5 Ways to Optimize Salesforce

0:00 Data keeps changing how you can be secure of all the analysis that you've done.

0:16 Welcome to The LeanScale Podcast where we talk about everything RevOps. Thank you for listening.

0:28 The CRM is the backbone of your revenue operation and I'm really excited to dive into the five things you need to be doing with Salesforce. With my co-founder, LeanScale's chief architect, most importantly my good friend, Sakai. Sakai, thanks for being here with us today to talk through it. Fortunately, thanks. Thanks for inviting me. I was dying to come here and discuss a little bit of the tech side of the house. My private recommendations, I hope they help the listeners get the best use of their CRM.

1:04 Yeah, absolutely. I can't think of anybody who knows Salesforce better than you. For those who don't know, Sakai and I worked together at three scaling B2B tech companies before starting LeanScale. Sakai was always a systems architect connecting Salesforce with HubSpot, Marketo, the rest of our go-to-market tools and built beautiful operations. He made all my dreams come true as a VP of RevOps. I can't think of anybody who has better recommendations than you and I know it's not going to end with today. Today is just going to be the top five, but we're going to have a lot more content on how to get the most out of your CRM in the future.

1:41 Yep, for sure. If you're down, let's start with the very first one. Alright, yeah, let's dive in. What's the first thing people need to be doing if they're using Salesforce? Of course, the very first one recommendation, top one is, you know, enable history track. This is very important to understand how data evolved over time, diagnosing any issues or errors that may arise in your database. Of course, he also gives admins and users a historical snapshot of the data changes that you had in your CRM.

2:19 Super important for any business, important for admins, important for revenue operations. If you need to know what happened in the past, go look into the history track. You know, it's interesting too on history tracking. There's a lot of third party tools that tap into that history tracking intelligence, forecasting tools, intelligence tools, productivity tools. So having that enabled isn't, I wouldn't say it's just important for your CRM, but it's also going to be the backbone to prepare for using other technology as well.

2:56 Right. If you have a well-tuned operation, you always have to lock in some additional third party tools. They are always looking to, you know, understanding the past, what happened in your history tracking and special revenue. They really trying to understand. And also now with all the AI coming up, they are always looking to your past so they can kind of try to predict the future a little better.

3:31 All right. What's the second thing we need to do if we're using Salesforce? Of course. Second is ensure, you know, timestamps are added to your most important critical objects. You know, when I say timestamps, I'd say timestamps to go and look into how stages changed, statuses that you have, or any field that you use that is important for you to track an important change. So, you know, if you as an example, if you're trying to understand how a lead stage or lead status has changed over time or, you know, opportunity stages are, you know, time stamping out the timestamp through a course of opportunity lifecycle.

4:25 Here is what we do. We create custom fields that track every change you do in each of the, I don't know, stages that you have in an opportunity or any lead status that's important for the operations. They're very important for you to understand, you know, how customers interact with a person with an SDR or how the opportunity evolved over time. You know, because history tracking that we mentioned in the first place, it's not, it doesn't, it's not so, I'd say it's not so good at reporting. We can report on some of the changes, but creating the timestamps creates an additional layer of analysis that we can do for an object as an example.

5:31 Yeah, the way I've seen you do it, so we do this often for our customers. We always had this at the companies that we worked at, but you have a dedicated field. So when did this lead move to this lead lifecycle stage? When did this customer move to this customer stage? And the most common, when did this opportunity move to the next sales stage? So that way you can report directly on that field and then you can also do really quick sales cycle data, use it for conversion data, and not have to dig through the history tracking, but you have it easily accessible for building reports and dashboards native in Salesforce.

6:10 All right, Sakai, what's tip number three that people need to be following with their Salesforce instance? Well, tip number three is freeze your close opportunity data. So important for, you know, Salesforce. That seems obvious, right? Doesn't that seem like everybody would have that or it'd be like out of the box in Salesforce, but how many times do you go in with close one changes all the time? People always assume like, oh, this data will never change. But, you know, people makes mistakes or an uninformed salesperson would probably go and change.

6:50 There's all there's a series of things that may happen to your close opportunity. They're all crazy.

7:01 But you need to put, you know, all the barriers and the security in place. So they never changes. You have a good sales forecasting. You can do the best analysis that you can with the close one data. It's important with your commission's plan. You don't want to mess up with people's money. And, of course, it's important to identify trends and patterns if, you know, data keeps changing how you can be secure of, you know, all the analysis that you've done. Because, you know, the moment someone changes this small little thing and an opportunity, the entire analysis is, I don't know, invalidated, right?

7:51 Yeah. And the way the way I've seen you do it. And I don't know if this is your recommendation, but it's pretty much total lockdown. The only person who can make a change or close an opportunity is the super admin in your instance. Yeah, I like to put in place, you know, validation rules. I also like to put, how can I say, automation. People think they change it, but they always go back to what they were before you would say it.

8:22 I just want to make sure I put actual layers of security so data is always clean, always the same every time. Plus, we do backup of the data every week so it's hard to go try and go over these layers and break the system that we put in place. Makes sense. Makes sense. Super important. Tip number four. Yep. Tip number four is make sure data from leads go into all the other objects after they are converted. So we are talking about leads converting to accounts, contacts, and opportunities. This is so important. You know, we always want to make sure, you know,

9:11 the lead lifecycle stage timestamps are in each object that we're touching. After it's converted, we want to make sure lead source, I don't know, lead source, lead source details as an example are, well, they flow into opportunities. And, you know, lead owner, SDRs, every piece of information that's important later in the process, they need to be added in there. So, you know, if we want to convert and the data is not at the end of the flow, we lose data, we break the system that we put in place. And, you know, it all contributes you to put noise into your business, which we try and avoid the first time. Right.

10:08 I think something a practical question I would always get as a VP of ops is which lead source has the most closed one opportunities. And if you're capturing the lead source on that lead object and then you don't bring that lead source over, it becomes nearly impossible to answer that question. And then, or what's the full sales cycle for marketing qualified lead to close. So without having everything on the same object, it makes reporting a little bit more difficult.

10:38 So tying those leads and the important data on that lead to that opportunity is really, really important, mainly for reporting and understanding how to get the most out of your marketing channels. So, Sakai, wrap it up for us. Tip number five. What else do you need to be doing in Salesforce if you're not doing it already? Of course, tip number five is make sure validation rules are in place. You know, you want to make sure the data entered in your system meets your business processes.

11:13 We're talking about from the very simple, you know, make sure amount is in place before you close one, an opportunity to make sure that the close date is not in the past. And all the way into like a more complex, you know, tie to your, I don't know, let's say, which sales. How do you say the sales? I lost the word, Anthony, forgot. Sales methodologies, like making sure. Yeah, sales methodology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So make sure like your sale methodology is in place and you ask for the data the right time and in the right place. In each stage you're going through, there are pieces of information that are important for each of these stages.

12:11 And, you know, you're going to end up in enforcing the data integrity is in place and accurate because you're going to prevent people from saving a record without the right pieces of information that you need. Yeah, makes a ton of sense. I mean, having the right level of validation rules in place to actually inform the process, but maybe not overdoing it to add too many controls is a really healthy balance. So just wrap it up. Five things that you need to be doing in Salesforce if you're not doing it already. Enable history tracking, get that rich out of history on the fields that are important to you.

13:00 Time stamp your staging, lead staging, opportunity staging, count staging. If you're doing proof of concepts or proof of values, add staging there and time stamp it. It's the only way you're going to get sales cycle and conversion data. Freeze your close one data. You don't need to go back to a board meeting and have to redo all the data on your close to one opportunities because somebody's been going in the past and changing things. Make sure those fields and piece of data that are important on your leads make their way to opportunities because they're separate objects. They're not typically related to each other.

13:35 So making sure you're bringing that data over is super important. And then tip number five, put the validation rules in place that align with your sales process and your customer journey to make sure you're capturing the right data at the right time. Sakai, thank you so much. I know our listeners are going to really appreciate this and I know we're going to do some more of these in the future. And I really appreciate you being here. Of course, and thanks. Looking forward for the next episodes and I hope you guys enjoy the first, the five tips on how to make successful operations from the tech perspective. Thanks, Sakai. Yeah, thanks.

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