Salesforce – CRM 2022 Review

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Salesforce (Sales Cloud) is a software-as-a-service CRM for small- to enterprise-level organizations focused on sales and customer relations. Salesforce supports the processes required for retail, wholesale, supply-chain, real-estate, and custom manufacturing or fabrication. Salesforce was designed for Sale Rep ease-of-use.

Salesforce CRM capabilities include lead management, marketing automation and contact management. These functions are designed to help manage customers, track leads, conduct and monitor marketing efforts, and provide post-sale service. In addition, Salesforce allows users to synchronize their Microsoft Outlook contacts, calendars, emails and tasks between applications.

With Salesforce CRM, you will:

  • Keep track of every lead and customer interaction
  • Increase your sales team’s productivity and your company’s revenue
  • Unify your email, phone, social and chat channels so you have all your communications in one place
  • Connect all your ecommerce platforms so you have a single source of truth for multiple sales channels
  • Automate redundant tasks, like triggering messages based on customer actions

Salesforce streamlines the sales process by allowing sales representatives to generate and follow-up on leads, manage account activity, track marketing efforts, and create hassle-free reports.

And Salesforce CRM gives you an AI-enabled assistant called Einstein to help you make efficient business decisions faster to increase productivity and enhance customer satisfaction.

Salesforce is highly customizable. While there are many functions (noted above) that come in the basic feature-set, you can configure a wide variety of options if you need to modify Salesforce to grow with specific areas of your business.

In addition, some add-ons can be purchased to manage business requirements beyond a traditional CRM if needed.

Salesforce offers a mobile app that enables you to manage your day from your mobile device no matter where you are (with internet service, of course). You can view meetings, get account updates, access and update your CRM data, and even close a deal. In fact, Salesforce CRM even lets you build your own custom-branded mobile app with Mobile Publisher.

Salesforce once had a unique integration called Salesforce for QuickBooks, which allowed the two applications to link straight together. However, technical issues associated with problems arising from the ability to customize Salesforce and changes to QuickBooks, and similar incompatibilities kept creating more problems than value. As a result, the integration software was discontinued after a few years.

About the same time, some of the other connector companies started offering third-party integration connectors to allow Salesforce Users to integrate with QuickBooks Online. An example of how one such product maps customers, products/services, estimates, payments and invoices is shown below.

The example above generally is representative of the integrations offered by the following products (listed alphabetically), which are all listed (at a minimum*) in the Intuit QuickBooks App Center specific to QBO to Salesforce Integration:

In addition, many Salesforce Users discovered that Zapier was a solution they could customize to integrate with QuickBooks to sync their customers and transactions, invoices, and other information. As a result, you also will find Zapier in the same section of the QBO App Center, even though it can be used for many other integration purposes.

But in November of 2020, Intuit announced it once again was releasing a new Salesforce Connector for QuickBooks Online Advanced. This integration tool provides seamless integration between the Salesforce and QBO, but one that only works with QBO Advanced.

The connector is not free—it has a monthly subscription cost in addition to the regular price QBO-Advanced and your Salesforce subscriptions.

See the App landing page for more information about Salesforce Connector for QuickBooks Online Advanced.

For more information about Salesforce Sales Cloud, head over to its webpage or consider the free trial.

* Additional products that work for this purpose may be available and may even be listed within the Intuit QuickBooks App Store. The fact that they were not included in this article was solely by oversight and not by intent.

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

Salesforce Sales Cloud CRM — Graphics and content used within this feature were derived or adapted by the author in part from Salesforce Sales Cloud CRM source materials, including the Salesforce website. Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud CRM, and other Salesforce products specified within this article refer to registered trade names of Salesforce.com Inc., a multi-national corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Adapted source materials related to products published within this feature by Insightful Accountant are for educational and product promotional purposes only.

As used herein, QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online (QBO) and QuickBooks Online Advanced (QBD-Advanced) refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., a publicly-traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Any other trade names used herein refer to products which may be registered or trademarked, or otherwise held by, their respective owners. They are referenced for informational and educational purposes only.

This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. None of the vendors within this article have paid Insightful Accountant or the author any form of remuneration to be included within this feature. The article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.

The publication of this article, nor inclusion of this product within the related series, does not represent any endorsement by either the author or Insightful Accountant.

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