A View from the TopLine

As a Salesforce partner, this is one of the times of the year I most look forward to! While some may have visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, I have visions of Salesforce Release Notes dancing on my screen! The beginning of December, while also the lead-up to the holiday season, is also the time of year when Salesforce usually releases the details about the many new features and updates, which will be incorporated into the Spring release.

In our last Lightning for Outlook blog series post, I covered what Lightning for Outlook is, how awesome it is and how to get it. If you've gotten Lightning for Outlook installed, you're ready for this blog post! If not, check out the last post or reach out to your Salesforce Admin for assistance.

Most businesses need to have their customers sign documents.  Whether it is a receipt for services or an invoice of some sort, proof is needed that a customer agrees to the contents of a written record.  In the past this required pen and paper.  Someone had to print the document, sign it with a pen and return it somehow (via scan/email, fax, mail).

TopLine Results has a proven, simpler, solution for this by using Adobe Sign.

Are you an Act! user on an older version, specifically one developed from 2004 to 2015 (Act! 2005 to v17)? If so, you need to take immediate action to preserve your access to your Act! database. You will need to upgrade to a newer version of Act! or convert to another CRM. Otherwise you are at risk of losing access to your data on January 1, 2019!

Why is this happening?
You may or may not know this, but most software relies on third-party components to add functionality.

I recently had the privilege of attending a Dale Carnegie class called “Sales Advantage”. It was an eight-week course that met for 3.5 hours each Wednesday evening. The instructor guided us through the sales process with lots of examples and role-plays.

I was recently asked if it is possible to see all scheduled tasks for all users in Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) CRM. Well, of course, there is! By using a standard list view of activities, you can see all the captured details. You can even pop open a chart that shows counts of activities by user or by type (or various combinations) with stacked bars showing users and numbers of activities of each type.

Digital marketing and marketing automation are hot topics for businesses these days.  As a certified marketing automation consultant, I meet with business owners and marketing managers on a weekly basis to help them determine which digital marketing tool will work best for them.

Imagine this…You open up Outlook on a Monday morning and you've got an email from a new Contact at a new Account and they have some real interest in your company's products (new Opportunity)! Well, this is exciting! "Oh wait," you say to yourself, "now I need to enter all of this ‘new’ data in Salesforce.

Efficiency is one of the keys to an effective CRM.  People need to be able to do their jobs with the least amount of work possible.  The new Outlook App for Dynamics 365 v9 is a great tool to help customer service people work more efficiently.  The feature that I will be discussing today involves a way to create a case from an email directly within Outlook, eliminating the need to work separately in your web browser.

Sometimes jumping into something new can be daunting unless you take a measured and thoughtful approach. Here at TopLine Results, we like to minimize risk for our clients by taking a sit, stand, walk, run approach to CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

Sit
We like to sit with you and understand your processes for sales, marketing and/or customer service.