again next month and see if we continue to see progress.
Snag-it and Dashboards
There is a great screen capture tool called Snag-It which I
would recommend to just about anyone. The closest thing I can equate it to is
have a good pair of scissors at your desk. As a sales manager, one way I use
snag-it is to create quick snapshots of a dashboard element that I want to
bring attention to. I then do a quick annotation to emphasis what I’m seeing,
and then I send it out to the team.
For example, “Hey guys take a look, Conor hit his
number today. Congratulations! Carly, Anish, Jen, Jared, and Dana are inching
closer. Who will be next?”
As a manager this is a great way to drive adoption
because the reps realize that you are watching dashboards intensely and
rewarding behavior accordingly.
Snag-it and Dashboards
There is a great screen capture tool called Snag-It which I
would recommend to just about anyone. The closest thing I can equate it to is
have a good pair of scissors at your desk. As a sales manager, one way I use
snag-it is to create quick snapshots of a dashboard element that I want to
bring attention to. I then do a quick annotation to emphasis what I’m seeing,
and then I send it out to the team.
For example, “Hey guys take a look, Conor hit his
number today. Congratulations! Carly, Anish, Jen, Jared, and Dana are inching
closer. Who will be next?”
As a manager this is a great way to drive adoption
because the reps realize that you are watching dashboards intensely and
rewarding behavior accordingly.
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