Getting Started with a new Trial

Getting Started - Dashboard Configuration - Editing Tabs - Lead Management - Account Management - Contact Management - Opportunity Management - Reporting 

Once you check your email, click the link to activate your trial and change your password. To find more information on salesforce.com implementation, click here.

Next, add the additional users who will be evaluating salesforce.com. (You can skip this process if necessary)

The first time you log in to salesforce.com, a small window will appear with a "quick start guide". This is valuable information and we urge you to go through this to get started. If you prefer, select to "not show me this again" to bypass this pop-up in the future.

Welcome to the salesforce.com Home Screen.

Do not be alarmed by the size of the Dashboard components. Remember that most items within salesforce.com are customizable. To change the size of the dashboards to make them fit more comfortably on the home page, click on the DASHBOARD tab.

Click on the Edit Button and resize each dashboard component. (The best fit is "Medium")

Once resized, the dashboards should fit nicely across your browser. (More information creating dashboards found here.)

Another area to customize if you like is the add/removal or order of the tabs

Click on the "mini"-tab (last tab with right-pointing arrow) to bring up the edit options. Select "Customize Tabs"

Select the additional objects you want included from the left side panel and click on ADD to the right side panel. In addition, if you would like to remove certain tabs from your view, highlight the objects and click Remove.

Lead Management. Click here for more information.

Click on the Leads Tab. (A lead is considered an unqualified opportunity. Our leads remain in their own tab to keep your CRM database clean. When leads are qualified, users can "convert" leads into contacts.)

You can write a number of custom views of leads you want to see. Click on "Today's Leads" from the drop down list.

Click on one of your open leads to view details

Included on the Lead Page by default will show the Lead details including their contact info and now as you scroll down the Lead page, you can see "related lists" which will list all related information to the Lead. In this case, you should see Lead Open Activities, Activity History and HTML Status.

Most of our days as sales reps is spent on the phones and one of the biggest challenges we have is tracking those customer transactions. To start recording or tracking your activities, from the Lead page, click on "Log a Call" to track your call notes.

Selecting "Log a Call" will open up the call log screen where you can write your notes and follow up information. If necessary, you can create your own custom fields you want to track on a Call Log page by clicking here.

A second challenge sales reps have is knowing when to follow up with prospects or customers and spend a lot of time writing reminder post-its that hang on their computer monitors. Within salesforce.com, if reps need to remind themselves to follow up, they can simple scroll down the Call Log page and set up a follow up reminder. (Reps can also elect to assign the task to another user and send a notification email alerting them to the task which will populate on both the lead page and on the home page overview).

Once the activity is logged, navigate down on the Lead related list and you will see the activity history now recorded

Account Management. Click here for more information.

Moving along, lets evaluate ACCOUNTS (also known as Customers or Companies). The Accounts tab is almost a Company Folder, where all the information rolls up into one view, including the contacts, opportunities, notes and attachments and activities.

Click on the Accounts Tab in salesforce.com

Very similar to the Leads tab, you can write a custom query to view your accounts. Click on ALL ACCOUNTS to view the current accounts in your new salesforce.com CRM.

Click on the account, "ACME". This will pull up the entire Acme Account Page. This page includes the high level Account Details at the top (Name, Phone, Web Address, etc) and as you scroll down the page (similar to the Leads Page), you will be able to view the related lists. The related lists from within the Account page include Open Activities, Contacts, Opportunities, Support Cases, Partners, Activity History and Notes and Attachments). These related lists indicate all the relationships to this one ACCOUNT (all things Acme).

As you continue to populate your CRM database, notice that everything starts at the Account Level. All phone calls made to a contact at Acme will appear on under the Activity History. Anytime you want to add a new contact, the best practice is to add them under the Account. If the Account doesn't exist, create it...then create the contact. It becomes the standard search to look for anything under the Account first.

Contact Management. Click here for more information.

The next area to explore is the CONTACTS within your database. These are the individual people that we work with AT the ACCOUNT. (ex: if I need to close a deal with Edward Stamos at Acme, I need to either search the database for Acme and scroll down to the Contacts Related List, or I can click on the Contacts Tab and click ALL CONTACTS.  Find Edward Stamos and click on his name. From this one single screen, I can now view all the information about my contact "Edward Stamos", including contact information and as I scroll down the page, once again, I can see the RELATED LISTS. From the contact page, I am viewing Open Activities, Opportunities, Support Cases, HTML Status, Activity History and Notes and Attachments.

Similar to the Leads Page, sales reps want to log phone calls or send email. You can email the contact DIRECTLY from within salesforce.com. From the contact screen, scroll down the ACTIVITY HISTORY. Click on "SEND AN EMAIL". This will bring up a web-based email screen (similar to Yahoo or Hotmail webmail clients).

You have a few choices from this screen. The absolute first thing you want to do is to click on the "SWITCH TO HTML" link. This will enable you to track whether or not your recipients have recieved and opened your email using HTML Cookie Tracking. Secondly, you can create your own pre-configured email templates to send to prospects and customers which will mail merge in database parameters such as NAME, PHONE, PRODUCT INTEREST, etc.  As an example, click on the SELECT TEMPLATE button.

Next, select one of the sample email templates included in your Trial.

This will automatically populate the email for you saving selling time!

Once the email is sent, the activity is automatically stored on the Contact Activity History as well as an indicator of the HTML Read Status.

(More information about email templates found here)

Opportunity Management. Click here for more information.

Select the Opportunity Tab in salesforce.com. Opportunities are the "deals" that sales reps manage that create or build their pipeline. Opportunities are where reps can view who their selling too, what they are selling, dollar amount, close date, etc. From the Opportunity Tab, click on "All Opportunities". (You can also create your own view of opportunities. As an example, create a view of deals over $50k, deals closing next month, deals where you compete with XYZ company....)

Select the first Opportunity entitled, "Acme - 1,200 Widgets". This will open the actual deal you are working on. Reps can now manage their entire pipeline through salesforce.com by adding deal information like Name, close date, $ amount, deal source, sales stage, probability, next steps, etc. 

Click EDIT

Reps have full control to change their name, close date, deal type, source, sales stage, etc. Click Save once again to update your opportunity.

Built into the Opportunity Home Tab is a Sales Pipeline Report. To access the report, click on the Opportunity Tab and click on Opportunity Pipeline Report"

This will immediately pull up your entire team's pipeline report depending on the Role Hierarchy.

To view more reports or create new reports, click on the REPORTS tab

There are over 70 pre-defined reports available from within salesforce.com. You can elect to run a static report, customize and save a static report or create a brand new custom report. (You can also report on ANY field within the database). More information on reporting can be found here.

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