Sales Process
Archived Posts from this Category
Task Management Tools Lesson 2: Creating Custom Fields
Posted by Peter Mitton on 20 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Sales Process, User, Administrators, Tips and Tricks
In Part 2 of our series, we discussed how we create tasks for ourselves and other team members and where to find those tasks again later. In part 3, we continue the process of organizing and presenting that information in a concise and easy to follow manner.
So, in this lesson, we continue to examine the creation and use of reports to help manage our tasks. If you recall from our earlier discussion, we generally want to know the following things about individual tasks…
- What is the Task.
- Who is the Task assigned to.
- When was it assigned.
- When is it due (if has a due date).
- Is it on time, or is it late
More below the fold!
From the “Things that should be in Salesforce but aren’t - file!” - Task Management Tools
Posted by Peter Mitton on 10 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Sales Process, User, Managers, Administrators, Tips and Tricks
When we work in Salesforce, we have the advantage of being able to communicate across the enterprise using the activities tools. Now, we have already covered the process of creating activities, but as we can see from our example, we don’t have a lot of visibility.
But you might be saying to yourself right now “But I saw all my tasks and events, thats pretty visible, isn’t it?”.
You would be right about that, it is pretty visible to you, but what about this scenario. Lets say we have used the activity creation tools to create a task for another one of our team members. How do we know its complete? Heck, how do we even remember that we created the task in the first place. Well, this series of articles is going to cover this in some detail. Get your propeller hats out, because we are going to dive in to some advanced tips and tricks below the fold!
The First Cup of the Day: Starting My Salesforce Day - Part 2 Activities
Posted by Peter Mitton on 05 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General, Sales Process, User
In part 1 of this series, we outlined the concept that the start of our sales day as an “Outside Salesperson” starts on the Home Tab of Salesforce . As you could see in that article, the Home Tab was looking pretty sparse. In fact, it is down right empty!
Thats no good! Our managers are looking at their sales metrics and saying “What the heck is Peter doing?” and “Why isn’t Peter scheduled to make calls?” and most importantly, “Why do I keep this guy around as a Salesperson?”. These are questions we don’t want our bosses to ask us. As Salespeople, the only time we want to hear from our boss is when he or she is telling us how great we are and how they are planning on increasing our comission rate. Verbal reports are for “Old Style” sales organizations. This is the age of the computer! This is the age of “pulling data” rather than “pushing data”. In a word, we need to do some CALL PLANNING.
The First Cup of the Day: Starting My Salesforce Day - Part 1
Posted by Peter Mitton on 03 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Sales Process, User
I spent several years as what I would call an “Outside Salesperson”. My job meant I spent my days on the road, meeting customers and trying to close business. So, in order to be successful, I spent my morning having that first cup of coffee and reviewing my plans for the day. Those plans start with the Home Tab, and so thats where we’ll start today.
The Sales Process and Salesforce: Getting into the right frame of mind
Posted by Peter Mitton on 02 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General, Sales Process
I am a big fan of Gitomer.
One of his many sayings (and I do mean many) refers to the idea that if you are going to be great in Sales (with a capital “S”), then there are certain things you need to do in order to be successful. If I might quote:
“You can only earn a commision using a sales technique, but you can earn a fortune building friendships and relationships.” -Jeffery Gitomer, The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, Revised Edition
And really, when you get down to it, Salesforce is just a simple (and perhaps complicated at times) tool for helping you maintain and manage those important relationships. And if you dig even further, as salespeople, we deal with a LOT of different relationships. Keeping track of those relationships can be really hard. I know when I started, I juggled a lot of different pieces of paper, day planners, business cards, presentation materials, to do lists, etc., etc., etc.
Well, Salesforce can help us make this process easier, and smoother. With the help of this tool, we can manage one of the most valuable commodities we own as a sales team, INFORMATION, and use it to our advantage.
