Salesforce

Comments: I use it daily. I live in salesforce and I'm in marketing. I use it to keep up with my team and to try to use chatter to highlight what is working and showcase certain accounts. I also like to follow the wins and losses to try to get a feel for where we can improve.

Pros: Everything. I love salesforce. I love its ease of use, navigation, walk-me, training, integration, features, functionality, you name it. Chatter is my favorite feature and once adopted by organizations you see the whole organization migrate to making salesforce their homepage. I love the adaptation the teams have to it and that you can customize your dashboard so sales, marketing, integration, and other teams can all use it as they need to.

Cons: The cost, and sometimes Salesforce does not do a good job of showing the interoperability it has. There are so many features that make it a one-stop-shop for companies large and small, but it seems if the product is sold as a sales tool, it remains that way instead of showing the integration options for marketing and other teams.

Comments: Overall, i like the product. It is probably more than i need for my firm but I enjoy many of the features help me create greater efficiencies.

Pros: I like the user-face and intuitive nature of the product. I also like how i can customize it to meet my needs for my company. It is not an out of the box product.

Cons: I wish there was better customer support and initial orientation to the software. Service is overseas and it could take up to two days to get a question answered. I would prefer customer service to be held exclusively in the United States and within reach if i needed a quick question answered. I also wish there was a set up team that can provide simple customizations that do not necessarily require a third party vendor to charge several hundred, if not thousands of dollars to customize my CRM.

Comments: Once we started using Salesforce, we have increased our repeat business from our existing clients and our conversion rate from the leads and referrals we receive has skyrocketed. We are able to tailor our offerings to the prospects specific needs and their response has been overwhelmingly positive. We often get comments about how they feel like we understand them better than our competitors.

Pros: Salesforce is probably the most functional CRM tool on the market, and one of the easiest to set up and use. It worked right out of the box, and we have continued to expand the features we use. One of the best things are all the plugins available, which allow you to customize the environment to fit your business' specific requirements. Our revenues have doubled consistently year-to-year and our customer satisfaction ratings have improved dramatically since we began using Salesforce. My team has threatened to revolt if we ever consider moving to a different platform.

Cons: The licensing structure favors larger organizations, but the fees we pay are still reasonable for the value we get from the product.

Comments: If you or your team does not have the time to fully invest in training and learning the platform to a deep extent, than this software would be a waste for you. I would recommend speaking with a SalesForce consultant about the different reporting, campaigning, sales, etc. capabilities before making the investment. Though the Customer Support side of SalesForce, in terms of issue resolution, have not been helpful, the SalesForce sales team is very knowledgeable and give honest opinions on what different functions, plans, etc. they would recommend to fit your specific needs. The sales team has actually saved us money by showing us how to more efficiently manage our plan with them.

Pros: The reporting capabilities of SalesForce, especially now that they have switched over to the new Lightning experience, are a great asset for companies looking to track business development activities. Sales funnel reporting, gain-loss reports, call/meeting/email recaps, project lists, budgeting and customer contacts - SalesForce is your "one stop shop" for all of these reporting functions! My team has also loved having the ability to sign up for monthly emails that are based off of reports they have set up within SalesForce. This allows them to track any progress, trends or issues that need to be addressed upfront. My team has also enjoyed the email campaign tracking, which works in conjunction with the Pardot platform.

Cons: SalesForce is not an intuitive software to use and is not easily learned by all members of my team. This is what I like least about the software. Beyond that, customer support has been less than helpful. My team and I have often had to do our own research on Google and YouTube for solutions to problems the SalesForce Customer Service could not help us with. This platform takes a considerable amount of training to really be able to grasp its reporting and data entry capabilities. Beyond that, this product is not cheap! It is worth the investment for larger organizations, but I am not sure it is worth the cost for smaller companies.

Comments: We love Salesforce. We have loved working so closely with the team to create our personalized CRM. It has increased our tracking, our efficiency, and sales.

Pros: We work for a Membership Camping Resort and have been using Salesforce as our CRM for the past few years. We worked directly with Salesforce to create a customized CRM for Leads, Working Leads, and our full Call Center. Previously we were working with older systems. It is amazing to have a Web based platform. We are able to track our Lead to Sale so much better than we have for years. Our use of Salesforce has allowed to really see where our dollars are going. Working with their support team has been amazing for us. They have helped us enter into the new century!

Cons: It's extremely costly. And, we have a large staff that needs access to our CRM. We have to pay for each person to have their own Login and Profile. When you are paying for 50+ people and need more, it becomes extremely expensive.