Since launching in 2017, Everpeak has helped more than 200 companies optimize Sales and Service Cloud. We’re often called in to fix a bad implementation or help teams improve adoption. Of the hundreds of audits we’ve run, these are the six most common areas we find low-hanging potential to improve

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1. Sales path

Companies should have lead status values and opportunity stage values that make sense based off of their sales process. They should use “guidance for success” to outline best practices for each stage. The stages should pick up from the lead status to the opportunity stage and there should be a clear conversion event. The conversion point when a lead goes to an opportunity should be based on the timing in the sales process where the lead expresses clear interest in the product / service and the seller confirms that they are indeed a qualified potential buyer.

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2. Key Fields / Dynamic Fields

‍Key fields are part of the buying process tied to stages, but can also be added to any “Path” which isn’t necessarily always related to sales. As the stages progress in any path, relevant fields for that stage can show up. For example, you might not care what the “loss reason” is when you’re within the sales process, but if you lose a deal, it becomes highly relevant.

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3. Validation Rules

‍Validation rules ensure that data is clean. While there are basic required / non-required fields, validation rules go a step further by requiring fields based on a condition. For example, a “manager approved” checkbox can be required if a deal size is over $250,000. Or you could require the “amount” field and “signer name” to be populated before generating a proposal in Salesforce. They ensure that the proper data is entered into Salesforce at the right time. Validation rules also save sales and rev ops managers time by automating their sales operations processes.

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4. Flows / Automation

‍‍The automation engine in Salesforce is world class. You can literally automate anything with the logic of: “If a criteria = true, then trigger an automation.” For example, if the State = California, trigger the lead to be reassigned to the “West” team as the new owner. Or if a new deal is won, create a new task to be assigned to the owner to schedule the onboarding session. Automation can trigger updates in the following ways: email alerts, new tasks, field updates, 3rd party system data updates and more. The sky’s the limit when it comes to automation.

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5. User Interface

‍The UI is the way that the user interacts with the system and even saving one click each time a record is opened for a particular object can make a world of a difference. The UI should be simple and just show the most relevant information. Many companies who upgrade to Lightning do not properly configure all of the Lightning elements. For example, three-column layouts can be very effective. Eliminate extra fields and parts of the page layout that don’t serve the team and make it easier to scan for most useful data. Optimization of the UI is highly valuable and includes the following: homepage UI, tabs at the top of the screen, logo branded on top left, list views, page layouts across all objects for fields, Lightning page layout for object elements, buttons that show up within objects, buttons that show up within records, links in favorites tabs, related lists on objects and much more

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6. Reporting

‍Quality reporting is essential to understanding the performance of an organization. As the old saying goes, “What gets measured gets managed.” Most companies have two issues: No1. is the quality of their data, which leads to reporting that doesn’t accurately reflect what’s going on. Training your team to consistently enter accurate and timely data is crucial. Using a carrot and stick approach here can be most effective.  No. 2 is their reports aren’t built correctly. Quality reporting should roll up into dashboards with multiple components. The dashboards can be both placed on the homepage of users as well as saved dashboards within their reports / dashboards folders.