In order to stand out from their competitors , companies are investing heavily in the customer experience .
To do this, they adopt CRMs . This has caused the value of this market to skyrocket. It is estimated that by 2028, CRM technology is expected to be worth approximately $128 billion worldwide .
Salesforce is considered to be the global benchmark for CRM software. There are many Salesforce tutorials in English. In this article, you will discover in French the basic concepts of this CRM.
Salesforce: what is it?
Salesforce is the global benchmark for business CRM software . It is a very complete CRM thanks to its many integrations and applications.
Is Salesforce an ERP?
Salesforce is not an ERP, it’s a CRM.
An ERP is software that manages all the information and activities of each department of a company. For example, between the accounting department and logistics.
A CRM is dedicated to customer relations only. It is therefore only used by sales people, customer support and sometimes by marketing.
Salesforce can however connect to an ERP .
Who are Salesforce customers?
Salesforce’s customer base is mostly large companies. These customers generally have the means to set up a team dedicated to handling the software. Salesforce is not really dedicated to beginners because its handling requires the presence of experts, for integration and maintenance.
It therefore does not really correspond to the needs of small customers who want a turnkey solution .
Why is Salesforce the CRM market leader?
Salesforce has over 150,000 customers . It has become a market leader because many of its tools are leading applications in their respective fields. Indeed, we can cite:
Sales Cloud – leader in sales applications
Service Cloud – leader in customer service applications
Marketing Cloud – an advanced marketing application
What is SalesCloud?
Available from €25/user/month, Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s dedicated sales tool .
The application aims to help its customers increase their turnover by supporting sales teams. To do this, Sales Cloud offers various features:
Contact management
Opportunity management
The sales forecast
Automation of certain processes
A mobile version (ideal for sales reps on the go)
Our opinion on Salesforce in a nutshell
Salesforce is a very complete CRM . But it is difficult to configure and requires the intervention of dedicated experts for its implementation. It is therefore a very expensive tool: in addition to a more expensive subscription than the rest of the market, you must pay an expert, at least €500 per day.
It is therefore a tool suitable for large companies with complex needs. If you are an SME or a startup , you should choose a tool that is simple to implement and less expensive.
What are the features of Salesforce?
Salesforce offers many features that are grouped in its 3 main applications.
Sales Cloud for sales management
Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s dedicated sales management application.
Contact management
Sales Cloud offers a database that collects all the information about your customers. You will find :
Your contacts
Centralized exchanges (emails, telephone conversations, support tickets, etc.)
The corresponding internal discussions (between the sales administration team and the sales people, for example)
You can also centralize social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
SalesforceⓇ Engage
You can improve interactions between your customers and your sales forces through personalized marketing campaigns.
Business performance management
You can manage your teams by:
defining quantified objectives
providing continuous feedback
rewarding them
All directly in Salesforce!
Lead management
You can track your leads from first contact to customer conversion .
You can optimize your campaigns across all of your channels and observe the friction points in your conversion funnel.
Marketing automation with Pardot
You can automate all your online marketing campaigns. For example, you can create targeted and personalized emails that are sent from specific triggers.
With the associated reports, you will be able to optimize your campaign and increase your conversion rate.
Access to business data
You have continuous access to business data through Data.com .
This database improves the knowledge of your leads and your customers.
You can thus analyze all the metrics concerning your sales in order to improve your conversion tunnels.
Partner management
Sales Cloud allows you to develop and enhance your network of collaborators with Partner Community .
It’s a network of Salesforce experts and Salesforce app developers.
Approvals and Workflows
You can automate most processes through Visual Workflow . For example, you can create an application on which, as soon as a new customer validates a sale, a confirmation email is sent to him automatically.
Email integrations
You can integrate Sales Cloud with your usual emails such as Outlook and Gmail: everything is centralized in a single point.
File synchronization and sharing
Sales Cloud lets you manage all your files online by making it easy to search, post, and share . Each member of your team will be able to access customer data easily.
A search engine makes it possible to find information or a document.
Reports and Dashboards
You have access to a dashboard summarizing all the essential metrics of your activity.
Sales forecasts
With sales forecasts, you can:
Carry out forecast analyzes on your turnover
Support multiple currencies
Create custom categories
Territory management
You can manage your sales by geographic area . They are modifiable and allow you to segment your teams, your analyses, your contacts, etc.
Cloud service for customer service
Service Cloud brings together all the functionalities dedicated to customer support management .
We find as features:
Lightning Service Console
It allows you to give your agents all the information concerning the customers in order to offer them the best support.
Request management
You can speed up the resolution of support tickets by accessing the specific context of each case .
Workflows and Approvals
You can customize and automate customer support and approval processes .
Automatic ticket assignment
You can automatically assign cases to the agent best able to resolve them .
Telephone integration
You can manage your phone calls from the interface .
Customer service on social networks
You can respond on social from Salesforce .
Automation with macros
You can automate repetitive tasks .
Order management
You can track your customers’ orders and their history in one place .
Marketing Cloud for marketing tools
Marketing Cloud brings together features that help build customer relationships through digital marketing .
Among its features are:
Email marketing
Email Studio is Salesforce’s email marketing platform .
B2C journey management
Journey Buyer enables the creation of personalized experiences across all channels at every stage of the customer journey .
Useless in B2B, it is to be used only for your customers in B2C.
Datorama
Datorama allows you to connect, analyze and act on all marketing data in a dashboard .
Digital advertising
Advertising Studio lets you integrate digital ads with marketing and CRM data to create personalized user experiences .
Mobile messages
Mobile Studio lets you do sms marketing, push notifications, and group messages .
Social Media Marketing
Social Studio allows for listening, engaging and posting on social media .
Salesforce Pricing
Each Salesforce product has several tools attached to it . There is therefore no price list grouping all Salesforce products , but formulas specific to each product. If you wish to have access to several products, you must pay several subscriptions .
Here are the prices for each product:
Sales Cloud pricing (sales management)
Sales Cloud offers 4 formulas ranging from 25€/user/month for the cheapest to 300€/user/month for the most complete formula .
Sales Cloud offers a free 30-day trial period on each plan.
Cloud Service plans (customer service)
Similar to Sales Cloud, Service Cloud offers a 30-day free trial period . Service Cloud offers 4 subscriptions from €25 to €300/month/user:
It is also possible to get both Sales Cloud and Service Cloud products in one package. The prices are always divided into 4 formulas with a free trial period of 30 days .
Count on average 25 € more per user to have the 2 tools:
Marketing Cloud Pricing
Lead Generation
The B2B marketing automation tool “Pardot” offers 3 rather expensive formulas. No free trial period is available and Salesforce must be contacted to access the tool.
Pardot ‘s pricing for annual billing (for 10,000 contacts ) is:
1250 €/month for the Growth plan
2500 €/month for the Plus plan
4000 €/month with the Advanced plan
Sales funnels
Marketing Cloud allows, among other things, to personalize and automate interactions by email, on mobile and on the web for each client according to their needs. Like Pardot, there is no free trial and you must contact Salesforce to take advantage of it:
The Basic plan at €400/user/month
The Pro plan at 1250 €/user/month
The Corporate plan at €3,750/user/month
The Enterprise plan which is a personalized plan, contact Salesforce for a quote
It’s very expensive, knowing that automated prospecting tools like Leadin are available at 97 € per month.
Reviews of Salesforce
Salesforce is full of tools and apps . The tool has far too many options, which makes it difficult to handle . The services of an expert will be more than necessary if you want to exploit all the features of the software .
In short, Salesforce is an unintuitive software for beginners with unresponsive customer support and very expensive prices (according to the various customer reviews). Which earned it a 1.4/5 rating on Trustpilot :
Nevertheless, these are the feedbacks and reviews usually from small businesses. Based on the feedback of other users on several other review and comparison sites, Salesforce has not stolen its leading position: for a large company, it is the perfect tool !
To find out if the tool is suitable for a large company, you have to call on the firm Gartner. He regularly makes dials by type of tool.
Here is the CRM one:
Salesforce is by far the market leader!
What are the benefits of Salesforce?
Salesforce offers many features. It is a largely customizable tool and with the advantage of being known by salespeople:
A complete CRM
Salesforce offers comprehensive functionality in sales management, customer relationship management, and marketing management .
A customizable CRM according to your needs
Surely you don’t need all the features offered by Salesforce. You have the option to choose the features that you really need.
A CRM known and used by many salespeople
Salesforce is not a leader for nothing, it has proven itself as an excellent CRM . Many sales people know how to use it . So as soon as you recruit a new salesperson, it is very likely that he already masters a version of Salesforce.
What are the disadvantages of Salesforce?
Salesforce is too expensive for some companies, and it takes a lot of resources to get started:
The price
The plans offered by Salesforce are very expensive . And if you need to add features that are not available in the packages offered, you will have to pay for additional applications or tools .
The first grip
Despite the tutorials that Salesforce makes available to its user, it is quite hard to learn . The many features and applications make it difficult to learn.
The help of an expert is then necessary to exploit it correctly . Otherwise, you risk abandoning your apprenticeship fairly quickly and you would lose money.
Count between 500 and 1,000 € per day for the intervention of a freelance expert.
Does Salesforce CRM measure up?
Customer Support
Is he a victim of his own success so that his customer service can’t keep up ?
In any case, some customers complain about its customer support . We observe a particularly heavy slowness in the processing of requests .
Ease of handling
Salesforce is a complex CRM . If you don’t know any expert to help you install it or get started, move on. However, once you understand how it works you will have no problem mastering it.
Integration with other tools
Salesforce has a marketplace called AppExchange that offers thousands of Salesforce-compatible integrations .
You will find everything and the integrations are simple. If you’re looking for a feature not available on Salesforce, you’re sure to find an equivalent integration there.
For example, DocuSign allows your sales representatives to have contracts and quotes signed with an electronic signature. Its application on AppExchange makes it possible to integrate it with Salesforce.
How do I cancel Salesforce if I’m not satisfied?
To cancel your subscription to Salesforce, you will need to contact customer support .
What alternative to Salesforce for SMEs and startups?
Twilead is undoubtedly the best alternative to Salesforce for SMBs and startups . Besides being a CRM, it is an all-in-one marketing tool: no need to pay and connect other tools.
Just like Salesforce, Twilead offers many tools beyond customer relationship management. You have :
Marketing Hub
The marketing hub brings together the tools needed to manage and develop your marketing:
Marketing Automation
Email marketing
Creation of forms, surveys and questionnaires
Creation and hosting of websites and sales funnels
Twilead then offers features just as rich as Salesforce, but with easier handling. These are less complex tools that better correspond to the reality of SMEs and startups.
Sales management
Twilead lets you manage your leads and opportunities, from first contact to customer conversion.
To do this, Twilead provides you with:
Sales pipelines (visualization of the journey)
Online calendars (like Calendly)
Advanced reports
CRM & E-reputation
Twilead allows you to deepen your relationship with your audience, with:
A centralized discussion thread
The fully integrated CRM
Contact lists with tags
Reputation and review management
Features and integrations
Twilead has all the integrations your business needs.
Twilead is easier to access than Salesforce. It is a turnkey solution, not requiring the presence of experts.
In addition, Twilead costs significantly less than Salesforce:
The Start formula at 25€/month
The Grow formula at 45€/month
The Scale formula at 80€/month
The Perform formula from €140/month
A 14-day free trial period is also offered.
Features | Salesforce | Twilead |
Price | from €25/month | from €25/month |
Sales funnel | ❌ (extra) | ✅ |
Sales management | ✅ | ✅ |
Customer service management | ✅ | ✅ |
Appointment calendar | ❌ | ✅ |
Email marketing | ✅ | ✅ |
Intégration | ❌ (extra) | ✅ |
Mobile app | ✅ | ✅ |
Social media management | ❌ (extra) | ✅ |
B2C journey management | ✅ | ✅ |
Ads management | ✅ | ✅ |
Forms and surveys | ❌ | ✅ |
Creation of websites | ❌ | ✅ |
Creation of landing pages | ❌ | ✅ |
Workflow automation | ✅ | ✅ |
Free trial period | ✅ | ✅ |
100% free version | ❌ | ❌ |
Conclusion
Salesforce is undeniably an excellent CRM software and deserves its place as market leader. It offers many applications that help businesses at all levels, from customer relations to sales and marketing management.
But its many features and its many tools make Salesforce a particularly complex software. It is not suitable for beginners and requires a fairly substantial learning time .
If you want an out-of-the-box CRM solution that requires little or no basics, look to Twilead . It is the friend of small businesses, startups and especially beginners in CRM.
It is an all-in-one marketing tool that provides all the features needed to run a business.
What are you waiting for ? Try Twilead for free!
