6 Best Practices for a Smooth Salesforce Implementation

The concept of customer experience is timeless!

Reports suggest that an organization’s success depends heavily on effectively managing customer relationships. In almost every industry, one in four customers is willing to pay 10 percent more for excellent customer service^[1].

Not only this, but more than 96%^[2] of customers say customer service is paramount to sustaining their loyalty to a brand.

The above statistics place customer experience (CX) at the core of customer retention and business growth strategies. For the same reason, CX has emerged as a driving force for business success and market leaders have started investing heavily in CRMs to equip their teams with everything they need to offer a better customer experience.

However, choosing the right CRM solution is only half the battle; the other half is implementing it to meet your business requirements precisely.

That’s where Salesforce comes in.

Salesforce is not just a simple CRM. It is a sales system, an integrated data center, a support platform, and so much more.

From the beginning, Salesforce has always focused on combining business success and customer satisfaction, and has evolved into the most innovative, comprehensive CRM solution that fits many business needs.

This powerful CRM tool, when implemented right, has the potential to support efforts that foster a better relationship with customers.

Let’s decode ‘how’ you can implement Salesforce right to churn out its fullest potential.

Best Practices for Salesforce Implementation:

1. Defining Stakeholders

It starts with the most crucial question: who’s relevant to this project? The first step in implementing this project is to identify the stakeholders that have an interest in the project, and whose requirements must be considered. The following roles and responsibilities should be defined for the project:

• Business/End Users: Individual users and/or teams that will actively use the system.
• Project Manager: The individual responsible for determining the progress and results of the project.
• Decision Maker: The individual who has the authority to make decisions regarding the project, such as timeframe, budgets, or design.

2. Defining Goals

With your stakeholders defined, the next step would be to determine the project’s goals. During this phase, you identify areas for improvement (by addressing the greatest pain points).
You can start by asking these questions:

• What are your organization’s goals?
• What pain points prevent you from achieving these goals?
• What processes need improvement?
• How will Salesforce help you solve business challenges and achieve your goals?

Once your goals are defined, it gets easy to track and monitor your progress.

3. Defining Implementation Plan and Timeline

In this phase, you choose a Salesforce implementation strategy based on the size of your company and the capacity of your marketing and sales teams. During this step, you decide if you want multiple Salesforce products implemented simultaneously or individually. Once your requirements have been determined, the timeline for the project is created.

4. Migrating Data to Salesforce

In order to implement Salesforce, you first need to migrate relevant data from your current system to Salesforce. During the migration process, here are the things to keep in mind:

• Ensure that the quality and accuracy of the data are not affected during the transfer
• Make sure that you map data, such as fields and objects correctly

5. Testing the New Salesforce Solution

Once your data has been migrated and you have customized Salesforce as per your requirements, you will need to test it. When you perform QA, you will be able to answer critical questions, such as:

• What is the current status of the solution?
• Is everything running smoothly?
• Are all your business requirements met?

6. Providing Training and Driving Adoption

Getting your employees on board and training them to use Salesforce is the next challenge. Providing effective training and encouraging the adoption of Salesforce will enable users to make maximum use of it. End-user training before roll-out can play a significant role in ensuring user adoption of a newly developed Salesforce solution. Your team can be trained in a sandbox environment during UAT. Furthermore, they can learn with hands-on exercises through a subset of data replicas that were specifically designed for training.

Pro-tip: Make sure you train close to your go-live data launch, so they’ll use it more often afterward and you’ll get immediate feedback.

Should You Implement Salesforce Yourself or Hire a Salesforce Partner?

Implementing Salesforce requires technical knowledge backed by proven experience. You may think, ‘what if I have the right knowledge? Can I do it myself?’

The short answer is ‘no’! Salesforce implementation is not a DIY project. The complexities of the project require the assistance of an expert every step of the way.

For this reason, it is advisable to choose a Salesforce-certified partner for implementing Salesforce right.

By providing insights on the various Salesforce features and products, they will help you determine what’s appropriate for the company.

The right implementation services can help you with:

• Accurate and Complete Information
• Better Sales Forecasting
• Effective Lead Management
• Higher Revenue and ROI
• Efficient Internal Processes

Throughout the entire process – from effective implementation to navigating the system and end-user training – you will get comprehensive support and solutions.

The Bottom Line

You have chosen the most powerful, capable, and robust platform to run your business operations, so you are a clear winner.

To ensure that your investment in Salesforce gets positive returns and its overall utility continues to pay dividends for many years to come, a consultation with a Salesforce expert can go a long way.

Have More Questions about Salesforce Implementation? Talk to us!

Statistical References:

^[1] Forbes
^[2] Sqauretalk Statistics