Corrao Group Blog – Page 11 – Salesforce Technical Support and Digital Marketing Agency

Entertaining and Necessary Things to do While Staying Inside

With a great number of people asked to stay inside during this time, one can run out of things to do fast. There is only so much television we can watch, books to read, and other things before something new is needed. We’ve put together a list of things to do during the week that can help out in many different areas. The list includes activities that are both fun and also tasks that should make you feel more accomplished while staying inside.

Review Budgets to Save Money

Review your monthly subscriptions for necessity
– Business Subscriptions, Music, Clothes, Food – are these necessary for the next couple of months?

Update Family Budgets
– How does eating out less and cooking more affect your situation?
– Contact your Gym to make sure you’re not paying for this month.
– What are your cost savings for gas as well as time not in traffic?
– Can you adjust your car insurance, based in miles, for the next 3 months?

Create a simple spreadsheet with 2 columns, “WFO” and “WFH”, and compare the costs to see how much you’re saving and where you can save more.

Productive Activities Around the House

Clean up the garage
– It’s time, don’t hold it off any longer. Keep the door open as well to get some fresh air.
– If you find things that you don’t need anymore, donate it to help people in need right now.

Change the oil and fluids in your car(s)
– It might be a good time for a self-detail as well.
– If you have children make this fun and educational for them!

Fix things around the house
– Loose screws, squeaky doors/cabinets; now is a good time to fix those.
– Lightbulbs and batteries for alarms.
– Have you always wanted to paint that room? It’s time to schedule this on your calendar if so.

Cook an extraordinary dinner!
– Take out that day-long recipe you’ve always wanted to cook and get to it. Make sure that if someone else is enjoying your dish, they do the dishes – it’s the rules.
– Kick off a Zoom meeting and have a virtual potluck with your friends and family.

Clean more
– Cleaning more frequently makes it less of a task each time you do it. Having a clean space can also boost productivity and happiness.
– This is a great task to keep the kids busy. Make it a fun project and reward them for completing their jobs.

Catch up on entertainment
– Pull up the list of shows and movies your friends have been telling you to watch. Call your friends afterward to discuss it and catch up. If you’re fortunate to have kids, show them one of your favorite movies from when you were their age.

Go through the family photos
– Relive all the great times over the years through your photos. Send pictures to anyone else in the older photos to connect with them!

Get ready for summer by cleaning the backyard and planting the garden
– This is a great exercise to do with family and could be great for the kids to learn how to pull weeds! A win-win situation.

Game Nights, Trip-Planning and More

Family game nights
– Break out all of the board games and make it a fun night. Maybe even tally the wins per player over the next few weeks and see who is the ultimate game night champion!

Learn an instrument
– Have an old instrument in the garage you never finished learning? Dust it off and look at some free online videos for help. Maybe someone else in the family would like to learn with you.

Plan a trip
– Plan for a future trip. Do all the research about places to stay, visit, and dine at. Plan for a few trips and figure out which ones to take first.
Stay connected with your extended family and friends.
– If they are not tech-savvy, show them how to use tools like Skype and Zoom. You could play games such as chess and others through video chat.
– Schedule frequent calls to stay connected and foster a positive mental outlook.

These are some activities you can do both during the week as well as the weekend. This is only a small list – there are thousands of other activities you can do. If you’d like to stay up to date on other things to do during this time, please fill out the form below and we’ll send you an email each time we post content like this. Always wash your hands multiple times per day! If your hands feel dryer than usual, it’s because you are washing them more frequently than usual – find some lotion to help keep your hands from getting too dry. Set reminders to get fresh air and go for walks.

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Why Salesforce Is the Ultimate Work From Home (WFH) Platform

When it comes to working, there’s nothing more relaxing than responding to emails, making phone calls, and reviewing reports all from the comfort of your home. Being a stay-at-home employee has its benefits, such as having more control over your schedule, fewer distractions and more productivity, and everyone’s favorite reason, no time spent in traffic! Working on the Salesforce platform since 2008 ourselves, we know how relaxing it is to work from home. There’s almost nothing you can’t do from home while working on Salesforce. You’re still working, but it’s tasks from the comfort of your own home without any office distractions. Here are a few benefits from working from home across Management, Marketing, Development, and Sales.

Management

Our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao, started by saying, “People working in the office is nice, but it’s not necessary in a lot of businesses. Many of my employees could work from home because Salesforce is a cloud-based system. No servers required, which means if something happens in the office, like the internet goes down, you can just head home and work. We think soon all businesses will have to evolve with the coming times, that means moving away from their multiple systems for each department and onto a software like Salesforce, which supports: Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Support, Operational Linguistics with each having a customizable cloud.“ He finished off by saying this, “You shouldn’t be handcuffed to your building, having freedom will make you a better and harder worker.“

Salesforce allows managers to track and display all their KPIs within Dashboards. With the company updating Salesforce in real-time, reports aren’t only ready at the end of the day, or week – they’re available 24/7 with live stats. All the information and conversations regarding projects are tracked and recorded within Salesforce.

Marketing

Our Marketing Specialist and Social Media Manager John Carroll said, “If everyone had to work from home tomorrow, we would still be a functional and successful company. We all have access to the same data in real-time, so we don’t have to wait for reports, documents, or files from co-workers.” He also brought up this tweet from Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who said, “While we are all working from home during this time, we are using quip to help other remote teams across the globe collaborate.” He is talking about the documentation software, Quip, where documents, spreadsheets, slides, and chat are all combined and connected to Salesforce records. At Corrao Group, we use Quip to communicate with each other, even if it’s a few desks away or from one of our remote offices such as Seattle or Canada.

We can create a campaign asset inventory for emails, landing pages, and more within Quip, where our entire team can collaborate in real-time, anytime. Quip should be in the everyday marketer’s toolbox, especially those already on the Salesforce platform. Fields in Salesforce can map to information in Quip, so when users update one piece of info, the other connected piece is automatically updated so there’s no discrepancy. It’s perfect for working from home because all the content is live, and team members can get notified when updates or tasks are assigned.

Sales

“With Salesforce, working from home is as easy as it gets”, Ellis Davis, Sales Operations at Corrao Group. All the information and tasks are inside Salesforce so forgetting any notes at the office are a thing of the past. It’s all inside of Salesforce and easy for the whole company to access in real-time. With Chatter being the main communication on projects, she and everyone else can jump into the conversation and catch up or give updates with everything being in one place. “We’ve always known how to work from home because we’ve always had Salesforce, so it’s easy to hop on during a weekend and home and work like you were in the office”, she ended with. Tyler Keil, Sales Operations, has always lived by the phrase, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” All notes are put into Salesforce and associated with the appropriate location, whether that’s a Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity record, or something else. Having instant alerts when someone updates one of your records or tasks that you’re working on helps speed up everyday processes while working from home. “Salesforce is much more than a virtual Rolodex, it tracks conversations, the entire pipeline, historic deals and much, much more.”

When working from home, sales reps can’t quickly ask if a co-worker spoke with, or emailed a new lead. With Salesforce, all calls and emails are logged right on the contact record as they happen, so there’s no confusion. This way, reps can catch up if they need to without having to wait for someone to explain the updates themselves. Salesforce eliminates the need for unnecessary meetings and allows users to continue being productive at home.

Salesforce: The Ultimate Work From Home Platform

We’ve had the ability to offer the option for our employees to work from home since we started using cloud-based solutions in 2002. Since then, we’ve adjusted and created an infrastructure within Salesforce so our team can work from home and not skip a beat. While Salesforce isn’t required in order to run a business from home, it can incredibly boost the progress and success of each department, all while making your employees’ jobs easier. We understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is and how it supports every department in your business. If you’re struggling to run your company from home, please email us at wfh@corraogroup.com. We can jump on a call to discuss your current and projected business situations and suggest assistance.

Our Top 3 Manufacturing Pain Points Solved

Are you receiving any positive feedback or results from your sampling program(s)?

Have you lost complete visibility into rebates across your entire ecosystem?

Does it take forever for your account receivable team to collect payments?

Corrao Group understands the frustration of manufacturers who experience these pain points on a daily basis.

For the past two months, we’ve been explaining the invaluable benefits and exciting features of Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud. New features include: Sales Agreements, Account-Based Forecasting, Performance Reporting, and more.

Over the next two months, Corrao Group will be releasing three individual blogs to identify, explain, and offer solutions for three critical manufacturing pain points: Product Sampling, Rebates, and Collections. As a long time manufacturing-focused partner, we have been able to work with 100+ manufacturing companies to find the best-in-breed solutions for their wants and needs. Our solutions for product sampling, rebates, and collections are tailored, optimized, and exclusively built for the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud Platform.

Manufacturing Cloud was designed for manufacturers to have greater transparency and collaboration across their entire business ecosystem. According to Cindy Bolt, “This unified view provides a clear picture of manufacturing customers through new sales agreements and account-based forecasting solutions that enable them to accurately forecast, plan, and drive predictable (and better) business outcomes.” Old and traditional manufacturing methods or systems can’t compare to the faster, transformative, and newer technology of Salesforce. To learn more about Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, please visit their blog.

Corrao Group’s experience and discipline with manufacturing pain points dates back to 1982 with our Managing Partner. Jack Corrao has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. Since 2008, Corrao Group has been helping manufacturers utilize Salesforce to create an automated closed-loop system for channel-centric manufacturing. To learn more information about us, please visit our website. If you would like to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud, please check out our blog posts linked below:

Salesforce Releases Manufacturing Cloud

The Importance of Manufacturing Cloud

Our Favorite Manufacturing Cloud Features

Manufacturing Cloud: No Longer Negotiating Blind

Manufacturing Cloud: No Timely Visibility Solved

Manufacturing Cloud: Reporting on Performance

Tracking the overall performance of your company is an essential component for a successful business. Full visibility into your reports can become arduous if your data is siloed across multiple spreadsheets or systems. Manufacturers should move to Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud for a “More predictive and transparent business” (Salesforce). Manufacturing Cloud becomes your central location to house all your data, KPIs, metrics, reports, and more.

Reports are Difficult to Create

It’s important to have a dashboard of reports that identify the business’s health, performance, and areas for improvement. Reports such as KPIs, run-rate, financial reports, forecasting, and sales pipeline are all critical to track in real-time. Reporting may seem impossible if you don’t have full visibility into your business’s data or metrics. Additionally, it can be frustrating for manufacturers if creating reports is difficult or demanding. Both pain points can lead to performance reports being indistinguishable from each other. For example, your run-rate reports may be mixed with your new logo reports, which results in you not being able to understand your actual business performance or sales costs. Manufacturing Cloud gives all your users a reporting vehicle that captures your entire business ecosystem.

A Solution Built for Manufacturers

Manufacturers now have the ability to operate in a much more profitable point of view as Manufacturing Cloud delivers efficiency, speed, accuracy, and consistency. Additionally, it integrates with your Salesforce and other users to have everyone on the same page. Manufacturing Cloud combined with Einstein Analytics gives your users a complete 360 view of your customers, data, and reports. Utilize Einstein Analytics to gain crucial insights into your account health, demand planning, product penetration, sales agreements, and your KPIs. Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud provides your company with the predictability and consistency that is needed in the manufacturing industry.

Working With Manufacturers Since 2002

Working with Salesforce since 2002, we’ve seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will allow customers and their partners to have company-wide visibility into all their business processes. With tools such as sales agreements and forecasting, data can be analyzed faster and effortlessly. Reporting on performance becomes easier with Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud. Salesforce consulting services have been just as important to us as business process optimization, and we strive to help businesses maximize their investments into their CRM and Manufacturing Cloud.

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Sources

Salesforce (Einstein Image and Logo)

Manufacturing Cloud: No Timely Visibility Solved

Salesforce solved a significant pain point for the manufacturing industry as manufacturers no longer have to negotiate blind. Salesforce figured out another challenge for the manufacturing industry: No Timely Visibility into Sales Agreements. Sales Agreements in spreadsheets can become very confusing and frustrating to track. Manufacturers must veer away from spreadsheets to a single source of truth.

Losing Track of Sales Agreements

Manufacturers are often so busy that losing track of sales agreements becomes a regular occurrence because most agreements are managed or hosted outside of the ERP. Manufacturers can’t make the necessary changes to help their company if a sales agreement is lost and underperforming. Data spread out across multiple spreadsheets or silos will cause multiple problems for your company in terms of tracking, updating, and sharing deals. Without full visibility into every deal, you’ll lose an opportunity or two without making any adjustments to the agreements or releases.

Salesforce’s Solution

Manufacturing Cloud gives you a flexible central location to house all your customer data, sales agreements, and forecasts. Sales agreements give your sales users the ability to put actual orders beside planned and forecast amounts in real-time. Additionally, manufacturers can receive automated platform alerts on missed targets to make quick adjustments to underperforming agreements. Real-time visibility allows manufacturers a way to manage complex deals and release schedules.

Salesforce Power Users

Salesforce solving the pain point of no timely visibility into sales agreements is another victory for the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing Cloud becomes your single source of truth that trickles data to your vendors, partners, and the factory. Everyone in your company has real-time visibility into all the important metrics with Manufacturing Cloud to work more efficiently and productively.

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every department of your business. Salesforce “off the shelf” is rarely tailored to your unique requirements. We work with you to remedy that. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers; implementing, customizing, and optimizing Salesforce. Since 2002, Corrao Group has been helping B2B organizations of all sizes successfully optimize their business processes with Salesforce and our full-scale digital marketing agency. Please contact us if you would like to learn more about how Corrao Group can help you.

The New CCPA Regulations

Active January 1st, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was put in place to protect the data and privacy of consumers.

Active January 1st, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was put in place to protect the data and privacy of consumers. It gives California consumers the right to see how businesses use their personal information. Businesses must tell what type of data they are collecting and have to give the consumer the option to say no to them selling their data. If the company has its data breached, the consumer has the right to sue the company.

CCPA applies to companies that:

Exceed an annual revenue of $25 million.
Obtain personal information of 50,000 or more California residents, households, or devices per annum.
Secure 50 percent or more of their annual revenue from selling California residents’ personal information.

You should determine if your company wants to have different privacy items for California residents or have one single united notice. Either way, a large majority of US companies must update their privacy policies to comply with these new rules.

Your company will also have to:

Review and understand the personal information you have collected
Know how the consumers’ personal information is collected and confirm that the information sold to third party companies and is shared
Train present and future employees on how to properly handle customers’ information
Update your internal and online privacy policies
Prepare procedures to quickly respond to customers who request access to, deletion from, or information related to the sale or disclosure to their information.
Review contacts with third-party service providers that have customer information you have given away
Ensure third-party service providers who have your consumers’ personal information comply with the new CCPA rules
Prepare tech solutions that process requests made by customers to opt-out of the selling of their information
Review your internal policies on how the collection of personal information is gathered

This is just the beginning. By 2025, there will be even more states to sign similar legislation giving every US consumer the right to know how their data is being used.

I hope that after reading this you have a grasp on the new rules and regulations that the CCPA has put into effect. If you meet the criteria, don’t wait to make changes, be the first and set the example for others to follow. If you have any questions, please feel free to visit our website and reach out to us. Hope to hear from you soon!

Who Will You Adopt?

Our 2020 challenge to every company is simple: Adopt a nonprofit organization NOW. Words like care, commitment, love, and generosity come to mind when we think of the word adoption. When you adopt an animal, child, or nonprofit, it’s forever. Adoption doesn’t just mean you get together a couple times a year to feel good. Adoption means you are giving a commitment level that happens 365 days a year.

Give Beyond The Holidays

For many companies, it’s the same story every year. The holidays arrive, and companies conduct one or two fundraising events for charitable nonprofit organizations. How is your company contributing to solving social problems the other 11 months of the year? The need to give back to your community hasn’t stopped because the holidays are over.

It’s time for the executive leadership of companies to adopt a nonprofit organization to help make a difference year-round.

The Importance of Adoption

Adopting a nonprofit involves ingraining the organization into your company, culture, and business plans. Adoption is a deep and passionate commitment to helping a nonprofit every day of the year. It’s about making sure your company accepts, assists, and engages with both the events and mission of their adopted nonprofit.

You should take the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for adoption as seriously as any other company KPI’s. Our managing partner, Jack Corrao states, “When I look at our revenue and profitability goal, I think our nonprofit (Emilio Nares Foundation) goal the most important. The Emilio Nares Foundation’s (ENF) flagship program is to provide transportation for children with cancer to and from their hospital appointments. Funding rides for kids means we’ve hit our revenue numbers, we have happy customers coming back to us, and we have a healthy business culture. For me, it is the ultimate metric for Corrao Group.”

Nonprofit organizations need help. Many people working for nonprofit organizations don’t have a business or financial background. In today’s world, employees want to put in a fair amount of work, make a livable wage, and want to be associated with a company that makes a difference in their community. CEOs who adopt this model are more likely to attract people who are passionate about both their work and making a difference.

Our Beginnings – Saint Augustine High School

Our adoption started with Saint Augustine, a private intercity Catholic High School in San Diego. Saint Augustine reached out to our Managing Partner and their own Alumni, Jack Corrao, about his interest in being a part of the technology committee in 2001.

Because Saint Augustine shaped Jack Corrao’s core values, he wanted to do more.

Jack joined the Saint Augustine High School board of directors to provide consultative guidance for their future mission. Their first initiative – the rebuild of Saint Augustine High School into a new state of the art facility. New facilities included high-tech classrooms, a library, and a Gymnasium.

Health issues caused Jack to leave the board of directors in 2012. However, Saint Augustine remains a part of Corrao Group’s culture. The Corrao Group’s internship program provides high school seniors with early mentorship and guidance on the basics of business operations. Early professional guidance for students provides them with purpose and direction to help start their business careers. After students complete their internships, Corrao Group stays connected to them via advanced summer internships, LinkedIn, and summer visits. Many former interns become full-time Corrao Group employees after graduating from college.

St. Augustine High School located in San Diego

The Emilio Nares Foundation

We decided to adopt and become a part of the ENF family in 2006. ENF helps families navigate through their child’s journey with cancer. Their flagship program, Ride with Emilio, provides free transportation for underprivileged children and their parents to and from the hospital for cancer-related appointments. Ride with Emilio currently serves children in San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles. Their goal is to bring Ride with Emilio nationwide.

Here’s how we helped grow and expand ENF since adopting their organization in 2006:

- Corrao Group gladly welcomed ENF into our office when they needed additional workspace.
- We implemented their Salesforce Org to help manage their donations and events.
- A Corrao Group staff member has been on ENF’s board of directors to make sure we are physically a part of their organizational goals.

The most important part of our commitment and KPIs for ENF is Ride with Emilio. For every hour we bill our customers, we provide $5 to ENF which has resulted in over 3,396 rides for children to and from cancer treatment. It is a donation we happily send once a month to help them grow and expand as an organization.

“Using the Salesforce CRM tool has allowed us to increase our outreach and improve our donor relations. We are able to better manage our campaigns. Our Salesforce team, Corrao Group, has given us outstanding service, and they have become an integral part of our organization. Because of their excellent service, we have been able to grow and serve additional families whose children are battling cancer treatment.” – Richard Nares, Founder of ENF

Corporate Examples

Lebron James

Lebron James, an NBA player for the Los Angeles Lakers, recently opened a school in Akron, Ohio. Lebron’s “I Promise” school opened up in 2018 for 240 at-risk third and fourth graders. Kids who attend the school will receive:

Marc Benioff

Marc Benioff, Founder and CEO of Salesforce, recently set forth a challenge for every CEO: Adopt a public school. Benioff writes about a random visit to Presidio Middle School in his new book, Trailblazer. He didn’t have an appointment, but he walked into the principal’s office and asked to help out. Since his visit to Presidio Middle School, Salesforce has adopted 107 public schools. Additionally, Salesforce has given out $70 million dollars to local San Francisco and Oakland public schools. Salesforce also provides volunteerism, mentoring, and technology to the schools. Benioff recently explained the power every CEO has to make a difference in schools, “You’d be surprised at the power your company can have to improve your local public schools. And do you want to know who are in the schools? It’s the children of your employees.”

Domino’s

Domino’s selected St. Jude as its’ national philanthropic partner in 2004. Domino’s has raised more than $57 million for St. Jude through its participation in the St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign since 2004. “St. Jude is leading the way the world understands, treats, and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Treatments invented at St. Jude has helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since it opened more than 50 years ago, and they won’t stop until no child dies from cancer” (St. Jude Mission Statement).

Richard Branson

Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, has been a big proponent of giving back instead of using the money for his personal use. Branson found Virgin Unite to “Unite people and entrepreneurial ideas to create opportunities for a better world. Since then, together with some great partners, we have inspired and incubated a number of wonderful collaborations – like The Elders, Ocean Unite, Carbon War Room, The B Team, and The Branson Centre for Entrepreneurship – which have spurred much needed change in the world.”

Adopt a Nonprofit

Our 2020 challenge to companies is to find a local nonprofit to adopt. Committing to a nonprofit is not just about writing a check for them every month. It’s about making sure your company embraces, participates, and supports all their events. You will have a successful adoption if you find a nonprofit that you are passionate about, and an organization that aligns with your company’s culture.

Where will your company priorities be in 2020? You are disconnected from our world if money is your only priority. We are in a new decade. It’s time to wake up and make a difference for people who need our help… TODAY!

What will you choose?

References

Manufacturing Cloud: No Longer Negotiating Blind

Salesforce’s announcement of Manufacturing Cloud has given manufacturers the tools needed to take control of their business. Before the release, it was difficult for manufacturers to have full visibility into sales agreements. Negotiating blind occurs for companies when their sales team doesn’t have what it needs to plan, sell, or close the right deal. As a result, negotiating blind was the first significant pain point that Salesforce solved for the manufacturing industry.

Outdated ERPs and Forecasts

Ongoing changes to sales orders that are not communicated back to the original sales agreement are a major challenge for manufacturers today. The changes to sales orders are not fully visible to manufacturers because the sales agreements are managed outside of the ERP, or the deals are across multiple ERPs. In addition, inaccurate forecasting becomes an issue when updated sales orders are not synced directly to the sales agreement. Without accurate data in real-time, manufacturers tend to create forecasts based on their own best interests rather than relying on accurate data from past or present performances.

Salesforce’s Solution: Manufacturing Cloud

Manufacturing Cloud provides a central location to surface orders from multiple systems. All your employees and partners have real-time visibility into planned orders that can be compared to actual orders. All of your important data housed under one single source of truth will help Manufacturers improve their forecasting as employees cans see changes made to sale orders in real-time. With the help of Salesforce Einstein, forecasted data on the agreement can outline the internal assumptions that went into the contract so that you never forget crucial insights from your previous deals. In addition, Einstein can generate insights automatically to help you plan, sell, or close a deal when you store all your customer data into Salesforce. Manufacturers should no longer have to negotiate blind with the ability to have one single source of truth.

How Forecasts Help You

Let’s say you’re the Managing Partner of a manufacturing company that makes reading glasses. In order to make the glasses, you need to engage with a metal company for the frames and a plastic company for the lens.

After reviewing your forecasts without using the insights from Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, you estimate you will require 10,000 eyeglass units. With the ability to forecast accurately in real-time with Manufacturing Cloud, you’re alerted you have the potential to make more than 12,000 and save in costs. Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers better confidence in their actual production units because of the ability to have accurate forecasting that can be broken down per month.

Now, you’re able to circle back to your vendors and negotiate a better price for your company based on the volume of material that’s coming in. Manufacturing Cloud takes the guesswork out of forecasting.

Corrao Group Can Help You

Solving the first pain point of the current Manufacturing industry is a significant accomplishment for Salesforce. With the recent release of Customer 360 Truth, Salesforce is giving its customers a single source of truth that houses all your customer’s data. Much like Customer 360 Truth, Manufacturing Cloud gives Manufacturers a more precise picture of their entire business with additional features that will help improve their company. If you would like to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud’s capabilities or features, please reach out to the Corrao Group team. The Corrao Group team is here to help you integrate and advise you on the best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.

Best Practices: Inbound Marketing Strategies for B2B

Revisit and Repurpose Content

According to the Huffington Post, B2B companies who blog attract 67% more leads than those who don’t. If you haven’t already started blogging, consider repurposing your existing content to get started. While blogging is a great first step in the content development process, you should expand the scope of your content library with videos, white papers, and case studies. A fully-formed content library serves as the foundation of your marketing initiatives by providing value to your audience throughout each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Reference Your FAQ’S

When prospects visit your site, they reach your site seeking answers to one or many questions. If you can anticipate the questions your audience is hoping to resolve, you’ll provide the early value while also spending less time answering the same questions over and over again. Leverage your frequently asked questions in your content strategy to improve relationships with your web visitors and strengthen the quality of your leads.

Trail Blaze With Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is the future of successful inbound strategies. A tool like Qualified allows you to interact with your web visitors in real-time to start the nurture process as soon as these visitors hit your website. Qualified mixes automation features and direct chat to help you optimize the conversational process. To further streamline your conversions, Qualified connects to both Salesforce and Pardot to capture visitor information directly in your CRM.

Click here for more information on how Qualified can bolsters your B2B strategy

Develop Your Social Strategy

Social media isn’t just for B2C. Social media continues to grow in value for B2B marketers as a content sharing platform attracting new leads, and nurturing existing ones. Just like any other content plan, your social media content plan should be structured, and this starts with a content calendar. Creating a content calendar will help you keep track of your social media presence by eliminating the chance of uncertainty halfway through the month.

Automate Your Marketing Initiatives

Gone are the days of tedious, manual marketing campaigns. Marketing automation platforms have taken over every industry and are built to grow with your business. At Corrao Group, we use Pardot as the foundation for our marketing programs and leverage the tool for internal onboarding too! Pardot offers a multitude of features that can save your team time, minimize mistakes, and align your sales and marketing teams. List segmentation, drip programs, email templates, A/B testing, content calendars, and autoresponders are all at features included in Pardot’s user-friendly interface. Need proof?

Check out our case study on how we helped our customer generate $3M in sales using Salesforce.

Engage With Industry Influencers

Imagine the value of being recognized as a reliable resource by the leaders of influence within your industry. Interacting on social media posts on LinkedIn or quoting tweets from influencers on Twitter helps you get started. Other businesses follow and trust these leaders and therefore would be more likely to value an interaction or observation of yours involving their trusted content. Connecting with them via social media is a quick and easy way to make yourself known.

Sharpen Your Titles

Despite its lengthy implementation, SEO continues to make or break the success of B2B digital marketing initiatives. When searching for information on Google, title tags inform the search algorithm that your content exists as a results option. This simple adjustment to the back-end of your website and your blog has the ability to make a huge, low-cost difference when it comes to driving traffic to your site. However, be sure your text titles correspond with what readers expect to find on your page or you may face Google’s penalties.

Optimize Your Web Pages

B2B audiences don’t have time to wait around and are often web-browsing from their mobile phones. Don’t let a slow website be the reason you lose impressions. A combination of issues could be slowing down your site from the size of your images to the location, arrangement, and type of code being used.

If you’d like to learn more about Inbound Marketing Strategies for B2B, please visit our website.

The Benefits of Moving to Salesforce Lightning

Salesforce has scheduled to enable the Lightning interface for all Salesforce users that have not yet migrated in January 2020. Salesforce users will still be able to access the classic interface, but there are many reasons why users should make the switch to Lightning. Customers on Salesforce’s new UI interface have increased their productivity by nearly 25%.

Corrao Group recommends all classic users to plan for the switch in 2020. You can start by turning Lightning on per user per department. Try Lightning out with the Sales or Service teams to get them trained, and when they feel comfortable, start with the next department. Your employees will become much more productive and find better results once they make the move to Lightning.

What is Lightning?

The Lightning Experience is a new interface that helps users build apps faster, create custom business logic, customize your user interface, and more. With a complete redesign, Lightning is a modern-day interface that allows users to build Lightning pages without code, using custom-built Lightning Components. Corrao Group doesn’t see Lightning as just a new interface. The Lightning Experience allows you to improve your processes and do so much more with better user adoption. Today is the best time for your company to re-evaluate and re-optimize your Salesforce system based upon your unique business needs. Lightning is also integrated with Einstein, Salesforce’s automated intelligence platform. Einstein provides helpful insights to help make jobs easier and boost production.

How Is Lightning Better Than Classic?

Better User Interface

First of all, the Lightning experience looks and feels better than Classic. Your company can personalize Salesforce to fit your company’s brand logo and colors. Customized pages allow you to drag and drop different components on to your page so that every page can look different based upon the record type or app you find most relevant for your business.

In addition to the look of the instance, Lightning is easier to use than Classic. Everything on the Lightning platform from creating records to editing records is faster. For example, when you are on a record for a lead and you want to give them a call, Lightning allows you to call prospects directly from the lead page with a click of a button. If they don’t pick up the phone, use one of your pre-recorded voice mails, drop the message, and keep on working. A new feature, Salesforce’s Quick Actions, allow users to update records faster with the ability to log a call, send an email, or create a task from any page within Lightning.

New Features

All new features released by Salesforce going forward will be specific for Lightning. Classic users are missing out on tons of improvements to the Salesforce system that helps improve your employee’s productivity. Lightning is integrated with Einstein to look at your data to predict outcomes on your sales deals. Einstein now offers insights into whether deals are likely to get bigger, smaller, or get pushed out to the next month. In addition to Einstein, the list below contains new features released by Salesforce that Classic users are missing out on. You can see the full difference between the two orgs right here.

- Pardot Einstein Campaign Insights
- Einstein Activity Metrics and Pricing Guidance
- Marketing Cloud Integration with Google Analytics 360
- Advertising Studio
- Mobile: Customized Mobile Experiences and the New Salesforce Mobile App
- Salesforce Essentials
- Salesforce Einstein: Quarterly Forecasting, Case Routing, and Code-Free Predictions on Records
- Field Service: Time Sheets, Health Check, and Extended Match Work Rules
- Knowledge: Expanded Channels, Flexible Styles, and Improved Article Management
- Recycle Bin now in Lightning
- Lightning Flows
- Customized Reports and Dashboards
- Kanban View
- Quick Actions

Enhancements On Existing Features

Salesforce took the pain points that users had in classic and made improvements to make them better in Lightning. For example, there are added enhancements on existing features such as reports and dashboards. Lightning dashboards look much better in Lightning now that you are not limited to the 3 Column layout. Users can now customize dashboards to a specific size or style that best fits your interests. In addition to the look and feel of dashboards, Salesforce has added a Kanban view which has been a big hit for Salesforce users. The Kanban view allows users to take any list you want, and with a click of a button, users can see each record as a card with the ability to drag and drop the cards into different stages depending on where your deal is.

Corrao Group Can Help You Make The Switch

As a partner of Salesforce for over 11 years, Corrao Group can help your company make the transition from Classic to Lightning. We have grown up using Classic and have made the switch to Lightning over a year ago to find a new UI system that allows our business to run quicker, better, and faster. Lightning should not be considered as “something we will get to eventually.” Migrating to Lightning is something you will need to budget for, and eventually implement by the end of the year. Look at switching to Lightning as a move that will help your entire company in terms of use and ease. As a partner of Salesforce for 11 years, our recommendation would be to contact a professional who has been through this before and can help you through every step of your process.

Please visit our contact us page to get a quote or assessment before it is too late!