To get the most from this chapter, it would be useful to have a working knowledge of your organization’s strategy and values and understand the goals and the business case for the purchase of Sales Cloud.

The information you discover and define relating to the content of this chapter, such as defining implementation goals and scope, can be captured in standard business tools such as word processing and spreadsheet tools. Where your organization has project management tools, you may start to capture the overall implementation vision using these.

The role and expectations of the teams that generate sales, also known as the commercial function, are continually evolving. While there is always an expectation to deliver increases in revenue year on year, ways of working and customers’ expectations also change. Technology and macro social and economic factors are also having a big impact. Customers are looking for personalized one-to-one relationships and are more intentional about how they spend their money, meaning sales teams have to be able to demonstrate value.

The 2020 pandemic forced many sales teams to rapidly find alternative ways of working. It took away the majority of in-person interactions, forcing organizations to quickly try and find ways to connect to customers online. Those who already had the working practices and technology had an advantage. Salespeople who built relationships in person at meetings and events needed to adopt a different approach. While the overwhelming desire in society has been to get back to in-person interactions and activities, there are some aspects of the new ways of working that people appreciate and want to continue with. For some people, working from home had benefits such as less time and money spent on commuting and more time spent with family or on leisure activities. Some people made big life changes by moving to new homes with office space and more rural locations. Equally, some organizations realized that they could conduct business without having to spend so much time and money on travel.

This enforced a global shift to working from home that proved that it was possible, although there are differences in opinion with regard to productivity. For some workers, it has meant they don’t want to go back. For sales, this means they have to be prepared to build relationships with people both in person and remotely. So, organizations have been able to do this really well, which has raised the bar further for those who are just starting their journey.

Another significant disruptor is generative artificial intelligence (AI). Following the impact of ChatGPT, we are seeing all organizations talking about how they might incorporate artificial intelligence into their ways of working to gain competitive advantage. Although this dominates conversations, most organizations are still at the early stages of understanding the potential and the implications and deciding where to incorporate it. There are questions to answer and decisions to be made to ensure that organizations receive the benefits without unintended consequences or bias.

Salesforce has announced several exciting AI features in recent months, and I am sure there will be many more. As it is early in their release, they are not widely adopted at this point. Those who are more mature in their AI journey will start to explore the benefits of these. Most organizations are still considering what these technological advancements mean for them. To capitalize on the benefits of AI, it is essential to have a volume of accurate, relevant, connected data that AI can learn from. In this book, we will not be focusing on the new AI tools as they are rapidly evolving, but we will focus on how you can implement Sales Cloud with an appropriate data model and quality data so you can connect it to other data sources and layer appropriate AI tools over the top when your organization is ready to adopt those at scale.

Next, we will explore some of the sales function-specific challenges that sales teams and leaders experience. This is not an exhaustive list but will give you an understanding of the types of challenges you might hear about.

Managing the sales pipeline

Pipeline management is the activity of managing the detailed steps in the sales process; understanding what has happened and what needs to happen next to move the deal to a close. The sales pipeline shows the status of a prospective deal at a given time. By inspecting the pipeline, a sales leader can see how many deals have been made by each salesperson and what their values are. They should also be able to see what prospect stakeholders are involved, what activities and meetings have taken place and what emails have been sent, and what the next steps are.

In addition to seeing where the pipeline is at any given time, leaders also want to know how it has changed compared to last week or last month. This allows them to take action if any negative trends are seen, such as the pipeline reducing in value or the close dates of deals being pushed out.

It is common for sales leaders to want more visibility on what is happening in the pipeline and for it to be up-to-date and accurate at any given time. Sales Cloud enables this by providing the functionality to record activities and the people involved, as well as offering a Pipeline Inspection view that gives a summary and comparison of what has changed, which we will learn about in Chapter 3 – Design and Build: The Core Sales Process. Integrations with other business tools also streamline the logging of activities, which will we look at in swsw, Common System Integrations.

Forecasting accuracy

Forecasting is the process of predicting value or the number of sales that will be achieved at a given point in time, usually by month or quarter. This number becomes a commitment to the business in terms of how much revenue will be generated, which also has an impact on the business in planning spending commitments. For example, organizations plan what they can spend on marketing or if they can hire additional people depending on the revenue forecast. Failure to achieve the revenue predicted means that cuts need to be made or plans need to be downgraded. This also had wider implications when the organization is publicly traded or when the business has been backed by investment. Forecasting is a fundamental and essential part of business planning. The accuracy of the forecast impacts the whole organization.

Sales Cloud has both specific Forecasting functionalities and Report and Dashboard functionalities for further analysis. It also enables the setup and enforcement of a consistent sales process so that data is consistently recorded by all. The forecasting functionality has features to allow leaders to view different people’s forecasts and quickly drill into the records. This allows leaders to see exactly what makes up the forecast and make manual adjustments based on their judgment so that they are confident in the forecast they commit to. We learn about Analyzing and visualizing data – Reports and Dashboards in Chapter 5.

Increasing sales productivity

All organizations welcome improvements in productivity. It would be unusual to find a commercial leader who wouldn’t want their teams to be more effective. Productivity can be increased by automating tasks such as logging data and notifying colleagues or providing them with relevant information, making it easier for team members to collaborate.

Sales Cloud offers many ways to increase productivity. Creating a single source of truth for commercial dates means Users know that they are working with and making decisions on the most up-to-date data. Stream and automate the logging of activities such as calls, emails, and meetings, automate the creation of records and notifications, and capture who is collaborating together on sales deals and in organizations to increase efficiency. We learn about setting up an appropriate data model and recording Opportunity and Account Teams in Chapter 3, Design and Build: The Core Sales Process. We review all the ways you can create a great user experience, including automation, in Chapter 5, Design and Build: Sales User Productivity.

Achieving sales and marketing alignment

Another common challenge that so many organizations face is creating alignment between sales and marketing. This refers to the role that marketing has in generating sales prospects, what determines that they have shown enough interest to a salesperson to take over, and how that handover is carried out.

Sales Cloud can assist with this as the sales prospects, Leads, resulting sales deals, and Opportunities can be tracked in one system. This means that it is possible to track a prospect all the way through its lifecycle. Ownership can be tracked and changed to capture the handover, as well as rules and guidance that support the way of working to successfully transition a prospect. With this reporting functionality, managers can assess the performance of the process. We learn about lead generation in Chapter 4, Design and Build: The Lead Generation Process.

Selling to buying groups

The buying group is the group of people who influence whether an organization makes a purchase. Particularly in a business-to-business setting or when there’s a purchase of a significant value, there can be a number of people involved in assessing the suitability or approving a purchase. For this reason, salespeople have to be able to successfully engage with multiple people.

Sales Cloud provides the functionality to be able to capture every person a salesperson interacts with and specify the role they have in the buying unit. Having this documented makes it easier to see the overall picture, create a plan, and gain the support of others. We learn about Contacts and Opportunity Contact Roles in Chapter 3 – Design and Build: The Core Sales Process.

Enabling sales teams

Enabling sales teams with the knowledge, tools, and materials they need to service prospects and achieve their targets is another challenge organizations look to solve. Sales Cloud with a level of customization for specific needs will provide the tooling. In Chapter 2, Defining the Approach, we learn about the importance of the role that Change Management has in ensuring Users are prepared to use Sales Cloud. In Chapter 5 – Design and Build: Sales User Productivity, we learn about functionalities such as Sales Path and In-App Guidance and provide users with guidance on what they need to do right when they need to do it.

The examples given here are just a few of the examples of how Sales Cloud provides solutions for common sales challenges. In the next section, we will explore why it is important that you understand how your Sales Cloud implementation aligns with and enables your company strategy and values.

In this section, we will explore why it is important to not only focus on the details of your Sales Cloud implementation but also to ensure that your delivery and solution align with your company strategy, goals, and values. Ultimately, you want your Salesforce strategy to align with your company strategy; the former should enable the latter. This sounds quite obvious, but when the implementation team gets into the details, it can be easy for the focus to deviate. In some cases, it is also possible that the Sales Cloud implementation team doesn’t have visibility of how what they’re building contributes to delivering the company strategy. This can easily happen if the implementation is being delivered by an external supplier. When your Salesforce strategy aligns with your organization’s strategy, you can expect that Sales Cloud will help you achieve your goals sooner and you will be able to demonstrate how it is doing that.

The first step in developing alignment is to understand your company’s strategies, goals, and values. For example, your organization might have a goal of reducing operational costs or it might have transparency or collaboration as a value. Once these are understood, the next step is to determine how the Sales Cloud implementation supports these. For example, you might be looking to reduce the time, the number of steps, or the number of clicks required to complete a process to gain operational efficiency, you might implement an open data-sharing model to ensure transparency across the organization, or you might deliver collaboration functionalities in early releases to show commitment to them.

It is highly likely that the benefits expected by the Sales Cloud implementation are aligned with business goals, or else the purchase would not have been approved in the first place. During the implementation, it is essential not to lose sight of what we promised, as this is how success will be judged.

It is worth remembering that companies are made up of people, and companies only achieve their goals when people work together. While diversity of thought can be a strategic advantage, it is also essential that people pull in the same direction to achieve company goals.

Achieving business alignment

To achieve business alignment internally, Salesforce uses a process called V2MOM, which stands for Vision, Value, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures. Everyone in the organization completes a V2MOM, which aligns so that every person understands how their actions contribute to the overall goal. Salesforce provides information on why and how to create a V2MOM on their public learning platform, Trailhead. You can find links to this information in the Further reading section.

To achieve a successful implementation, everyone on the project, and the stakeholders, should understand what the implementation is trying to achieve and how their role contributes.

There are a number of steps that can be taken to help achieve this: communicate the goals of the implementation regularly to all stakeholders, bring stakeholders on the journey by including them in defining requirements and requesting feedback, and train and support users so they both understand the value and can perform the tasks asked of them. We explore how you can do these in subsequent chapters in this book, starting in Chapter 2 – Defining the Approach.

To ensure the focus throughout an implementation is on the overall goals, it is common to have regular steering committee meetings to keep track of progress, make decisions, connect to the business, access additional budget, and get commitment from other areas of the business. Depending on the scale of the implementation, these meetings happen weekly or monthly and include senior members of the organization, typically the executive sponsor and senior members of the implementation team.

These meetings ensure that any issues or decisions can be identified early and appropriate actions can be taken. One of the benefits of having a clear vision is that it makes prioritization easier. It is worth noting that some stakeholders may be personally invested in the success of the implementation, as it either has an impact on their role or their reputation.

For example, if your organization prides itself on transparency, then you will probably find your data model will be quite open, allowing people to view most records. If your client confidentiality is core to your business, you are likely to have a private model with restrictions on who can see what data. If collaboration is important, the functionality to enable it must be delivered in early releases to show commitment to it.

Salesforce Strategy Designer Certification

Salesforce understands that the success of its solutions is dependent on how they contribute to an organization’s overall success. Salesforce provides services to clients to help them achieve alignment using strategy design tools and techniques. To help organizations achieve this, they have developed a curriculum and certification to teach and validate an understanding of strategy design. This certification is called Salesforce Strategy Designer. You can find details of the certification on Trailhead along with resources to learn about this topic. There are links to these resources in the Further reading session.

In the next section, we explore the concept of adoption and its role in a successful Sales Cloud implementation.