Salesforce for Dummies

Get up to lightning speed with this fully updated, bestselling guide to using Salesforce.com!

Salesforce.com For Dummies, 7th Edition gives you an edge in building relationships and managing your company's sales, marketing, customer service, and support operations. You’ll learn how to maximize the new user interface to organize contacts, schedule business appointments, use forecasting tools to predict upcoming sales, make accurate projects based on past performance, and more. 

Written by Salesforce.com insiders with years of expertise in CRM services, this new edition covers the latest enhancements to Salesforce.com, the world's most popular customer relationship management software. You’ll find out how to determine the right configuration to suit your business needs, and how to use apps, widgets, and tools to personalize your system. Then, you’ll explore prospecting leads, managing accounts and partners, developing contacts, tracking products, calculating forecasts, and utilizing service and support.

• Customize the new user interface with apps, widgets, and tools
• Prospect leads, drive sales, and provide outstanding customer service
• Manage contacts, identify opportunities, and analyze your results
• Collaborate with colleagues using Chatter

More than 150,000 companies worldwide use Salesforce.com as their CRM solution—if you’re a new or existing user looking to maximize the potential of the new UI, this book has everything you need.

Liz Kao has been a member of the Professional Services team as well as an independent Salesforce consultant. She has implemented CRM solutions for companies both large and small.

Jon Paz is a Salesforce consultant and former editor. He has delivered world-class solutions to an assortment of perplexing business challenges for his enterprise clients.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Introducing Salesforce 5

Chapter 1: Customer Relationship Management at a Glance 7

Introducing the Customer Relationship Management life cycle 8

Understanding your customer’s customer 8

Centralizing customer information under one roof 8

Looking to Customer Relationship Management to

Solve Critical Business Challenges 9

Expanding the funnel 9

Consolidating your pipeline 9

Collaborating effectively with your colleagues 9

Working as a team 10

Extending your sales force with partners 10

Beating the competition 10

Improving the customer experience 10

Measuring the business 11

Selecting Salesforce as Your Customer Relationship

Management System 11

Chapter 2: Discovering Salesforce.com’s Products 13

Using Sales Cloud to Win More Deals 14

Making sales groups more effective 14

Improving sales productivity 15

Generating Better Leads with Marketing Cloud 15

Managing email campaigns with Marketing Cloud 16

Improving marketing automation 16

Identifying qualified leads with Pardot 17

Providing Excellent Customer Service with Service Cloud 17

Managing customer interactions with cases 18

Interacting with the customer across multiple channels 18

Deciding Which Salesforce Edition Is Best for You 19

Part 2: Understanding Salesforce Features 21

Chapter 3: Navigating Salesforce 23

Getting Familiar with Basic Salesforce Terms 24

Accessing Salesforce 25

Setting up a password 25

Logging in 26

Explaining the Lightning Experience 27

Navigating the Lightning Home Page 27

Finding records with Search 30

Defining Apps 31

Uncovering the App Launcher 31

Managing your calendar 31

Tracking your tasks 32

Navigating the tabs 33

Accessing shorcuts from the navigation bar drop-down menus 34

Discovering a tab home page 35

Navigating a record in the Lightning Experience 38

Chapter 4: Personalizing Salesforce 41

Completing Your Profile Page 42

Using the Settings Menu 44

Modifying Your Personal Information 45

Updating your user information 46

Customizing pages 46

Granting login access 47

Setting Up Salesforce for Your Mobile Device 48

Downloading and installing Salesforce on your mobile device 48

Configuring the Salesforce mobile app for your needs 49

Navigating in the Salesforce mobile app 51

Importing Your Contacts 53

Working with Salesforce Remotely 53

Chapter 5: Working in Salesforce 55

Managing Records 55

Creating records 56

Resurrecting records from the Recycle Bin 56

Detailing the Record 57

Using links and buttons on the record page 58

Modifying records with inline editing 59

Capitalizing on related lists 60

Looking things up with lookup hovers 60

Reviewing Activities 61

Creating Activities 62

Creating an Event 62

Creating a Task 65

Logging a call 67

Organizing and Viewing Activities 68

Updating Activities 69

Assigning activities 70

Completing a Task 71

Understanding Email Fields in Salesforce 71

Setting Up Your Email 72

Personalizing your email settings 72

Building personal email templates 73

Sending Email from Salesforce 74

Getting Help and Set Up 75

Chapter 6: Collaborating in the Cloud 77

Preparing to Use Chatter 78

Understanding Key Chatter Terms 80

Turning On Chatter 81

Locating Chatter 83

Profiling Yourself 84

Keeping Everyone Informed with Posts 85

Posting a status 85

Commenting on posts 86

Choosing What to Follow 87

Configuring your Chatter feeds 87

Following people 87

Your secret is safe 89

Following feeds 89

Creating a Stream 91

Being Part of a Group 92

Understanding Salesforce Chatter groups 92

Joining a group 92

Creating a new group 93

Managing Chatter Notifications 94

Using Chatter Effectively 95

Part 3: Closing More Deals with Sales Cloud 97

Chapter 7: Tracking Leads 99

Introducing the Lead Record 100

Setting Up Your Leads 102

Adding new Leads 102

Cloning an existing Lead 103

Importing your Leads 104

Accepting Leads from a Queue 109

Following Up on Leads 109

Qualifying Leads 109

Tracking Leads 110

Converting qualified Leads 111

Maintaining Your Lead Database 113

Making use of Lead queues 113

Finding and merging duplicate Lead records 114

Creating assignment rules for automatic routing 116

Transferring Leads 118

Changing the status of multiple records 119

Mass-deleting Lead records 119

Chapter 8: Using Accounts 121

Getting Familiar with the Account Record 122

Understanding standard Account fields 122

Building parent/child relationships 123

Performing Actions with Account Related Lists 125

Displaying an Account’s Opportunities 125

Viewing Cases 125

Tracking your Account teams 126

Maintaining Your Account Database 128

Increasing Account accuracy with Lightning Data 128

Deleting Account records 128

Chapter 9: Developing Contacts 129

Understanding the Contact Record 130

Customizing Contact Information 130

Entering and Updating Your Contacts 131

Entering new Contacts 132

Importing your Contacts and Accounts 132

Researching your Contacts in the news 136

Updating Contact fields 137

Cloning an existing Contact 137

Organizing Your Contacts 138

Using Contact list views 138

Creating custom Contact views 139

Developing Organizational Charts 139

Chapter 10: Tracking Opportunities 141

Getting Familiar with the Opportunity Record 142

Entering Opportunities 143

Modifying Opportunity Records 145

Updating Opportunity fields 145

Rolling up Opportunity data onto the Account record 146

Tracking your deals on the Opportunity kanban board 147

Visualizing your deal using Sales Path 149

Defining Contact Roles 149

Using Opportunity teams 151

Associating an Opportunity Team to your Opportunity 152

Following Opportunities with Chatter 153

Chapter 11: Tracking Products and Price Books 155

Discovering Products and Price Books 156

Defining standard Product fields 157

Understanding the different types of pricing 158

Using Products and Price Books 158

Adding Products to Opportunities 158

Adding and updating schedules on Opportunities 160

Searching for Products 162

Building the Product Catalog 162

Planning products for success 162

Adding Products to the Product catalog 163

Changing Product details in the Product catalog 163

Setting Up Schedules 164

Enabling schedules for your company 164

Adding and updating a default schedule 165

Managing Price Books 166

Adding to the Standard Price Book 166

Creating a custom Price Book 167

Adding Products to a custom Price Book 168

Making global changes to Price Books 168

Chapter 12: Managing Your Partners 171

Understanding the Partner Life Cycle 172

Understanding a day in the life of a channel manager 173

Understanding a day in the life of a partner 177

Preparing for Your Salesforce PRM Implementation 179

Part 4: Providing Support with Service Cloud 181

Chapter 13: Tracking the Support Life Cycle with Cases 183

Walking through a Day in the Life of a Service Agent 184

Understanding the Case Record 184

Creating a Case 186

Validating the Contact 186

Entering new Cases 187

Managing Cases 189

Communicating the Outcome 190

Emailing customers from a Case 190

Closing a Case 190

Chapter 14: Diversifying Your Support Channels 193

Preparing Your Salesforce Service Cloud Strategy 194

Planning the implementation 194

Identifying your support channels 195

Delighting Customers with Multi-Channel Support 195

Web-to-Case 196

Email-to-Case 198

Computer telephony integration (CTI) 198

Salesforce Chat 198

Part 5: Empowering Marketing to Generate Measurable Demand 203

Chapter 15: Creating Marketing Campaigns to Drive Demand 205

Understanding Campaigns 206

Creating a new Campaign 208

Modifying the Campaign member status 209

Building Target Lists 210

Using external lists 210

Importing new Campaign members 210

Targeting existing members 212

Executing Campaigns 214

Delivering an online Campaign 214

Executing an offline Campaign 214

Tracking Responses 215

Using Web-to-Lead forms 215

Mass-updating Campaign member statuses 218

Chapter 16: Driving Sales Effectiveness with Salesforce Files and Content 219

Understanding Content in Salesforce 220

Learning about Files 221

Using Files 221

Creating Libraries 222

Adding Files 223

Using Files with Chatter 225

Using documents 226

Part 6: Mastering Basic Salesforce Administration 227

Chapter 17: Performing Common Configurations 229

Discovering the Power of Customization 230

Breaking down basic elements 232

Customizing for relevance 234

Building and Editing Fields 235

Adding fields 235

Viewing and updating custom fields 237

Replicating your key standard processes 238

Understanding custom formula fields 238

Customizing List Views 240

Working with Records 241

Reassigning record ownership 241

Cloning records 242

Updating records 243

Using related lists 243

Creating Dependent Picklists 244

Customizing Page, Search, and Compact Layouts 245

Modifying a page layout 246

Assigning layouts to profiles 247

Changing search layouts 248

Managing compact layouts 249

Using the Lightning App Builder to Build Lightning

Experience Page Layouts 249

Using Record Types 250

Managing Workflow and Approvals 253

Creating workflow rules 253

Managing workflow actions 254

Understanding the Process Builder 256

Choosing to use the Process Builder 256

Creating processes 257

Adding process criteria 257

Adding process actions 258

Activating and deactivating processes 258

Creating Actions 258

Chapter 18: Diving Deeper into Standard Object Setup 261

Configuring Sales-Specific Settings 262

Using Account Settings 262

Identifying Contact Roles on Opportunities 264

Tracking different sales processes 265

Managing Marketing-Related Settings 267

Assigning Leads 267

Choosing a default Lead owner 267

Confirming Lead conversion settings 268

Capturing Campaign influence 269

Setting Customizations for Your Service Organizations 271

Understanding Support Settings for your Cases 271

Defining escalation rules 272

Chapter 19: Building Custom Apps 275

Understanding Elements of the Lightning Platform 276

Preparing Your Custom App Strategy 278

Creating Custom Objects 279

Building your custom objects 279

Modifying custom objects 281

Building relationships 282

Creating Custom Apps 285

Setting up a custom app 285

Creating custom tabs 286

Understanding the AppExchange 287

Chapter 20: Accessing the Right Data with User Permissions 291

Understanding User Administration 292

Creating a new user 292

Activating and deactivating users 293

Freezing users 293

Establishing Data Access Concepts 294

Defining Your Sharing Model 296

Setting organization-wide defaults 296

Granting greater access with sharing rules 298

Setting Up Profiles 299

Reviewing the standard profiles 300

Creating custom profiles 301

Defining the Role Hierarchy 304

Using Other Security Controls 306

Setting field-level security 306

Delegating administration 308

Chapter 21: Managing Data 311

Understanding Your Options for Data Migration 312

Using the Data Import wizard 312

Investigating the Data Loader 313

Migrating Your Legacy Data 314

Determining your data sources 314

Preparing your data 315

Testing the import 316

Analyzing the test data results 317

Migrating your final data 317

Validating and augmenting your data 318

Managing Your Salesforce Database 318

Backing up your data 319

Mass-transferring records 320

Mass-deleting records 321

Finding and merging duplicates 323

Getting Help with Complex Data Tasks 324

Part 7: Measuring Overall Business Performance 325

Chapter 22: Analyzing Data with Reports 327

Discovering Reports 328

Navigating the Reports home page 328

Displaying a report 330

Creating Your Own Reports 331

Building a report from scratch 331

Customizing existing reports 333

Filtering Reports Efficiently 335

Hiding and showing report results 335

Sorting and summarizing report results 336

Changing or clearing filters 338

Exporting Reports to Excel 338

Organizing Reports 339

Creating new folders 339

Determining folder access 340

Maintaining your report library 340

Mastering Reports 341

Building custom summary formulas 341

Understanding additional reporting options 344

Chapter 23: Seeing the Big Picture with Dashboards 345

Figuring Out Dashboards 346

Breaking down basic elements 346

Planning useful dashboards 348

Building Dashboards 349

Installing sample dashboards and reports 349

Copying a dashboard 350

Developing a dashboard from scratch 351

Modifying dashboard properties 353

Customizing components 353

Changing the layout 356

Setting a dashboard refresh schedule 356

Organizing Your Dashboards 357

Viewing dashboard lists 357

Building dashboard folders 358

Part 8: The Part of Tens 359

Chapter 24: Ten Ways to Drive More Productivity 361

Salesforce Trailhead 362

Dreamforce Conference 362

Salesforce Trailblazer Community 362

Salesforce.com Local User Groups 362

Salesforce Trailhead Academy 363

Salesforce Colored Favicons 363

Field Trip 363

ORGanizer 364

Perm Comparator 364

Gmail Sidebar in Salesforce 364

Chapter 25: Ten Keys to a Successful Migration to Lightning 365

Understanding Why the Transition Needs to Happen Now 366

Identifying Your Executive Sponsor 367

Building Your Project Team 368

Evaluating Your Current Customizations 368

Planning Your Change Management Strategy 369

Defining Your Scope and Prioritizing Initiatives 370

Confirming the Lightning Experience for Your Business 371

Customizing for User Relevance 371

Building a Comprehensive Training Plan 372

Connecting with Peers 373

Index 375

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