9 Signs You Should Be Using Salesforce Classic
If you aren't keeping up with new tools for your growing business, you could be wasting time and losing money. Using a customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Salesforce Lightning can help you out in more ways than you might think.
Here are nine signs that you should enlist this awesome tool to help you out if you haven't already. But, first, let's look at the difference between Lightning and Salesforce Classic. These are two platforms offered by Salesforce, but they have some stark differences.
Salesforce Classic versus Salesforce Lightning: What's the Difference?
Salesforce Classic offers text-based UI that relies on a more basic design that isn't super intuitive. Salesforce Lightning offers a more modern and responsive interface with features like drag-and-drop page editors, customizable dashboards, and customizable components.
Lightning includes all the core functionalities of Classic but also introduces several new features:
Lightning App Builder: A drag-and-drop tool that allows users to create custom apps and pages without extensive coding knowledge.
Lightning Components: Reusable building blocks that can be customized and combined to create apps and features within Salesforce.
Einstein Analytics: An AI-powered analytics tool integrated into Salesforce Lightning that provides advanced data insights, predictive analytics, and recommendations, helping users make more informed decisions.
While Classic is still supported, Salesforce has shifted its focus to Lightning and considers Classic a "legacy" interface. Plus, new feature development is primarily focused on Lightning, so Classic users won't have access to the latest tools and innovations.
1. If You've Ever Lost an Email or Forgot to Respond to a Client
Like Classic, Salesforce Lightning is killer at helping you stay on top of emails. With the ability to track activities related to an account or contact, you can add your emails directly to the account or contact record. Years from now, if you need to refer back to an email for reference, or a week from now, if you need to remember where you left off, Salesforce has the email.
You can also create workflows with the Automation Lightening App, which allows you to create and review automated workflows quickly.
2. If You've Lost Track of Your Opportunities
Have you physically misplaced a potential sale opportunity because you wrote it on a napkin and left it in the restaurant? Or approached a lead but forgot to follow up? With Lightning, you can track every opportunity in various stages, make notes on what to do next, and use automation to move that deal from stage to stage.
Salesforce even has a mobile app that lets the sales team members work on the go, wherever their clients want to meet, and still input their data! The easier a product is to access and use, the more likely we are to use it.
3. If You Send Out Communication to Customers One By One
Emailing customers is time-consuming, and you're wasting precious time if you have to send them individually. It's time to embrace the future of emailing.
Salesforce Lightning can mass email contacts, so all you have to do is choose who you want to email, and with a few clicks, the emails are sent. You can even create Campaigns with leads and track your efforts. Even better, Lightening offers email templates to build into your Salesforce workflows.
Don't worry; there are still easy ways to ensure those emails make the customers feel like you are talking directly to them with the ability to populate the recipients' names.
4. If Out-of-the-Box CRM Solutions Just Don't Work for You
If one-size-fits-all CRM solutions don't work for your team, Salesforce Lightning is the ideal choice. Its highly customizable platform lets you tailor every aspect of the CRM to fit your unique workflows and processes.
With Lightning App Builder and Lightning Components, you can create custom apps, dashboards, and reports without a bunch of coding, ensuring that your CRM works exactly the way you need it to. This flexibility means your team can be more productive and means your CRM can grow and change with your business.
5. If You Want an Easier Way to Track Your Pipeline
Are you still using spreadsheets or paper to track your potential sales? Are you tracking potential sales at all? One of the best ways to plan your business goals or KPIs is to determine what will be happening for you during the year, and this is especially true if you want to attract some investors.
Salesforce Lightning allows you to set your fiscal year, use the standard year, and then enable Forecasting. You can view a snapshot of up to five days to track day-to-day or week-to-week performance. Compare historical values of different opportunities, such as dates or amounts, to get detailed insights into how your performance is changing over time.
6. If You Want to See How Much Money You're Making
What are you using to track your sales? Is it easy to access? Does it allow you to examine the details of the sale or customer accounts more deeply? If you are using more than one system, stop.
Start using Salesforce Lightning and make your life a whole lot easier. Adding your opportunities and your leads into Salesforce Lightning has the bonus of being able to report all of your hard work—so no more guessing or jumping around from system to system or account to account to figure out all those glorious numbers. You can filter, track, and customize reports with ease.
You can also create graphs and charts! Nothing beats a visual representation of your biggest sales, customers, and best account reps. Nothing is more valuable than visualizing a plan for your organization's future growth.
7. If You are Using Outlook to Track Your Accounts and Contacts
It's never too late to start using Salesforce Lightning to input your contacts and accounts. Whether you keep them all in Outlook, in spreadsheets, or in your Rolodex, it's time to transition to Salesforce Lightning. Salesforce Lightning has ways to mass import spreadsheets, or you can enter contacts and accounts one by one. With everything in one central location, stored securely on servers around the country, your data has never been easier to access. You can access all of this data even while traveling using the Salesforce Lightning mobile app.
You can make sure key contacts at your company can see the information, and you can create custom fields for those accounts to ensure you track all of the right information.
8. If Meetings are Overwhelming Your Calendar
Let's face it: you're a busy person with many meetings and projects to work on. The last thing you want to have to do is micromanage your team. They need to spend their time selling, not wasting their time talking to you!
With Salesforce Lightning, you can track what your sales reps are doing with activity history related to contacts and accounts, and you can report on the opportunities they are logging.
How many calls did Joe Salesman have this month? How many of those calls turned into meetings and opportunities? And how many of those opportunities led to a win for your team? Report on it all and watch those bar graphs rise with the power of Salesforce Lightning.
9. You Have No Way to Recover Data if Your Computer Crashes
A really important reason to use Salesforce Lightning is to keep all of your data centralized, secure, and accessible at all times. Computers crash, external hard drives break, and Post-It notes get lost. Salesforce Lightning stores your data in the cloud on its servers. Seamless upgrades are a benefit of their platform, and they improve with every new release.
Salesforce Lightning also lets you schedule data exports of all your organization's work, monthly or on-demand, so you can still back up all of that data externally. Trust the cloud, and keep those rainy-day disasters away!
Learn How to Make the Most of Salesforce Lightning
These nine reasons to start using one of the leading CRM platforms in the industry are solid, but there are plenty more out there that you'll discover as you become a Salesforce guru.
To learn how to make the most of Lightning's tools and features, consider our Salesforce Lightning Interface Online Training. You'll learn how to configure Salesforce so your CRM works better for you.
delivered to your inbox.
By submitting this form you agree to receive marketing emails from CBT Nuggets and that you have read, understood and are able to consent to our privacy policy.