Sales Cloud

In this chapter, I would like to describe to you the most important, even core, functionality of Salesforce, known by the name Sales Cloud. This is, indeed, the cloud that sells the best; it is the most popular, and you, dear reader, will most likely encounter it on your journey, whether as a user or an administrator. In other words, Sales Cloud is the alpha and omega of the Salesforce world, something that Mark Benioff, like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, took from the gods – not the ancient gods of Olympus but the more modern gods of the internet. Without Sales Cloud, Salesforce would not be as recognizable, and probably without Sales Cloud, there wouldn’t be other clouds such as Service, Marketing, and Data.

So, is this mythical Sales Cloud real, as we’ve already mentioned? Yes, it is! What is Sales Cloud then? As Salesforce describes, Sales Cloud “unlocks efficiency by managing Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and customer Accounts...

Seller Home

Seller Home is a relatively new solution from Salesforce designed to theoretically facilitate the work of sales professionals operating within Salesforce. It represents a natural extension of the classic Home tab available to all users, with the addition of certain elements tailored to the needs of sales teams. Is it a perfect solution? Not entirely. However, it is a step in the right direction, and it’s encouraging that Salesforce has recognized the need to customize certain views for what is arguably their largest user base – sales departments.

Seller Home includes several interesting elements, some of which are entirely new, while others are derived from the former default Home tab accessible to all users. The overall presentation is quite intriguing, as can be seen in the following screenshot.

Figure 11.1: Seller Home

Due to the presence of some new features, I will briefly discuss what is available on Seller Home:

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Leads

We briefly discussed Leads in Chapter 1, Introduction and Getting Started with Salesforce, of this book; however, in this section, I would like to expand on this description and show you more. As a reminder, in Salesforce, a Lead is a place where potential, preliminary sales opportunities can be recorded. A Lead is a combination of fields from both Account and Contact, as it contains information such as the potential customer’s first name, last name, phone number, and email address, but also the name or address of the company they work for. Alright, but where can I get such Leads? That’s a good question because unless you’re Harry Potter and can conjure them up yourself, they won’t magically appear in your system. Let’s list the most common sources of Leads in this place. These include the following:

• The salesperson’s own efforts: The salesperson actively explores the market, contacts potential customers, and enters them into...

Accounts

I think, in this case, there’s no need to delve too deeply. An Account in Salesforce contains the company data you input. These can be your clients, potential clients, partners, or even competitors (to mark this, you can use the standard Type field). Importantly, Accounts are related to Contacts and Opportunities. This means that by accessing the profile of a specific company, you can immediately see which Contacts belong to that company or view historical and current sales opportunities.

Account records also include the company’s contact information, tax numbers, and so on. These are rather static data, making this object less frequently edited and, therefore, less attractive to users. However, it exists because there needs to be a common part connecting Contacts and Opportunities. Yet, it doesn’t always have to be this way. One thing I often do to make Account records more appealing is to use fields such as Rollup Summary, summing up the total sales...

Contacts

In this case, much like with Accounts, there aren’t too many mysteries. Contacts are simply records, most often associated with Accounts, meaning employees of a particular company or individuals with whom you establish cooperation during sales activities, such as writing to them or calling them if you are a salesperson. Contacts appear in Salesforce after converting Leads or can be created directly on Accounts by clicking the New button in the Account Related List.

The Contact object includes fields such as first and last name, email address, one or more phone numbers, and address details. These details may differ from the registration data of the associated Account, as the contact person might work in a different department or city. You can record activities related to the Contact, such as calls or meetings. Additionally, you can add notes about important matters.

An important Salesforce functionality related to Contacts is the ability to connect one Contact...

Activities

Activities are a fundamental feature that virtually every Salesforce Sales Cloud user grapples with. Of course, I used the phrase “grapples with” as a joke, but to be honest, activity updates are often a tedious task not always favored by Salesforce users. Of course, Salesforce allows for significant simplification and automation of this process. There is the option to install the Salesforce plugin for Outlook, which allows logging selected emails or events. You can also enable Einstein Activity Capture integration, which automatically associates emails with the relevant records in Salesforce: Contacts or Leads if the email is related to them. While these solutions are not without flaws, users still largely manually add activity records in Salesforce.

How do activities work? In a very straightforward way. In Salesforce, there are three objects associated with activities: Tasks, Events, and Email. They are distinct, so to create a new Task, you use a different...

Campaigns and Campaign Members

You could say, “C’mon, we were supposed to talk about Sales Cloud, and here it seems we will be learning about campaigns?” Are these marketing campaigns? Yes and... no! In Salesforce Sales Cloud, we have functionalities similar to marketing tools because we have access to the Campaign and Campaign Member functionalities. What are they used for? Imagine that our marketing department is running a campaign targeting our biggest clients. During this campaign, the sales team needs to contact representatives of the largest clients to invite them to an event planned for a few months later. The ultimate result of this contact should include whether the client’s representative was contacted, whether they received an invitation and information about who accepted it so that the marketing department can efficiently count the guests and plan the event. The entire event can be planned using Campaigns. In a Campaign, you can name the campaign...

Opportunities

What would a salesperson be without selling? A deserted island without inhabitants, a sailor without a ship, or the Friends sitcom without Joey? Of course, this is a joke, but this illustrates what Sales Cloud would be without the Opportunities tab. Opportunities are a key feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud. Opportunities is a place where a salesperson looks very often because it is the tab where they plan future sales, which can be carried out for both existing and new customers.

Tip

Sales departments are sometimes divided into separate teams: farmers, individuals who take care of existing clients by upselling new services or products while maintaining relationships, and hunters, salespeople who acquire new orders and sign new contracts. Very often, both teams work with Salesforce Opportunities, but they have different statuses, milestones, or products they sell.

Opportunities themselves are basically a straightforward object, and their records are directly linked...

Forecasts

Now that you’ve learned how the sales team works with Leads, Campaigns, and Opportunities in Salesforce, it’s time to see how Salesforce supports their supervisors. Forecasts is a tool or set of tools that allows sales management to track and analyze current sales progress and results. It provides valuable information related to the current state of sales, allowing you to view them by team or individual salesperson. To access Forecasts, there’s a dedicated tab in the Salesforce interface and specific permissions are required. However, before you can view anything in Forecasts, it needs to be configured (you can do this in Setup). We won’t go into detail on how to do this because the Forecasts functionality has many possibilities and it’s difficult to describe a universal solution that will work for everyone. Just keep in mind that Forecasts are based on Opportunities, meaning that records of these objects are taken into account in Forecasts...

Summary

In this chapter, you have learned about the intricacies of Salesforce Sales Cloud, starting with the crucial domain of Leads. You delved into the process of Lead conversion, discovering the seamless transition from potential interest to engaged prospects within the Salesforce platform.

As you navigated further, the landscape of Accounts came into view, showcasing the organizational prowess of Salesforce in categorizing and managing business Accounts. The narrative deepened, illustrating how Salesforce provides you with a holistic view of customer interactions and relationships.

Next, we talked about Activities, stressing the importance of keeping track and managing tasks and events related to customer interaction. Salesforce’s Activity feature came out as a strong tool, making sure you can thoroughly monitor and proactively handle these tasks.

Then, we landed in the world of Campaigns and Campaign Members. The narrative underscored the integration of marketing...