How do you put everyone on the defensive in four simple words?
“Do more with less.”
For many, it’s not a thought - it’s reality. Because with tighter budgets and control over spending, you need to nail how you’re spending every dollar.
What if you could impact multiple teams that drive significant bottom-line impact … and make how you do business easier for yourself and others?
You can.
In your Salesforce instance.
So much revolves around what this powerful platform is capable of - yet it’s often overlooked or under-resourced when it comes to strategic growth.
Here, I’m going to take you through a handful of business cases on ways to grow with Salesforce improvements. We’ll use a made-up company, The Placeholder Company (TPC), to showcase examples of each in action.
If you find yourself in need of help, we’re ready to assist and a discovery call is your first step to driving these use cases forward!
Click to jump to a section: Improve SG&A | Bolster Retention Rates | Win More Deals Reduce Technical Debt
With that, let’s get started with the classic “do more with less” that actually can be had:
Improve SG&A
If you asked your teams what annoys them most about their workday, what would they say?
I’m not talking about the person who always forgets to mute themselves on Zoom and treats the whole meeting to a concert of their dog barking or their neighbor’s lawn mower symphony (we’ve all been there).
Chances are, there’s plenty of annoyances in your Salesforce instance - especially for larger companies. After all, it’s a mammoth platform with countless opportunity … or complexity, depending on your current setup.
This foundational element needs to constantly evolve both for your business today and in the coming years of growth.
How This Happens
Typically, it’s unseen.
Your CRM gets implemented and works well for your initial uses. Teams have what they need, and most people adopt the platform without issue.
But as you grow and evolve - we’re talking years, if not a decade or more - it doesn’t keep up. Cracks in your business’ foundation turn into chasms. Outdated processes and data flows strain from increased use, which forces admins and developers to create inefficient workarounds that crush scalability and create technical debt.
Workarounds typically don't scale and aren't documented.
Those workarounds can’t scale and often aren’t documented, which leads to significant issues that only build as:
New channels of customer support create friction with ticketing and resolution systems
Work management fails to route appropriately - or automatically
Invoicing processes require more manual labor as deals get more complex
An M&A invites all sorts of chaos by merging systems, data, and different processes/integrations
…the list goes on.
What you gain
Tens of thousands of dollars - if not more - in labor efficiency. That’s real cost savings in your budget.
What if multiple team members could free up 1-3 hours a week from mundane tasks and instead focus on higher-level challenges? And if manual errors are reduced by 40-50%?
Depending on the process and teams impacted, you could save even a million dollars annually, as one client did when overhauling their entire quote-to-cash process.
We’ve seen this time and again for companies willing to strategically invest. And there are additional benefits:
Higher employee engagement. Staff wants to know they’re working on things that matter - and there’s direct company benefits.
Faster realized value. Priority projects get completed sooner because the right teams focus on the best use of their time.
Customers get better service. Happier staff = better customer experiences.
What’s the fix?
Do you have a Salesforce roadmap? (Do you know if it exists, and if so, who owns it?)
Stay with me. It’s not just a standard improvement plan. A good roadmap features:
Alignment to the business objectives
Identifying what the highest-priority items are and how it helps
Resourcing for said initiatives
Specific owners and deadlines for each project
In my experience, most companies don’t.
IT is always overburdened and under-resourced, and they’re the unsung heroes of all companies. They keep your data safe, tech updated, people trained, and are usually the first team to bail you out when something goes wrong.
These teams do typically have an overall roadmap for the organization, with some details around each technology. But considering the scope and complexity of Salesforce, a specific project around this foundational platform is a next-level step that gives innovative companies a competitive advantage.
For those who do have a roadmap, ask this question: realistically, will identified items get done in a timely manner?
If the answer is no, supplement existing resources with Managed Services. You get the benefit of dedicated expertise (without headcount and hiring processes) that drives progress for multiple teams, from Finance to Customer Support, Sales to Marketing, IT and the full C-Suite.
An Example
Let’s take an example of The Placeholder Company. They’re currently using:
Salesforce Sales Cloud
CPQ for its quote-to-cash process
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
The Placeholder Company’s teams sometimes work well together, such as Sales and Marketing having a common definition of what a “good” lead is in their systems.
So, where do opportunities lie for TPC? From a roadmapping exercise, they determine:
Add Experience Cloud. Customer support can provide significantly-improved service with a range of solutions, such as self-service portals with updated information, more dynamic ways of getting in touch (and the underlying routing for these requests), and branded partner portals. And automating some of the lower-value items that customers could handle themselves with proper information? Big efficiency savings.
Add Billing. Billing sits on top of CPQ and automates a great deal of the invoicing process. It’s one of the more unsung heroes that many Salesforce customers overlook, but it’s a worthy investment.
Invest in more accurate forecasting. Finance and Sales identify that current data isn’t as trustworthy as they’d like, which hampers the C-Suite’s decision-making abilities.
Optimize current processes. For instance, if a salesperson spends an hour less a week hunting for customer information and updating fields manually, that’s more time spent on closing deals. A support agent with the right information in the right place can give customers faster help, leading to less time spent on every call.
And this is just the beginning!
Related: Explore our Salesforce roadmapping service
Bolster Retention Rates And Upsell Opportunities
Imagine you’re a customer of The Placeholder Company… and you run into an issue.
Is help easy to find? Is there a relevant walkthrough that’s easy to access and understand? Or if the issue is too complex, are you able to easily escalate to get the help you need?
Now think about these same questions from TPC’s Support team’s point of view.
If your company sells more, are they equipped and empowered to handle a greater influx of requests? As new support channels are added, will the team’s capabilities scale? And can they easily find the right information quickly in your current systems?
Your answers are vital to increasing customer retention rate and supporting more upsells. (Keep reading for a few stats).
If you’re subconsciously nodding your head with a knowing “yep, I know exactly where we fall short” or perhaps reflecting on a recent time when you had a bad experience and promptly switched who you buy from … read on.
Take this as a sign to do something about it.
How this happens
A situation like this typically occurs from one of three scenarios:
An M&A adds significant complexity to support experiences as product/service catalogs are merged, and disparate systems, teams, and processes complicate it
Explosive growth creates bottlenecks as demand for support increases at a faster rate than the company can scale
Lack of infrastructure leads to manual labor on low-impact tasks, reducing bandwidth for escalated items
There are other situations, of course, but I’ve seen these be primary drivers for multiple clients.
What you gain
Some statistics, as promised:
Boosting retention rate by just 5% reduces churn and increases profits- sometimes by 25% or more, per Bain & Company
89% of customers are more likely to buy again after a great customer service experience - and 78% are more forgiving and willing to do business after a mistake if they have excellent customer service (Salesforce Research)
A majority of surveyed consumers (68%) are willing to pay more for products and services from a company with an excellent customer service reputation, per Hubspot.
How much would a 5% increase in customer retention mean for your company’s bottom line?
What about 10% or more?
This is what’s at stake.
What’s the fix?
It depends on your current setup.
For Support teams without Salesforce Experience Cloud, they’re missing out on a seamless integration into existing architecture and aligning more with other parts of the business. For example, working in the same systems as other teams provides a better 360-view of the customer, allowing Sales and Support to view the necessary details on which customers are happy - and which aren’t.
For those that have Experience Cloud already, auditing what areas work well vs. what don’t is the starting point.
This includes a technical readout of what’s needed to upgrade any weaknesses into best-in-class strengths, additional functionality that may not be used, and team training on new features or processes.
It can take a few months or up to a year to realize the full value of these endeavors - but a more loyal customer base (with a more empowered Support team to help) is absolutely worth it.
Win More Deals (Faster)
Speaking of Sales, when it comes to sales optimization, the CRM is usually top of mind. It’s called “Salesforce” for a reason.
In Selling, these are true:
The company easiest to do business with often wins
Speed matters, but not at the expense of accuracy
The more complex a deal, the longer it will take to close
Prospects are better-informed than ever before. They know their options. When choosing to engage with your Sales team, they’re confirming the impressions they’ve already formed.
Unless a poor experience sinks it.
How This Happens
Earlier-stage companies have teams taking a scrappy approach and doing more with whatever they’re able to use - and an inflection point in the business’ growth leads to a tipping point in how it goes to market.
For more mature companies, factors that contribute include:
An M&A that fundamentally changes how Sales operates
New products that introduce challenges with current quoting processes
Under-resourced Sales Operations over the years that has led to a lack of development and maturity in how Salesforce is used
Sometimes it’s subtle, but Sales teams can pinpoint where they run into the greatest challenges. The trick is building a sustainable solution.
What you gain
Simply put, a faster time-to-quote process provides a competitive advantage at best, and levels the playing field at worst.
Prospects and customers want fast and accurate information. And if they don’t get in during the Sales process, they’ll expect it’s just as bad when working with you or your products.
Meeting their expectations keeps you in the game and increases sales velocity as you’re able to get pricing into their hands faster and with a greater degree of accuracy, no matter how large your product portfolio or service catalog are.
And it removes the guesswork from the salesperson’s point of view, simplifying their day-to-day so they can focus on providing a better experience and support throughout the cycle.
An Example
Let’s take a look at The Placeholder Company. Current customers run on two-year contracts, so renewals are frequent.
Prospects, meanwhile, usually speak with 3-4 other options in addition to TPC. Competitors are somewhat similar in what they offer, and deals can be won or lost at the finish line.
As the Sales team engages new prospects, they find it cumbersome to filter through price sheets and quoting mechanisms that haven’t kept up with the increased complexity of products. On top of that, leaders have to approve any quotes sent out to ensure pricing and what’s promised are aligned, but this process is prone to bottlenecks.
To make matters worse, integrations into the CRM add data, but not in the right places - and opportunities don’t always have all of the information needed for an accurate picture of the customer. Incomplete lead records, files failing to save in the right places, and many more issues plague the entire system.
Close rates drop by 15% year-over-year, and now the C-Suite wants to know what’s gone wrong and why targets aren’t getting hit.
This situation may seem simple, but it relates to much of what holds Sales teams back: unnecessary complexity.
What’s the fix?
There’s a few factors in play.
First, how is your current quote-to-cash process? Even if you have a system like CPQ, it might not be in an optimal state. Starting there is a natural launch point as it impacts the critical moments within a sales cycle.
But it’s only the beginning. Other avenues worth exploring include:
Optimize Sales Cloud. How is your base Salesforce instance configured, and does it need a clean-up and/or upgrade? Are current pipeline stages well-defined and used? Are forecasts considered accurate and trustworthy?
Implement or upgrade quote-to-cash processes. CPQ and Billing are top-of-mind, with an eye towards Revenue Lifecycle Management in the future. Dynamic pricing and diverse product catalogs are two reasons to look deeper into these features.
Examine lead management. Do current processes have clear stages with defined criteria, and do these contribute to accurate pipeline analysis?
Invest in sales and marketing alignment. Do both teams agree on what a good “lead” is, so that Sales is only working on what’s most likely to turn into closed-won revenue?
Tighten Sales-Support alignment. Happy customers invite further sales opportunities, but the data flow needs to be both ways for Sales and Support to work together … and customers need to already be thrilled with the support they receive today. Experience Cloud may be a solution.
Timeframe will vary depending on the aspects of Salesforce being worked on, the complexity of the project, and the number of stakeholders involved. For some, it may take six months, while others can involve a year or more to build the right solution that empowers your entire company.
Reduce Technical Debt
Do you feel up to your eyeballs in tech? Are teams bouncing between platforms trying to get work done, with a knee-jerk negative response to terms like “2FA” or “integrate?”
Sure, I’m using a bit of hyperbole, but it’s not uncommon to see teams using 20+ platforms on a given day to manage their entire workload.
You’re paying for all of that tech...and paying again for the unused features within platforms you already have! Tack on inefficiencies of platform-hopping throughout the day, and the business case for greater operational efficiency crystallizes.
Without an audit, who knows how teams get things done?
The answer lies in your Salesforce instance.
IT departments are amazing, but they can only do so much. So why not help them - and yourself - by reducing tech debt both within your Salesforce instance and by streamlining more in this capable platform?
An example
The Placeholder Company grew quickly, but now it’s realizing its teams are drowning in technology.
It’s gotten so bad, different teams have different platforms for simple tasks like group ideation (Lucid and Miro), note-taking, video conferencing, internal communications, and much more.
Even worse? Teams only use the bare minimum within “their” areas of Salesforce:
Support works in Experience Cloud, but only to log and update information
Sales uses Sales and Revenue Cloud functionality, but isn’t engaged in updated reporting, marketing campaigns, and most team members stick to Opportunities and Leads
Marketing runs campaigns and updates lead management processes, but that’s it
Finance has reporting, but little insight into how these reports pull together
In short, each team uses enough to get by and make the platform functional, but not optimal. And The Placeholder Company’s leadership wants to know what gains can be made by moving more processes into Salesforce, which is already its most foundational investment.
How this happens
Teams purchasing technology that fits their needs is a common contributor. When teams work in silos, it’s even easier - Marketing doesn’t know what Support is using, and Finance doesn’t know the full Sales tech stack.
Within Salesforce itself, the full capabilities aren’t unlocked because it’s not prioritized at an organizational level.
IT can’t chase them all. So tech debt builds, an unseen budget assassin wasting tens of thousands a month.
What you gain
This pairs well with the SG&A savings section above, because by fully using what you’re already paying for in Salesforce, you can:
Reduce tech spend. Get rid of duplicate platforms that could be brought in-house into Salesforce
Reduce risk. Salesforce has top-of-the-line security protocols that they keep updated
Increase productivity. Optimal processes with tools that work well together (i.e. Salesforce Experience, Sales, Service, and Revenue clouds) reduce low-value labor
Align teams. When cross-functional staff use the same tools, they naturally speak more of the same business language and work more closely together.
IT also finds it easier to stay on top of it all as your company grows.
How you get it
The first step is mapping out what your company uses today. A roadmap does take this into account.
Then, prioritize and allocate investment - in people’s time and budget - to identify and build what the ideal process looks like across teams.
A third-party vendor works nicely in this scenario, because they can be the “bad guy” when determining what team’s needs take priority and/or which processes get improved first - as long as they align with core business objectives.
A Common Thread
If your company has the resources and dedicated teams to the upkeep of your foundational technology, you can explore implementing some of these with that team.
For most companies, however, it’s far easier to outsource.
You get:
Dedicated expertise that brings in fresh perspectives
One vendor to hold accountable
Faster onboarding (vs. hiring full-time help)
Supplemental help for your team to get more done
And with DoubleTrack, you get even more: a guarantee that we’ll hit agreed-upon benchmarks. If we don’t, you keep part of the project fees.
Intrigued? Let us know and we’ll be in touch - or, if you have any additional Salesforce business case questions, you can send those in, too.
Thanks for reading!
Comentarios