Preparing for Salesforce
Patrick Crosbie
How to define your Salesforce requirements

No two Salesforce implementations are the same. Each of our clients has unique processes and requirements and it's our job as Salesforce consultants in Dubai to design and built CRM platforms that reflect those bespoke requirements. The first step in working with Tenacre is to define the scope of work for the Salesforce project.

This process can be difficult for many of our clients, so we've written this article to provide assistance. Remember that your Tenacre consultant will walk you through each of these steps, you won't have to undertake any of these activities by yourself.

How to define your Salesforce requirements
Preparing for Salesforce
Patrick Crosbie
Taking your sales processes to the next level ...

84% of b2b customer inquiries fail to convert. Why? 

A report by the Aberdeen Group tells us that 84% of inquiries that businesses receives will not convert to a sale. These inquiries are usually expensive, you've paid out marketing budget for Google Adwords, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter campaigns. 

So what's the problem and how can you fix this? 

Taking your sales processes to the next level with marketing automation
Sales Management
Patrick Crosbie
Creating value for the sales leaders with ...

For companies in Dubai and the GCC region, succeeding in sales and sales management is can be dependent on the tools and technologies that are used. Many of our clients relied on spreadsheets or basic CRM platforms before making the decision to upgrade their CRM to Salesforce with the help of Tenacre consultants.

Once the decision has been made to move to Salesforce, what are the benefits that you can expect?

Creating value for the sales leaders with Salesforce CRM
Preparing for Salesforce
Patrick Crosbie
Salesforce implementation - Essential ...

A Salesforce project can often seem daunting, particularly if you haven't been involved in one before. Depending on the degree of change that Salesforce will bring to your company, the key to getting the CRM up and running is to prepare thoroughly. While each project that we work on is unique, there are common themes that the team at Tenacre has identified that could help you prepare better before the project kicks off.

Salesforce implementation - Essential preparation
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Sales Management - Key performance metrics from your CRM

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Sales Management - Key performance metrics from your CRM

Many of our clients are SME businesses where there isn’t a dedicated sales manager or person with sole responsibility for leading and managing the day to day sales activities. As we set up Salesforce CRM in these organisations it’s common to see our customers struggle with moving from their old position of having little information on sales and sales activity, to have so much data that they don’t understand how to make use of it. 

Here are some key metrics that should be the starting point for most organisations. If you can get to grips with these reports, you can then add more metrics that are specific to your company or sales challenges. These reports can easily be created in your Salesforce CRM.

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How to run a data-based sales meeting with Salesforce

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How to run a data-based sales meeting with Salesforce

Managing sales meetings as a Salesforce company means that how you run these meetings will be different to how other sales managers (that don’t have real-time information at their fingertips in the CRM) run theirs. With so much data in the CRM, this article explores the specific ways that you can leverage this data for more effective meetings and more profitable sales.

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Is it time for a security audit of your CRM data?

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Is it time for a security audit of your CRM data?

At Tenacre we look at Salesforce data from the perspectives of

  • Data security (how safe is it)

  • Business Continuity (how quickly can we recover from losing a key staff member)

  • Usability (how easy is it for people to use data as they need it)

Data has massive value in any company, particularly a business that’s a Salesforce user. All the rich CRM data holds valuable information on your customers, prospects, pricing, and the history of your sales reps calls, meetings, and notes. This is why Salesforce has provided such as a comprehensive set of security options for your CRM, to keep your data safe. But have these security settings been set up, and is your data safe?

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The dramatic impact on sales when response times to inquiries are shortened.

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The dramatic impact on sales when response times to inquiries are shortened.

According to this Harvard Business Review article, the average time it takes for companies to respond to an online submitted inquiry is 42 hours. The article goes on to say that leads that are followed up in less than one hour are seven times more likely to qualify than if they followed up in one to two hours.

The bottom line is that speed matters in sales.

As a Salesforce customer there are numerous specific things that you can do to have your inbound leads responded to in less than 60 minutes.

Automating professional services processes in Salesforce

Automating professional services processes in Salesforce

In professional services, profitability is directly dependent on how efficient your processes are. If your team can do things 10% faster then this is money that does straight to the bottom line. A common recommendation that we make to our clients during Salesforce CRM implementations is to look for ways that the CRM can automate repetitive tasks or move projects through pre-defined stages as smoothly as possible. These requirements are as relevant to the post-sales phase as sales phase.

So what are the standard ways that Salesforce can automate processes? Here’s a summary of the techniques that Tenacre typically use for professional service firms.

Use Salesforce as the single-source of data

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Lead nurturing for professional service firms

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Lead nurturing for professional service firms

Selling professional services usually involves getting to know many people in your target companies, and making a pitch that is specific to their part of the business. Over time this approach will ensure that your value proposition will resonate with all the key decision makers. The difficulty in this approach is how to maintain contact with such a large group of people? We suggest that you consider lead nurturing and marketing automation as a strategy to intelligently and continuously keep in touch with your target audience.

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Resource Management for professional services firms in Salesforce

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Resource Management for professional services firms in Salesforce

For professional services firms, we generally have two things to offer our clients; our time and expertise. Managing these assets correctly requires a unique skill set and management tools. Having worked with many professional services in Dubai to implement Salesforce, the consultants at Tenacre have had the benefit of seeing how many different types of companies manage their resources profitably.

Here are some of the things that we’ve learned.

Salesforce Update - Winter '19 Summary

Salesforce Update - Winter '19 Summary

The ‘Winter ‘19’ update from Salesforce will be released to all existing clients over the weekends of October 5th and 12th. This is one of three major releases from Salesforce this year, and contains hundreds of new features and upgrades to your existing CRM. All of these features are available to you to deploy immediately, but will require the settings to to be activated and set up by your consultant or in-house Salesforce developer.

If you would like to have these features setup in your system, get in touch and a Tenacre consultant will be able to help you plan and deploy the new features that will deliver value for your company.

Summary of new features

Out of the hundreds of new upgrades, we’ve selected the ten new features that we think will deliver the most value to our clients

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The data security & business continuity advantages of Salesforce CRM

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The data security & business continuity advantages of Salesforce CRM

How valuable is your company’s data?

How easy would it be for one of your employees to leave your business and take important client or pricing information with them? What would be the impact of data corruption on in-house databases or spreadsheets to your day to day operations?

For many of our clients, data security and business continuity considerations were some of the main reasons for implementing Salesforce CRM.

How to define your Salesforce requirements

How to define your Salesforce requirements

No two Salesforce implementations are the same. Each of our clients has unique processes and requirements and it's our job as Salesforce consultants in Dubai to design and built CRM platforms that reflect those bespoke requirements. The first step in working with Tenacre is to define the scope of work for the Salesforce project.

This process can be difficult for many of our clients, so we've written this article to provide assistance. Remember that your Tenacre consultant will walk you through each of these steps, you won't have to undertake any of these activities by yourself.

How Salesforce CRM has become the backbone of Dubai media companies

How Salesforce CRM has become the backbone of Dubai media companies

When Tenacre Group was setup in Dubai in 2013, our first ten clients were all media or advertising businesses based in Dubai Media City. We quickly build up an in-depth understanding of what media and advertising companies needed from their Salesforce CRM. With each new client we learned a little more about how to make the CRM create even more value for both sales managers and salespeople. 

It's worth stating that while most companies in these industries have similar requirements, each of our projects have unique features. We develop Salesforce platforms around the processes and procedures of each company, and often help our clients to optimise these processes before building them into the CRM workflow. 

How Tenacre secures your data in Salesforce

How Tenacre secures your data in Salesforce

One of the many reasons that companies in Dubai implement Salesforce CRM is so that they can have greater security over the data that relates to their customers, sales activities and prices.

If your business uses spreadsheets or other informal ways of holding sales reports, you are exposed to the threat of data theft from employees that leave the company to work for a competitor. 

Salesforce is used by the worlds largest banks, medical institutes and commercial organisations. The security options that the CRM offers is one of the compelling reasons for companies to trust Salesforce to hold their data. 

If you are considering a CRM platform in your business, here are the ways that Tenacre helps companies in Dubai to apply best-practice security settings to keep your records safe. 

Getting your data ready for Salesforce

Getting your data ready for Salesforce

When Tenacre consultants are working on Salesforce implementation projects in Dubai, we have learned that one of the common bottlenecks in the project can be getting our clients data into the new system. 'Data Migration' is the phrase used to describe how companies identify data in their organisation, and then import this into Salesforce. 

Advance preparation

If we prepare in advance, the data migration phase of the project doesn't have to be a bottleneck. Preparing for this part of the project can start in advance of the actual Salesforce implementation, and is best done by an internal staff member of our client's company. There are some key steps that can be taken that will help avoid delays later on when the Salesforce implementation is in progress. 

Taking your sales processes to the next level with marketing automation

Taking your sales processes to the next level with marketing automation

84% of b2b customer inquiries fail to convert. Why? 

A report by the Aberdeen Group tells us that 84% of inquiries that businesses receives will not convert to a sale. These inquiries are usually expensive, you've paid out marketing budget for Google Adwords, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter campaigns. 

So what's the problem and how can you fix this? 

How to build your project team for implementing Salesforce

How to build your project team for implementing Salesforce

One of the key success factors with implementing Salesforce is good preparation, and specifically having the right people formally assigned to the project from the start. Having the right team in place helps with ensuring that there's momentum behind the project, avoiding delays and being able to work through problems quickly. 

The team that you put together will depend on the size and complexity of the project. In general, there are standard project roles that should be created.

These project roles work well with Tenacre's agile project management methodology. 

An explanation of how Tenacre delivers Salesforce projects

An explanation of how Tenacre delivers Salesforce projects

Our clients for Salesforce implementation love the way that Tenacre delivers projects. We switched away from traditional ways of project delivery back in 2015 in an effort to build in more flexibility for our clients to make changes during the project, and to speed up the time it took to deliver a working system. Over the past three years we've worked on over 100 projects, and during that time we've completely embedded the 'Agile' project management methods into the culture of how Tenacre delivers Salesforce projects here in Dubai. 

If you are considering a Salesforce implementation in Dubai, what are the key aspects of working with Tenacre that you should be aware of? 

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How to make 'Lead Nurturing' work for your sales team

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How to make 'Lead Nurturing' work for your sales team

We're doing a lot of work with Pardot (the Salesforce marketing automation software) at the moment. We think Pardot is a fantastic solution, but I'm not going to talk about it (much) in this article. Instead, I want to talk about the piece of our sales and marketing efforts that most of us ignore, the middle of the sales funnel. I think that if companies here in Dubai concentrate a little more effort in nurturing the middle of the funnel sales opportunities that they can enjoy a 10% to 20% increase in revenue within three months. The Pardot marketing automation application provides all the tools needed to convert this unrealised pipeline.

Why's this so interesting? Well, let's consider the two ends of the sales funnel that we all tend to pay most attention to, the top end where the inbound marketing effort creates new leads and inquiries, and the bottom end where the sales team are working hard to convert the opportunities into closed sales.

Managing culture change with Salesforce implementation projects

Managing culture change with Salesforce implementation projects

The need for cultural change

Changing company culture can be tricky, it's not an easy to get right and can take some time for change to truly happen. Your company culture is defined by the beliefs, values and especially the actions of the people that work there. In this article, we'd like to focus on five key behaviours that will contribute to a successful Salesforce implementation.

We have identified these behaviours based on implementing over 100 Salesforce CRM projects in Dubai. We hope that by sharing this information here it will help companies to put in place some steps to address these cultural considerations before they start implementing a CRM system. 

Salesforce integration with multiple systems

Salesforce integration with multiple systems

As more and more of our clients in Dubai and the UAE implement Salesforce and continue to add more sophistication to their system, one of the common requirements is Salesforce integration (or Pardot integration) with other software systems. Even our smallest clients have considered the benefits of getting data shared across their cloud-based systems. The benefits of Salesforce integration with multiple software applications is that it gives more accurate data to your employees faster. Providing staff with a single view of your data means that they save time on sourcing information, and can concentrate their time on more productive work, like closing sales.

So how does Tenacre create Salesforce integration with other systems? There isn't a single method that we use, instead, it's very much a case of what integration method meets our client's requirements best. We always consider factors such as what data needs to be shared across systems, and whether the data needs to be in real - time sync, or whether a sync cycle of every 15 or 30 minutes will work.

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Salesforce Engage - Bringing marketing automation to the sales team

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Salesforce Engage - Bringing marketing automation to the sales team

Salesforce Engage fixes the problem is how to enable your sales team to quickly and easily deploy marketing campaigns that directly help them to close new business. With Salesforce Engage, a salesperson can load a new prospect into the CRM, and then activate a multi-step email marketing campaign right from their iPhone.