A leader in creating ecosystems for business development. The Kleenex of CRM.
I find Salesforce easy to use and an excellent tool. I appreciate the wide variety of functions from easily accessed customer information, prospects/leads/sales tracking and anlysis, related activities, and detailed information. I do find it best for large companies who need deep analysis and reporting and it can be customized to specific corporate needs.
I've implemented salesforce for over 15 years and it is a great tool. There is a reason they are the #1 CRM application and on track to be the fastest enterprise software company in history to reach $16 billion in revenue. Granted, some features are designed for enterprise clients but a great implementation partner (one with both business and technical expertise) can help you navigate those choices and get your up and running quickly. If you are considering salesforce or have a failed implementation, contact me. Likewise, if you have questions about the tool, ask.
I believe that CRM's are a much needed tool for any size business to manage lead flow and customer communication accurately between departments. It creates transparency across multiple departments as well as forecasting actual and potential future sales. I would not want to be in sales role without it. Furthermore, I believe that there are a variety of solutions on the market from Salesforce to Microsoft. Depending on your team size and scope I would recommend selecting a few for trial purposes and make your choice from there on what integrates best for your business.
It pretty much is the best CRM out there. I use it. The downside, for me is that there are many features I don't use or need - they tend to muddy the functionality for us. Makes it a bit harder to navigate.
We originally tried it out but the learning curve was too steep for our team. If someone has experience and can customize it to what your group needs (and then train everyone), it's a great resource. It's built for the business world and there are tons of features that are great for a nonprofit, but you need to know it well to use it well.
This is an excellent product and well worth the investment. I have used so many CRMs and it is by far one of the best I have had the pleasure of using.
I have used Salesforce with a previous employer, and it was seamless with Outlook. My choice by far. It is good for the salesperson, but even a better tool for management to micro manage. Anyway you cut it you can sell the benefits of CRM. I have been up and down the creek and if you have a slow server or internet or lose connection you have nothing. Just sayin' keep a hard copy.
Salesforce is very robust and is certainly customizable, but I find it to be overkill for most SMBs. I would recommend looking into simpler and esier to use CRMs including Pipedrive, Hubspot and Insightly.
SalesForce can be as good or as bad as you make it. The great thing about SalesForce is that it can be custom tailored to any individual producer, sales team, or large organization's needs. On the other hand, you're going to have to pay for all that functionality.
Ensure that it is set up correctly, because if you opt in to too many or not enough of the tools available, or if you aren't familiar with how they operate, you'll have a very hard time with it, as I've seen many others have.