Salesforce Sales Cloud Reviews

Pros

Salesforce is incredibly robust for automation and capturing data if you have a knowledgeable administrator at the helm of your business. Being able to create different sections (objects), fields, reports and rules in a matter of minutes makes it the best CRM I have ever used.

Cons

In Salesforce, everything is connected, which can often times cause errors or minor issues when making a simple change/addition. The software is getting better at educating users and administrators, but it lacks the full ability to debug easily.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud

Dynamics was difficult to get a full picture of our business and the UI was not allowing our users to succeed. We needed a software that will continue to evolve and allow us to modernize our business processes.

Switched From

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce had more to offer when it came to reporting and automation.

Pros

I LOVE Lightning as a whole, and I personally believe it was Salesforce's best huge update/release since I first started using the platform in 2011. My favorite Lightning feature is Lightning App Builder for its non-code-based UI and its simplified yet vast customization capabilities.
I also f*ing love AppExchange, Trailhead, and the seemingly endless list of available integrations.

Cons

I'm sorry (but not sorry) to say, I HATE how very very little SFDC has improved their incumbent reporting and dashboard functionalities and UI. It's been one of the primary areas of SFDC, as an admin, I use the absolute most yet I always find myself having to resort to external reporting/data analysis tools (shout out to my Ride-or-Die, Excel!) to accomplish all of the data analysis and reporting needed in my role. Einstein Analytics (formerly Wave Analytics) is a godsend but costs a little too much ON TOP OF the already exorbitant price we pay just for base licenses.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho CRM, Dynamics 365 and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce leads the CRM industry, of course, so it's usually a companies first choice when acquiring a CRM. It integrates with almost everything, has a nebulous laundry list of functionalities and customizations, there's super valuable free resources available from AppExchange to Trailhead and more, and so on.

Pros

I like how technically advanced Salesforce is. Salesforce is the most superior CRM on the market, but it is incredibly technical, difficult to use, and very expensive to maintain. I'd only recommend Salesforce to large enterprise organizations.

Cons

Cost, difficulty to use, slow, complex, too much.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

We use both HubSpot and Salesforce. HubSpot is a great tool for marketing automation, Salesforce is a great tool for Sales CRMs.

Pros

The stage by stage feature, which for Compliance makes it easy to see where workflows are pending action.

Cons

The overall space is quite 'busy' and important items are sometimes hidden or not easily accessible.

Pros

The AppExchange allows Sales Cloud to be rapidly expanded, which is its most valuable feature. Whether it's taking payments, collecting electronic signatures, or integrating a computer telephony system, it's likely that an ISV partner has already constructed what you need.

Cons

It's a pricey product to license and to install because skilled workers are hard to come by. Salesforce as a company is more concerned with making a sale to you than helping you succeed with their product.

Pros

- Easy to integrate to other systems and save time and reduce human errors.- Linking several departments in one place make the work easy for everyone, and reduce extra communications through other channels.

Cons

Nothing flagged as a dislike for now as the tool seems to satisfy our daily work needs.

Pros

Using Salesforce Sales Cloud has been very productive and effective for our organization. The platform customization options allow us to adapt it to our needs. It has many tools being a suite that has several services, its wide range of solutions offers third-party solutions to fill that gap. What makes it even more powerful is its wide compatibility; It seems like every other software out there has or is developing an integration with Salesforce. I have used other Salesforce services and over this time I have noticed how the platform has improved internal collaboration between our teams and has elevated the customer experience with more personalized solutions.

Cons

As for the reporting features, they are promising, but plagued with a few glitches. I have noticed errors, particularly when trying to drag and drop fields into reports. Creating reports is more cumbersome than what I've found with platforms like Microsoft dynamics. The tool requires a certain level of proficency, especially if you are trying to create reports that include complex variables, such as accounts and specific types of engagements.

Pros

Ecosystem of Apps, very easy to integrate into lead gen software like Pitchbook and sync date in

Cons

Had to hire IT specialists to input special tools to make sure duplicate accounts were not created, I don't like that date last modified doesn't update when adding notes, or some fields. It is finnicky, and so reports sometimes we haven't updated an account when we have

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Pros

For a company our size that handles the processes that we do this tool makes perfect sense.

Cons

Just like any other tool it can sometime be buggy and it takes time to make customized changes to certain things based on our business.

Pros

Lighting has everything we need to manage our sales team and associated deals. It's record keeping and reporting functionality creates a single across our entire org.

Cons

The foundation of SFDC shows its age and isn't always easy to work with.

Pros

Salesforce is EXTREMELY customizable with more features and possibilities than any single company could ever dream of utilizing. It does very well as a name brand CRM system because of this very reason but companies must be well aware that utilizing these features will come at a heavy monetary cost.

Cons

Branching off what I liked about Salesforce, there is also a dark side to endless features and customization; there are so many options and features it's nearly or absolutely impossible to teach yourself how to set up and use Salesforce for your company without taking professional lessons or hiring someone from Salesforce to do this for you.

Alternatives Considered

monday.com and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

Luckily, we had a Salesforce Certified team member that was able to take the reigns and guide us through getting started and teaching us all how to do basic tasks that were seemingly impossible without instruction. We needed a broad range of features and Salesforce at the time was the right choice.

Pros

I recently transitioned out of venues and over to the vendor side of things. However, while in venues (90% of my career) I participated in the implementation of salesforces' product delphi.fdc (latest version) in my last two positions (Director of Events at a country club 2016-2018 and Sales Manager at a Boutique Hotel 2018-2020). While at the Country Club, I completed extensive research reviewing SalesForce against several other standard industry event softwares. SalesForce is the most streamlined and inclusive option available. As a vendor, there are numerous tools that would not apply to my current position however if I was still working in venues, I would be pushing for the delphi.fdc as the best option to prepare teams for their current workload and any curve balls the future may throw their way.

Cons

However, there are some spin off components to the software that may still need some work such as meeting matrix. The set up process is lengthy and requires a lot of back log work to ensure old data that is moved over is clean and new habits are in place for your team to ensure the new system remains clean.

Alternatives Considered

Caterease

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud

Initial motivation was software was moving online only. After additional research into other products, the need for the software to do more than Reserve was capable of doing was immensely important in order to streamline internal processes and procedures.

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce is a superior product when compared to most softwares.

Pros

I like that it integrates well with the overall Salesforce CRM

Cons

We are a SME and are implementing Salesforce through all aspects of core business, it is a big investment in the future of our business. We would have thought that if an issue arrives that Salesforce as the global leaders in CRM would have the mechanisms to be looked after instead of pretending to not hear us (we spend a lot of time with calls, emails, and follow up calls and emails). The account managers are great people but lack the capacity to escalate things swiftly with management for a response, and it seems aren’t properly trained in the offering of Marketing Cloud. It feels as though our case gets lost in a big company with a disconnected hierarchy similar to governmental departments in the ’80’s.

Alternatives Considered

Sprout, Later and Hootsuite

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Sales Cloud

Lack of customer service, functionality, software bugs, too expensive.

Switched From

Hootsuite

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

We loved the idea to have all apps under one software umbrella and missed the fact that it is a very expensive app ($750/mth) with little functionality 4 social media connectors.

Pros

Integrating, once we set up our system and what we were going to use it for, this did a world of good keeping us organised. We were only a business of 4 when we started and knew fairly early on relationships with local businesses were key to us staying open, after an incredibly helpful and informative call with sales force it made things so easy to set up. I didn’t know how much CRM in a software at the time would help but after taking the chance and settling into it with the team it because a great tool to use, especially after we hired staff that were more knowledgeable about the software themselves. Managing our business accounts with sales force is the best thing we did.

Cons

It’s expensive and getting started we worried about whether we would be able to afford it long term but it pays for itself.

Pros

The non-profit organization that I work for, Interfaith Caregivers has been using Salesforce for a year. I'm so glad that we decided on this system because I have used it previously in other places of work. One of the reasons why we went with Salesforce was to manage a marketing/fundraiser campaign that we have every year. We were able to store our donor and board members and create a campaign just for them to use as a communication tool and to begin the fundraiser campaign for our annual gala. It was also very easy and much needed to track donor and fundraiser payments for the gala. We are able to store multiple templates which consist of donor thank you letters in the template field. This is a very helpful feature!

Cons

It is hard for me to dislike Salesforce. I appreciate the fact that we were able to get the nonprofit discount. Also we were able to use the 10 free licenses since we have 10 employees!

I would say the only thing is that I look forward to seeing how Salesforce will continue to grow and evolve and offer other packages to improve the CRM experience. Currently I have not ran into any problems.

Pros

SFS is a very powerful piece of software that is a dream if you take the the time to configure it and a nightmare if you don't. Those who fail with SFS are the people who think it's a turnkey solution that you can just buy and start using. Nope. You need to configure the heck out of it to suit your needs. If you take it seriously, capture workflows and goals for your team well, and take the time to set it up, you will be very happy with this solution. It doesn't need to take years, but it does take dedicated time.

Cons

The pricing is high. Social media tools for the application are pretty weak. Plus, out of the box, it's overwhelming and just not usable.

Alternatives Considered

Sage CRM, Zoho CRM, NetSuite, SAP Business One and Basecamp

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Sales Cloud

Our [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] liked the power of Salesforce and felt that a weak sales pipeline would hurt us. So, we focused on optimizing, getting many module solutions to add to Salesforce, and it was working well. The sheer mass of options in the Salesforce Marketplace was also impressive and led to us thinking this was the right solution for people not afraid of paying for the premium option.

Pros

One of the aspects that I value most about this software is the possibility it offers me to work from anywhere. My work demands to travel continuously and the fact of being able to access the cloud from any laptop, tablet, smart phone or table computer and sharing information and tasks with my co-workers is very positive. And the best thing is that this software gives me total security that others do not guarantee me. Knowing that my data, my projects and my documents are well protected, generate me a lot of confidence, so I totally recommend it

Cons

Although it is a very powerful software, its use is sometimes complex with respect to the tools to segment and automate my marketing campaigns since working with well-defined social strata in the communication area would be a great collaboration to do it from the same software and not manually Simpler steps that allow processing all the information and then classify it. It would be very helpful because of the complexity that sometimes is made for those who are beginning to use this software.

Pros

Really allows you to track your customers/clients/members/leads and see the arc of their interaction with your organization. If you also use something like Pardot to manage emails and online forms, it will give you a complete life timeline for the individual and how they have interacted with you. Allows you to create a journey & experience based on their interactions with you and to give quick follow-up when someone shows signs of life.

The only caveat here is that you have to be ready to use it. That means more than just having people trained in how to use the interface, but making sure everyone is on board for how this kind of data can and SHOULD inform and change how you interact with your clientele. If you're used to getting back to people within 24 hours, you need to be ready to shift that to 20 minutes. If you're used to treating everyone the same, you'd better be ready to create drip/nurture programs based on behavior.

If you aren't ready to use it to its full capacity, it isn't worth the investment, but if you are able to use it the way it's meant to be used, it's incredibly powerful.

Cons

It has a steep learning curve. I've been using it for a couple of years now, and I know that I still have barely scratched the surface of what I could be able to do, but I don't have time to devote to just learning SalesForce when it's not my core job. Definitely recommended for larger orgs where you can have a team devoted to support. Also, I hate the way they continually try to sell you new add-ons to the core product.

Pros

As a CRM platform, it's everything you could ask for. Also, its AppStore is top notch. From a functionality perspective, you cannot go wrong with Salesforce. Also, as one of the biggest and most widespread platforms, there are plenty of Salesforce resources out there, so there is no shortage of help available should you need it. If you are a small non-profit particularly, Salesforce can be an incredible resource as your first 10 licenses are free (as long as you qualify as a non-profit with Salesforce)

Cons

If you are a for-profit firm, be aware that Salesforce builds in an annual 7% licensing cost increase into it's contracts. As a result, you will be continually negotiating and re-negotiating with them to keep licensing costs reasonable. Even then, Salesforce will continually look to increase your spend with them. Their sales teams/account managers can be very aggressive and a lot of things you may want or need will cost you extra. They're also continually rotating their account managers. This can be very frustrating as a customer because just when you feel that you've built a good relationship with your account manager, Salesforce will switch people on you and then you have to work to rebuild a new relationship.

Pros

A stage that offers deals the board, client administration, showcasing robotization and accomplice relationship the executives. It is a c cloud-based CRM arrangement, Salesforce gives you anyplace, whenever, access to your business information, even from cell phones. This stage helped us streamline our procedure and logged our discussion with every one of our customers/applicants monitoring the discourse history and knowing where we left at. It has a decent contact the board framework that enables the clients to store significantly more data like record/customer subtleties, addresses, other accessible data which permits a decent record information review. The Dashboard is adaptable and can fit to what their customer needs and requires for the particular procedure. It's a simple to explore programming particularly for the individuals who had been into cloud-based stage previously.

Cons

The multifaceted nature of its highlights here and there are not being depleted/augmented by little scale organizations and could get overpowering now and again. Evaluating might be somewhat high for a little organization particularly on the off chance that they need something that is progressively adaptable. For our group, it took us some time to explore the stage completely and consider was on the most proficient method to tweak the stage dependent on our necessities. Recognizing what is as of now accessible for us and what can be considered for what's to come is something that we get to profound plunge through the span of months and a great deal of cooperation and discussion with the group. Announcing issues may be somewhat hard as far as realizing who is responsible for certain specialized glitch if its Salesforce people themselves or some application that connects to it.

Pros

> Salesforce is so easy to use. The plan is so natural, next to no preparation is required before you're off running and receiving esteem in return. It's anything but an advanced Rolodex with all the data you should be fruitful.

> The thorough detailing capacities make it simple to oversee groups and see where improvement can be carried out. Effectively perceive how every delegate is getting along creating drives, following up, and meeting objectives contrasted with the past.

> Customization permits you to perceive what's essential to you, not what Salesforce believes is significant. Effectively oversee objectives, track progress, and oversee specialty units to see how your association is performing.

Cons

> With more prominent adaptability to alter, Salesforce can get overpowering. Setting aside the effort to set it up to really meet your particular necessities can get baffling, yet whenever it's done you'll be happy you invested the energy.

Pros

Salesforce is an amazing CRM apparatus that is not difficult to set up and use for our association.
It is easy-to-use programming that provides me with a reasonable image of my business processes in diagrams and assists me with amending my business procedures.
Salesforce.com is amazingly adjustable. I would not think about it as an out-of-the-container arrangement, despite the fact that its standard fields take into consideration major CRM exercises and revealing.
Salesforce.com can incorporate 100s of outsider programming—as rulemaking efficiency in processes.

Cons

The announcing could be more instinctive, and the apparatus' worth requires insightful plan and design.
The dashboards could be more clear, and chipping away at various tabs dials the interface back.
Customization of reports and a huge number of different elements would be welcome augmentations.
Assuming a client makes a record and that client is as of now not dynamic, you can't make changes to that record except if an administrator changes the record proprietor.
Copy and Matching principles ought to be naturally enacted while carrying out the CRM to guarantee information honesty.
Salesforce.com is an incredibly perplexing stage, and if not executed as expected, can make issues not too far off when organizations develop and change. This isn't a usefulness issue, yet I accept that Salesforce.com ought to talk with all customers on what specialty units they require and streamline the framework for scaling as the association develops.

Pros

Once you have your Salesforce process setup and streamlined, it's great to use. It's easy to access leads and opportunities and manage data inside them with relatively few issues. I also like the dashboard feature which allows you to see a lot of data from different reports in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I have never used the Zoho CRM, but I know my company switched over and has been using it for over 2 years now.

Cons

The setup process can be difficult and might require some degree of coding logic. Like all software sometimes features won't work and you'll have to contact the salesforce administer within your company to fix it. Also, the reports can kind of be tricky to set up.

My biggest complaint is that no two people can edit a file at the same time. There have been times where I've spent 15 minutes inputting information in a file and tried to click save only to see an error message saying that someone else has edited the file. So I wish it would allow for real-time editing amongst co-workers or at least allow me to refresh the page while saving all the data I have already typed up.

I'm also not a fan of "lightning mode", which is the new UI that they are trying to push. Salesforce classic is just so much easier to use, and you can see so much data at one time when looking at leads/opportunities.

Pros

Easy integration with DocuSign and Outlook. Easy to log interactions. You can pull so many custom reports, and control permissions of who may see and edit them. Permission structure is pretty granular, which I know many orgs prefer. The dashboard is nice we should have used it more. You can control stages and what is triggered/required at each level of the sales process. Lightening is better than the old version, trust. There's a ton of features I could cover but those are the ones that stand out most. The chatter is handy and you can tag other users to see/attend what is needed nearly anywhere in the process.

Cons

Most likely due to our initial implementation, pulling reports is sooooo tedious. Salesforce sales cloud doesn't seem to work well for dual product verticals with shared customers. I wish they would have just set up a separate implementation for the second vertical because sharing contacts, division of account ownership, etc got very messy not to mention trying to pull reports. I recommend you have SF Architect help who knows the system inside out! The plugin for Outlook was a bit glitchy sometimes.

Pros

Salesforce CRM was worked to address the issues of undertakings and huge organizations, yet as the SaaS world detonated and independent venture arrangements turned out to be more normal, Salesforce extended its extension with smoothed out alternatives that were simpler and more reasonable to get fully operational. Today, the CRM goliath offers clients of each kind admittance to incredible business programming with a lot of customization alternatives. The valuing scale Salesforce utilizes makes it simple for developing organizations to work out profoundly progressed frameworks, piece-by-piece, as they develop.

The sheer versatility of Salesforce settles on it a fantastic decision for organizations that are rapidly extending. The Salesforce AppExchange store is one manner by which CRM clients can work out adjustable frameworks. Through the store, Salesforce offers outsider incorporations for a huge number of applications and programming items that range from in-house Salesforce additional items to outsider arrangements (both paid and free).

Cons

Evaluating alternatives with Salesforce can immediately get confounded, and numerous clients gripe about an absence of lucidity with regards to what is incorporated and what costs extra. Clients who imperfect from Salesforce frequently refer to this sort of disarray.