Strategize: Salesforce Automation Best Practices
As you develop a plan, the best mindset is data-driven. It’s also collaborative.
The best practices accelerate sales success. Research shows these concrete strategies make Salesforce automation easy. Establish these nine practices to move your team forward.
1. Automate Intentionally
First, automate intentionally. Many tasks can be automated. But, automation takes time to implement—at least at first.
Know your team’s priorities. Then, implement Salesforce automation in order. The order prioritizes automation with the highest impact first.
Also, understand your team’s process well enough to determine genuine bottlenecks. Is slow communication the barrier? Or has your team de-prioritized collaboration?
It’s best to streamline the tasks causing the most problems. It’s also wise to make sure the issue is one automation can solve.
2. Define and Test Processes
Automation requires an AI to execute tasks in a precise order. Execution is contingent on triggers. You can set anything from the time of day to email open rates as a trigger.
Creating this chain of events defines automated sales processes. Yet, it’s not always clear which process solves the problem best.
So, you’ll need to test automation processes to determine the best practice. Create a few variations and compare them.
3. Think Ahead
As you implement automation, stay mindful of how things change. Ask yourself how to automate flexibly. Your strategy should accommodate plausible future scenarios.
These might be scenarios limited to your company. How will this automation plan scale? Can it handle unique our client types?
It’s also wise to be ready for large-scale change. How can your process integrate with future technology? This could be Salesforce updates. Or, underlying technology could become obsolete.
After all, third-party cookies and email pixel beacons were once routine. Now, they’re unusable. Data-gathering methods changed with the times.
Automation will too. Can your plan handle that?
4. Choose The Right Tools
Choosing the right tools for each job seems elementary. Yet, the practice is fundamental.
When you choose the right automation tool for each task, onboarding goes faster. And, you won’t waste time looking for a replacement.
We’ll unpack tool choice in more depth later in this guide. At this stage, it’s simply wise to be mindful. Checking out G2 is a good start.
After all, Salesforce surpasses other CRM tools. In the same vein, Salesforce automation tools also vary in quality.
5. Be Concise
Concision is good across the board.
Stay concise when you name things. All named elements benefit from concision. This is true of files, functions, and decision paths.
A concise name tells users each node’s identity at a glance. This cuts down time spent reading and searching for information on the platform.
Concision streamlines communication.
Likewise, concise processes are (often) better than long ones. A simple cause-and-effect chain moves customers through the funnel faster. The key is to balance simplicity with personalization.
6. Implement Standard Practices
The sixth best practice is “implement standards.” Standards outline how team members should use Salesforce. This reduces errors and integrates the program into representatives’ routines.
Standards should not vary from one person to the next. If possible, standardize automated data-capture processes for all teams in an organization.
When a practice is standard, it’s easier to remember. It also improves the team’s cohesion and alignment.
7. Effective Salesforce Automation Training
To implement any program well, you need to train users. What’s the best Salesforce automation training method? This might seem like an open-ended question.
Yet, researchers have studied how humans learn. You can apply vetted methods to train teams to use software to positive effect. And, new methods facilitate virtual learning. These strategies onboard overseas team members effectively.
Feynman Method
Dr. Richard Feynman was a physicist. He made incredible strides in the field of machine learning.
His observations also help humans learn. You can use the Feynman Method to train your team.
Feynman Training
First, describe Salesforce information to your student. Then, ask the student to explain the information back to you. Ask them to use their own words.
Encourage the student to explain in as simple language as possible.
The student will probably get stuck on part of their explanation. At that point, encourage them to identify precisely what they don’t understand. The student asks a concrete question to clarify the information.
Then, the student will resume explaining. As a person describes information in simple language, they understand it better.
This process of listening, describing, and asking questions empowers deep learning. It encourages a student to build an accurate mental map of the information.
Honing an accurate mental map makes it easy to reference that information. This makes it easier to use Salesforce after only one training session.
Build-In Routine Training Updates
Training should not be a one-time event. Instead, build training into your department’s routine.
Team members should be aware of upcoming training sessions. It helps when you train in regular cycles.
This way, you won’t have to scramble to train staff on new Salesforce updates. Instead, you can simply integrate updates into the regular schedule.
When there are no updates, training seminars can focus on specific integrations. Or, they can highlight automation best practices. This further clarifies and reinforces the information.
Virtual Sales Training
Virtual training is an integral part of the process. These video-chat sessions empower remote workers to use Salesforce well.
Virtual training uses similar methods as remote sales coaching. A savvy manager can combine training and coaching in a single call.
Both virtual training and coaching benefit from similar traits. Are you aware of your team’s non-verbal cues? Have you tracked team members’ progress, and can you help them correct course when they’re off-track?
Likewise, concise meetings are better. They’re memorable and cost-effective.
Plan out what you need to teach before the session. This keeps you from wasting time on tangents.
8. Balance Sales Rep Workloads
Rapid growth is a great problem to have. But, it can still be a problem.
Fortunately, you can solve it by maintaining balance. As the client list grows, balance the workload evenly among team members.
Integrate this balance into automated processes. For example, use the software’s collaborative features to help team members divide up work quickly.
One way to balance workloads is to define each representative’s territory. Look at each team member’s sales data so far. Then, curate territory borders that utilize each member’s strengths.
Territory can be client categories rather than geographic regions.
9. Routine Process Evaluation
Finally, implement routine evaluations. Regularly check the impact of each automated process.
How is it going? Rate the impact with KPIs that make sense for your company. Examine all relevant metrics.
The impact will probably be positive. Yet, it’s worth asking if it could be even better. Can the process be optimized in any way?
Routine evaluations let you account for changing contexts. They also keep you from settling for middling gains.
Without regularly scheduled evaluations, you may only discover a problem after its affected your team. With them, you prevent problems from happening.
Salesforce Adoption Pain Point #1: Sales representatives report spending 66% of their day performing tedious, non-selling activity in Salesforce.
This is a conundrum for most sales managers, as sales productivity is one of the common selling points of the Salesforce CRM platform.
How are you expected to deliver Salesforce ROI to the C-Suite if your sales team is spending most of their time on data entry, manual pipeline management, and Salesforce minutia—that is to say if they’re even using Salesforce at all. Non-selling activity also slows down onboarding and urgently limits the platform’s effectiveness.
As a manager, how can you improve Salesforce adoption, performance, and ROI?
The key is Salesforce automation.
When you automate the Salesforce platform, it’s easier than ever to use—for you and your sales team. Automation saves time, and increases data accuracy, sales productivity, and revenue growth.
This guide details everything that you the Sales Manager needs to know to reap the benefits of Salesforce automation—especially strengthening your reputation as the MVP in the company.
Click the links in the table of contents 👇 to skip to the chapter of your choice, or read this post from top to bottom.
Just be sure you print and bookmark this blog post so you can take it with you wherever you go, wherever you sell. And share it with your colleagues in sales management. They’ll thank you for it.
Table of Contents
Salesforce: A Brief Overview
Salesforce Adoption Barriers & Challenges
Salesforce Automation Breaks Adoption Barriers
What is Salesforce Automation?
Sales Tasks to Automate for Maximum Impact
How to Automate Salesforce Successfully
Strategize: Salesforce Automation Best Practices
Choosing Salesforce Automation Software
Conclusion on Salesfore Automation for Sales Managers
Timesinks Waste Sales Reps’ Potential
In sales, nothing matters as much as prospecting and closing. In a battle of priorities, it’s those two tasks vs everything else.
The best sales reps hone interpersonal skills that software can never replace. Persuasive conversational skills are valuable.
Why waste that value? Researching prospects, sifting through huge swaths of data, and re-typing reports is NOT necessary.
Salesforce: A Brief Overview
Salesforce is a premium CRM platform. This cloud-based software program improves sales strategies across the board, and it simplifies many elements of the sales process.
With Salesforce Automation, you could realize the following benefits daily:
What Sales Manager does’t want all of these benefits and more?
With these sales capabilities, the average company sees a return of at least $2.50 for every dollar it invests in Salesforce.
Yet, some companies see greater success than others. What limits companies’ experience of Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce Drives Exponential Growth—In Theory
Salesforce gives companies the potential for exponential growth. Yet, most businesses aren’t reaching that potential.
A company can’t thrive with Salesforce if team members don’t use it. And, its insights are less effective when teams use them inconsistently.
Sales team members might input incorrect information or miss out on key features or AppExchange apps if they’re uninformed. So, delivering that information is critical to optimize Salesforce use. At the same time, you’ll need to make the information stick.
To do this well, learn about challenges that prevent full Salesforce adoption.
Which of the following 👇 Salesforce barriers might your team face?
Salesforce Adoption Barriers and Challenges
You might be unsure if Salesforce is right for your team. Or, maybe your company has already invested significantly in the software, but your team just isn’t using it.
As you know, Salesforce is a data-driven platform. It uses the cloud to work with large swaths of data without impacting your bandwidth. Yet, this data can be hard to parse correctly.
Some team members resist onboarding because they feel overwhelmed by the data. Others are missing critical, advanced data literacy skills. This hampers their attempts to navigate the platform.
It’s easy to fall back on old habits. Fortunately, slow Salesforce adoption doesn’t mean adoption is impossible.
For most teams, slow adoption signals a struggle with one of the following 👇 six barriers. Any of these hurdles can make Salesforce onboarding a challenge.
1. Salesforce: Inconvenient and Inaccessible?
Even though Salesforce is cloud-based, some users find it hard to access. Ideally, a sales representative can update the program in real-time, from wherever they are.
In practice, the Salesforce mobile app isn’t intuitive for everyone (but this 5-star AppExchange app is). Salesforce mobile’s user interface doesn’t always communicate functions in ways users are used to.
It’s easy to fall back on old habits, and mentally reference programs we’re more familiar with. It’s harder to take a systemic approach to learn a new sales app interface.
This can make new users’ experience with Salesforce unsatisfying. As a result, users return to noting information in applications they understand, such as Microsoft Excel. This is especially true when they’re away from their desks or at home.
If you can successfully integrate Salesforce with apps your team knows better, they’ll use Salesforce mobile more often. Without that, though, the program remains inconvenient.
2. Data Concerns: Consistency, Security, Depth
Some sales reps worry about the data CRM programs like Salesforce handle. In almost every survey of new Salesforce users, they’re concerned about data security.
This mirrors evolving security concerns globally. The demise of third-party cookies shows how serious users’ privacy demands are. They also want groups that handle personal data to act transparently.
In many respects, client-lead data is more valuable than typical user data. So, representatives scrutinize platforms’ security measures.
Salesforce’s forecasts and strategies are only as good as its data. If team members hesitate due to security worries, data will be inconsistent.
Then, there’s the problem of the sheer volume of data. Certainly, breadth is good. Yet, some users worry this comes at the expense of depth.
Does skimming the surface of customers’ information grant any worthwhile insights? Or, can you enable Salesforce to go deeper than that?
3. Aggregation Challenges
Salesforce can aggregate data to different levels of granularity. That is, it groups data into readable sets with varying levels of detail.
Mastering these options can be challenging for some users. There are barriers to parsing the data as its presented. This is particularly true when users want to act on data quickly.
Aggregation challenges stem from ignorance. What data sets are right to use? Which parameters get you the information you need?
Input difficulties contribute to these challenges. How can team members best ensure accuracy at different levels? Should they take specific variables into account when they look at a “zoomed in” set?
Representatives might ask how Salesforce gets the data. And, how does it make grouping decisions? Without a grasp of the program’s logic, it’s harder to work with.
4. Synthesis Questions
Salesforce works from massive quantities of information. Then, it makes choices.
CRM programs sift through information. They bring together disconnected data. Then, they display what’s relevant.
Without Sales Artificial Intelligence, sales team members have to teach Salesforce how to make those decisions. This “teaching” can be daunting.
Moreover, how does manually teaching Salesforce impact your team’s approach to information input? Or synthesis, for that matter?
To resolve synthesis questions, make a “roadmap” of Salesforce’s logic. Then, look at your team’s strategies and goals. How does Salesforce fit into the roadmap?
Answering synthesis questions is about stakes. Stakeholders see how the program aligns with their goals.
An effective team understands this alignment. They know exactly what they are doing with this software. They know how each Salesforce task fits into a larger process. They know that process fits with the broader goal.
If you can make these connections, this understanding underscores their work.
5. Information Enrichment Issues
You need to enrich data. This is not intuitive with Salesforce.
Without enrichment, data is hard to use effectively. Even when your team can parse information well, the application isn’t obvious.
Team members may balk at the default enrichment processes. How much time are they saving with Salesforce? If they enrich all data themselves, it feels like one tedious task was replaced by another.
It’s worse if they don’t have a basis for enrichment. Do they have to hunt down enrichment information? Who can they get it from?
Yet, poor data enrichment can make Salesforce seem useless. If it’s ineffective, it’s not worth the trouble. So, onboarding stays challenging until you resolve these issues.
6. Context-Oriented Barriers
Context is a key part of enrichment. It’s also critical to effective data use.
How does your team know what context is relevant? Context can mean any point of comparison.
How does one data set measure up to known goals and targets? How does a new lead compare to existing clients?
Context confusion is a huge barrier to adoption. It’s also important that users know where to gather context data.
And, they need to learn how to gather context data effectively. What data-gathering tools are useful and trustworthy?
There’s also another side to context barriers. The sales representative’s context matters.
How much prior Salesforce or CRM knowledge do they have? What baseline are you working from when you onboard?
If you understand your team’s context, you can persuade them to use Salesforce wisely.
Just Another Time Drain?
Sales team members find these barriers offputting. These challenges make Salesforce seem cumbersome. It’s hard to say the work will pay off when you haven’t yet done the work.
Yet, so much of the work that makes Salesforce a success isn’t sales fundamentals. It’s not your team’s greatest skill set.
Instead, Salesforce requires research. And, it demands repetitive data-entry tasks. This can make the platform even more uninviting.
The highest ROI projections can’t get anyone’s time back. But, Salesforce’s monotonous tasks don’t inevitably discourage use.
The key is, let your team skip the monotony. Use automation.
Salesforce Automation Breaks Adoption Barriers
Automation drives businesses forward. Ravin Jesuthasan, a committee member in the World Economic Forum, notes most businesses aren’t preparing for the next decade wisely.
Companies that embrace automation win the race to the future. Jesuthasan’s research shows organizations do well when they divide work into task types.
Is a given work-task repetitive, or does it vary? Is it largely independent, or does it involve collaboration? Does a worker use their body or their mind?
Dividing these tasks lets managers use automation to augment each team member’s abilities. This lets you build each job to suit your teams’ strengths.
For a sales team, automation can augment most tasks, especially non-selling activities. This lets each worker play their best possible hand.
External Working Memory
Nobody can automate friendliness or creativity. But consider how automation programs facilitate creative collaboration by automatically booking meetings.
In that way, automation acts as an executive function. The software stays aware of each next step in the customer acquisition funnel. Then, it automatically executes the next task.
This frees up a sales representative’s working memory during the day. Working memory is a neurological function. It’s what we use to keep track of ongoing processes as we solve problems consecutively. That is, our working memories let us keep one eye on the “big picture.” This informs each task we perform as we do it.
Working memory is critical to make well-reasoned choices. But, it’s also limited. A person may only have four “memory slots,” or four processors to keep track of the order of tasks at once.
Fortunately, we can use automation to outsource these tasks. This frees up our memory slots for social and creative information.
So, automation increases workers’ creative problem-solving capacity. And, it saves us time.
What is Salesforce Automation?
Salesforce automation, specifically, saves sales team members’ time. It also lets them divert mental resources to creative solutions and social reasoning. This savings combination nets departments a high ROI.
Salesforce automation specifically streamlines tasks that let the CRM software function more efficiently. It hands certain processes on the Salesforce platform over to machines.
Thus, this automation improves the team’s productivity. And, it cuts down on new users’ onboarding time. Salesforce use gets faster, easier, and more effective.
How Salesforce Automation Software Works
Salesforce Automation software communicates with Salesforce. Then, it follows users’ directions to execute Salesforce tasks automatically. Imagine the time savings!
Teams use this automatic execution to streamline almost every Salesforce function.
Imagine how much easier your life is going to be with Salesforce automation!
Automation can make any sales process move faster. Chatbots provide friendly customer service. Automatic predictive lead scoring functions save time wasted weighing priorities.
Which tasks you choose to automate matters. While the best choice often varies from team to team, general trends hold across the board.
Sales Tasks to Automate for Maximum Impact
Sales reps execute hundreds of small tasks to move a client through a sales funnel. It makes more sense to automate some tasks than others.
The best Salesforce automation ideas free up representatives’ time. Then, they’ll spend that time cultivating strong, personable customer relationships. These relationships are customer acquisition’s backbone.
Salesforce trends show us which tasks take up a disproportionate time. And, despite the time they take, you can’t simply cut the tasks. So, automation streamlines six core sales processes.
1. Lead Generation
Lead generation tasks are crucial. Yet, the software can automate many of them.
Consider research. Representatives spend time identifying market trends, so they can hone in on new potential customers.
Research and Discovery
Sales AI programs with Salesforce Automation can discover these trends faster by scanning real-time market data in seconds. Then it can show team members exactly how to use it.
Automated research informs representatives about customer habits and cycles. It connects these observations to concrete marketing tactics. It can even highlight upselling opportunities.
Voice search functions also facilitate faster lead generation. Smart voice-search software parses verbal cues. This way, it can bring up relevant information in the course of collaborative conversations.
A sales rep won’t need to pause a conversation’s flow to look something up. Instead, the software pulls up data that drives lead generation as a whole.
Data Consolidation
Teams can also automate data consolidation. A one-click feature lets users automatically input information into Salesforce. It doesn’t matter where the data’s from.
It could be a lead a coworker passed over by email. Or, it could be from a shared document. Automatic consolidation lets teams develop comprehensive customer profiles in record time.
2. Prioritization
Sales representatives must choose where to prioritize their time. Which leads will most likely become customers? How much of the day should we spend on each part of the funnel?
Automating prioritization makes answering these questions easier. Salesforce software can instantly weigh thousands of variables. Following the priorities it generates pays off.
Automatic prioritization covers several discrete tasks. This includes:
To generate smart priorities, automation software needs data. Fortunately, automation also improves data quality.
3. Data Entry
Data entry can consume most of a sales rep’s day. In fact, data entry is the task most responsible for dragging down the time a rep spends selling.
Rather than sell 95% of the time, most teams only spend 33% of their day closing actual sales. Tedious data entry takes up one to two hours every single day.
Some teams outsource data entry to unskilled workers. But Salesforce is a complex program.
It’s better to outsource line-by-line tasks to Sales AI. Specifically, one that knows Salesforce inside and out.
Salesforce automation programs enter data correctly with a single click or intuitively. Some entry points don’t even require that minimal effort.
Client Focus
In a sales call, automatic data entry lets the seller focus on the client. Rather than typing in data as they talk, the program enters the data. This frees the seller to build a thoughtful, emotional connection with the client.
Sales AI can direct data where it needs to go regardless of source. It understands key terms and processes. Then, it applies that understanding to what it “reads” in an email and what it “hears” in a recording.
Reduce Human Error
Automatic data entry reduces human error. Studies show that even a single data entry error can render a study’s results inaccurate. It can wrongly turn “noise” into a “signal”—or vice-versa.
Teams need accurate data to make smart choices. Fortunately, automatic data entry reduces the incidence of error.
The highest-risk industries are largely making the switch to automatic data capture.
In the United States, data entry errors in patient records kill almost 1000 patients each day. Yet, hospitals that use automatic data capture to generate health records cut error rates in half.
Hospitals already use data-entry automation. It saves lives. For your team, this automation saves time—and closes deals.
4. Collaboration
Salesforce automation facilitates pipeline management.
To manage a customer acquisition pipeline well, sales and marketing teams must collaborate. Teams might also need to work with the IT department.
Invitations to collaborate can quickly fill users’ Salesforce inbox. Fortunately, automation can address this too.
Automation makes collaboration easy. An automated program could:
Automation doesn’t replace collaboration. It makes it easier.
5. Communication
Ideally, a sales rep spends most of his time engaging leads and customers. Automation takes over the tedious parts of communication.
Salesforce automation software generates personalized messages from a customer’s data profile. It can also increase engagement with curated content.
It also bears best practices in mind. It knows the right time to send follow-up messages. And, it knows what type of message to deliver each time.
Some automated software tools focus on email. This can be follow-up emails or automatic, tailored email marketing campaigns, or email tracking and analytics.
Email campaigns are effective. But, they only work if leads can read them.
So, it’s important that an automated program still generates high-quality emails. Content quality makes sure the message gets past any spam filters.
Part of this is cultivating an opt-in email list. A smart automation program knows where it gets its data from. It will prioritize customers who actively seek out sales communications.
6. Pricing
It takes time to generate smart price quotes—if you’re a human. Fortunately, Salesforce automated programs accelerate price quote generation.
Salesforce’s data consolidation improves the CPQ process. With Salesforce, your team is less likely to leave money on the table. At the same time, the programs accurately predicts the price a lead will accept.
Salesforce automation further streamlines this process. A sales representative can input the right data and get a reasonable CPQ in a matter of seconds. Pricing automation is a huge factor in Salesforce’s high ROI.
How To Automate Salesforce Successfully
You can use software to automate tasks in all six categories. Yet, not all automation strategies are equal.
Approach automation with a plan. As a team leader, you influence the direction automation takes. Your company’s goals should drive your propositions.
As you develop an automation plan, be mindful of how the plan underscores these goals. And, make sure your aims are feasible with current technology. To do this, abide by two rules.
Use Data to Set Goals
The first rule is, “use data to set goals.” Your company sets the overarching goals. How do the sales department’s goals get the company to that space?
Then, work backward. Think critically about the day-to-day tasks your team handles. What’s wasting the most time?
Then, consider efficiency. Analyze time-spent data to discern bottlenecks. What prevents maximum Salesforce efficiency?
Then, start working forward. You know the goals. What does your team need to meet those goals?
Then, what should people do to meet those needs? Project a sensible cause-and-effect chain. Then, trace it back until you reach what to do today.
Derive the plan from data. Accurate data builds the best path from where you are to where you want to be.
Collaborate With Developers Effectively
The second rule is, “collaborate with developers.” Salesforce automation software is an application. But, you’re not an application engineer.
Fortunately, some engineers work at your company. So, your IT department is an incredible asset.
Software engineers can help you cultivate relevant automatic functions. These functions make Salesforce the best possible version of itself for your team.
As you work with them, create materials as you go. Use engineers’ insights to develop marketing content.
Ask questions that occur to you. Develop training materials from their answers. This collaborative strategy paves the road to success.
Strategize: Salesforce Automation Best Practices
As you develop a plan, the best mindset is data-driven. It’s also collaborative.
The best practices accelerate sales success. Research shows these concrete strategies make Salesforce automation easy. Establish these nine practices to move your team forward.
1. Automate Intentionally
First, automate intentionally. Many tasks can be automated. But, automation takes time to implement—at least at first.
Know your team’s priorities. Then, implement Salesforce automation in order. The order prioritizes automation with the highest impact first.
Also, understand your team’s process well enough to determine genuine bottlenecks. Is slow communication the barrier? Or has your team de-prioritized collaboration?
It’s best to streamline the tasks causing the most problems. It’s also wise to make sure the issue is one automation can solve.
2. Define and Test Processes
Automation requires an AI to execute tasks in a precise order. Execution is contingent on triggers. You can set anything from the time of day to email open rates as a trigger.
Creating this chain of events defines automated sales processes. Yet, it’s not always clear which process solves the problem best.
So, you’ll need to test automation processes to determine the best practice. Create a few variations and compare them.
3. Think Ahead
As you implement automation, stay mindful of how things change. Ask yourself how to automate flexibly. Your strategy should accommodate plausible future scenarios.
These might be scenarios limited to your company. How will this automation plan scale? Can it handle unique our client types?
It’s also wise to be ready for large-scale change. How can your process integrate with future technology? This could be Salesforce updates. Or, underlying technology could become obsolete.
After all, third-party cookies and email pixel beacons were once routine. Now, they’re unusable. Data-gathering methods changed with the times.
Automation will too. Can your plan handle that?
4. Choose The Right Tools
Choosing the right tools for each job seems elementary. Yet, the practice is fundamental.
When you choose the right automation tool for each task, onboarding goes faster. And, you won’t waste time looking for a replacement.
We’ll unpack tool choice in more depth later in this guide. At this stage, it’s simply wise to be mindful. Checking out G2 is a good start.
After all, Salesforce surpasses other CRM tools. In the same vein, Salesforce automation tools also vary in quality.
5. Be Concise
Concision is good across the board.
Stay concise when you name things. All named elements benefit from concision. This is true of files, functions, and decision paths.
A concise name tells users each node’s identity at a glance. This cuts down time spent reading and searching for information on the platform.
Concision streamlines communication.
Likewise, concise processes are (often) better than long ones. A simple cause-and-effect chain moves customers through the funnel faster. The key is to balance simplicity with personalization.
6. Implement Standard Practices
The sixth best practice is “implement standards.” Standards outline how team members should use Salesforce. This reduces errors and integrates the program into representatives’ routines.
Standards should not vary from one person to the next. If possible, standardize automated data-capture processes for all teams in an organization.
When a practice is standard, it’s easier to remember. It also improves the team’s cohesion and alignment.
7. Effective Salesforce Automation Training
To implement any program well, you need to train users. What’s the best Salesforce automation training method? This might seem like an open-ended question.
Yet, researchers have studied how humans learn. You can apply vetted methods to train teams to use software to positive effect. And, new methods facilitate virtual learning. These strategies onboard overseas team members effectively.
Feynman Method
Dr. Richard Feynman was a physicist. He made incredible strides in the field of machine learning.
His observations also help humans learn. You can use the Feynman Method to train your team.
Feynman Training
First, describe Salesforce information to your student. Then, ask the student to explain the information back to you. Ask them to use their own words.
Encourage the student to explain in as simple language as possible.
The student will probably get stuck on part of their explanation. At that point, encourage them to identify precisely what they don’t understand. The student asks a concrete question to clarify the information.
Then, the student will resume explaining. As a person describes information in simple language, they understand it better.
This process of listening, describing, and asking questions empowers deep learning. It encourages a student to build an accurate mental map of the information.
Honing an accurate mental map makes it easy to reference that information. This makes it easier to use Salesforce after only one training session.
Build-In Routine Training Updates
Training should not be a one-time event. Instead, build training into your department’s routine.
Team members should be aware of upcoming training sessions. It helps when you train in regular cycles.
This way, you won’t have to scramble to train staff on new Salesforce updates. Instead, you can simply integrate updates into the regular schedule.
When there are no updates, training seminars can focus on specific integrations. Or, they can highlight automation best practices. This further clarifies and reinforces the information.
Virtual Sales Training
Virtual training is an integral part of the process. These video-chat sessions empower remote workers to use Salesforce well.
Virtual training uses similar methods as remote sales coaching. A savvy manager can combine training and coaching in a single call.
Both virtual training and coaching benefit from similar traits. Are you aware of your team’s non-verbal cues? Have you tracked team members’ progress, and can you help them correct course when they’re off-track?
Likewise, concise meetings are better. They’re memorable and cost-effective.
Plan out what you need to teach before the session. This keeps you from wasting time on tangents.
8. Balance Sales Rep Workloads
Rapid growth is a great problem to have. But, it can still be a problem.
Fortunately, you can solve it by maintaining balance. As the client list grows, balance the workload evenly among team members.
Integrate this balance into automated processes. For example, use the software’s collaborative features to help team members divide up work quickly.
One way to balance workloads is to define each representative’s territory. Look at each team member’s sales data so far. Then, curate territory borders that utilize each member’s strengths.
Territory can be client categories rather than geographic regions.
9. Routine Process Evaluation
Finally, implement routine evaluations. Regularly check the impact of each automated process.
How is it going? Rate the impact with KPIs that make sense for your company. Examine all relevant metrics.
The impact will probably be positive. Yet, it’s worth asking if it could be even better. Can the process be optimized in any way?
Routine evaluations let you account for changing contexts. They also keep you from settling for middling gains.
Without regularly scheduled evaluations, you may only discover a problem after its affected your team. With them, you prevent problems from happening.
Choosing Salesforce Automation Software
Don’t waste your effort on mediocre software. Effective practices will take you far. But poor software limits your potential.
Instead, invest in high-caliber Salesforce automation. And, focus on the best product for your team. Know your team’s needs, and identify which features impact them positively.
Visiting G2’s AI Sales Assistant page is a good start for you (we’re on the grid-come grow with us!).
Salesforce Automation: Good vs. Great
Alison Green, a workplace advice columnist, notes one question as “golden.”
When you interview for a job, you should ask, “What separates a good employee from a great one?” The answer tells you how a manager determines who’s thriving in a role.
Take this same tactic when evaluating software. There are many “good” Salesforce automation options. What makes great programs stand out?
Top-Tier Automation Software Features
Some analytics firms run software databases. These catalogs are directories. They also highlight features many teams look for when they choose a program.
Perusing these databases can give you a starting point. From there, build in nuance.
What challenges does your team face that makes implementing Salesforce tricky? Get specific. Then, focus on solutions to those challenges.
1. Mobile Access (Cloud-Based Software)
The best software lets users input data from anywhere. So many sales talks happen out-of-the-office. Collaborative meetings are remote as often as not.
Representatives want to input data when it’s fresh. Salesforce automation programs with easy mobile access stand out.
To discern between mobile options, learn about each program’s user interface. Is it intuitive?
And, discover how much energy the app uses. Does it need a lot of bandwidth? Will it drain the phone’s battery?
Mobile sites that follow AMP guidelines often run faster. That’s worth factoring in many regions.
2. AI-Supported Sales Coaching
To build your sales team, you need to coach them. Coaching is fundamental to good management.
Automated sales coaching options elevate a program. The tool might facilitate coaching with:
Sales coaching tools are rare. Salesforce automation programs with these tools are a cut above the rest.
3. Sales Forecasting Features
Most Salesforce automation tools offer forecast options. So what makes a forecasting feature high-caliber?
It comes down to data. Quality data sources empower accurate forecasts.
The best programs consolidate data from diverse sources to inform their predictions. They also incorporate data quality control measures.
4. Simplified Relationship-Building
Sales are all about building relationships. The best programs simplify every step of the process.
How many relationship stages does a program automate? Note a program’s capacity for lead generation and data enrichment.
Which programs enable automatic appointment scheduling? Does it automate customer pipeline maintenance? Streamline relationships, and you’ll close more deals.
5. Easy Pipeline Management Tools
Speaking of pipelines, pipeline management is another divergence point.
Great automation programs address this from many angles: inter-department collaboration, data application recommendations, and balance.
6. Precision Performance Tracking
Most Salesforce automation tools offer some performance tracking. Precision elevates the best programs.
Precision performance tracking gives you granular data. This lets you A/B test as many variables as you want for each campaign.
To rate a program’s precision, learn how many unique metrics it uses to measure performance. Then, discern how well it communicates that information.
7. Integration Options
A program’s API capabilities let it communicate with other programs. Transitioning from one app to another can be hard. Fortunately, your team may not have to.
High-tier automation programs offer many integrations. Look for programs that connect to the software your team already knows.
8. Support Services
Finally, compare each program’s support services. Salesforce automation software is a technical project. The best options have effective tech-support staff.
Also, look for built-in support articles. How does the program streamline troubleshooting? A well-designed process can save your team hours.
Conclusion on Salesforce Automation
Veloxy elevates Salesforce. But, don’t take our word for it. We have 100’s of 5 star reviews across G2, Salesforce’s AppExchange, Capterra, and SourceForge.
Since Veloxy joined the AppExchange, Salesforce automation has never been easier for sales managers at Fortune 500 companies and SMBs. Most sales managers who use Veloxy experience a complete return on investment in as little as one month.
Now, you can get one month of Veloxy for free. Sign up for a free trial, and contact us with any questions. Discover what we can do for you.