Seasoned salespeople are skeptical of technology changes. Sales veterans have spent years refining their processes, so even if the latest shiny software looks useful, they are likely highly skeptical. Managing their sales plays in an offline spreadsheet may be inefficient, but it’s still helping them close deals.
Yet, relying on spreadsheets prevents you from getting the complete picture of how your team is performing. And running a sales organization without clean data is like running a race blindfolded.
While Salesforce Lightning is a powerful tool, you often have to customize your Lightning page to make it work the way your salespeople work. Salesforce navigation is oriented around objects, but your users don’t think that way. They simply want to access and update their data in a way that makes the most sense to them.
In our last App-etizer webinar, we shared how you can customize Salesforce to improve data quality to better match how your team works.
Abandon manual processes, all ye who enter here.
Small-to-midsize businesses would be surprised to learn that even enterprise customers run manual sales processes. Spreadsheets, whiteboards, post-its, legacy systems, ad hoc Zoom meetings, and even butcher paper on the wall: you name it, we’ve seen all the ways companies are trying to manage work.
But when they don’t rely on a single source of truth like a CRM, organizations have siloed, fractured data, making it impossible for leadership to understand what’s going wrong, what’s going right, and what steps to take to grow the business.
And with your workforce being remote, now more than ever you need to improve your data quality and maintain it within a single source of truth to keep everyone on the same page.
First, you need to establish trust. When you’re building any application, you must convince users it will work how they’re used to working, make their lives easier, and help them accomplish their goals.
Because even if reps are managing their sales process inefficiently, if it’s helping them reliably close deals, they have no incentive to change. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: make reps trust the system you’re building more than they trust their spreadsheets. Doing so will improve data quality and better set your organization up for success.
Make Salesforce work how your users work with declarative app building.
Anytime you’re building an application, strive for simplicity and ease of use. Remember, if you can get users to embrace it, your data quality will improve. But they need to be convinced that they stand to lose something by not using your app. Here are a few ways to make the decision easy for them.
Group common objects into a single view.
To create a better user experience, leave the object model behind. What this means in practice: when customizing Salesforce, consider what tasks users are most commonly doing and group the related objects together in a single view.
For instance, most reps live in accounts, contacts, and opportunities in Salesforce. That said, build a view where someone like an account manager can see all these objects on a single page and interact with them without having to navigate away.
Provide spreadsheet-like features.
People find comfort in familiarity. So, letting users inline edit tables like they would a spreadsheet is a great way to encourage adoption of your app. Give users the ability to edit multiple columns, rows, and fields at the same time. Plus, provide key actions like updating or deleting an account directly from the table.
Make pages visually appealing and dynamic.
Human-centered design presents data in a visually-appealing way, making it easier for people to process and act on what they’re seeing.
First, for any page you create, consider how much real estate users have on their screens. For customers using laptops, space is a premium. So, keep pages tight, clean, and contemporary.
Though many users love spreadsheets, they complain that all the data looks the same. Here’s where you can one-up that experience: create a page with a table and a graph or chart that displays the table’s data in a visual way. When the user edits the table, the data in the corresponding graph or chart should update, too. Now you’re offering users something they didn’t have before that makes information easier to process.
Instead of building static reports and pages, think about ways to operationalize business intelligence, so that users can take action on what they’re viewing. You’ll deliver both reporting and the ability to do daily tasks in CRM, all at the same time.
Skuid helps you improve data quality with declarative apps.
Using Skuid, your data layer and visual layer are separate but connected. Our Action Framework combines data operations (i.e., fetching data) with UI operations (i.e., showing UI elements) to create dynamic apps with experiences suited to how your users work.
With the Skuid App Composer, you can do this in a declarative way, by dragging and dropping elements, all without writing code. And our Design System Studio will help you define visual elements throughout all your apps to produce a consistent look and feel.
For more details on how you can improve data quality by implementing the ideas above, check out this webinar:
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