Preface

The Salesforce Sales Cloud – An Implementation Handbook is a practical guide on how to design and deliver Sales Cloud solutions. Concepts and functionality related to Sales Cloud are presented and explained in the context of the software delivery lifecycle to illustrate when and how solution decisions are made. Tips, pitfalls, and examples are given to provide enough information to make decisions for their use case without being overwhelming. The book is beneficial for those who are new to Sales Cloud and software delivery and also for those want to gain an insight into the different aspects of Sales Cloud.

Your journey in this book will start with how to set yourself and your Sales Cloud implementation up for success by having clear alignment with company goals, being clear on the scope of the required solution, and having detailed, documented, and confirmed processes and requirements. These foundational elements can often be rushed and overlooked because of a desire to get hands-on straight away and start building your Sales Cloud implementation, but this can be the root of many implementation delays or failures.

The book guides you through how to engage with stakeholders, how to gather requirements for the system, describes the out-of-the-box functionality, and goes on to describe how you approach and deliver the build, test, and release phases of your Sales Cloud implementation.

Furthermore, this book covers how to extend your solution beyond the out-of-the-box Sales Cloud functionality. By the end of this book, readers will have the confidence to start their first Sales Cloud implementation. They will understand all the components that are required to deliver a successful solution. They will be able to make choices that are appropriate for their use case.

Who this book is for

If you are a newly appointed or certified Admin, a consultant new to Sales Cloud, or a stakeholder in a Sales Cloud implementation, this book will give you the insights that will set you up for success. Admins, Consultants, or Business Analysts already familiar with the Salesforce Customer 360 platform will learn how and when to design and build Sales Cloud functionality to solve business challenges.

This book is a practical companion that the reader can follow, or dip in and out of, to guide them in building Sales Cloud implementations. It teaches the technology options available so the reader can make appropriate choices for their use case. It is born of the lessons learned and successes earned by an enthusiastic, accidental admin who transitioned into an experienced consultant. As it is written by and for people without a formal technology education, this book distills the lessons learned over projects. It provides pragmatic, practical advice and tools.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Preparing for Success, outlines the foundations for the success of any Sales Cloud implementation and how you can ensure success on your project.

Chapter 2, Defining the Approach, walks you through the important upfront decisions that define how you approach the delivery of your implementation. It introduces the Salesforce Application Lifecycle and outlines your development methodology, testing, development environment, and change management options, allowing you to shape the delivery of your implementation as you need.

Chapter 3, The Core Sales Process, focuses on how to gather requirements and design a Sales Cloud Solution that enables your organization’s core sales process. It starts by introducing some common sales frameworks to give you the language and understanding to be able to collaborate with sales stakeholders. It moves on to how to gather the details required and then we step through the data structure that is available in Sales Cloud and what it is designed for.

Chapter 4, The Lead Generation Process, focuses on the process before the core sales process and how the leads are managed. Again, we review common frameworks, gathering requirements and the capability available in Sales Cloud.

Chapter 5, Design and Build: Sales User Productivity, explains all the Sales Cloud functionality that is available to increase your sales team’s productivity so you can select what is appropriate for your use case.

Chapter 6, Bringing Data into Sales Cloud, guides you through how you load data into Sales Cloud and how you go about planning your implementation data migration.

Chapter 7, Getting Sign-Off, explains why sign-off checkpoints play a critical role in a successful implementation and ensuring you take your stakeholders with you.

Chapter 8, Executing Testing, builds on the testing planning that was discussed in Chapter 2, Defining the Approach. It walks you through the practical considerations so you can feel confident in executing testing.

Chapter 9, Executing Training, also builds on the training planning that was discussed in Chapter 2, Defining the Approach. It provides you with practical considerations so you can feel confident in executing pre-go-live user training.

Chapter 10, Deployment Planning, explores how to approach deploying the functionality that you have built for your stakeholders in a way that minimizes the disruption to them.

Chapter 11, Territory Management, reviews the capability Sales Cloud has for modeling more complex people structures.

Chapter 12, Modeling Additional Processes with Sales Cloud, shows you how you can go further with the standard functionality or extend it to capture information and support processes that are bespoke to your organization.

Chapter 13, Common System Integrations, explores the types of systems that are commonly integrated with Sales Cloud and reviews the considerations and ways these can be approached.

Chapter 14, Extending with the AppExchange, guides you through how you can deliver system requirements by adding third-party applications that tightly integrate with Sales Cloud. We start by considering the paradigm of buy vs build and then, we move on to how you can approach gathering information and selecting an appropriate tool.

To get the most out of this book

A good working knowledge of your organization’s sales process and the organization’s goals for the Salesforce Customer 360 platform will help you get the most out of this book.

All the guidance in this book assumes that your Edition of Salesforce is either Enterprise or above (Performance or Unlimited). Essentials and Professional Edition do not have all the capabilities in Sales Cloud. To carry out any prototyping or development, you will need to have access to a Sandbox, Developer org or Trailhead org with System Administrator permissions, Modify All Data, and Customize Application.

Suggestions will be made on what tools you need in the Supporting tools and information section of each chapter however always considering use the tools available in your organization first. This will make it easier to collaborate with colleague, including senior stakeholders.

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Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “To enable Territory Management, enter Territory Settings in the Quick Find search or go to Setup > Feature Settings > Sales > Territories > Territory Settings.”

Tips or important notes

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