Salesforce Best Practices Guidelines.pdf

Salesforce “Best Practices” for RSM and Reps in the Sales Cloud
[Need to make sure that we have this “revision controlled” and who the owner is…]
**** INDEX ****
➢ Dashboards
➢ Chatter (Feed)
➢ Leads
➢ Accounts
➢ Contacts
➢ Opportunities & Quotes
➢ Projects
➢ Tasks
➢ Events
➢ Libraries
➢ Reports
➢ Cases
➢ Dashboards
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DRAFT (9/19/16) – B.DiazSales Operations / Salesforce 27-Oct-2016 [RBP] =
Recommended Best Practice

 DASHBOARDS (HOME on the Partner Portal) [consider moving to the end of the document as
dashboards are not yet well defined – dmm 10/23]
Dashboards are summaries of information in listing or graphical form. Clicking on the list or graph will
open the report used to create that view. Magnetrol users have a pull down menu with various
Dashboards to choose from in either the Magnetrol Internal or Magnetrol Partner Community views.
Partner users do not have but one view of their dashboard in their HOME tab. Users and Partner users
cannot create dashboards. Requests for Dashboards are handled by Salesforce administration group.
Some users may have been given authorization to create Dashboards.
Partner user Dashboards are limited at this time, but offerings will continue to grow in the future as the
‘value proposition’ for the use of Salesforce.
There are two histograms offered to Partner users showing information about their Opportunities.
– One lists bucket groups in the 30-60-90 day to ‘close date’ into the future. This is helpful when
discussing the opportunity pipeline.
– The other is showing bucket groups in <$25k, $25k to $100k and >$100k
– Also showing is a list of the top 10 opportunities by value for the rep’s territory
Clicking on the histograms or the listing will open the detailed report used to generate these summaries
in the Dashboard (Home) and are very useful in analyzing and updating data.
 CHATTER (FEED)
The Chatter tab in Salesforce is a communication channel with Salesforce users that emulates the look of
Twiteeter[should be Twitter, not Tweeter]er, including @, #... options. All Magnetrol users have access
to any posting under the general Chatter tab. Partner users do not have general Chatter access to all of
the Magnetrol user community. Magnetrol users must be in the Partner Community Portal to chat with
Partner users.
Recommended Best Practices
➢ [RBP] Almost every tab in Salesforce, including Groups, has a FEED (Chatter) environment that
should be used to communicate with other users issues related to that one specific topic. This
will limit view from all other users not involved in the topic. You can choose to ‘Show Feed’ or
‘Hide Feed’. [In most cases, you will want to utilize the FEED associated with another object as
most messages will be specific to a particular opportunity, account, lead, etc.[BRP]
➢ ]
 LEADS
Leads are people or companies inquiring about our products and/or services. They are not Salesforce
contacts. Leads captured by the Marketing Dept. are handed over to RSMs as the initial owner ([in some
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cases, Leads are assigned directly to the Sales Rep level)]. RSMs would change ownership of the leads to
an appropriate contact in the rep organization where the lead is geographically located so they can
follow-up on it and qualify it as useful or not (Qualified or Disqualified). When ownership is changed, you
may want to use the Chatter Feed to notify the new owner of the lead. If Qualified, the lead would
thenm [s/b then] be ‘converted’ to a Salesforce contact. There is a procedure on Lead Management
available in the SF Libraries.
➢ [RBP] All leads should be verified if they already exist as contacts in Salesforce using the Global
Search feature. If they do, the information should be checked and/or updated with the
information received as a lead. Sometimes we can verify that the Account for the lead exists,
but not the name of the person as a contact. We can simply add the person as a contact
associated with the appropriate account and then label the lead record as ‘Qualified’. This is
considered as a processed lead.
➢
 ACCOUNTS
All customers and reps must exist in Salesforce as an Account. RSMs should be the owners of Accounts
regardless of who creates the account. An Account must exist for every location where contacts are
physically located. This means that it is fairly common to see multiple accounts for the same company,
but with different physical addresses.
➢ [RBP] Before creating an Account, use Global Search to make sure it doesn’t exist in Salesforce
already. Tip: [try searching for the specific name first, then try a secondary search using only
part of the name/location in case it was entered using only a partial/different name. Wildcards
(*) can also be used in the search ]
➢
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 CONTACTS
Contacts are associated with Accounts. Every user should try to populate in Salesforce as many of
their contacts as possible. The best initial sources for contacts are your Outlook contacts, your
cellular contact list, MPSS’s customer database. Every Account should have at least one Contact
listed.
➢ [RBP] Before creating a Contact in Salesforce, use the Global Search to make sure it doesn’t
exist already.
Page 4 of 11

 OPPORTUNITIES & QUOTES
Opportunities represent the core of Salesforce’s usefulness. Salesforce should be a map pointing to the
ultimate goal, which is generating business and revenue. All interactions with customers, associates and
reps are documented in Salesforce creating a timeline of events summarizing the work invested in
closing as many deals as possible. It provides visualization of the sales funnel towards meeting goals.
REMEMBER: In Salesforce you ‘close’ on the Opportunities, not the Quotes. [Opportunities = the chance
to sell something whereas a Quote = the actual product/service offering]
➢ [RBP] Create an Opportunity as soon as you can in order to visualize the upcoming process
and record the potential contribution to the sales funnel. It doesn’t necessarily have to
begin with a quote. In all cases it is recommended to use the Quick Quote Creator (even if a
quote is not yet “needed”).
➢
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 PROJECTS
Projects are a collection of Opportunities related to a common event at a customer’s location. You
cannot create Projects in Salesforce. You must fill out the template under the Project tab with
justification on why it should be created. The salesforce administration team will be in charge of
analyzing each request and determining if a Project is worth creating or not for the sake of keeping track
of a number of Opportunities.
➢ [RBP] RSMs and reps should decide if a Project is worth defining in Salesforce to bundle a
number of Opportunities related to a given project. Provide the appropriate justification as well
as a suggested unique project name that can’t or should not be used again.[RBP]
➢
➢
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 TASKS
Tasks are reminders of action items to be done related to any item.
➢ [RBP] It is best to create each Task in the appropriate tab that best describes the action to be
performed by a given target date. You can create tasks for yourself or tasks for another person
to perform.
➢
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 EVENTS
EVENTS are calendar programming items. They will appear on your Calendar for the dates they were
programmed for (sales call, telephone conversations, meetings, etc.)
➢ [RBP] It is best to create each Event in the appropriate tab that best describes the action to be
performed on given dates. You can create Events for yourself or Events associated with other
persons.
➢
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 LIBRARIES
Libraries hold important information being shared to the Salesforce community, such as files,
presentations, stats, articles, etc. Some information is bundled under subfolders (My Libraries)….
Power Library, Chemical Library, Product Presentation Library, etc.
Page 9 of 11

 REPORTS
Several reports are available in the Reports Tab in the Magnetrol User portal. Unfortunately, there are
less available to partner users.
➢ [RBP] RSMs should use Reports available under the Report Tab in Salesforce. There are several
useful reports available under “Unfiled Public Reports” that can be customized at will and saved
under a different name in “My Personal Custom Reports”. Best reports are “Open
Opportunities”, “Open Opportunities-Select Territory” and others. Use the Search window to
locate specific reports.[BRP]
➢
➢
[Standardized reports will be issued by the Salesforce team in the near future]
Page 10 of 11

 CASES
Cases can be used to solicit assistance from Inside Sales, Technical Support, Field Service, RMA, Training
and others. Fill the appropriate template with as much information as possible. Each template is
different depending on the request to be submitted.
➢ [BRP] Make sure you select the appropriate Record Type from the pulldown menu, a clear
description is given of the need in question under Case Information/Description. Give it a short
title under Subject and a Case Reason that best describes the situation. Select NEW under
Status for a new request and a Priority. You will be contacted shortly regarding the created
case.
➢
 DASHBOARDS (HOME on the Partner Portal) [consider moving to the end of the document as
dashboards are not yet well defined – dmm 10/23]
Dashboards are summaries of information in listing or graphical form. Clicking on the list or graph will
open the report used to create that view. Magnetrol users have a pull down menu with various
Dashboards to choose from in either the Magnetrol Internal or Magnetrol Partner Community views.
Partner users do not have but one view of their dashboard in their HOME tab. Users and Partner users
cannot create dashboards. Requests for Dashboards are handled by Salesforce administration group.
Some users may have been given authorization to create Dashboards.
Partner user Dashboards are limited at this time, but offerings will continue to grow in the future as the
‘value proposition’ for the use of Salesforce.
There are two histograms offered to Partner users showing information about their Opportunities.
– One lists bucket groups in the 30-60-90 day to ‘close date’ into the future. This is helpful when
discussing the opportunity pipeline.
– The other is showing bucket groups in <$25k, $25k to $100k and >$100k
– Also showing is a list of the top 10 opportunities by value for the rep’s territory
Clicking on the histograms or the listing will open the detailed report used to generate these summaries
in the Dashboard (Home) and are very useful in analyzing and updating data.
Page 11 of 11

Salesforce Best Practices Guidelines.pdf

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