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.

6 Reasons to Use Video in Account-Based Marketing

Videos work because it helps companies stand out from their competitors; they grab the viewer’s attention in a way that a simple email cannot.

B2B companies are seeing higher ROI with Account-Based Marketing tactics (ABM) than they are with other marketing initiatives. Incorporating video technology into one’s ABM program can only boost its success. While those extremely nice and ground-breaking videos we see from Nike, Apple and others are amazing, even simple videos of a rep at their desk can boost ABM efforts. These videos work because it helps companies stand out from their competitors; they grab the viewer’s attention in a way that a simple email cannot. In addition to standing out from your competition, here are six reasons to use video in your ABM efforts:

1. Videos Boost Conversions and Sales

Having a video on your landing page can boost conversions by 80%. With vision being the most dominant sense, it’s not surprising. For sales, 74% of users who watched a product video ended up buying something. In today’s digital world, videos are outperforming white papers and enhancing landing pages to give the customer an easier experience.

2. The ROI is There

83% of businesses report that video provides great ROI. Whether the video’s quality is at the scale of Nike, or a simple product demo, it pays off. As technology advances, editing tools are getting easier to use and more affordable. Companies that don’t have experience in video marketing can easily get involved and start today.

3. Video Marketing Saves Time

Consumers are smart, and they know downloading a white paper means going through a sales demo at some point. They also know that it takes time to read and digest the content as the content tends to be more sophisticated than that of video. Showing a video helps viewers learn all they want about a company/solution if the video does the job right.

4. Provides Confidence and Validation

If the cost is large enough, the buyer will have to put their reputation on the line to justify it. Having a case study video testimonial will help the buyer, and their company feel more confident in your solution. Videos are also easier to share and don’t require additional information as white papers tend too.

5. Videos are Easier to Digest

In your busy workday, can you afford to spend 15 minutes reading a white paper, or would you rather watch a 3-minute video to obtain the same info? The average viewer retains 95% of info they watch versus the 10% when they read. Multiply this a few times because your colleagues will be reading/watching this content and it all adds up.

6. Communicates Emotion

A personalized video goes a lot further than a white paper, especially when it comes to first impressions. Emotions play a part in making decisions, and personalized videos can build a relationship. When the buyer narrows their choice down to two solutions and can’t decide on which one to choose, having that relationship is going to be the difference-maker.

Anyone can start using video marketing in their ABM strategy as soon as today! Recording a video containing content that would typically be copied and pasted into an email can be your simple start. Don’t have an ABM strategy in place yet? Don’t worry, it’s not required to use video in your outreach. If you’d like to start Account-Based Marketing, take a look at our 5 tips to get started blog post. Visit our website and contact us today if you’d like us to help run, or assist your marketing efforts through our digital marketing agency. We provide marketing services of all kinds, including content creation, paid advertising, filling funnels, and much more.

ABM for Beginners – 5 Tips to Get Started

It’s well known that 87% of B2B marketers agree that ABM delivers a higher ROI than any other method (ITSMA). The next question everyone asks is, “where should I start?” ABM for beginners is a complex strategy, and newcomers can quickly become intimidated by the time and effort it takes to run. The truth is, even a company with 10 employees can successfully execute an ABM strategy. All it takes is knowing how to start correctly with a solid foundation. Businesses just don’t start ABM with 200 accounts on day one; they start out with a few accounts, show ROI and success, correct themselves, and continue to scale. ABM for beginners starts with building the right team.

1. Form the Team

An ABM strategy is only as great as the team that develops it. It’s pivotal that ABM teams are built correctly with the right people. They will be responsible for defining the goals and KPIs, developing the strategy, and executing to produce results. There is no magic number for the right team as it varies based on the company’s size. Recommended team members include the heads of Sales and Marketing, including those involved with content strategy, technology management, and media managers. Once the team is assembled, it’s time to decide on who your customers will be with your ABM strategy.

2. Identify Target Accounts

With hundreds and even thousands of accounts on file, is there a trick to pinpointing the ones that would provide the highest chance of ROI? There is, creating your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). An ICP is a description of a company that is the perfect fit for your solution. Criteria can include industry, budget, employee headcount, the technology they use, etc. Based on how many criteria a company meets, they should be segmented or tiered. Those that meet more criteria of the ICP should produce the most ROI, so they should be tiered higher and given more attention and resources. For example, if your solution is perfect for a company in the manufacturing industry with a budget of $30k, has 400 employees whom all use Gmail, that would be a Tier 1 client. If an account comes in that meets only one out of eight potential criteria, they would be a tier 3 client. Once some tier 1 accounts are segmented, we can then target and message the decision-making contacts at the account.

3. Highlight Decision-Makers

Finding out those who will ultimately say yes or no to your solution at a company will help your team market to them, swaying them to say yes. These decision-makers usually are c-level, but it’s also important to find out those who may not be in the c-suite but still have a major influence on this decision. Finding out who these contacts are can be done through interactions with the company as well as conducting research. The value here is having the confidence that you know who you’re speaking to will ultimately be the ones making the decision on your solution. A buyer persona should be filled out for each decision-maker, and include info on their daily activities and pain points. Knowing about your buyers’ pain points will help marketing create their content, and help sales with their outreach since they’ll know what pains to address. Having these contacts highlighted will help you in the next step when you create custom content for each decision-maker.

4. Design Outreach Plan

In traditional marketing, the same content is usually blasted out to everyone in all types of roles. ABM is about sending custom content about how your solution(s) will help the recipient in their specific role. This requires research to be done on what challenges they face daily, and how your offering will solve it. For example, a VP of Marketing at a tier 1 account will receive content from your company on how your solution will help produce more quality leads because it is a pain point for them. This can be time-consuming, but well worth the investment. Once the content is finalized, incorporating it into the larger outreach plan will help paint the larger picture for everyone. You’ll designate who will receive content and when, when a call from sales will go out, when they will see an ad about your solution, etc.

5. Expand Accounts, ROI Reporting

ABM requires an abundance of research, but the time and resources is well worth the investment. Due to all the research your company will do, they can find additional ways that your solution(s) can help a customer that would have never been found through traditional marketing. This stops the one-and-done projects and allows a longer engagement and more success for both your company and the customer. After ABM has been running for some time, it’s time to report on your success, did ABM work for your company? ABM reporting can be one of the more difficult efforts to track unless you have the right technology. It’s not recommended to track efforts manually as it would be too time-consuming, and not scalable. Our recommended tool is Salesforce’s Einstein B2B Marketing Analytics as it helps see top-level KPIs, identifies top-engaging accounts, see current stages, and much more.

ABM for Beginners: Final Thoughts

Account-Based Marketing will take time to show revenue due to the deals typically being larger in size. With ABM’s marketing efforts generating 200% more revenue than others, it’s well worth it (Flip My Funnel). In addition to having a great strategy, the technology used is also an important factor. Tried and true for both ourselves and our customers, the Salesforce platform has all the tools and connections to accomplish your ABM campaigns. Corrao Group offers services that both help set up your system for ABM training and campaigns, as well as execute and run it for your organization. If you’d like to download our full Account-Based Marketing Guide for B2B Marketers, please fill out the form below.

Salesforce Sales Cloud – Task Tracker or Business Streamliner?

Salesforce sales cloud tasks

You’re not alone if your company is using Salesforce Sales Cloud primarily for tracking tasks. Tasks are one of the simplest features and are easy to learn. They help users stay on track of open opportunities, larger projects, increase transparency and much more. Reports and dashboards can be built to show a high-level overview of users’ tasks tied to a specific opportunity, useful to review during project meetings. Companies that use Sales Cloud mostly for tracking tasks could get much more out of their current investment. Salesforce started out as a task and opportunity management system but has grown tenfold since then.

41% of Sales teams use Sales Cloud only for tracking tasks, where 35% say it streamlines their work. For other users, 27% use it for only tracking tasks, where 52% say it streamlines their work. (State of Salesforce). Other users are those in marketing, Service, IT, Finance and more.

So why are Sales teams not using Sales cloud past these initial features? Simply put, businesses aren’t keeping up with the new Salesforce features that are released. Sales cloud has released hundreds of updates that help deliver innovation to their customers. Users need to customize it to their unique selling experience in order to get more out of the platform than just tracking tasks and opportunities. Doing so will help pinpoint their customers’ individual needs, assist in their buying journey, and guide customers to contract signature. The best implementations extend the core functionality with solutions that assist sales users with everything from scoping and closing deals. We’re going to walk through the many ways us Salesforce users can streamline businesses beyond tracking the bare minimum.

Boost Sales Productivity

Each Salesforce cloud eliminates busywork so reps can focus time on what matters most. For Sales Cloud, it’s giving sales reps time back to focus on selling. Less time is spent updating multiple systems, tracking down information, and trying to find an old email – it’s all in one place in Sales Cloud. Sometimes, acquiring a new customer comes down to who contacted them first. A lead can visit 5 competitive companies and whichever one contacts them first gives them such a compelling pitch that they are favored. Chances are, the company that contacts them has a CRM, and it could be Salesforce Sales Cloud. Not only can it help companies engage leads quicker, but it also helps identify those potential leads, up-sell opportunities, and even sell to repeat customers. Some of these results aren’t from just one feature that can be turned on, it takes strategy combined with these features. With each strategy being different, knowing which system features to use is crucial.

Increase Efficiency

A profit increase isn’t the only ROI that should be tracked. Increasing your team’s efficiency is one way to help add to increased sales. Users can view important notes and documents that can help speed up the sale, helping the customer as soon as possible. For example, if a lead is looking for a few documents about a product, their sales rep can send the content to the lead, tracking, and logging when they open the content. They can accomplish this on their phone even as they’re heading out of an onsite meeting with a prospect. They can update fields and next steps so that those back in the office can move forward without having to wait. It doesn’t stop there with Sales; that’s right, Sales Cloud is for your entire company. A case can be automatically tied to a contact in Salesforce, recording the appropriate information and alerting the customer service rep. The rep can then record this and send a replacement if needed, which automatically alerts the Finance team. Your customers will appreciate the immediate responses and attention to detail that your company provides.

Implement Company Wide

From those measured in a Bluewolf survey, 45% say using one Salesforce cloud provides a cohesive experience. 55% said using three or more clouds provided the most cohesive experience. Implementing more clouds allows companies to onboard more departments onto Salesforce, helping the company stay on the same page. The clouds integrate seamlessly with each other, showing real-time information so there’s no more waiting around for someone to push an update. It also helps teams to be proactive, sending alerts when certain processes are triggered. For example, when a marketing lead reaches the criteria to become sales-qualified, the sales owner instantly receives a notification, prompting them to strike while the iron is hot. If engaged in a competitive sales environment, being first is key and sometimes even one day can cost companies a large deal.

Streamline The Entire Business

The moral of the story here is to think about processes that can be automated by Salesforce rather than become overwhelmed with what it has to offer. Find out from each department where the gaps are, and use the system to help better them. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a great way for a company to stay on top of its business and ahead of their competitors. With such a diverse system, it can be overwhelming to try and learn all of the features to know which ones are the most efficient to use. In no way is Salesforce a system that new users can set up themselves. There are too many features, and to properly learn the entire system in addition to one’s day job would take years. Expert help is always recommended, if not required to successfully implement Salesforce. Corrao Group’s Salesforce consulting business dates back to 2008 and has helped over 850 companies customize Salesforce to their business. Visit our Salesforce services pages to learn more about what we do, and how we can start the conversation of helping Salesforce streamline your business.

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Why Manufacturers Need a CRM

Many manufacturers don’t feel the need to have a CRM due to the fact that they are usually touted as being tools for sales and marketing teams. One of the great features of a CRM, such as Salesforce, is the ability to integrate all departments and vendors while creating a seamless connection between employees and customers. Salesforce goes beyond the sales department to streamline customer service, marketing, finance, partner management, logistics and everywhere in between. In order to keep up with the incredibly personal and attentive world that a flexible CRM creates, you must hop on the bandwagon! If you’re still unsure about how a CRM could benefit your team, keep reading to see the top reasons why every manufacturer needs one.

salesforce chicago

CRM Benefits for Manufacturers

Inventory Management, E-commerce, Finance

A CRM is not only great for basic communications between a company and its customers, but it’s also an invaluable tool for managing your inventory, finances, and e-commerce processes throughout your company. Integrating your ERP with CRM allows for full-spectrum visibility across all valuable KPIs for your business. With insight on your finished inventory as well as your shop floor, a CRM provides invaluable information for field sales, manufacturer reps, vendors, order processing, and manufacturers to asses ways to improve the inventory turns and the net availability of products in stock.

Customer Support

Since CRM provides data for all aspects of your business processes, it can be used as a tool to better support your customer’s needs while communicating with your sales staff. Your customer will be able to access knowledge based articles to self-diagnose resolutions as well as getting real-time status on open trouble tickets. Another way your CRM will transform your customer support is through the data regarding past purchases and interactions. From customer communication to product launches, your CRM will provide next-level engagement with your customer, enticing them to further support your business.

Increased Sales Pipeline Visibility

A CRM such as Salesforce provides real-time information for availability and ship dates, as well as updates and alerts for problems that need resolution. Having visibility into your entire sales pipelines will allow your manufacturing team to work seamlessly with sales in order to resolve issues and predict trends for the future. Integration with ERPs will also tie the complete supply chain with the forecast and show actual sales in real-time.

manufacturing crm

Company-wide Collaboration

Along with sales, your manufacturing team can benefit greatly from the collaboration across departments, whether that be with marketing or project management. Salesforce provides a tool named Chatter, which can provide a space for internal communication about new product releases for example, and other general conversations. Having a collaborative environment is beneficial for manufacturers as they now have insight into the way products are being sold, and are able to connect with teams across the company about data present within the CRM.

Vendor Management

A CRM allows you to stay connected to your vendor to ensure the highest quality products and on-time delivery through real-time communication. In today’s business world, ensuring that your vendor supports your business needs requires an integrated solution to ensure an efficient process is in place. Allow a tool like Salesforce to schedule and grade your vendors for you, in order to allow your staff to be as efficient as possible.

Customer Feedback

Ensuring your customer’s satisfaction is critical in today’s business world of social networking. As customers go through their evaluation, purchase, and receipt of products, you can capture and analyze areas for improvements, as well as using the feedback to socialize on your corporate channels.

salesforce consulting services

How Corrao Group Can Help

We have been optimizing business processes since 2002 and have continued to work with numerous clients in fields from manufacturing to finance. We have worked with large and small companies, new and seasoned companies, and everywhere in between. We know how it feels to have a business process in disarray, and we strive to create customized plans for each company that allows them to grow.

Working with Salesforce since 2008, we’ve have seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce allows for streamlining and company-wide visibility into all business processes. With tools such as custom reporting and forecasting enablement, data can be analyzed effortlessly. 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.

To learn more about our the benefits of Salesforce and our Salesforce consulting services, visit our Salesforce Services page.

Top 8 Reasons Why Your Company Needs an Internal Newsletter

When it comes to creating newsletters, you probably only think about the ones that go out to your clients. From product sales to social marketing updates, newsletters are a great way to keep customers engaged and coming back to your company for more. But, did you know that internal newsletters are just as important? We have compiled a list of the top 8 reasons why your company needs an internal newsletter so you can keep your employees as engaged as your clients!

Top 8 Reasons Your Company Needs an Internal Newsletter

1. Transparency across all departments

Employees don’t usually keep up with their coworker’s roles unless they happen to be working in the same department or team, which can lead to a lack of company knowledge. Having an internal newsletter is a great way to highlight important projects each department is working on and may encourage employees to reach out to one another for questions and collaborations based on personal experience.

marketing services

2. Company & Industry News

It’s important that everyone in your company is up-to-date on the latest company endeavors, as well as the latest news about your industry. An internal newsletter is a perfect place to provide links to new company products/marketing services, as well as updates on competitors or changes within the industry so all employees can be informed.

3. Introducing New Employees

Whether you have a small company or are as big as Google, it’s important that new employees and clients are recognized company-wide. When there is a new addition to the company, many employees get caught up with work and don’t take the time to get to know the person or their role, so welcoming them through the newsletter is a great way to keep everyone in the loop and encourage a conversation!

Our Favorite Salesforce ’19 Spring Release Updates

We’ve attended the webinars, we’ve read through the release notes, and we’ve actually used the features. With our customers in mind, we trained our team on these new features to improve our Salesforce consulting services. In addition to the full release notes found at the bottom, here are some of our favorites.

Sales Cloud

Accelerate Sales with Cadences and Work Queues

Description: Cadences are custom sales processes that guide reps through handling prospects of all types. Create consistently scheduled cadences of outreach activities that alerts and helps reps nurture their prospects. Work queues prioritize the next steps reps should take with their prospects. The app provides them with approved email templates and call scripts to help close the deal.
Benefits: Shows which prospects are ready for each outreach in your sales cycle. Handle prospects in half the time than it took before. Ensure company-wide uniformity of sales best practices.

Pinning Feature

salesforce sales cloud

Description: With 5,000 votes on the Appexchange, this Salesforce update allows users to pin certain filters on modules. Have a custom filter on tasks for past due tasks only? When you navigate to the Tasks object, it may default to recently viewed tasks, but now you can pin custom filters to default to.
Benefits: Saves time navigating across multiple objects. Increases customization of the platform.

Custom Training Programs

Description: This Salesforce feature gives companies the power to set up custom programs with certain training links, per user. Links can include Salesforce articles as well as external links.
Benefits: Uniformity on training new and existing users with the ability for tracking. Maximizes the use of the Salesforce platform, users don’t need a separate system for training.

Visit our Sales Cloud services page to learn how we can optimize your sales processes.

Salesforce for Project Management

Salesforce integration best practices

Corrao Group uses Salesforce for everything from client profiles, internal & external project management, and everything in between; we’ve deployed the Salesforce platform company wide. We implement Salesforce integration best practices in order to make sure we get the most out of our Salesforce organization. Our project management team utilizes Salesforce as a tool to track projects, assess our budgets, and bill employee time for maximum optimization of the platform.

Before Salesforce

Before using Salesforce, Corrao Group used to run on a lot of spreadsheets and constant overseeing. We had to set up our internal projects differently than external projects to bill time, and it was difficult to determine how much time was needed to complete each task in a project. When we adopted Salesforce in 2008, we became both a customer and a partner in the same day. Our mission with Salesforce was to maximize not only our investment with the platform, but our clients’ as well.

Once we switched to Salesforce for our project management, we had to evolve with our clients and learn how to utilize Salesforce integration best practices for our business consultations. Larger projects required more technical knowledge, and as power users of the platform, we took it into our own hands to figure out a way to make Salesforce work for us.

With Salesforce

Salesforce has provided visibility into our entire business process and has allowed our Project Management team to work more efficiently. We have tailored Salesforce to work with our own management tools from sales to kickoff, and now have both internal and external projects set up the same way. A popular feature we created was the automation of project communications to both the Salesforce Account Executive and the customer themselves. Without having to track down their Project Manager, automatic updates are sent out with timestamps regarding how the consulting project is tracking.

The customization of Salesforce is endless. We are able to add important details into each project such as files, quip documents, or even chatter threads. We have also implemented advanced dashboards such as Skuid in order to prioritize tasks and streamline management by utilizing Salesforce integration best practices. It is now easier to help project managers reassess how to work efficiently with the wide visibility into their projects, as well the ability to optimize Salesforce to see each individual’s skill-sets.

salesforce integration best practices — Project Notes & Additions in Salesforce

Moving over to Salesforce for project management did not come easily without the education about how Salesforce would work in our favor. Our whole company has to work together to learn how to manage our projects and prioritize the most important ones. From internal to external projects, we have been able to utilize Salesforce throughout all of our business processes, and with every new feature added is another way for us to maximize our investment with the platform.

Future of PM

The future of using Salesforce for our project management is ever-evolving. We have experienced the infinite customization of Salesforce, and the perks of better visibility so that we can spend less time overseeing, and more time helping our customers. We have ongoing conversations about ways we can continue to optimize our processes, as well as reassessing how we budget out our time.

With integration tools, we are not only able to streamline our own processes, but we can help our customers do the same. Our mission is to maximize our customers’ Salesforce investment, but in the process of doing so, we have continued to maximize ours. The advantages of Salesforce are endless, and we will continue to evolve our project management as Salesforce evolves with us.

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Where’s my Account-Based Marketing ROI?

ABM ROI

87% of B2B marketers agree that Account-Based Marketing (ABM) delivers a higher ROI than other marketing activities (ITSMA). If you’ve never executed ABM, your patience is usually tested when starting out. We’re used to semi-quick, yet small results with traditional marketing methods. A generic email blast goes out to a purchased list, and form submissions flood in. Boom, leads. Your Sales teams then engage with these leads and become upset to learn they’re not qualified. You realize that while you have hundreds of new leads, they’re not the right leads for your business. ABM saves your company time and allows Sales to focus on extremely qualified leads. In fact, Sales will only focus on leads that are your ideal customer, based on research of your existing customers. The result? Higher ROI, customers for life, and established personal connections.

Account-Based Marketing Tactics: Identifying Target Accounts

The first step in ABM is for “Smarketing”, Sales and Marketing, to come together and choose the target accounts you will go after. If you’re just starting out, we recommend selecting a few accounts, show the ROI, and expand from there. A three-tiered approach is recommended so Smarketing knows how much time to devote to an account. Tier ones are your highest valued accounts that meet your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). An ICP is a representation of your best-fit clients based on data and research. These should receive most of Smarketing’s attention, meeting face to face and establishing the greatest connection. Tier twos meeting most of your ICP, but aren’t as valuable as tier ones. Tier threes are your general leads that come in through lead magnets and your website. Adopting an ABM strategy doesn’t mean giving up on traditional marketing entirely, as that strategy will populate your tier threes. Tier threes can also move up the ranks too and become a tier one if they meet the ICP.

Building your Salesforce Analytics Foundation

New users can be so overwhelmed with Salesforce Einstein Analytic’s features that it could take up to one year to use the application. Unfortunately, a year is too long to see an ROI for on such a tool. The solutions to this are Templates, out of the box sets of dashboards and reports for new users. Templates provide an expedited start to users starting out with Einstein Analytics. Up and running within twenty minutes, they contain best practice KPI’s and are available to customize.

Templates give users the power to package and distribute their apps to others in your company, partners, and even customers. Apps give you ready-made dashboards automatically populated with Salesforce data to show KPIs. If you’d like to show Marketing’s influence on the Sales pipeline, “there’s an app for that.” Templates will allow you to package multiple apps and share them with the team and others to view real-time information from your system.

Salesforce Analytics

Key Elements of Templates:

– Quick Start: A configurable wizard helps you adjust analytical assets in your system.
– Intelligent KPIs: Templates will adjust and recommend best practice KPIs based on your company type.
– Advanced Data: Have data spread across the entire system? Templates automatically combine data from Opportunities, Accounts, Products and more in one view.

Salesforce Analytics Templates to Watch For in Spring ’19:

– Lead trending
– Financial service cloud products
– Trailhead and learning map

Take Salesforce Analytics Further:

Templates are a great way to start out simple and quick, but you’ll soon need more as your business grows. Professional help is always recommended. Experts who have completed hundreds of Salesforce analytics implementations can take your experience to the next level. Corrao Group has been implementing Salesforce since 2008, completing over 2,000 implementations. Check out our Salesforce implementation services here to see how we can help your company with Einstein Analytics.