Salesforce: Proof that Satan is real

[Parliament 14282]

Or am I wrong.  I've recently changed responsibilities in our company.  Turns out these guys have surrendered their souls to those Salesforce aholes, and I'm totally lost.  Salesforce for Dummies will show up on Tuesday and I'll read it until dawn.  Any other suggestions?  I may literally get fired over this.

[XYZ 2154]

WTF is salesforce?

[StruggleBus 3922]

If you can’t figure out how to use Salesforce  you probably aren’t employable anyway.

[Guest]

My company's shit is so antiquated, we'd kill to get SalesForce...LOL.

 

Not really.  Fuck those TPS reports and people who try and run their business by them.

[immamac 42900]

1 hour ago, Parliament said:

Or am I wrong.  I've recently changed responsibilities in our company.  Turns out these guys have surrendered their souls to those Salesforce aholes, and I'm totally lost.  Salesforce for Dummies will show up on Tuesday and I'll read it until dawn.  Any other suggestions?  I may literally get fired over this.

What? How hard is it to put notes in a CRM. I will never understand why field sales people hate salesforce so much is it because they actually get held accountable?

[Surly Bevo 25111]

Just now, immamac said:

is it because they actually get held accountable?

Yes that is a big one.

I'm not sales but have worked several places that use Salesforce.  People don't like feeling watched but get the fuck over it it is your job.

Now that said I have seen it implemented and used very well with the staff an integral part of workflow, reporting, dashboard etc design.  I've also seen it implemented really poorly.  Same basic tool, wildly different amount of value being added.

[immamac 42900]

Salesforce always adds value if the reps actually put data in. 

[Surly Bevo 25111]

1 minute ago, immamac said:

Salesforce always adds value if the reps actually put data in. 

If somebody knows how to effectively do something with that data.  That's sort of an important part.  That is more an organizational failing than a Salesforce failing but people being people will project their frustration on the tool they perceive is watching them and making them do a bunch of work that doesn't lead anywhere.

[immamac 42900]

If a business doesn't know how to do anything with sales data they aren't a business they are a money laundering operation or something. Lol

[JerrysJheriCurl 977]

1 hour ago, Surly Bevo said:

If somebody knows how to effectively do something with that data.  That's sort of an important part.  That is more an organizational failing than a Salesforce failing but people being people will project their frustration on the tool they perceive is watching them and making them do a bunch of work that doesn't lead anywhere.

And the data input has to be standardized. As mentioned, the value is not so much the data entry... it’s the analytics it produces... how to interpret those... and how to strategically target areas with more funds. 
Even if you get that far, the internal politics of a company get in the way. People will get defensive if their department is seen as low performing via the data and/or there is a weak spot in there.

Use Tableau CRM (Einstein Analytics) with it, and you have a very powerful tool that, if used properly can create predictive models with AI, as well with your own developed algorithms.

In short, Salesforce if used properly, can be a game changer. And no, I don’t work for Salesforce or have stock in it. 

[tx 3 putt 77280]

remember to always hit 'save' 

 

[JerrysJheriCurl 977]

3 hours ago, Parliament said:

Or am I wrong.  I've recently changed responsibilities in our company.  Turns out these guys have surrendered their souls to those Salesforce aholes, and I'm totally lost.  Salesforce for Dummies will show up on Tuesday and I'll read it until dawn.  Any other suggestions?  I may literally get fired over this.

Just get in there and start using it. The more you use it the easier it gets. If you need, help just let me know. 
SF built a specific CRM for our company, as we are the largest in our space. I’ve onboarded colleagues across the country, as they are really strong, but just needed to learn the new technology. 
One of our oldest field staffers is one of the best at it. It just took some 1v1 training. He put the time in and is killing it now. 

[TKthunder2 4997]

What part is difficult?  I’ve used other systems and Salesforce I clearly the easiest/user friendly assuming your company didn’t fuck up the implementation.

[Parliament 14282]

1 hour ago, TKthunder2 said:

What part is difficult?  I’ve used other systems and Salesforce I clearly the easiest/user friendly assuming your company didn’t fuck up the implementation.

Core concept, it seems.  We do a lot with "interactions," in particular.  Upthread is mentioned "tableau."  Tableau is pretty good.  My primitive caveman brain understands it.

[Dbeasy 15078]

I learned salesforce on the original UI and it was fine. Two years ago I had to get back into it for reports, etc and the new lightning interface had rolled out.

It took me about three weeks to figure out how to properly refresh views. It was completely non intuitive, but once you finally figure it out, it’s very easy and you wonder why the hell it took so long to figure it out. 

[StruggleBus 3922]

Yeah I was guilty of always switching back to classic for years. But once I learned Lighting I quickly understood that it is vastly superior to classic.

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Core concept, it seems.  We do a lot with "interactions," in particular.  Upthread is mentioned "tableau."  Tableau is pretty good.  My primitive caveman brain understands it.

same here.  we use the tableau too.  Not rocket surgery.

I just get a kick out of the questions that come downrange that are purely and absolutely a product of reading reports.  God forbid you get out of the ocubicle and triangulate with reality, motherfucker...

[JerrysJheriCurl 977]

Yeah we are still on the classic skin. I think we are one of the few bigs left on it. I can toggle to lightning and have played in reports in there... until my brain goes to mush.

I will wait until we flip the switch and move everyone to lightning. We have a state that we are piloting Tableau CRM with. That shit is the tits. Game changer. We hope to have the whole country on Tableau CRM in the near future.

And my black zip-up SF trailblazer hoodie can be worn anywhere, so that’s a bonus. 

[DonkeyCigars 143]

20 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

I learned salesforce on the original UI and it was fine. Two years ago I had to get back into it for reports, etc and the new lightning interface had rolled out.

It took me about three weeks to figure out how to properly refresh views. It was completely non intuitive, but once you finally figure it out, it’s very easy and you wonder why the hell it took so long to figure it out. 

SFDC classic until I die (but I understand some companies have disabled the ability to revert to classic from lightning, alas).

Edited February 8, 2021 by DonkeyCigars

[DonkeyCigars 143]

SFDC the core platform (Sales Cloud) is awesome and ubiquitous, but the real power is in the other connections and cloud hooks in a business (Marketing Cloud, Financial Cloud, Commerce Cloud, etc.) add that with Tableau and Einstein and integration orchestrators, along with now Slack, and you have a pretty awesome tech stack and a formidable competitor to MSFT, which is healthy IMO.

[52-80 19222]

On 2/7/2021 at 7:34 PM, TKthunder2 said:

What part is difficult?  I’ve used other systems and Salesforce I clearly the easiest/user friendly assuming your company didn’t fuck up the implementation.

people who shit on SF probably never used siebel or sap's version of CRM

 

im long salesforce. shit is gold standard.

[1978horn 895]

I think initial implementation is key.  If you fuck that up then it will always be.

 

I could be misremembering, but didn't SF have some fuck up a year ago and lose multiple customers data.  I seem to remember whatever backup that sales force was using didn't work and was corrupt and so those customers had to start completely over? 

[Bevo 13593]

This thread reminds me of why I prefer fishing.

[sachick 1189]

On 2/7/2021 at 9:01 AM, Parliament said:

Or am I wrong.  I've recently changed responsibilities in our company.  Turns out these guys have surrendered their souls to those Salesforce aholes, and I'm totally lost.  Salesforce for Dummies will show up on Tuesday and I'll read it until dawn.  Any other suggestions?  I may literally get fired over this.

I was in your place about a year and half ago. Had never heard of it and suddenly I was on the new Salesforce team since we had just bought SF. Trailhead is a great resource to learn stuff. Was able to get my Salesforce Admin cert using just Trailhead and googling SF Admin tests. It seems confusing at first but once you start using it, it's not bad and has a lot of potential. Now I'm learning Marketing Cloud which is totally different beast.

And I agree that how it is implemented is very important. I think we're getting off to a shitty start but all the wrong people are making the decisions. People who have no clue how Salesforce works.

[Reagan1k 3024]

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. 

Same with any CRM- if the input isn’t used to bring value other than being a whip, the best software is useless because those  inputting the data resent the effort it takes. 

[Guest]

On 2/9/2021 at 2:23 PM, Bevo said:

This thread reminds me of why I prefer fishing.

It reminds me of why I enjoy selling and letting other motherfuckers administer the monotonous horseshit.

Had a junior associate with me yesterday and made a few sales calls.  Reeled in a couple deals, one of which happened after customer had been particularly pissed.   At the end of the day, we're reviewing and he says, "None of that felt like a sales call at all and it damned sure didn't flow like they teach us."  I'm like yeah, all I did was solve their problems...  I didn't have to sell shit. 

I mean... they could opt to keep having problems.

Edited February 20, 2021 by slorch

[StruggleBus 3922]

It’s actually really easy to both sell and update Salesforce. 

[Bigpoppapump 532]

Had to write integrations into salesforce back in the day. That shit was awful.

[texasjacket 289]

On 2/7/2021 at 10:16 AM, immamac said:

If a business doesn't know how to do anything with sales data they aren't a business they are a money laundering operation or something. Lol

Just Stop. I have yet to see a business that knows how to probably use CRM information in a way that gives justification for the sweat equity invested by the field in recording the information. All the big firms are the worst in this regard as you have layers upon layers of middle managers trying to justify their existence by creating new metrics and dashboards that all report the same basic info, none of which truly helps the field. 

[immamac 42900]

2 minutes ago, texasjacket said:

Just Stop. I have yet to see a business that knows how to probably use CRM information in a way that gives justification for the sweat equity invested by the field in recording the information. All the big firms are the worst in this regard as you have layers upon layers of middle managers trying to justify their existence by creating new metrics and dashboards that all report the same basic info, none of which truly helps the field. 

So you told me I'm stupid, then literally said the exact same thing I said with different words. 

[LebongJames 1813]

Salesforce can be a great tool for a sales team and the organization but like others have said it’s how these shitty organizations use it. It’s not about being held accountable it’s about tracking KPIs that do nothing besides lead to reps pencil whipping data which defeats the purpose.

Sales is a very easy job to monitor to see who’s working and who isn’t. Making up bullshit numbers like you have to have 20 meetings a week, 2 new proposals just leads to nonsense.

At least the dashboards and reports are easy with Salesforce, Hubspot was not great and any companies proprietary applications are usually very difficult to use.

[Guest]

I'm glad we have our own shit.

 

That being said, fuck the morons who manage from behind a desk/ phone, calling to ask me to explain anomalies.

"IDFK, Chief.  You're the smart motherfuycker in the office.  You fucking tell me...  or get your fucking ass out in front of the customers and find the fuck out for yourself."

 

All i know, is at the end of the year, and there's been 22 of them; my shit fucking pays the bills.  Leave me the fuck alone...

Edited February 22, 2021 by slorch

[DonkeyCigars 143]

17 hours ago, texasjacket said:

Just Stop. I have yet to see a business that knows how to probably use CRM information in a way that gives justification for the sweat equity invested by the field in recording the information. All the big firms are the worst in this regard as you have layers upon layers of middle managers trying to justify their existence by creating new metrics and dashboards that all report the same basic info, none of which truly helps the field. 

At the most basic level, SFDC is a single source of truth and a way for a CRO/SVP to manage different theatres, regions, and teams and make forecasts and commitments to the C-Suite and Board.

However, Salesforce as an organization is much bigger and broader than the Sales Cloud which all sales people know SFDC as, as mentioned in my previous post. Just depends on which Salesforce we are talking about I guess-- the original SKU or the $20bn Fortune 200 software company.