Sales managers play a vital role in deciding the total revenue of a company. They build, nurture a high-performance sales team and guide them to reach the company goals and meet customer needs. For many companies, it is one of the most expensive departments of their organization. They spend up to half of their revenues on their sales teams only. Most of the time, they acquire many different tools, here comes an issue.
The Issue: Many Apps, Poor Workflows
Unfortunately, sales reps become less productive. They are not able to show their efficiency due to poor workflow, unavailability of data, and lack of value communicated about the product. They spend most of their time in seeking information and doing repetitive and other administrative tasks. Not only it de-motivates your sales team and forces them to become data-entry robots but also leads to reduced sales and conversion rates. Moreover, your sales reps are the representatives of your company. The busier your team is with mundane tasks, the slower and more error-prone they are going to be with important ones.
As a business owner, you should strive to automate your business processes as many as you can. With automation, not only your company tasks will be completed at a faster rate but also reduces the chances of making mistakes. It is a secret weapon to scale your business. If you are seeking the ways to automate your business processes, then the use of Microsoft Flow can turn out to be the best option.
What is Microsoft Flow ?
Microsoft flow is cloud-based software that makes it practical and simple for line-of-business users to create workflows to automate tedious and time-consuming business tasks across multiple applications and services. It does not only integrate with Microsoft products, but it can also be used with a wide range of apps and services including Salesforce, SQL server, Google Drive, etc.
Though every department of your company can leverage its benefits, the sales department stands to gain the most. When you use Microsoft Flow, it allows your sales team to save their time and focus on core sales activities that add value to the business. However, before you go ahead, you need to know how to use Microsoft Flow. In this guide, we are going to tell different ways to use Microsoft Flow to leverage the benefits of Salesforce and Office 365.
What can you do with Microsoft Flow to get the power of Salesforce and Office 365?
1. Create Outlook Calendar events for Salesforce events:
Being a Sales Manager, you know the importance of Calendars. Your whole team relies on calendars to schedule all the important events and meetings of your company. Not only it allows you to plan your day but also helps you to make informed decisions. And with the help of Salesforce-Office 365 Calendar integration, you can efficiently manage those events and meetings. Every time a new opportunity is created in the Salesforce, it will automatically copy over to your Office 365 Calendar. Not only it saves your time but also liberates your team form repetitive task and allows them to focus on other important activities of your business. All you need to leverage the benefits of this integration is a Salesforce account and an Office 365 Calendar account.
2. Add Salesforce Tasks to Wunderlist Tasks or Microsoft To-Do
When you release a new product, you always focus on its marketing to attract potential customers. However, presenting your product in the most enticing way is not sufficient to enhance your customer base. In fact, you need to keep a good follow-up of your every sales lead. Following up your customers is a key to boost your revenues and enhance your customer base. By using Salesforce and Wunderlist integration, you can efficiently manage and automate all of your lead follow-up processes without any delay and mistake. It will create a task on Wunderlist each time you add a new lead to your Salesforce account. Apart from this, you can set push reminders for your pending tasks. You can also edit and share your to-do list with other members of your team from your mobile devices.
3. Send an email or an SMS when new specific Salesforce Opportunities are created
For many companies, a quicker response to certain situations is crucial in order to add new customers and enhance business productivity. However, waiting for a client’s reply restrict you from focusing on other important activities. Hence, you can’t afford to wait for a reply from your sales leads. If you are seeking ways to improve your response times to your potential customer actions, then Microsoft Flow can turn out to be the best way. It will send you an email or an SMS when new Salesforce opportunities are created. You can add some conditions such as a minimum amount to trigger the sending. It helps you to connect with your customers regardless of your location which will further provide you with a competitive edge and enhance your business.
4. Create Salesforce Leads from Excel Table
In order to reach your departmental goals, you need to track sales opportunities so that you can tailor your action plans accordingly to retain your customers and enhance your business productivity. However, juggling work locations, type of product enhance the chances of missing the details and losing money. With Microsoft Flow, you can organize your data and generate real-time sales reports with a few clicks. Not only it will reduce the chances of missing even a single lead, but also helps you accurately measure your business growth. Moreover, you need not manually add all the details in the excel sheet. When you add a new row to the Excel table, it will automatically be created in Salesforce.
5. Track Salesforce open leads and send an email
It is not easy to find business leads; you and your sales team are putting efforts to find more business opportunities and enhance your productivity. In order to reap the benefit of your hard work and convert your open leads into your potential customers, you need to tell them about new products, services, and deals of your company. However, it is not possible to track every open lead manually. By the use of Microsoft Flow with Salesforce, you can track your open leads and send them a notification email to remind them. Not only it enhances the chances of conversion up to 9-times but also saves your time.
6. Start deal approvals with DoucSign for Salesforce opportunities
There are lots of business processes that can’t be processed without your signature such as legal work, contract with your new clients, shipping of products, close your deals, etc. However, with DocuSign, you can quickly and securely sign those documents digitally, from anywhere in the world from your mobile device so that your complex workflows can be quickly automated while keeping your business moving forward, faster. You can take follow up of your tasks by using Microsoft Flow with DocuSign. You can initial your deals and approve all the processes using DocuSign when any Salesforce opportunities are won. Not only you can go paperless, but also you can edit your documents via Docusign which will save you time.
7. Monitor and Manage your Social Media Presence
It is crucial for every business to know what your customers are saying about your brand and products. However, effective social media management can be a struggling task, even if we use only one platform. It not sufficient to respond to your customer’s queries, you need to do much more such as posting the content regularly, moderating spam and then reporting and checking the impact of tasks you are performing, etc. With Microsoft Flow, you can get rid of these tasks. You can automate your editorial calendar and twitter posting by using Microsoft Flow with Office 365. Not only it will simplify your work, but also save your time and money.
8. When an object is created in Salesforce, create a row in SQL
In order to manage sales opportunities, every organization should have access to a good customer relationship management database. A quality sales database acts as the best tool that helps your sales team to handle your customers. It allows them to understand how many and what type of opportunities are in the sales pipeline. Not only the sales department can access this database, but the other departments of your company can also edit that database. Due to this, the sales team gets the most up-to-date information. Salesforce is a CRM that allows you to copy new leads into SQL server. Not only it will enhance coordination between all your departments, but also helpful during client handling. As a result, it will enhance your business productivity.
While these are the ways you can use Microsoft Flow with Salesforce and Office 365 to streamline your business processes, there are many more possibilities such as you can receive a win notification when a Salesforce opportunity is won, notify your team when a new lead is created, etc. No matter what is your business size and type, every business can use Microsoft Flow to automate their business activities and improve your operational efficiencies. Why put in extra effort when you can do it with only a few clicks. Let Microsoft Flow automate your enterprise process via cloud-based data sources. If you see some more, do not hesitate to share it with us in comments!