I find that the SalesForce solution can be used to capture everything you're doing during the course of the workday. I'm not a senior executive. I'm the guy in the trenches. I find management is trying to develop a portal to log all the information possible, so that, if I ever left, that they would be able to recreate my funnel and have all the contact information and the customer information and try to better understand the dynamics of the decision making within any of the corporations that I've identified as potential customers.
What I really like about Salesforce is that it's very intuitive. It's an easy platform for salespeople to quickly and efficiently be able to track an opportunity and develop custom reports for management.
At times, companies that have embraced the Salesforce engineering model, have been able to gather resources necessary to facilitate quotes. It'll be able to store all my information, as far as notes from calls, meetings, and tracking the progress of a particular project.
There's always room for improvement. Simplification is something it needs for sales. Every time you get the engineers involved, they make things a little too complicated. It might be more beneficial to simplify everything for quick and easy reference.
The solution should offer a Salesforce version for individuals. You have a number of people that have independent agencies and other independent workers that are out there that want to be able to track what they're doing and be able to put that into some sort of a schedule that coordinates with their calendar and everything else. When I look at Salesforce and I open Salesforce, it's unique to me as an individual. I've used Salesforce with many different companies. Sometimes you can see the visibility of other accounts, and things of that nature. These platforms can be problematic as you have people that are always looking at your stuff and then trying to work their way around you.
With Salesforce, I do feel that I'm doing a lot of repetitive tasks. We're constantly, re-putting in the same thing over and over and over. And that's something that Salesforce should figure out. They need to remove redundancies, as salespeople want to move on to the next deal. Salespeople want to talk and track the initial and primary points of contact. They want to put in a quick note and move on to the next opportunity.
For a salesperson, sometimes, you should be able to categorize your opportunities in the vertical markets that can be beneficial as well. I know it makes it a little more complex, however, that way you could see everything at a glance. You could look up which vertical, for example, you are more successful in. You should be able to split those out and dissect everything a bit better.
That way, when you're running your campaigns, you could actually have some consistency. For example, as a salesperson, you could say "today I'm going to call logistics companies" or "today I'm going to call finance companies".
I've been in technical sales for about 30 years now and have used Salesforce for almost 20 years now.
The company I work for right now has 400 people.
I actually worked with GoldMine CRM, one of the first CRM tools that were out there. They worked on my internet services and voice services for many years before selling GoldMine to Vendata.
What I liked about their tool, which is something that Salesforce doesn't do, is they actually had a version for individuals as opposed to companies. That way, I would be able to track everything I was doing, too, and coordinate, and be able to save that information without setting up all the alarms that come with downloading something.
I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user.
I've used Goldmine Software, SEIBEL, Oracle, and Symantec Compass.
The company I work for has a partnership with Salesforce.
The product version is the latest and up-to-date. It's all handled through the company I work for.
I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect, however, Salesforce is a good CRM tool.