What Are Some Great CRM Tools For Independent Salesforce Consultants?

CRM has evolved as a lifesaver for businesses. With changing business standards and needs, CRM has become the need of the hour. CRM can be described as different practices, strategies and technologies used to manage and analyze individual interactions and data. In easier words, CRM focuses on a company’s relationship with people. They can be customers, service providers, suppliers, users or co-workers. So, you can say the complete customer lifecycle passes through the doors of CRM in a business setup.

Starting from acquisition, sales, issues, feedback, service relationships, and repeat sales everything is recorded within the CRM. To get maximum benefit from the CRM, the best way is to incline it with areas like HR, Marketing, Sales, Research and Development, Supply-chain management, etc. Also, the success of a CRM depends on the implementation. The implementation solely depends on your decision of hiring professional CRM development service.

The service can be given by a big business organization or an individual salesforce consultant. Well, each has its pros and cons. If you hire CRM development services from a big brand, they offer you expertise, but can be heavy on your budgets. Whereas individual salesforce consultants can be a single point of contact for your CRM and be easy on your pocket.

Before hiring an individual for CRM development services, look for one with expertise in Salesforce tools. Salesforce is a leading cloud based CRM used by many business organizations and individual consultants. When you are hiring, an individual salesforce consultant makes sure you dig deep into the salesforce tools he/she is using. This will enable you to judge the value he can add to your business.

This article will give you an insight into some great CRM tools used by independent salesforce consultants.

1. Chatter:

Chatter is a new addition to the vast variety of tools from salesforce consulting. Synonymous to its name, Chatter gives business the flexibility to connect with its users.

With technological changes, increasing social connections and the use of the web has made salesforce introduce this tool. Chatter allows users to collaborate and share information by creating a community within the business. The community can be of employees, suppliers, customers or anyone related to the business. So the tool lets you be updated about what happening around with others and the business. Or you can just get an idea about specific sales cycles or collaborate with a colleague on some data. And even better is that if you already a salesforce consultant or salesforce consulting company with a salesforce account, then Chatter is absolutely free to use.

2.Buddy Media:

Buddy Media is the newest addition to the salesforce family. Buddy Media is a social media tool, which has been recently acquired by salesforce. Now, you wonder how it helps salesforce consultants. With the help of Buddy Media, an individual salesforce consultant or salesforce consulting company can manage the customer lifecycle from sales to support. Many companies setup a Facebook page to promote their brand. Buddy Media uses the content on the pages to quietly introduce and promote a brand by adding it into people’s conversations on social networks, thus increasing the fan following for the company.

3. Quip:

Quip is a productivity tool, combining spreadsheets, tasks lists, team chats, notes, documents, etc. at one single place. By organizing these files in one place, it helps salesforce consultants to be aligned and coordinated with business goals. So, if you are working with a number of people, a Quip spreadsheet will open up your salesforce report in a single click. And over that the data shared on quip is live any changes or updates will automatically make its way in Quip. This will help all the people or salesforce consultants working on the project to coordinate effectively.

4. IOT:

Nothing is complete without the internet. Now every person on the internet is a potential customer. The IOT tool by the salesforce capitalizes on the power of the internet for customer acquisition and satisfaction. Wondering, how does IOT work? IOT uses physical devices connected to the internet like Cars, Home appliances, Alexa, Google home, Smart bands, etc. to capture data online. Machine-to-machine communication helps to track any faults in machinery operations, reports it and raises service alarms. So instead of getting a customer complaint, you can identify probable faults and communicate them to the technical department before even happening. An idea about the product will also help you tweak into your design and marketing strategies.

5. Lightning Dialler:

Getting touch with potential customers is also a humongous task. Sometimes as an individual salesforce consultant, you can miss some important clients. Lightning dialler makes this easy for you. As soon as you enter the number in the salesforce CRM, the customer number is updated in the lightning dialler. As the number gets updated, you only need to click on the number in the salesforce to connect with the potential customer. You can also receive the calls within the salesforce framework. Along with is you can take notes, answers, feedback and finalize details within the app without switching any windows. And even better than that you don’t need to remember what you spoke to the prospect last time. The lightning dialler keeps an interaction history of every call. So, you can remember who your prospect is and when and what did you speak to them the last time.

6. Pardot:

Pardot can be termed as an automation system focussing on lead marketing. Pardot focuses majorly on B2B relationships. Individual salesforce consultants and salesforce consulting companies can connect with prospects via social media, emails, paid marketing, etc. You can also use Pardot to sync and be updated about your current customers. Like for example, if you are running a salesforce campaign for a product update, you can add a list of attendees from your salesforce into Pardot. And stay connected with them even after the event ends.

7. Heroku:

Heroku is a cloud based platform service that supports different programming languages like Ruby, Java, Node.js, Scala, Clojure, Python, PHP and Go. So, in simpler terms, Heroku lets the developer build, run and execute applications in multiple open-source languages. So, if you have built an app with a self-contained design or a browser based program, then it needs a home on the web. Technically it needs a web address, so people can locate it on the web. You will also need some storage space for data associated with the app and background support to make sure that traffic spikes won’t knock it offline. This is where Heroku helps. The tool helps you to get your finished app reach the users by just a few clicks.

8. Thunder:

Big data has become the need of the era. With information flowing from multiple channels like mobiles, smart devices, sensors, websites, point of sale, social media, etc. There is a data dump that is created and captured every day. The individual salesforce consultant and salesforce companies can benefit from this data by the use of Salesforce Thunder. Now, let’s get to know what Salesforce Thunder exactly does. Salesforce Thunder is a big data processing pipeline that uses different processing rules to record, filter and react to events in real-time.

9. Sales Cloud:

The first one on the list will be definitely the Sales cloud. Sales Cloud is a salesforce tool, designed to manage and support sales, marketing and customer support in both B2C and B2B setups. Now, if you are wondering, why is it so great for an individual salesforce consultant, then here are a few reasons? The sales force tool can be customized. The tool brings all customer information related to leads, sales, service, and analytics in an integrated platform. You can also access over thousands of applications using the AppExchange. The tool is also incorporated in SAAS for the browser and mobile based access. This benefits the individual consultants to collaborate in real-time social feed.

10. Service Cloud:

We discussed the sales cloud focussing on B2B and B2C services. While the service cloud focuses on customer service and delivery. This cloud service is more conventional and supports features like consumer portal, knowledge base, online communities and real time chat. So, you will be thinking about how it works for a salesforce consultant. The service cloud lets the consultant to answer queries on the company’s social media platforms like Facebook or Google Plus. As well as convert these posts, opinions and comments into cases in the tool. If you take the example of twitter, it works in the same way by creating case from tweets and conversation threads. Service cloud enables salesforce consultants to act as a social agent for the company by chatting live with the customers. This tool works best with a B2B setup, looking to cut down on the human workforce and work with less expensive tools.

These are just a few tools to name from the Salesforce basket. CRM tools will be largely dependent on your business need, size, and budget and of course the number of users.

Ajay Goyal is co-founder & director at Endive Software. He works dedicatedly with client’s aspects to deliver industry-specific results. He runs development services like mobile app development and website development for enterprises and startups.