Salesforce.com For Dummies®

Part II. Driving Sales — The Basics

In this part . . .

Sales are the lifeblood of any organization. When sales are growing, life is good. Employees are energized, groups are happy to work together, and the company has money to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. When sales are down, life gets rough. Everyone feels more pressure to perform, the company tightens its belt, and you start receiving lectures on how coffee is for closers. So how can you and your sales teams consistently perform so that you have enough leads at the top of the funnel to ensure a consistent flow of sales at the bottom of the funnel?

Salesforce, a tool built by sales people for sales people, is designed to do just that. With the core sales tabs in Salesforce, you can effectively manage your leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities.

In this part, we explain each of those tabs and their records, how they connect to each other, and most importantly, how to use them so that you can quickly get up to speed to sell more, faster. We show you how you can use Salesforce to manage your sales activities, including calendared events and tasks. You discover the ins and outs of e‐mail and how, by sending e‐mail from Salesforce, you can connect with more leads and contacts than you thought possible.