What is Salesforce: fundamentals of the market's leading CRM

Customer relationship management has become a major differentiator for businesses since the turn of the 21st century. This is why companies have sought to understand what Salesforce is and use it as a solution to bring companies and people closer together.  

From then on, Salesforce became the largest integrated CRM platform, offering every department a single, shared view of each customer. Salesforce emerged from the understanding that cloud processes made far more sense than local, slow formats.  

This idea reshaped how companies operated internally. In the 1960s, for example, it was common for companies to use a great deal of paper, whether to note contacts, plan strategies, or record important information about sales, customers, and internal actions. 

With a cloud service, all the data that was easily lost on paper became available online, making life easier for salespeople, marketers and service representatives.   

Since then, Salesforce has evolved technologically to increasingly impact customer relationships and connect potential leads with the purchase journey for a product or service.  

In this content, we will understand all the features of Salesforce Hub and how the platform can help your business when properly supported and configured. Keep reading! 

How Salesforce connects potential customers with your business 

Salesforce consists of a suite of software that spans the entire business cycle, from marketing to innovation through applications, from service to managing the complete sales and customer journey.  

Basically, its capabilities make it possible to carry out processes such as: 

• Attract more buyers with a personalized marketing strategy using Marketing Cloud.  

• Win more customers by understanding their needs and concerns with Sales Cloud.  

• Meet your customers' expectations by offering outstanding buying experiences with Commerce Cloud.  

• Respond quickly to customer-support issues on any channel with the Service Cloud.  

• Automate time-consuming tasks by creating customised applications in the app hub. 

The usefulness of these tools is not simply to make operations easier by automating tasks and offering greater control over every stage. Software alone holds a vast amount of data; the real differentiator is knowing how to use that data and make it tell an accurate story about your customers and leads. 

Tool Hub

Salesforce Customer 360 includes marketing, sales, commerce and service applications to help drive business — plus Slack to connect customers, teams and partners. It is a complete, robust CRM where you can configure and create countless processes and activities across the company.  

Practical examples of using the tools  

To make it easier to understand what can be achieved with a tool such as Salesforce, we provide two practical examples. One relates to the connection between Data Cloud with Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud.  

3 quick steps that prove using Salesforce delivers better results: 

• Use Data Cloud to capture leads and track every step for nurturing, filtering each lead type for the sales and marketing teams; 

• Create Sales Cloud alerts with the collected data for the sales team, making internal and external communication easier, so everyone knows who the leads are, what stage they are in, and which communications they have received, with real-time notifications. 

• Use Salesforce AI automation – using CPQ and Einstein – to create scores for each lead entering the contact database, taking their interests into account. This makes it possible to use Marketing Cloud strategies to reach them correctly and bring them closer to purchase.  

Another practical example focuses on strengthening branding marketing by using Salesforce to explore brand plans and actions. Today, consumers and customers expect more from brands because of trust.  

Using the data that Salesforce tools can capture, teams can create a range of tests based on behavior and how emotional factors affect customers in the contact database.  

Based on this strategic analysis, Salesforce Marketing Cloud makes it possible to create different journeys for specific groups, personalising experiences. These can be email journeys or content creation – videos, ebooks, infographics, research, and more – focused on leads' needs and desires.  

This way, your brand will inspire greater trust and demonstrate real concern for the experience of leads and customers who have already purchased your product or solution. 

Why is Salesforce considered the best CRM platform on the market? 

In short, CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management, and in this regard, Salesforce is an extremely robust, comprehensive tool for carrying out customer-relationship practices, business strategies and technologies.  

The CRM platforms are considered the most technologically advanced and important options available to companies. With it, your company can manage accounts, leads, and sales opportunities in one place, all with information collected by the tool. 

This is because Salesforce software ensures 360-degree management of sales, marketing, service, and every touchpoint. It is important to understand that, in the twenty-first century, we are in the age of the customer, digital transformation, and new technologies.  

This is why the relationship between companies and consumers has also evolved, giving rise to a new concept known as customer experience. Salesforce aims to be customer-centric.   

Understand in more detail what the 360 view means:

• 360-degree customer view: This functionality provides a complete view of customer interactions, preferences and history, helping companies create personalised experiences that increase customer loyalty and lifetime value
• Sales efficiency: Salesforce Customer 360 improves sales processes through lead- and opportunity-management tools, sales forecasting based on AI analysis, and team collaboration tools
• Effective marketing strategies: The platform makes it easier to create personalized, data-driven campaigns, manage customer journeys across multiple channels, and track ROI in real time
• Personalised customer service: Includes case management, self-service portals and service analytics to improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn
• Customer engagement: The platform offers consistent experiences across every customer touchpoint, enhanced customer insights, and greater loyalty through personalised interactions and rewards
• Data-driven decision-making: Provides real-time analytics, predictive insights through AI, and a centralized customer data platform
• Operational efficiency: Automates routine tasks, integrates with other enterprise systems and scales to meet the business's growth needs

With a Salesforce platform, your company increases results such as: 

How does Salesforce support work? 

When acquiring the license, the Salesforce team provides training to employees so they can use the tools to their full potential. There are up to 3 months of support after implementation begins.   

During this period, bugs and platform-performance issues will be fixed, along with possible adjustments to specifically meet your type of business. 

Therefore, do not forget to plan ahead to understand priorities and how the tool should help the team, since the number of functions and configurations is vast.

After 3 months, certified companies, considered Salesforce Partners, such as Weenow, provide all the support, configuration and assistance needed to enhance the tool. These actions focus on existing functionality or new applications acquired from the provider. 

The Salesforce developer 

Responsible for all system programming, Salesforce developers implement and maintain all available applications and technologies — such as Slack, MuleSoft and Tableau, for example.

The role of these professionals enables organisations to improve their customer experience by following Salesforce tool best practices. 

These developers can be architects who design applications or implementation specialists. There are qualifications that make developers Salesforce specialists, using Apex and other languages. 

In addition, it is necessary to have and/or acquire knowledge in the following areas:  

• Data modelling, management, and security; 

• Platform development; 

• Developer Console; 

• Application customisation in Salesforce; 

• Salesforce Lightning Framework; 

• Visualforce concepts; 

• Search-solution concepts; 

• Salesforce query language; 

The Salesforce consultant 

When we talk about a Salesforce consultant, we are talking about a service provider who helps your company achieve results and make its Salesforce investment worthwhile. They configure whatever is necessary according to the specific needs of your teams and business. 

Consultants are able to connect business needs with the technology options the platform provides. This flexibility ensures creative solutions that transform businesses.

In this case, rely on consultants from Salesforce-approved companies, such as WeeNow, as they demonstrate efficiency and ensure results. 

360° Salesforce Consulting  

One of the major benefits of working with a Salesforce consultancy is having advanced CRM solutions 

With specialists supporting your business, your company gains clearer goals, making it easier to achieve results. Through specialized Salesforce consulting, your company gains autonomy and takes advantage of every opportunity offered by the CRM. 

Discover all WeeNow services and our team specialising in implementing, configuring, and applying new projects to your CRM. We also handle highly complex projects, managing digital-transformation initiatives as a whole.