Building a Salesforce-Powered Front Office

Harness the power of Salesforce to manage and grow your business. This book shows you how to use the Salesforce CRM tool to consolidate consumer data into a single place to gain better insight into your business and more easily manage data.

Data (such as email, spreadsheets, databases) is generated through the front office or face of your business, where your company interacts with customers and revenue is generated. In a hotel, for instance, the front office is the lobby where guests are greeted, their problems are handled, and room payments are made. Another example is a coffee shop, where the front office is an employee taking a customer's order or serving a drink.

Salespeople connect to customers by selling your company’s goods or services. Marketing team members connect with them through advertising and promotional activities. Service and support staff assist customers with problems and provide help with products.

This book introduces the many ways Salesforce-based innovations are transforming the technology landscape and the strategies that may be used for designing and launching a digital front office. The book examines how organizations can launch and grow digital solutions and strategies for the governance of the platform and provides an overview of digital transformation across industries. 

You will:

• Understand basic Salesforce concepts, including the digital front office process tower, lead to cash journey, core CRM functions, best practices, and more
• Review data management concepts, integrated sales, customer service, marketing operations, and proposal and business development needs in a systematic way
• Use frameworks to build a business architecture and multi-year technology roadmap
• Get familiar with Salesforce business processes and concepts such as account, contact, lead, and opportunity management; marketing campaigns; master data management (MDM); and lead scoring, grading, and activity management across the front office
• Define and develop digital marketing challenges and strategy (people, process, brand, messaging, and ROI), measure campaign data, and create an end-to-end campaign in Salesforce.

The Front Office is where revenue is directly generated for your company, so ensuring you have a good process for it is important. As with anything, developing a strategy is key to success. Whether you’re a new business or an existing one, get to know your market and develop a business strategy around it. Analyze the current market, gather business intelligence, and look into marketing programs such as Partnership Growth Program or SPIFF, where salespeople are immediately rewarded through bonuses for sales.

With your business strategy developed, it is time to really delve into marketing. To make sales, customers need to know that you’re an option. Get the word out there through a marketing campaign. Advertise your business through the web, TV, or radio, attend trade shows, launch email campaigns, and send mail to potential consumers. Once the word is out there, Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) should work to organize potential leads for the sales team.

Sales are next in the front office process. Use the leads that marketing has created and convert them into sales. Configure Price Quote software or CPQ, can be used to generate accurate quotes for potential customers in real-time, in order for a salesperson to have a quote readily available to convert a lead.

When a sale has been made, track that order using your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. This will help the front office process by allowing salespeople to look at existing orders when trying to keep clients or convert new leads.