Salesforce CRM Review: Everything You Need to Know in 2023
Running an online marketing business can be challenging if you don’t have access to marketing tools. Fortunately, this is not an issue thanks to the cloud-based software development that saved all online businesses. Nowadays, everyone in the digital marketing field is using a few tools to improve their online marketing business; tools that offer many features to help you, guide you, and push you toward a brighter future, and make the famous saying happen that says “work smarter, not harder.” One of these tools is Salesforce CRM.
Salesforce is a cloud-based software that offers tools and solutions like HR and customer relationship management systems. This Salesforce CRM review covers everything you need to know about this software and gain a comprehensive understanding of how it works and how it can help you in your business.
Let’s dive in.
What is CRM?
To learn more about Salesforce CRM, first, let’s have a quick look at what CRM is. CRM, also known as Customer Relationship Management, is software that helps you monitor and manage your leads, contacts, and products and create a better relationship with current and potential customers. It also aids you in recognizing potential leads and, with the right insights, guides you to increase the conversion rate. Generally, CRMs help businesses to customize and optimize customer interactions and automate the marketing process. Moreover, they provide detailed insights and suggestions based on campaign analysis, helping you to improve your strategies and run campaigns and other marketing areas more effectively.
Accordingly, a CRM can significantly impact your business growth and management, whether you are an enterprise or a start-up. The right CRM can build your brand and make you famous for the best customer support and relationship management. Salesforce CRM is an excellent tool to guarantee your improvement, providing everything a business needs to bring more solid revenue.
So let’s see how CRM software salesforce performs.
What is Salesforce CRM, and what Does it Do?
As mentioned earlier, Salesforce is a cloud-based platform with many business tools, such as HR software and CRM. As cloud-based software, Salesforce CRM does not need specific expertise to install and update the software since everything is automatically done in the backend. All you do is work with and enjoy the smooth flow.
Salesforce CRM can help different businesses of any size in many ways.
- It streamlines the marketing process and helps the sales team close deals, giving useful insights based on customer behavior and preferences.
- Another way that Salesforce can be beneficial is that it identifies the possible issues on pending deals. It helps you solve the problems and continue your sale.
- A CRM forecasts sales accurately and provides patterns to make more accurate sales, and Salesforce is known to be the master.
- It also stores customer information and records conversation history and data in an easily accessible way. This way, everyone in the company can pull out the files and information when needed. This information and record include emails, SMS, phone calls, and chats.
- Salesforce also helps you find new leads and potential customers with the same taste and criteria as your current customers. This, too, provides you with similar patterns and guides you to close more deals in a win-win way.
- As a CRM Salesforce helps you build strong and long-lasting relationships with your customers and help them with what they need.
Salesforce CRM Features and Attributes
One of the prominent features of CRM Salesforce is its flexibility. That means businesses can determine the features and capabilities they want to use based on their needs since Salesforce is a modular CRM. In the following, we elaborate on some of the features of Salesforce CRM.
Salesforce CRM core features:
Customer Service and Support
Salesforce CRM provides tools that help you manage customer service and support, such as chatbox and knowledge management. Also, it enables the customer service team to personalize the support system to aid every customer with their issues according to their need.
Store and Manage Customer Information
This useful tool allows customer data, including contact details, purchase history, and preferences, to be stored and managed in one place. Sales marketing and customer service teams have real-time access to this data and can update them at any time.
Analytics and Reports
As a CRM, Salesforce provides analytics and reports, gives you insights on improving your customer relationship, and helps you provide better services and management. CRM analytics salesforce can be beneficial as to which strategy works better and which needs to change.
Marketing and Sales Automation
Another significant feature of Salesforce CRM is its ability to magically smooth the workflow and automate the sales and marketing process. It offers tools for lead and opportunity management and sales predicting. It also tracks pipelines to guide to the right direction of making on-time sales.
Moreover, Salesforce CRM supplies practical tools for marketing, such as social media advertising, email marketing, and lead generation. Plus, it provides reports to track your campaign performance.
AI-powered Tools
Salesforce benefits from Artificial Intelligence to help you automate marketing processes and gather deep understanding and insights to make data-driven decisions.
Collaboration Tools
To help teams collaborate more efficiently and share information in real time, Salesforce CRM features collaboration tools like Chatter.
Mobile App
This CRM also provides an app for your mobile phone to access the platform while on the go and keep track of tasks. The app is available for iOS and Android.
Third-Party Integration
As a CRM, Salesforce integrates several practical platforms for better management and performance. In the following, we elaborate on Salesforce integrations.
Hubspot: Salesforce integrates HubSpot as a marketing automation tool to simplify the workflow, including lead generation and customer communication.
Mailchimp: Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that Salesforce integrates to synchronize customers’ data and email campaigns.
Zendesk: To enhance customer service and support, Salesforce integrates Zendesk as a useful tool for this purpose.
Microsoft Outlook: Another platform that Salesforce integrates is Microsoft Outlook and Exchange to match email, calendar, and contact information.
Google Apps: Salesforce also integrates all Google apps, such as Google Drive and Google Calendar, for better collaboration and meetings reminder.
These are popular and more practical integrations that Salesforce CRM supports. You can easily modify them according to your need and expectations.
Salesforce CRM Pricing
This tool provides various pricing plans for different-sized businesses. Plus, it is favored as a CRM for real estate agents and marketing. Here’s a brief look at Salesforce pricing plans:
- Salesforce Essential: This plan is perfect for small businesses and offers contact management, email integration, and opportunity tracking features. Salesforce Essential pricing starts at $25.
- Salesforce Professional: This plan’s pricing starts at $75 and is suitable for medium-sized businesses and features additional options such as lead management, marketing automation, and reports.
- Salesforce Enterprise: Salesforce Enterprise plan is created for medium and large businesses and provides advanced features. This plan costs $150 per user per month and offers team collaboration, workflow automation, and advanced analytics.
- Salesforce Unlimited: As the name suggests, this plan is for large enterprises and offers unlimited, customizable features, such as integration and support options. This plan’s pricing starts at $300 per user per month.
Please note that the mentioned pricing might change depending on the number of users and additional features you may require. Furthermore, Salesforce CRM is designed in a way that starts with basic features yet is customizable, meaning that as your business grows, you can adjust the features according to your needs.
Salesforce CRM Pros and Cons
Salesforce is considered an excellent tool that may meet all your needs with its wide range of features. However, it might have some strong and weak points. Here are Salesforce CRM’s pros and cons if you consider buying it.
Pros
- Customization
- Integration
- Cloud-based Platform
- Collaboration
- Comprehensive Analytics and Reports
- Scalability
- Mobile Access
Cons
- Complexity
- Learning curve
- Can be expensive
- Reliance internet connection
- Privacy concern
Final Thoughts: Is Salesforce Worth The Price?
Let’s wrap up this Salesforce review. Salesforce is a practical tool that can be essential for your business growth, and it simplifies every process, including marketing, sales, and contact management. It helps create and maintain a strong business foundation and improve customer relationships.
If you are looking for a robust CRM that meets all your expectations, Salesforce CRM might be the one. However, some users claim it might be expensive given the rather hefty prices. Still, if you find it useful for your business, set a budget and go for it. If not, you can always find other CRMs to make it work.
FAQs
Salesforce is a SaaS-based platform and provides many useful tools for businesses and companies. One of these tools is the Salesforce CRM, designed for customer relationship management and marketing automation.
Salesforce offers a wide range of features you find necessary for your business, which other CRMs may not provide. Therefore, the pricing is usually determined base on the features.
Salesforce CRM is designed to suit start-ups to large enterprises, with many features for each.