For companies in Dubai and the GCC region, achieving success in sales and sales management can be significantly helped by 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?

1. Real-time reporting, with data you can trust

• Reports are pre-configured

• Reports drawn from sales reps activity

• Report across the full spectrum of sales activity

A Tenacre consultant will help you fix the problem of reporting and data quality by configuring your Salesforce CRM in a way that all reports are just a click away. We want to help you move away from the old way of working, where your sales reps had to spend hours or days 'preparing a report' prior to a sales meeting. With Salesforce CRM, the reports that you use will reflect the up to the minute data that has been inputted to each lead or sales opportunity by each sales rep.

The data that you should include in your standard reports and dashboards shouldn't just reflect the sales pipeline values or closed deal records. For more insightful information, it's often revealing to view your team's activities such as meetings, calls or presentations. This data is possible through the integration of your CRM with your Outlook or Gmail application which comes as standard with each Tenacre project.

2. Enabled Sales Reps, especially when they're out of the office

• Mobile Apps

• Easy to view or add data to Salesforce

• Integrated with email and calendar

Salesforce is an enablement tool. It enables your sales team to have full access to records while they're out seeing clients and working deals. Even for reps that spend most of their time in Dubai Healthcare City or Dubai Media City rather than the office, they can use their smartphones, tablets or laptops to log in and view data. More importantly, they can update records in the CRM so that sales opportunity records reflect the outcomes of each meeting or phone call.

The integration of Salesforce with your reps Outlook or Gmail system makes it easier (practically effortless) for them to keep their records up to date. Adding meeting notes and follow up tasks directly into Salesforce makes each rep more productive. They no longer have to depend on scribbled notes in a diary when they need to see the details of the last client visit, instead, they can look at the Notes or follow up tasks that are entered into Salesforce during or after each meeting.

3. Create a step by step sales process

• Create sales 'best practice'

• Guide salespeople through the steps from within the CRM

• Gain more realistic forecasts

We call it a 'sales process' because there is a logical, sequential series of actions that we want our sales team to follow. We do this because we know that it works - when the process is followed we are more likely to close more business. The challenge for sales managers is that over time, our sales teams take shortcuts through the process, skipping some of the actions that you have defined.

When we configure Salesforce CRM for you, there will be a built-in method to guides the salesperson through the steps in the process. This guided selling feature will prevent the salesperson from skipping through the key phases or activities. With better adherence to a sales process, the forecast data that is used by sales managers will show more realistic data.

4. Better data security and business continuity

• Restricted access to records

• Prevent data theft

• Revoke and transfer records when an employee leaves

We know from working with so many companies in Dubai, that the security of the companies data is a big concern for sales leaders. In a region where there's often a relatively high turnover of staff, it's a concern that when a sales rep leaves the business that they don't walk away with your entire databases of customers.

Salesforce has complex security features that allow us to grant or revoke access to specific records. The access to data can be determined by the sales reps or sales managers requirements to do their job. If they don't need to see all of the records in the CRM, Tenacre can configure Salesforce to only give access to the records that they are responsible for. When they leave their job, the system administrator can easily revoke their access to prevent data theft.

When an employee is leaving the company, their Salesforce access can be revoked as part of HR off-boarding process. All of the records that they owned can be transferred to other sales reps in seconds, ensuring that there is no downtime in the sales process.

5. Integrate sales with customer service, marketing, finance...

• Integrated data across departments reduces errors

• Gives all departments a single view of the customer

• Integration with ERP or accounting platforms is straightforward

When your sales team are up and running on Salesforce, there are other teams within your company that might want to get access to your data. The CRM platform contains standard features such as Case Management that your customer service team could use. This feature captures all customer complaints or service issues and provides the tools to the customer care team to resolve the issue faster.

Third-party applications such as your ERP platform (SAP, Sage, MS Dynamics) or your financial accounting platform can be integrated with Salesforce. This integrated data can provide the sales rep with a single view of her customer. Additionally, workflows can be built between Salesforce and the external system. An example of this is when an Opportunity is 'Closed Won' in Salesforce, it can trigger an invoice in the accounting platform. Another use-case is that when materials are shipped from the distribution center, the ERP notifies the sales rep in Salesforce.

6. Build a high-performance culture

• Set goals, measure progress

• Coach sales reps using performance data

• Use Salesforce reports and dashboards

There's a saying, 'what you can measure you can manage'. The alternative of this saying is that if you don't have up to date and accurate data, then it's very difficult to coach better performance from your teams.

Salesforce will give you performance data on all of your sales teams. Establishing baseline targets for a number of sales calls, product demonstrations or other specific sales activity is a great starting point. In the first instance, it means that all the team understands their activity KPI's (we can put these on a specific dashboard on their home page). More importantly, teams start to see the relationship between the sales activity (prospecting, product demonstrations, asking for referrals) and closing deals.  With this data, sales management can document and enforce a structured sales process that helps the sales reps to improve their close rates.