For managing two different things, I'm managing some sales pipeline, the pipeline of sales of some products, and also doing marketing automation for after-sales.

The functions of the Salesforce Sales Cloud that I have found most valuable are mostly because it's a CRM system; it's a central location where you gather all of your customer information, and based on that complete view, you can act. But that's not specific to Salesforce Sales Cloud; it's to any CRM system.

We've got a highly customized solution from Salesforce Sales Cloud, so we do use automations in some areas. Not specifically for sales, but we do automatic quoting, for instance; that's an automation.

The biggest benefit of the Salesforce Sales Cloud is a centralized point, a centralized source of truth for customer-related information; you centralize all the information in a single database, and that's the biggest benefit. The second benefit is that you can analyze or standardize processes in different areas; for sales, for service, for marketing, there are many ways in which Salesforce Sales Cloud can be used to improve a company's processes.

From a customer perspective, it's a very stable system, and people are used to its functionalities, good and bad. Improvement, in my opinion, would be to include AI functionality in a simpler way; right now, it's not easy; it's cumbersome and requires some back and forth with different functionalities in the system, and it's a very complex integration. It would be my recommendation to make the integration simpler.

I am still working with the Salesforce Sales Cloud and still using Salesforce products.

I would rate the stability of Salesforce Sales Cloud as a nine.

I would put scalability, or the ability to scale and expand, as a seven.

The initial setup process for the Salesforce Sales Cloud very much depends on how customized you want to have your solution, so there is no easy answer for that one; it depends on the customer and the level of customization that you want. If you want to use the system out of the box, you can do that, but probably it won't fit your business process. If you want it to fit your business process, you've got to do configuration or possibly even custom development. Overall, I think, as a system, it's one of the best systems to configure and customize, but there's a learning curve like most systems, and it depends mostly on the process. On a scale of one to ten, being ten the easiest to customize, I would classify it as a seven.

I would rate the price for Salesforce Sales Cloud as a three, where one is a high price.

I would compare Salesforce Sales Cloud to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which is the second player in the market; from my perspective, Salesforce Sales Cloud is the biggest player.

Dynamics CRM is the closest one, but Salesforce Sales Cloud is much bigger still.

The integration capabilities of the Salesforce Sales Cloud, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the hardest, I would rate around five.

From my perspective, the main issues or main complexities with integration include large-scale data integration; when you have to do large volumes of data synchronization with external systems, Salesforce Sales Cloud can become an issue because of something called governor limits, which are rules that force you to divide the data into small chunks and small transactions.

It's a very flexible solution; I can advise it for any company size. I don't have a preference; different companies will use it differently. The big companies will probably customize it more, but smaller companies will use more features because they are more flexible. It's mostly a question of negotiation of the license and selecting the right type of license for your company.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is leading in the market, holding 25% market share, while the second player has 8%, which is Microsoft, the last time I looked at it.

I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud eight out of ten.

For every cloud of Salesforce Sales Cloud, we work with them because we are partners for the last 15 years.

The feedback about Salesforce Sales Cloud is related to our recent delivery of a large project in the solar industry, where we have utilized Agentforce, the AI. The implementation timing was almost one year. In this project, we have not only automated the whole AI journey but also achieved huge success with the three minutes quote process. If you land on their website, you enter your information, and your quote is ready, absolutely perfectly fine with the correct data and service provider. You can get your quote done within three minutes. The moment you hit claim now or save for later, the AI starts working, which includes auto follow-up via email, SMS, and even voice agent calls to help sellers sell faster.

The company name is The Very Good Solar Company. They are based out of Utah in the US, and the CTO is our very old client. This is the fourth project we have done with this client, where we have implemented Salesforce Sales Cloud, which is the unlimited edition of the highest edition of Salesforce Sales Cloud. We have fetched the whole data for every state because in every different state, there are different products permitted by the US government. We have integrated a couple of applications that tell you your monthly bill for the whole year and also check the rooftop, as the Google Solar API has been integrated, giving accurate information about roof size, how many maximum panels can fit, shadow analysis, and financial analysis from the Solar API. Based on that, it tells you that the 100% offset can be achieved with eight, 12, or 16 panels, increasing by four panels each time. That is the configuration we have done, and that's all we have for now.

Salesforce Sales Cloud itself is a wonderful solution, and there are two different versions: Lightning and classic. The Lightning version is a new generation version compatible with any mobile device, whether it's a phone, iPad, or any size of screen. The reporting and analytics functionalities, especially with the Einstein feature, are wonderful because it allows for analysis of data regarding your opportunity pipeline, giving insight into how long it will take to close deals. This gives a great understanding of running different levels of campaigns and defining smart workflows, where if one task is done, the other task can automatically get created and assigned to different team members. This flexibility is a key benefit of Salesforce Sales Cloud.

Lead management is a great feature in Salesforce Sales Cloud because if you go for enterprise and above licenses, you can define different record types. For example, if one company is into two different businesses such as real estate and car reselling, both being opposite, this can be defined in Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing for different workflows, fields, and mechanisms that do not affect each other's operations.

The predictive insight feature known as forecasting is a very old feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud, giving predictions based on your pipeline and previous opportunity closings. The new Einstein analytics feature is more advanced and is enabled with AI, providing better forecasting based on your current pipeline. Salesforce Sales Cloud is working smartly with AI to help close more deals based on opportunity stages, trends, and industries, advising on the steps to take next.

Lead generation is the most important thing because every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.

Improvement is always necessary. The Lightning version and classic version have some differences needing improvement. For example, in classic, you can create different folders, but in Lightning, the document feature is not available; only files are accessible. This missing document feature in Lightning is something that Salesforce Sales Cloud should address.

15 years

We don't host or deploy Salesforce Sales Cloud as it operates on Salesforce's cloud system. All we do is access it and implement solutions according to the requirements and workflows clients seek. We customize it as needed and integrate third-party applications if necessary. No Salesforce Sales Cloud product requires hosting; it's all managed on the Sales Cloud.

With 15 years of experience, we've found solutions for various problems, and while critical situations can arise, we are confident in our ability to resolve them. There aren't really obstacles in Salesforce Sales Cloud.

There are two types of support: free and paid. Paid support provides quick assistance within 24 hours and can include technical help through screen sharing on platforms such as Google Meet or Zoom. For free support, my experience in India suggests that the support team requires more training as some are still not fully ready or aware of all Salesforce Sales Cloud features. They need better training, but generally, the support is good and responsive.

Lead generation is crucial as every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.

I always address requirements gathering with new clients, considering their vision for the future as it's crucial. We are not just implementing Salesforce Sales Cloud; we need to understand what the customer wants to achieve in 5 to 10 years. Implementation should align with their requirements and vision, so we prepare a scope of work document and suggest improvements. Many first-time CRM users are unaware of all features and best practices, so we guide them with use cases, sample work, or sometimes create a POC to show them how their system will look and the expected outcomes, ensuring the ROI is beneficial for them.

Pricing in India has evolved as a reseller; the market has gone above a billion dollars for Salesforce Sales Cloud. This happened for the first time because of the new CEO, Arundhati, who revolutionized pricing strategies, allowing discounts of 60-70% for Salesforce Sales Cloud in India. Salesforce Sales Cloud also supports implementation, helping with the right consulting partners, and conducts surveys after project delivery to ensure the implementation partner was helpful and that the solution met the client's needs.

As a Salesforce Sales Cloud partner, we take care of Salesforce Sales Cloud projects. Both Agentforce and Salesforce Sales Cloud are available. We operate as a reseller and implementation partner. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud an 8.5.