Salesforce Account Management: Best Practices? Salesforce CRM, the indispensable sales tool, has many options for creating and storing customer information. Available Salesforce Services are many, but let's narrow this discussion to Salesforce Account Management. First, what exactly is a Salesforce Account? An Account is an entity, a person, a company, a group of people, or a group of different companies that share a common objective or bond. But for our purposes, when talking about Salesforce Accounts, let's narrow the definition down to some basic types.
- Customers
- Investors
- Competitors
- Suppliers
- Regulatory Agencies
- Resellers
- Anyone or anything that you communicate with
These different accounts can contain additional information about the Salesforce Account owner. And the fields can be easily customized by your team or Salesforce Consulting
Remembering that Salesforce Account Management is a very flexible tool that allows nearly unlimited information to be entered and grouped. For instance:
- Company name
- Industry
- Size (the number of employees)
- Company billing and shipping address
- Phone number
- Website
- Account Owner
Salesforce Account Management: Best Practices? Salesforce account records are supported by information from other tabs, such as contacts, opportunities, cases, and activities, so you can take a quick birds-eye look and quickly drill down into the details. Together, all this data gives you a global view of your customer and makes the facts available. Salesforce allows you to store and display separate data sets based on the chosen account type- an extensive distribution network may need additional account fields to capture the demographic and order information of various distributors. Salesforce consultants can assign a different page layout for each account type value, depending on your preferences.
Dealing with large companies, you can hierarchically organize data about their numerous divisions, business units, and subsidiaries. Using a “parent” account in Salesforce CRM, you can identify the company with the most influence or control and link it with its multiple “child” offices. Then the overall relationship with the whole business group becomes more apparent, with a broader perspective on the relationships within the “parent” and the use of collective monitoring to find new sales opportunities.
Salesforce defines an account as a company that you are or were doing business with. Salesforce Account types allow you to store data not only about your customers and partners but also competitors, investors, resellers, and all other companies or individuals that you may interact with in your work. For example, if you are a restaurant supply company that uses resellers to sell your products, you may want to select Reseller as one of your drop-down list values.
This organization makes detailed information readily available and in a single file, which speeds up account research and connection.
What Exactly Is Salesforce Account Management?
Keep in mind that Salesforce CRM, at its core, is still a Customer Relationship Management tool. And while CRM has been integral to doing business for centuries, in the 21st Century, it’s a tool that can do much more than send a Christmas fruit basket or a box of cigars.
The most crucial asset of Salesforce Accounts is the ability to be customized. The default position includes the basics:
- Company name
- Number of employees
- Contact information
- The billing address and information
- Shipping address and information
- Industry
- Website
- Lead contact
Following that, each Account can be further populated with information about contacts, sales projections and activities, notes on conversations, future plans, interests, and possible needs. This info can be available as a "quick look" or a "deep dive." Since this information used to be open to just one of the sales staff, or a small number of associates, it's somewhat of a revolutionary concept. In the old days, the company list of customers was usually confined to the person handing out the Christmas gifts. And now that customer information is more widely shared, the term "Customer Relationship Management" more directly describes what and who is being managed.
What Does A Salesforce Account Look Like?
It's not just the information contained in a Salesforce Account; it's also how you can access it. Rather, the way any of the sales team can access and use the information. Here’s an example: with cross-referencing details like what was in the last customer order, you might run across a similar order from another customer. This, in turn, might trigger an opportunity for savings on the customer’s part since a volume discount might be available from the supplier. Things like that really do make a difference in customer loyalty, and customer loyalty is the name of the game in Customer Relationship Management.
Other information can be included, but not limited to things like:
Company name, Industry, Size (the number of employees), Company billing, shipping address, Phone number, Website, and Account Owner.
How To Use Salesforce Accounts To Manage Customers More Effectively
As mentioned earlier, a "Lead" is a "Contact" is an "Account" at the various stages of your relationship with it. And contacts need to be secured so as not to be lost in the daily back and forth of business. If an Account is a person, not a company, they still deserve an Account. An Account may fall out of the “action” category and then be labeled “inactive,” but it should remain an Account, nonetheless. This mantra also works in reverse: a Salesforce Account should never belong to a staff member that, for whatever reason, has left the company.
Salesforce makes your account management more convenient. Without hassle, you can do things like:
- Consolidate all target accounts
- Purge paper-based account management
- Easily create new accounts
- Maintain account consistency
- Quickly describe the company hierarchy
- Assign account owner and account teams for effective business communication
- Track top accounts to prioritize sales and marketing activities
Personal accounts are practical for individual customers, club members, travelers, and online shoppers. These accounts have a unique feature absent from business accounts: each person can be assigned to a particular business. And you can work with personal accounts individually: invite them to meetings, create unique personalized messages, and other unique functionality.
Salesforce Account Management and Your Business.
The whole point of Customer Relationship Management is to keep communication and organization at the forefront of doing business. Salesforce CRM is the premier tool in use today, and the people at Salesforce intend to keep it that way. But remember, right out of the box, Salesforce may only have some of the functions you need. That's where a Salesforce Certified Consultant can make all the difference. Check with Rely Services and their Salesforce Certified Consultant Services. They can make Salesforce work for you!