Are you truly maximizing Salesforce's potential? Many users only scratch the surface of what this powerful CRM platform can offer.
With a wide range of under-the-radar tools and features, Salesforce has the power to:
- Streamline your processes
- Improve customer relationships
- Drive meaningful results
Yet, many of these impactful features remain overlooked or underutilized.
In this guide, we’ll explore ten Salesforce features you might miss out on, from automation tools to advanced reporting capabilities. By understanding and leveraging these tools, you can unlock the full potential of Salesforce, giving your team a competitive edge.
Discover how these hidden gems can elevate your sales and customer success strategies.
10 of the Most Underutilized Salesforce Features and How They Can Transform Your Workflow
Salesforce has tools beyond essential CRM functions, offering features that can save you time, improve insights, and boost customer engagement. Here’s a quick rundown:
1. Salesforce Path
Salesforce Path is a powerful tool for visualizing stages in your sales process. It provides your team with a roadmap for each opportunity or lead. This feature highlights key fields, tips, and guidance specific to each stage, keeping reps on track and informed at every step.
Example: A sales rep can easily see the critical fields needed to move a lead from the "Qualified" stage to the "Negotiation" stage, reducing the risk of overlooking important information.
2. Einstein Lead Scoring
With Einstein Lead Scoring, Salesforce AI analyzes past leads to predict the success rate of new ones, scoring them based on their likelihood to convert. This feature helps prioritize high-potential leads, saving reps time and effort.
Example: If a lead shows strong engagement with emails and has previously interacted with certain content, Einstein Lead Scoring will boost its score, signaling the rep to prioritize follow-up.
3. Salesforce Surveys
Salesforce Surveys enable you to collect feedback directly from customers within the CRM, providing valuable insights into their needs and satisfaction. You can create and distribute surveys at any touchpoint, seamlessly integrating feedback into the customer journey.
Example: After a customer service call, a survey can automatically be sent, giving immediate insight into customer satisfaction and areas for improvement.
4. Collaborative Forecasting
Collaborative Forecasting allows sales teams to predict future revenue more accurately by viewing forecasts by role, territory, and opportunity. This feature supports more informed planning and goal-setting, helping align sales targets with realistic data.
5. Opportunity Teams
With Opportunity Teams, you can assign multiple team members to work on a single opportunity, each with defined roles.
This feature promotes cross-functional collaboration by bringing together resources, such as sales reps, solution engineers, and support specialists, who contribute to closing deals.
Example: A rep can directly loop in a technical specialist on the opportunity, ensuring customer questions get quick, accurate responses without switching between platforms.
6. Macros
Macros in Salesforce streamline repetitive tasks by allowing you to execute a series of actions with a single click. This is particularly useful for routine functions like closing cases or updating records in customer service settings.
Example: After resolving a common issue, a support agent can run a macro that logs the case, sends a follow-up email, and updates the status—all in one go.
7. Salesforce Inbox
Salesforce Inbox integrates email with CRM data, giving your sales reps direct access to account insights and updates without leaving their inbox. It also provides productivity tools like email tracking, scheduling, and templates.
Example: When a sales rep emails a lead, they can view relevant Salesforce data, track email opens, and send a follow-up reminder directly within their inbox.
8. Quick Text
Quick Text allows you to save and reuse pre-written messages for common responses. This feature benefits sales and support teams by ensuring consistency and saving time on routine communications.
Example: A support agent can use Quick Text to quickly insert a standard troubleshooting message or greeting, reducing typing time while maintaining a consistent tone.
9. Omni-Channel Routing
Omni-Channel Routing automatically assigns tasks, cases, or leads to agents based on availability, workload, and skill set. This ensures the right tasks go to the right agents at the right time.
Example: If a customer submits a high-priority support ticket, Omni-Channel Routing sends it to the most available and skilled agent, reducing wait time and improving customer satisfaction.
10. Dynamic Forms
Dynamic Forms allow you to create custom, flexible page layouts that display only relevant fields based on conditions like record type or user role. This helps reduce clutter and makes data entry more intuitive.
Example: A sales rep viewing an account record sees fields for 'Purchase History' if the account is a repeat customer, while a prospecting team member sees 'Lead Source' and 'Company Size.'
Conclusion
Salesforce offers many features to improve productivity, streamline workflows, and enhance customer insights. However, many of these tools are underutilized despite their potential to optimize processes across sales, support, and other departments.
By incorporating these often-overlooked features into your day-to-day operations, you can transform your Salesforce experience. This will drive efficiency, improve collaboration, and ultimately deliver a better experience for your team and customers.
