Salesforce Lightning for Business Users

0:00If you are new to using a CRM or just new to Salesforce, this system could change the way you manage your day. I put together this day in the life Nugget to show you what I see. Now I'm not going to go into any details in this. I'm just going to walk the happy path-- the happy path of the actions that you'll likely take using the lightning features to start your day and to stay on top of everything throughout the day. Now don't worry about trying to learn what I'm doing in this Nugget. Just watch me click around and notice how swift and efficient all these actions can be.

0:32And if you've never used a CRM before, if you've never seen Salesforce, this Nugget might blow your mind a little bit. It is a lightning fast tour of everything-- everything. So don't worry. This is just to give you some context and a vision for how you could use Salesforce once you get to know it. I'm already logged into Salesforce as a sales user. I'm taken to the Home tab. The first thing I look at every day-- what meetings do I have on my calendar. Any scheduled meetings for today will be listed, and I can click View Calendar to see the rest of the week if needed.

1:04So I would likely take about 10 minutes to plan out anything I needed to do to prepare for those two meetings on my calendar today. Next, I look at my quarterly performance chart. I look at this every day. I'm always checking my progress to goal. I met my quarterly goal a few days ago, but I'm going for a stretch goal in these last days of the quarter. And the ops in this zone here, those are my focus this week. And those are most likely listed right over here in the Assistant. I have five opportunity recommendations. Some are overdue, so I need to adjust the close date on those.

1:37Once I address it, it falls off my assistant list. Notice I can edit by clicking the pencil or by expanding the carrot and clicking Edit. On this opportunity, let's say I heard from them and they are not moving forward. So I changed the status to close lost and put in some notes to remind myself what happened here. After I click Save, which is down below the recorded window-- sorry about that-- I'm taken back to the Home tab, and that one drops off the list. This next one on the list also has a close date in the past. When I look at this one, this is one that I actually won this deal.

2:10I change the stage, save it, and that one drops off my list. So just notice there's a difference between what I'm doing with an overdue opportunity where the close date is in the past versus this one, which has tasks that I intended to do that are now overdue. Look how easy it is to modify the due date on a task associated with this opportunity. And when I hop back out to the Home tab, look how easy it is to add a new task when the opportunity doesn't have any planned future activities.

2:43So in a real life scenario, I would just keep adding tasks, modifying due dates, because I don't want anything to fall through the cracks here. And realistically, if I paused and took some action like sent e-mails and created tasks or acted on some of these tasks, I would probably be spending anywhere between one to two hours on this part of my day, addressing things that are open, overdue, and taking a little bit of action. And now I'm ready to look at my leads. All through the day, the Assistant will show me new leads being assigned to me.

3:14My process is I send a personalized email to the lead, asking about the best way to start a conversation about their needs. But I do not freehand type that. I use an email template. It's pre-populated with a greeting using their name and all of my contact information. So I do that for both of the leads that are listed here. And just notice within a couple of clicks, I have emails sent off to both of these leads to start the process of qualification. And as I touch these leads, they fall off my list. And then I move on to looking at my tasks.

3:45First thing I notice is one of my tasks has a due date in the past. It's marked in red, so it stands out. I'll need to edit that one. I'll give myself a few more days to get that done, and I'll save it. And the next I look at my list. Are there any other tasks that I have actually completed? Yes, checking the action box marks them done, and then they go into the task history. For me, I use this list to jog my memory about my giant to do list, but to work with the actual list and start to do these tasks, I go into View All.

4:18From here, I can see the full list for today and for tomorrow. And when I click on each task row, I see the details displayed on the right. For example, this one doesn't have a due date. I can easily double click in this field and edit it, add a due date, save the record, and that change has been made. I can also look at my overdue tasks if needed and address some of those. I can quickly mark some things done if I've actually taken care of them already but just forgot to mark them completed previously.

4:48When all of this feels complete, I head back to Home. Reviewing and updating my tasks and working on some of them, depending on what needs to be done today, that maybe would have taken an hour or two or three, depending on what I was working on. But throughout the day, I keep coming back to the Home tab as my landing place. I check to see if any new leads are popping up. And the Assistant will keep showing me opportunities that need attention. A decent percentage of my day is spent on the Opportunities tab, updating opportunity records as things develop throughout my day.

5:21But towards the end of the day, I am reflecting back on how it all went, and I always spend time looking at a view of my opportunities that are due to close soon. I love the Kanban view for updating the opportunity stage. I can drag records into the correct column, and it takes me seconds to get all of my opportunities updated and accurately reflected on the forecast. If any new deals have come in today, I can easily create a new opportunity record. I just fill in the critical fields-- again, we're just dealing with the happy path here-- I fill in those critical fields, and I'll fill in all the rest of the details later as I get to know more about the potential deal.

6:00And throughout the day, I'll probably view a dashboard and look at some reports. I just choose the dashboard I want to see from this list, check whether I should refresh it, and I get a snapshot of anything critical. Before I finish up my day, I'll go to the Leads tab and look at my leads in the Kanban view. And if I've made progress qualifying any of those, I move those into the correct lead status column. I can just drag and drop them using this Kanban view. Before I finish out my day, I would create any new records that might need to be added to Salesforce.

6:32You probably noticed I didn't spend a lot of time looking at customer data on the account or contact record, and that was intentional. There is a time and a place to review or update specific information about the customer or the lead, but I also want to be careful that that is not the core part of my happy path. Because I do not want to get into the habit of using Salesforce as just my fancy phone book. I want to stay focused on action, on getting work done that moves deals forward. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00Let's log right into Salesforce and explore the basics of navigating the Lightning interface. I'm on login.salesforce.com. This is the universal login URL for all of Salesforce. Unless you've been given a custom URL, then you should use that. And save yourself some time. Bookmark this login URL. So you just enter your login username and password, and then click log in. Or if you've never logged in, that's OK. I won't tell. But you should have received an email from Salesforce support asking you to verify your account.

0:31When you click through that, you set up a password for yourself and log in and you're in. Every time you log in, you're taken right to the Home tab. I have a whole dedicated Nugget with all my tips about the Home tab. In this Nugget I'm more focused on the tabs and some more basic navigation tips. So this set of tabs across the top here, this is your navigation bar. Think of this navigation bar as the menu of objects that are deemed necessary for your job role. It'll contain the standard Salesforce objects like accounts, leads, opportunities, plus items like home, tasks, notes, your calendar.

1:07And you might have custom objects that were added specifically for your company's business processes. The items listed on this navigation bar, they're all based on the app that you're using. What do I mean by app? An app in Salesforce lingo is a collection of tabs. It's just a collection of the specific Salesforce features that you have been given access to to be able to do your job. Apps are designed to give access to specific tabs or items or functionality that's needed by people in a specific job role.

1:37If you have a more broad job role, you might be given access to more than one app. That's actually pretty common. For example, right now I'm in the Sales app. And I can see that because it says so right here. The tabs that were grouped into the Sales app give me access to the common objects for somebody in a sales role. Somebody in a marketing role might be given access to an app that has objects that they commonly use. For marketing it would be really similar to sales, but it would likely have a tab for campaigns, maybe Pardot. Switching apps is really easy.

2:08You just go over here to this nine dot menu. We sometimes call this the rainbow waffle. And you access the App Launcher. That this little window that pops up. And the list of all the Salesforce apps that you've been given access to, those will be listed right here in these tiles. And you can see that you can click and drag and move the tiles around if, for some reason, you don't like the order that they're in by default. You can see that my org has apps for lead generators, sales leadership, sales operations. And below these tiles, that's the list of all the Salesforce objects that you have access to.

2:40We only give view tabs for the objects that we think you need fingertip access to right on that navigation bar. This list right here has all the items you have access to. Some are already tabs, and the rest probably didn't warrant a special place up on that navigation bar. So if I close out of that, do you see this More at the end with the arrow? If you click that arrow, that gives you access to any other objects that are listed on your tab, but maybe your browser isn't big enough to display everything. Those will be grouped under this More menu.

3:12This little pencil off to the right allows you to personalize your view of the tabs. When you click, you get the list of all of the tabs that are assigned to your nav bar. And then notice you can just click and drag to reorder them. Now you also have the ability to add specific items, even specific records to the nav bar. This whole part might be a little advanced if you're brand new to Lightning, but I'm going to show you anyway because I think you can handle it. I'm going to save the changes that I made here. I'm going to go back out to the Home tab. Now I'm going to navigate to my favorite client, Edna Frank.

3:45This is her contact record. Now imagine I'm working on a hot deal with her right now and I have to log a lot of activity and constantly look up her phone number. So to save myself a few clicks, I want to add this record to my nav bar for now, for the next couple of weeks while I'm working on this deal and getting this thing to close. All I do is I go back up to the Contacts tab. See this option down here at the bottom, Open in New Tab? I click that, and it pops up here on my navigation bar in italics. And then I can go about my day and very easily get back to her record if I need to.

4:19That tab will stay up there until I close this browser window or Salesforce goes idle. If I want to add it so that it's there every time I log in for the next couple of weeks, I should add it to my nav bar by clicking this option here. Isn't that great? It's such a fantastic time saver. And then when you get to a point where you're ready to remove it, you go back to the pencil. You find it and you remove it. The last point I want to make is you've probably heard that one of the benefits of Salesforce is that it's really flexible and customizable.

4:50So as you're looking at my screens, just keep that in mind. Mine will very likely look different from yours. I've made some modifications. Your org has customizations specifically for your business. So our screens won't look exactly the same, but the foundations are the same. I hope this has been informative for you and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00If you've been tracking your client data in another CRM or in spreadsheets or via your invoicing system or maybe not at all, it's completely normal at this point to be asking, gosh, the data I used to track in this other way, where did all that information end up in Salesforce? I think it's helpful to look at a visual representation of how the data is organized in Salesforce. So I put together this Nugget to sketch out all the core CRM objects, which customer data lives within those objects, and how the objects are connected to each other.

0:31I think this is important because it isn't completely obvious, once you're in Salesforce, how the records roll up and are connected to each other. I'll give this to you from the perspective of the majority of Salesforce users. There are other industries that don't exactly follow this model, like nonprofits and financial services and health care care, maybe. But for the most part, this is what you're going to be looking at. Salesforce is an account-centric model. That means that the account object is seen as the master object off of which everything else hangs or is connected.

1:02The account record will contain the information about the business entity, its location, mailing address, billing address, number of employees, annual revenue, all the data about the company. In some situations, you will have more than one account record for a business. If accounts have many different divisions or many different locations, you could have more than one account record. That's very common. But the account record holds all the information about the business. Contact records hold information about the individuals who work for that business.

1:33So you'll have one account record to represent that company and that exact location. And many contact records for all the individuals that you interact with who work at that location. And that contains their name, their email address, cell phone number, information about specific interactions you've had with them. A lot of people in selling relationships think they sell to a person, so they have a hard time getting their arms around, no, you're selling to a business. You're interacting with the person about the opportunity and the sale, but you're selling to a business.

2:05Opportunities-- I'm not going to go into this in too much detail here. There's a whole Nugget specifically about opportunities and how they're used. Opportunities hold all the information about the potential deal. And then activities-- you could have logged phone calls, tasks, meetings with people from the company, many people, one person, those records also hang off the account record or they're visible from the account record. Sometimes they're also related directly to a contact, but this is the basic model. Now I know that there could be other custom objects connected to this, such as maybe a project record or some additional custom things that you might hang, but this is the standard data model in Salesforce.

2:47Let's look at a common practice which is for business developers to keep info about our deals in a spreadsheet. Something like this. When we translate this data into the Salesforce model, all the information about the company is now kept in an account record. All the details on the contacts at that company are held in a related contact record. Details about my potential deals or past deals-- all of that is kept in an opportunity record. And actions like tasks or logged calls, meetings, those are all kept in activity records.

3:18So I have a history of what I did plus my next steps. All these records are linked. It's easy to view what's going on with the client from that master account record. And you're probably noticing, I have not yet used the term "lead." Lead is a very specific feature in Salesforce. We consider leads names of individuals who have not yet been qualified. They are not yet customers, so we keep their info in a lead record, which is separate from these types of customer records, until they're qualified and converted to become an account and contact.

3:49I have a dedicated Nugget focused on how to use the lead workspace in Salesforce Lightning, and all the tools that you can use to guide you through that lead qualification and conversion process. This is the model for the majority of Salesforce users. But like I hinted at earlier, some of you might actually be selling to an individual consumer or to a household. Maybe you arrange for life insurance or car leases, or you sell solar panels to households. In those situations, all the discussions that you'll have in your training will be more focused on contacts.

4:19And you may not access the accounts object as often as somebody who is selling into businesses. But I still want you to know this model, because it is the most common data model for Salesforce users. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00At this point, you should have a general understanding of the data model in Salesforce and that there are objects where different types of customer data are stored. And that theoretical understanding is super helpful, right? No, I know it isn't. Let's take a look at Salesforce where your actual customer data is actually stored, plus I have a few navigation tips for you. From the Home tab to get to an account record, we could search for a specific customer record or we can find it listed on the Accounts tab. I'll select my customer GenePoint.

0:31Clicking on the account name takes you into the account record. And keep in mind, my account layout may look a bit different from yours. Mine has some customizations and yours likely does too, but the foundational elements should be the same. We'll first do a tour of the overall layout of this account screen. First thing you'll notice is this page is actually laid out in blocks of information. This is a block up here on the top, and then this is a big block in the middle, and then this is a block over here on the right. And within each block or component-- that's the official term-- there are some things that you can click around in.

1:06At the very top left will be a building graphic and words telling you that this is an account record. And then right next to that in bigger bold text will be the name of the account, the business or the entity name. I know that seems basic, but I get that question so much. How do I know if I'm looking at a lead or an account? This is how you know. You just look up in the top-left corner at the graphic and the words and they'll tell you. The account name is an important field for you to know. It contains the legal name of the business. Or this could be the name of a household, a hospital, university, a nonprofit, the name of the entity that is considered your client.

1:42Right below that is a few pieces of important data, the stuff that's deemed important enough to highlight it right at the top of the page. It's usually going to be a main phone number, location, active status. Down here in the center component, notice that there are some tabs within the component that you can click on. The Details tab contains all the details about this account, about this business. Each one of these little areas is a field where the specific data about the customer is stored. Oh, and this whole section's collapsed. Let me expand that so you can see what else is in here.

2:15Notice when I hover, a little pencil shows up. And if I double click, the screen changes a bit. I think it's actually a little easier to see the fields in this edit mode. Some of these fields are dropdown menus. Some you just type in the information. Some are for searching for other data to relate it back to this account record. And then if you scroll down, there's some system information about who created this record, who was the last person to edit it. So just let this sink in. The Details tab contains all the fields of data.

2:47OK, I'm going to cancel out of that. I don't want to make those changes. And now let's look at the Related tab. This Related tab has the other most important set of information about this customer. If I scroll a little, you see all these rectangles, these sections on the page. These are records that are related to this account record-- that's why this is called the Related tab-- the contacts attached to this account, opportunities, notes, cases. Plus I added a custom object in my org called Projects. Each one of these sections will show a sampling, a short list of the related records.

3:20And notice when you hover on the name of that related record, you get a little pop up that shows some of the details of that related record. And you can click on the underlined name to go to that record. And notice in the top left, the icon is different and it tells you that you're on a contact record for Sandy Dolan. We'll covered this layout in just a second. But first, let's finish looking around the account record. I'm going to navigate back to the GenePoint record. Oh, here's a shortcut. I'm going to click on the account name right here. Because just keep this in mind, pretty much everything underlined in Salesforce is clickable and will take you to that record.

3:56So back on this Accounts page, I'm going to go back to the Related tab. There's one more thing. I just want to point out. These sections have an official name. They're called related lists. I want you to know the official term just in case you ever have to search help or google it. So if the question we're trying to answer is, where is all my customer data in Salesforce, the answer would be details about the company, such as the billing address, location, number of employees, that's all on the account record on the Details tab.

4:28Related data such as contacts at that company, previous deals, new deals, or custom information that you might be tracking, that would be found in related records on the Related tab. Activities, those that are coming up or activities you did in the past, that's all found over here in it's own component. You have one tab for Activity, and then it contains the activity timeline plus these subtabs to create new activities like a new task, log a call.

4:59I have a dedicated set of Nuggets about how to work with the activity timeline. For now, just know it's all right over here. This component also includes the Chatter tab. That's a collaboration space that allows you to either make notes for yourself or collaborate with colleagues right on this customer record. Before we step off this page I should mention that I've added a few custom tabs over here, really just to demonstrate that your admin may add some report charts or some additional tools or tabs for your specific business processes.

5:29And that would likely be found right in this area here. Let's take a quick look at the other standard objects where customer data is stored-- contacts, opportunities, leads. We'll start with the contact record. I'll choose my favorite client, Edna Frank. If you understand the layout of the customer account record, you'll notice that the layout of contacts is really similar. You have your graphic telling you that this is a contact and the name of the person right here at the top left, along with some other important fields that are highlighted for you right across the top. You have this center component with the tabs.

6:00Clicking Details will show you the fields of data such as all the phone numbers, email addresses, title, job role. The Related tab lists all the records related to this contact-- opportunities, files, notes, any record where this contact is related to that record. And notice, we also have a related list for related accounts. What is that? Contacts can have a relationship with more than one account record. So this will list all the accounts where my contact has some relationship or role with that account.

6:33I have a dedicated Nugget explaining related accounts and contact relationships and how to set this up. Notice the activity timeline over on the right. It's pretty much the same layout as what we saw in the account record. Now let's look at an opportunity. Remember that you can click on the name of any of these related opportunities to go right into that opportunity record. And on that screen up in the top left, you have the opportunity graphic, the name of the opportunity, and a few key data fields highlighted for you right across the top. But looking at this, you probably notice that it has the same components as those other objects that we've been looking at, but they're not in the same spots.

7:11Activities are in the large area in the center alongside chatter and details. And related records are over here off to the side. Now this is by design. Opportunity records, it's actually called the opportunity workspace. The intention is that you come here to get work done, move this deal forward. So we put the activity timeline in the most prominent spot right here on the center to keep you focused on action. The same thinking applies to leads. If I jump into a lead record, this is actually called the lead workspace.

7:46We use this object to track the same type of data that we would track for existing customers. But this Lead Workspace, this is what you use to track information about prospects that are not yet qualified. They have to go through some qualification process to determine whether or not they should be converted to become an account and a contact. So one more time, circling back to, where's my actual data in Salesforce? Information about your customers, the accounts you sell to, is found in the account record.

8:16All the information you enter and track about the people you interact with is found in their contact record. Details about the deals you are working with that account, that's all entered and updated in the opportunity workspace. And brand new prospects who are not yet qualified, that information is entered in managed into a lead? workspace. And all your activity that you do to support the customer and move the relationship forward is kept on the activity timeline in a task, an event, or a logged call within one of those customer or lead records.

8:47I hope this has been informative for you and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00Hey. Psst. You know that stack of business cards that you have on your desk or the stack that you have in your car in your cup holder? Or maybe you're fancy and you took pictures of them and they're on your phone. Yeah, gather up all that stuff. We're going to get all that customer information entered in the Salesforce. I'm going to show you first how to create account records to represent all the businesses on those business cards-- the ones that are already customers. So be logged into Salesforce, and wherever you are in Salesforce-- probably on the Home tab-- you're going to navigate to Global Search.

0:31Yeah, that's right you're going to search before you add anything to Salesforce. We always search before we add leads, accounts, contacts to make sure that they're not already in there. I'm working in my training org. I'm going to be putting in test data, but this exercise will stick with you better if you do this with a real customer. So I actually do want you to get a business card or an email from someone you've been working with. And if you don't have one, that's OK. Just create test records. Just clearly label them that they're test, and you can delete them when we're done. I'll show you how to delete them.

1:03So search for your client first and make sure they're not already in there. I'm going to search for my new client, Metric Solar. No results found. Looks like I'm good to add them. Then I'll navigate to the Accounts tab. By default, I'm taken to the list of recently viewed accounts. I can click New over here on the right to create a new account record, or a shortcut would have been for me to just click this down arrow on the Accounts tab and click the plus new account option. That brings up a new window with all the fields that we need to populate for this account.

1:33So take a moment right now and tap in everything you already know. There's a couple of things I do want to point out on this page. Anything marked with a small red asterisk, that's required for you to be able to save the record. And you probably have fields that I don't have, I have said that you don't have. If you're looking at some of your fields and there's information that you don't have at your fingertips, like maybe the industry or the number of employees, let me give you a tip about that. Take two minutes right now and look it up. If you can Google it, look it up. Because if you're thinking, oh I'll just fill in a couple of critical things, and then I'll come back later and fill in the rest.

2:07What I know for sure is, you won't. You won't come back and fill that stuff in. And then someone is going to have to do it, and it might be you. Or it might be somebody else. Take the time right now to populate everything you can. You don't want to be left with a big data cleanup effort and a couple of months or some perception that you put in a bunch of dirty data into Salesforce. So I'll go through these fields with you, and I know that you don't need a click by click detailed tour of every single field on this screen. But there are a few questions that always come up.

2:39So I'll cover those just in case you have the same questions. Let's start with account name. The industry standard is you always use the legal business name in the account name field. No abbreviations, no initials, no location, just the legal business name. And Salesforce has an internet search function that may recognize what you are starting to type in. If you see the company listed, click on it, and then several of the fields on this record will automatically populate. And you'll want to ask your manager or your Salesforce admin what is our naming convention, especially if there is the word The in the legal name-- the Home Depot, The Cookie Shop.

3:19Do you put the word The in there? Do you put it at the beginning, do you always leave it out? That's one of those things that can get you tripped up, and then you end up with duplicates in the system because some people are looking for the Home Depot under H, some are looking for it under T. So just ask about that if you're not sure. Account owner. Notice it defaults to me. Because I'm creating this, I am the default account owner. And if that's not right, if this is actually somebody else's account and I'm just creating it to be able to assign it to them, I'll be able to do that after I save the record.

3:52Description. I always put in something descriptive because I need to see at a glance which account record am I looking at here. Parent account is used to create account hierarchy. You populate this field when the account is a division or a location of another account, and you want to represent the company hierarchy in Salesforce. So I've linked this Client, Metric Solar, to its parent company, Mercury Solar. The phone field has some preset functionality to help you out. All you should have to do is tap in the digits, and then after you save this, Salesforce should auto apply the correct formatting, no matter what global region you're in.

4:29Industry is a standard field in Salesforce, with a standard list of recognized industries. And then employees. That's asking for the number of employees that work for this company. The address information at the account level, the standard functionality is to track billing and shipping addresses. Your admin may have modified this in case your organization does something different with the account addresses, but that's the default behavior. And this is one of my favorite shortcuts. If you know part of the address, you can enter it here to search for the full address. If you select one of the suggestions, all the fields will auto populate.

5:03Isn't that handy? And I've tested this with addresses in several international locations, and I was able to look up international addresses. And the fields should populate for you, as long as your address layout has the correct fields to accept that country's address format. So populate the address for your customer for both billing and shipping addresses, and once all of that is set, click Save. And you are taken to the account record. The customer name is up here on the left, along with a few key fields. And the rest of the fields that you just populated are located on the Details tab.

5:33Plus there's some information if you scroll down, like who created this record, at what time and day, the last time it was modified. Now at this point, if you want to further modify anything, you just double click on one of the sections to go into Edit mode, make your changes, and then be sure to click Save when you're done. The related tab has the list of related records for this account. It's all blank right now because we just created this one, but this is where you will start to add your contacts, opportunities, or notes for this account. And over to the right is the Activity tab that has the activity timeline.

6:07If you have something you need to do for this client, capture that right now in a new task. Or if you had a recent conversation with the client, take a second right now to log it. Back to the details of this account. Notice the account owner. It's showing my name, because I created it. If I needed to make a modification, I would just click this little icon, and I could choose another user's name. And I like how they spell out the implications of this change right here on the screen. So if you're in a role where you're responsible for creating account records, making sure all the data is accurately populated, and then assigning it to the correct sales rep or business developer, this is the process that you would follow.

6:45So I'll cancel out of that, and from here, there are three very common next steps. First, you create a new contact record for every person that you interact with at this company. Then, there are likely two or three next steps or things that you need to do or that someone else needs to do to keep this relationship with this customer moving forward. So you would create a new task for yourself or for someone else to keep everything on track. And lastly, you add an opportunity that has all of the information about the deal that you're already discussing with the client or the deal you're about to propose.

7:21There are separate Nuggets with all the details about how to do all three of those things, so it's viewer's choice from here. You can continue to create account records, or you can take this one deeper, add those contacts, add tasks, and add those opportunities. And if you just created test records, be sure to delete them when you're done exploring. If you have this permission, you'll see a Delete button in the top right area. If you don't see Delete, ask your Salesforce admin to delete those test records for you. But you, keep working this. Get all the information out of those business cards, out of your head, and into Salesforce.

7:55I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00In Salesforce lingo, contacts are all those people that you interact with at your client locations. Every individual gets their own contact record. If you've already added the business to Salesforce in an account record, then you're ready to add those contacts. Now this is a hands-on lab. So have some information in front of you-- some names, email addresses, phone numbers, mobile numbers. Let's get all those contacts into Salesforce. There is more than one way to add a contact. The first option is this Global Actions Menu on the right. You might have the option on this menu to add a contact.

0:32And you would fill in all the fields, making sure the ones with the red asterisk are completed. Otherwise, you can't save the record. Or the second option-- and this is actually the one I want you to do in this lab. You navigate to the appropriate account record. And from the Related tab in the context-related list, click New Contact. So I'm on the screen to add the new contact. And here are all the fields that I need to populate. But I'm going to scroll down on my screen because I want to show you something. Notice the address information. This populated from information that you had already input at the account level.

1:07So if this contact is located at a different location, be sure to modify that. Same thing with the phone number. If you put in a general phone number at the account level, that flowed automatically into this field here. So if this person has a different primary phone number, be sure to modify this field, as well. So I'm going to add some data to these fields. And I don't mean to give you a click by click tour of every single thing on this screen. I know you don't need that. But there are a few things that I want to point out. Anything with a red asterisk is required to be able to save the contact.

1:37First name and last name, obviously, these are critical fields. And always double check that you're creating this contact record on the correct account record. If you need to change it, you just click here, search for a different account record. This field is what creates the link between the account and its related contacts. Email address is really important to populate. You won't be able to send emails to this client or include them in any mass emailing lists, unless this email field is populated. And the email address is also used to catch duplicates in this system.

2:09Many orgs have been modified to capture more than one email address. So populate all the email addresses you have for this person. It doesn't mean that they'll receive duplicate mailings. Salesforce actually has features to prevent that. We just, usually, want to give you an option to capture all the possible contact email addresses. And phone numbers-- just remember that you can tap into phone number digits. And when you save the record, the phone field will automatically format according to the global region that's set up for your org. Now, let's talk about this field, Reports To. This is an interesting feature in Salesforce.

2:41It's used to create a contact hierarchy. So anyone can see at a glance who the players are at this company and how they're connected to each other. So if Eddie's manager was already entered as a contact, I could populate that manager's name into this field. And that creates a tidy, reporting structure hierarchy for me to refer to later if this account and all the contacts get complicated over time, which is pretty common. Once you have all your fields populated, click Save. You get a confirmation message at the top of the page, and you'll see the contact listed right here in this related list.

3:14Let's click into the name to go in and look at more contact details. First, notice that the contact owner, it defaulted to me because I'm the one that created the record. If someone else should be the owner, I would click this little icon to modify that. This little icon that looks like an org chart. This is where you can see contact hierarchy-- the relationship between all these contacts. I like how they flag which contact I was on when I clicked into this. And to get back, I can browse your arrow back. Or I can just click on Eddie's name. It really is that straightforward to add your contacts to an account record.

3:47If you have to add more, notice that you can quickly get back to Metric Soler by clicking on the account name right here. And you would just navigate to the Related tab. Click the New Contact one more time. But I want to show you something additional on this one. First of all, notice that Eddie that we just added is listed right here. And there's a checkmark in the direct box. That is telling you that this is a contact directly related to this account record. Usually what that means is they work for this company. You can add other individuals to this list who don't work for this company.

4:19But they have some relationship or involvement with the company. Maybe they're a consultant, an attorney, a board member. Instructions for how to manage contact relationships are covered in a separate Nugget. But I wanted to point out that that is an option. And there's one thing related to this that I want to show you on Eddie's record. The contact that we just added. If I click View Relationship, I'm taken to a new screen where I can edit the direct relationship with this account. Is he a business user? Is he the decision-maker or just an influencer? And depending on your industry, you might work with a lot of different people at this account.

4:54You might be talking to four, five, six people about the one deal. I really like this feature because it gives me a chance to sit down, think about everyone that I'm interacting with at this client site, get everybody's names into Salesforce, and then sort through who's who and really who is who. Whose the executive sponsor? Who's got the budget? It's almost like a meditative experience for me. And once I get everybody into the system, it actually spurs a lot of ideas about next steps and other ways to go about what I'm trying to get done.

5:25I encourage you to explore this feature. I think you'll find it to be a worthwhile investment of your time. So for Eddie, let's finish this off. I'll double click to get into Edit mode. And in the roles field, let's call him a Decision Maker. And I'm going to say his relationship strength with the company is strong. He's been there for a while. He seems well-respected. We'll put a start date in, and then I'll click Save. Oh, wait, before I save. Look at the end date. You populate the end date when this person no longer works for the company or no longer has a relationship. Now click Save.

5:55And then to get back to Metric Solar, I'll just click on the name here. OK, one more important thing that I want you to see. If you decide to use the Global Actions option and add a new contact using that option, I want to point out three important things. First, you do not see all the fields using this approach. You don't see that address that's going to flow down from the account or the Reports To field. This plus sign Global Action menu, it's meant to be a shortcut. It's a fast track option for you. But I want you to pay close attention to what is listed for you to populate and understand what was left off.

6:29Because you might need to go into that newly created record at some point and add the rest of the data. Second, notice that you get the confirmation that the record was created. But the screen doesn't change to show the record that should be listed there now. It's a function of the browser. If you just refresh, like I'll tap F5, then the newly created record will appear. And third, there is a third way to add contacts right from the Contacts tab. Any of these three options are fine. Just choose the one that works the best for your work process and make sure that you have the accurate account linked to that contact.

7:02And you should be good. Oh, I skipped a part where I was going to tell you to search first before adding anyone. But I'm sure you remember that. You don't want to get a reputation for adding duplicate contacts into Salesforce. So you would always search first before you add anybody. And if you did just create a duplicate or a test record, you can delete that by going to the record and look for the Delete button in the top right area. If you don't have that delete permission, just ask your Salesforce admin to delete it for you.

7:33Gone are the days of scrolling through your email inbox looking for contact info, right? Or sorting through that stack of business cards, trying to find somebody's email address. You're going to spend a little time to get that data off of paper, out of your email inbox and into Salesforce. And then it will forever be so easily available right at your fingertips. I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00What do you mean by lead? What's the difference between a lead and an opportunity? Wait, what's the difference between lead and a contact? Isn't everyone a lead? These are questions I get every week. I want you to understand the leads object. Understand the intention of it, what it does, how it works and functions in Salesforce, and the difference between leads and all the other standard objects. When I started to think about leads this way, it really helped it click for me. A lead is just a name. It's not a potential deal.

0:30It's not an opportunity. A lead is just a name. And when you think about a list of leads, it's a list of names. Names not yet qualified. Is this person a decision maker? Do they have a true need or are they just price comparing? Does the timing work? So that's the discovery process to understand. Can you qualify this lead and actually convert them to be somebody that you will probably do business with? In some industries, you stop there. Like if you're in insurance, or financial services, or you're in a leasing company, you might stop there.

1:02If not, if your services and products are intended to be sold to a company, you keep going. You have to qualify the company too. Is there really a budget from the company perspective? Are resources assigned? Is there a timing match between when they need it and your ability to provide whatever it is that you sell? Is there an overall match? And if you get to the point where you say yes, that lead is considered qualified and it gets converted. Let's talk about where the leads come from. Where did this name come from? What was the source of the name?

1:34We call that the lead source. It is often a web form, a trade show list or a business card fishbowl that you put out at the trade show, a purchase list that marketing purchased, networking-- you're out meeting people all the time. If you come across somebody interested in your products and services, that's a lead. Oh there's one missing-- incoming calls. This isn't as common, but I do have clients where the front desk phone rings. It's somebody who's interested to place an order. So a lead is created. And keep in mind, any one of these lead sources-- that's actually a CSV file or some type of a list-- will need to be data loaded into Salesforce by someone.

2:10And it's usually the admin who does that. So let's move on to talk about the next most important consideration with leads, and that's the status field. There's a field on the lead record called lead status. It is kept updated by the owner of the lead. And heads up, that might be you. The intention is that you, as the owner responsible for qualifying this lead, you'll do all the due diligence to contact, email, ask questions, and determine whether or not this lead is qualified. Throughout your discovery, your noting your actions and changing the status to reflect your findings to date.

2:44Salesforce lightning has several helpful tools to guide you through this process and make it really easy to keep all your leads updated. This whole concept of leads, and everything I've talked about, it will solidify more once you get some hands on experience with leads. Be sure to view the Nugget covering the lead workspace, where you will create a lead record. And practice moving the lead through lead statuses, all the way to the point where you determine that the person, and the company they work for, that they're qualified. And you'll convert the lead using the Salesforce conversion process.

3:15I hope this has been informative for you. And I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00We've already established that leads are names, names of prospects who have shown some interest in your products or services, but you haven't yet qualified them. Your goal with leads is to do all the discovery to know whether you will convert the lead into a customer. During the discovery and qualification process, you'll be working with the lead workspace. That's the official name for the lead record. It has all the details of the person, the company they work for-- we'll get into all that in just a second, because in this Nugget, we're going to create a lead record. And I'm going to show you how to use all the features of the lead workspace to keep you driving towards qualification.

0:34And then in the later Nugget, I'll show you how the conversion process works. Before we move into Salesforce, let's quickly talk about how leads get into Salesforce. Many organizations have automations in place to generate new lead records from marketing campaigns or web site registration, or some other web forms, or maybe lists are being uploaded. So creating a new lead, like we're about to do, may not be part of your actual work process, but I still want you to understand this process just in case. So wherever you are in Salesforce, navigate to the Leads tab.

1:05There's a new button over in the right area. So go ahead and click New. We could have also used this option here on the Leads tab, this Plus New Lead option. If you have a person who you think should be entered as a lead into Salesforce, get their information and have that in front of you. And if you don't have a real example, just create a fake record that you can delete at the end of this lab. I'll go ahead and add some data to my fields. And I'm going to walk you through the critical fields on this page. I'm assuming you don't need a detailed tour of every single field. And I'm actually going to leave some of my fields blank, because I want to show you some handy editing features that are available.

1:41First thing to notice, there are red asterisks on this record. Those must be populated before you can save. We usually enter the first name and last name first, and then the company, that's pretty standard. So go ahead and tap that information in. And then notice the lead owner. It defaults to me, and defaults to you, because we're creating the record. If I were creating this record and intending to assign it to someone else, I can do that after I save it. And then there's the lead status. These are just some sample statuses that I have in my training org. Your list will be different, but here's how I want you to think about this list of lead status options.

2:15You will probably have something that indicates you are trying to get in touch with this person and make some initial contact. While you're in the process of trying to make contact, you change it to that stage or that status. Once contact has been made and you're going back and forth asking, what is your timeline? Do you have a budget? Who's the decision maker on this? You know, all the things that you ask while you're qualifying a lead? That's this stage of working or qualifying. Whatever the term is in your org, there should be a status option that indicates you're in the process of working the lead.

2:46And then you will likely have some status that indicates this person is not qualified, but let's continue to nurture them and continue to form a relationship. They should still get newsletters. They should still get alerts from us, because there's something about the situation where the timing isn't right or they don't have a budget right now, they're about to be bought out by another company, and there's something interesting there to continue to nurture, but just not yet. There's usually some status in your org that will mean that. And then there's another lead status that means this person is not qualified.

3:18They are not a good lead for us. They already have a strong relationship someplace else maybe, or it's press, or a student, or they have a fake name like Mickey Mouse. The lead is unqualified to become a customer. There's usually both of these unqualified options on your list. If not, definitely talk to your Salesforce admin, or your sales leader, about how to handle both of those different situations. And then qualified is generally not a status that you actively choose while you're working the lead. This is a status that you apply when you convert the lead.

3:49Or if for some reason, you want to mark them qualified but you just can't convert them yet, you could change the status to this. So that's just a quick overview of how to use the lead status field. And your sales leadership or your Salesforce admins will likely be giving you a lot more direction on this specific business process for your firm. The Company field-- enter the name of the company where this person works. This field becomes the account name when the lead is converted, so make sure that at some point along the way you have confirmed the legal name and the spelling of the company.

4:19Leads source-- if this lead was automatically spawned from marketing or a web activity, this should already be populated. If it's blank and you know the source, you should populate it. This is critical data for you and for marketing. So for this one let's choose, circle of influence. Make sure you have an accurate email address. Email addresses are used to determine whether this lead might be a duplicate to another lead or a contact, and to keep data integrated if this person has a profile of activity being tracked by marketing.

4:50And then there's the phone number. Just remember that you can tap in the phone digits, and when you save the record this field will automatically format for whatever global region that you're in. That's something that's preset by your Salesforce admin. Populate the address information if you have it. If you don't, take him in right now and Google it, because it's probably pretty easy to find. You can search for the full address using this feature here, and that will auto populate the rest of the address fields. Under additional information, number of employees is another one of those things that you can probably just Google right now.

5:21Once you have all your fields populated, you're ready to click Save. Notice if you have several leads to enter, you can click Save and New. After you click Save, you're taken to the lead workspace. This top highlights panel shows you the lead name, and a few fields that have been chosen for this prominent spot. Oh, and we have some blank fields that need to be populated. And then right here we have my favorite feature on the lead workspace. This is called Path. See how it has all the lead statuses listed out along a path? And notice we can collapse and expand this.

5:52In the new status-- this admin is so smart-- the key fields listed in this new status-- these are the same fields that are up in that highlights panel. The admin is trying to make it easy for us to get that data populated using the Path tool. I'll show you in a second how to do that. Because the path feature does three important things for you. First, you can use the path tool to change the status of the lead. It's so easy. As your lead moves through your qualification stages, you can click the current stage on this graphic, and then you click Mark as Current Status.

6:23Or if you're on the current status and that feels complete, you click Mark Status as Complete. And the status will change to the next status over. Notice that Path will display new fields that are considered key for that status. This is the second thing that Path does. It highlights critical fields and makes it really easy to populate them. Go ahead and pause to populate some of this data. You just double click into any field and enter the information and then click Save. Oh, and if your admin has not configured this area with key fields, it'll be blank for you.

6:56In fact, if this whole thing hasn't been set up, you might not even see the down arrow to expand and collapse Path. If that's the case, you can click the Edit button in the top right to the data. And you need to talk to your admin or your sales leader, because as you can see, Path has shortcuts that you need for lead management. OK, back to our data entry. Continue to populate the fields that are critical for the stage that your lead is actually at. And notice this section over here to the right. This is the third thing Path does. It can serve up guidance that is tailored to your prospecting process.

7:30In my org, I have specific instructions for what is expected at each stage and even guidance on how quickly I'm supposed to move leads through the process. If you have information in your org, take a moment to review it, and then we'll look at the rest of the features available on the lead workspace. Because the other critical process when managing leads is planning what you will do, and logging what you've already done to qualify the lead. So let's pretend it's been a week. I've been in touch with Meg. I've been logging calls with her. I have an open activity, something that I need to finish up this week.

8:00I was able to reach her live, and we had a good conversation about her needs. So I captured that in a note. I'm getting all this information out of my head so I don't have to carry it around in trying to remember my next steps, what were the details she told me, I capture everything in Salesforce. All my actions and meetings are captured on this activity tab. This is where you can log a call, create a new task for yourself or a colleague, add a meeting to your calendar, or send an email to the lead. If you have a real task that you need to do for your lead, create that now and assign a due date, and then save it.

8:34That task will now show on the activity timeline. If you've already taken some action with this lead, maybe you called or emailed the lead, you can log a call to capture that activity. Click the log a call tab, enter a subject line, make the subject descriptive. Don't leave the default subject, call. Don't leave that, because it will be impossible to find your notes later if all your logged calls have that same subject line. Add comments if needed. And then save that logged interaction. And that will now show in the past activity section.

9:05Be sure to explore the Notes feature. You will see notes as a related object on pretty much everything in Salesforce-- opportunities, accounts, leads. And there's two ways to use notes. First, you can enter a new, fresh note for every tidbit of information that you want to capture, or you can create a master note where you just keep adding information over time. For the lead that you're entering, if there is any information about this lead that you want to get out of your head and document it for yourself or others, pause now and create a new note record.

9:37Now, let's pretend I have something specific to add to one of the data fields. I can click Edit in the top right, or I can go to the Details tab and double click in any of these fields, and then modify anything I need to and then click Save. And if I feel like I'm to the point with her where I think she's qualified, there's a budget, executive leadership sponsorship, the timing works out, I'm going to go ahead convert it. In this Nugget we created a new lead record and explored the features of the lead workspace in Salesforce Lightning. We stopped just before converting this lead to customer records in Salesforce.

10:11I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00In this nugget, we'll convert a lead record. I'll show you how it works, and I want you to follow along in your org so you get some hands-on experience with this. And I have a few tips for you that I'll cover at the end. First, let's talk about what happens when you convert a lead in Salesforce. When you click the convert button, that lead record almost ceases to exist. It doesn't really technically, but it may appear to you that it has. That's because new records will spawn from the lead record. There will be an account record with all the business or household information and a contact record with all the details about the person.

0:34And you may also choose to create an opportunity record to represent the details of a potential deal. And notice my asterisk. There are other scenarios that I'll review, but this is the most common lead conversion scenario. If you already have a lead record to convert, navigate to that lead record. If you don't have one, pause and create a fake record that you can use for this practice. I'm on my lead record. I'm just glancing at the information that I have on this record. I like to check whether I have any open tasks on the lead, and if any are actually completed, I make that update.

1:06But keep in mind, any open tasks will flow over automatically and those will display on the newly created account and contact records. The convert button is in the top right area. Mine's hidden over here. When you click the convert button, you're taken to a screen with three sections related to accounts, contacts, and opportunities. Notice in accounts you can choose to create a new account or add this person as a contact to an existing account. If you choose add to existing, you can search for that account and then select it. But this lead is actually the very first person from her firm to contact us, so in my situation, I'll create a new account.

1:42Notice that the company name I had this whole time on the lead record was Tilly Industrial. If that was not correct, I could modify it here. And I have the option to choose which account record type to use. You may not see this, but if you do, definitely click on it. I want you to see what record type options you have. In my setup, I have record types with fields relevant for business or household customers or a competitor layout. So I have to make sure to choose the right option here, otherwise I won't have the correct fields to input the details.

2:15So go ahead and make your account choice. And then in contacts, notice you can create a new contact record or you can choose to merge this lead with an existing contact record. Let's talk about this one for a second, 'cause it is a great feature. Sometimes it happens where a person is already in the database as a contact, but their name comes in again as a lead. It might take a little discovery before you realize that they're already in Salesforce as a contact. And if you had added any notes or logged any calls while you were working them as a lead, if you choose this choose existing option, any notes and activities are added to the existing contact record that was already in Salesforce for this person.

2:56And see this little option down here? You can also choose to update the lead source if this person is all of a sudden active because of a new campaign. But if none of that applies, just click create new, double check the name, and that's all you need to do for contact. So go ahead and make the correct choice there. The third section has the options for opportunities. First, notice that you have the option to not create an opportunity by checking this little box here. Or you can choose to create a new opportunity, just enter a descriptive name in this box.

3:27If you have chosen an existing account record, you will have the option to relate this lead name and the lead source to an existing opportunity that's already on that account record. This last option is a bit slippery to get your head around, so I'll show you in a second exactly how that works. You have the option to choose which user should be the owner of the newly created records. And converted status may have options. Mine shows two. If you have options, be sure to ask for instructions on when to use each.

3:59After you click convert, you get the confirmation of the newly created records or the existing records that are now linked to your lead activity. The account record will contain all the business information about the company that was collected. The number of employees, address information, the name of the company. The contact record will take the contact information for the individual that you've been working with, their name, title, cell phone number, email address. And the opportunity will have all the details of the potential deal. And that one is gonna have a lot of blank fields.

4:31So you'll wanna put a tickler task for yourself to go complete all the fields on the opportunity record. And going forward, you interact with these records to continue the conversation and hopefully drive toward a close one deal. Notice that these names are all clickable. My likely next step is to create a task to keep track of my next actions for this potential customer. Or if I have more leads to work on, I can choose go to leads. But I actually wanna go into the account record. I'm gonna click on the name because I bet there are blank fields now on that account record that I need to fill in.

5:04Here on the related tab, this is the contact and opportunity that were just spawned from that conversion. And I can edit the blank fields on the details tab. I just double click and make my changes. And notice my activity timeline over here has the logged activity that was on the lead record that flowed over from the conversion. The activity timeline on the contact will show these same items. That's how you convert a lead and spin up new customer data records. Let's hop over to another test lead because I want you to see what happens when you select existing records during the conversion process.

5:39First, notice that the lead source field is trade show on this lead. When I convert this lead and relate it to the existing opportunity, this lead source will flow into the matching lead source field on the opportunity. So I click convert. And notice that this option on opportunities, it's actually grayed out. But once I select Metric Solar as the account, I can select existing opportunity and then choose from the list. When I click convert, I get the confirmation of the records that were affected by the conversion.

6:11When I go look at the new opportunity on the details tab in lead source, it says trade show. So there it is. And notice that if there is another true lead source or a lead source that was more influential that happened prior to this, you can edit this field. Before we end, there are other situations where you will convert a lead not because it's a new opportunity and a new name for you, but because this individual works for a company that's already in Salesforce and you wanna bring that name in and group it with the rest of the contacts with that company.

6:44Similarly, if you've been to a trade show and you collected 15 or 20 names from the same company or even, you know, three or four, there's no way for you to group those names together while they exist as leads. So in that situation, we do recommend that you go ahead and convert everybody. But they're not really a true customer yet, they're more like a prospect customer. But you convert them to spin up that new account record and get all those contact records grouped together under one business. And then going forward, you interact with that new account record and all those contact records and possibly an opportunity record to continue the conversation with them and hopefully drive towards a deal.

7:23Okay, I have just a few more tips for you. So the first thing I wanna mention is guess what we forgot to do for this whole thing? We didn't search first before we converted these. But you will always, always do that. You will always search first before you add a lead, because we do not wanna get a reputation for adding duplicates to Salesforce. Also, I wanna make sure that you know that there is a feature called Unread by Owner. If other people are creating lead records and assigning them to you or if there's an automated assignment, they have a way to know whether or not you've clicked on that lead and looked at the details.

7:57So I thought you would wanna know about that. The Home Tab Assistant, it's a really handy place to see which leads have been assigned to you today, so make sure you notice when leads come in and are on that list. Also, I wanna encourage you to create some list views for yourself on the leads tab. There's another nugget that shows you how to create custom list views. Create helpful views for yourself so that you can see leads that are new today, new leads this week, et cetera, just as another way to stay on top of all of your leads that you need to be working.

8:28And then make sure you understand whether or not you are a member of a lead queue. There are different ways that leads are managed in Salesforce. So if you hear anyone discussing lead queues, work to understand whether or not that applies to you. Many of my clients have an expectation that's communicated to all the sales users about leads, and that's how long it's appropriate for a lead to stay at a specific status. I've heard that leads can be in the new status for up to two business days or three business days.

8:58It can be in the attempting to contact status for an additional three business days. I've heard rules and expectations like that. So make sure you understand if your organization has any expectation for a limited number of days at any of your statuses. And there's a term that you might read about on blogs or you might hear it said in meetings. That term is disposition, as in, "We are amazing at properly dispositioning our leads." It is just a fancy term meaning that you're keeping your leads updated, you're converting leads, or you're marking them unqualified if that's the determination.

9:33When sales users are not properly dispositioning their leads, it looks like the leads are being ignored or that those leads are being worked for weeks and weeks and weeks. Both those things make sales leadership and marketing a little bit nervous. Of all the things that you need to learn and do well as a Salesforce user, this topic, lead management, it has the biggest potential to change the way new business and new opportunities find you. So I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00Opportunities is the object used by sales users to capture data about all potential deals. This feature is one of the key reasons your organization invested in Salesforce licenses, right? The goal of a CRM is to get more data or better data about the selling activity happening in your company. Opportunity data is often viewed in aggregate by sales leadership to see at a high level the data about all the deals being worked. And when opportunity records are used and managed correctly, this data gives leadership an accurate perspective on the financial health and growth of your company.

0:34I'm sharing with you a dashboard that gives a sample of the type of aggregate data that might be viewed by sales leadership. This is what they rely on to understand the sales pipeline. They can click into these charts and see specific details by user or by company. So your role is to enter the data and keep it updated, so the aggregate data is trusted and allows for confident planning for the future. So let's look closely at the process of entering opportunities into Salesforce. And then in later Nuggets, I'll show you the features of the Opportunity Workspace that help you manage your opportunities over time.

1:07This is a hands-on Nugget. If you have an actual opportunity to enter right now, get that information together. Follow along as I create my opportunity, because it will sink in deeper if you practice using a real situation. If you don't have a real situation right now, that's fine. Just create a test record that you can delete at the end of this exercise. In Salesforce, navigate to the account record for your client. Yes, you heard that correctly. Go to the Account Record, because they're short cuts if you start here versus just creating a new opportunity from the Opportunities tab.

1:40So to create the opportunity on the account record, you go to the Related tab, and in the Opportunity section click New. You might see a screen that instructs you to select the Opportunity record type. What this is telling you is that your organization needs to have different versions of the opportunity layout, likely because you need to capture different types of information for different types of deals. Those would be described for you down here. So if you see this screen, choose the option that's appropriate and then click Next. If you don't see that screen, that's fine. It just means your organization doesn't have different versions of the Opportunity screen.

2:12You're taken directly to the screen where you populate all the opportunity information. I'll populate my fields and give you a few tips about how to approach this. I typed in my opportunity name. Notice it has a red asterisk. That means you have to fill this in order to save the record. So two things I want to share about the opportunity name. First, a descriptive, clear name will save you time in the long run when you're looking at your opportunities in a list or on a report. Second, sometimes your admin has added automations that will update the opportunity name for you.

2:45When you save the record, the name may automatically change. So keep that in mind. It's actually pretty common. The Account Name field automatically populated because I created this opportunity from the account record. This is one of those shortcuts I mentioned. It's really just to ensure that this opportunity is connected to the correct customer account. And there are a few fields on my layout that you may not have, and you probably have some that I don't have. I'm going to give you a general overview of the common fields that I usually see, like Primary Campaign Source. If this opportunity were tied to a specific marketing campaign, I can search and populate this field with the name of that campaign.

3:22And I have these check boxes. You might see something similar in your org. Is the budget confirmed, et cetera. So I can just get a check for things that have already been done. Over on the right area, Opportunity Owner, notice it defaults to me because I'm creating it right now. If I were creating this opportunity record and it should be owned by someone else, I'll be able to change that after I save it. Opportunity Record. Type, that's just reflecting the choice that I made when I created the record. And I can change that after I save it, if needed. Close Date, close date is critical for you to understand.

3:55Close date is the date that you expect to get the yes decision from the client. That's the date you put here. You might be saying, well, I don't know. I don't know when they're going to say yes. But I want to push back on that. I actually think you do know. If it's a brand new client, you may not have an exact idea. But you have some idea. And if it's a client you've been working with for a while, you have an idea how long it takes them to make decisions and get back to you with a yes or no. I don't want you to not create opportunity records because you don't know the exact date that you'll get that yes decision.

4:30It is OK to estimate. And if you're an exacting person and that makes you uncomfortable, use month end or quarter and when you think that they'll probably give you the decision. So you just put a stake in the ground when you first create the opportunity. It's sort of a guess. It's kind of an art. And guess what? You can always come back and modify this date. You can move it up closer, or you can push it out a little bit. But obviously, you have to put something in here to save the record. This Stage field, it's a pick list field. Each one of these options progresses through the core steps to your selling process.

5:02You will likely have a very different list than what I have here. The first three, four, five, those will be the main steps of you qualifying the deal, working it through with the client, making a proposal, going back and forth on a contract and negotiating pricing. And then you will have some options in here for Closed Lost or Closed Won. You will be updating this stage regularly. You're going to be looking at these opportunity records every day, every couple of days. And you'll be modifying the Close Date.

5:33You'll be moving the stage forward every time you reach a new milestone. So the Stage field is something for you to really understand. What is occurring at each stage? And at what point is it appropriate to move it to the next stage? So that's something that you'll get advice and coaching on from your sales leadership and possibly your Salesforce admin. And in later Nuggets, I show you how to use the features of Salesforce to keep all of that updated. Now Stage and Probability, those are fields that are tied together. Notice when I have an earlier stage, the probability is low.

6:05When I move it to a later stage in my sales process, the probability automatically adjusts. You can override this. Maybe you're at the proposal stage, but you feel like it's good. They're definitely going to choose you. So you can bump that up to, you know, 80%, 90%, if you want. Or if you're at the proposal stage and you're thinking, ah, they're just getting my proposal to get some numbers to compare with another vendor, they're just kind of price shopping. Maybe you bump that likelihood, that probability down to something low. And then there's the Amount field.

6:35This is where you take your best guess or your educated guess or your estimate of the size of the deal, knowing that this number is showing up on reports that are being analyzed and reviewed by leadership to understand the health of the pipeline. So you'll do your best to come up with a number that really represents the value of the deal without over-inflating it or under-estimating it. The Description field is often left blank. But I encourage you to put in something descriptive. If you're managing 20 or 30 specific opportunities, you want to have some details in the description for yourself.

7:08So don't skip this box. And then down below, Additional Information, you may or may not see these types of fields. Next Step, this is just a text field where you can freehand type in your intended next step on this opportunity. And on Lead Source, feel free to populate this with the lead source that you think really contributed to this specific request or proposal for this client. If all this feels complete, go ahead and click Save. You see the record you just created listed here. Click the name to go into the opportunity record. Let's look at a few things.

7:39You have the name of the opportunity here in the top left, along with a few critical fields in this header area. And then right below that, you'll see all of your sales stages listed out in this fancy graphic. This is Path. This is such a great feature. I have a whole separate Nugget on how to use Path on opportunities. And then in this block here, you probably have a few tabs. The primary ones are Activity and Details. Details is where you see all the details for this opportunity. What I notice is that the fields up here, this is where I mostly look for the details and I use Path and a few other tools to keep this opportunity alive and updated over time.

8:18I don't spend as much time on this Details tab as I thought I would. If anything needs to be modified or populated, you can just double click into any field, make your edits, and then click Save to apply the changes. Oh, before I save, let me show you something first. For some reason, we can't change the record owner and the record type in Edit mode. So if I click Save, and then go back to those fields, now I can modify them. And notice that these little icons, they're not pencils. This one is change owner. And this one is change record type.

8:49From here, you have the option to go deeper on this opportunity and add tasks or possibly do a brain dump of everything into a note. Or you can create additional opportunities. And to navigate to any other opportunities that you've already added, the fastest way is to go to the Opportunities tab and see them there on that list. Before we wrap this up, let's talk about a few pro tips. To avoid adding duplicate opportunities that could really throw off the pipeline data, search first to verify that it's not already in Salesforce.

9:21And the timing of when to create an opportunity, that is a thing for you to consider. The advice that I've always heard is that if you have confirmed that there is a true need and a budget and that you have the product or service that the client needs, go ahead and open an opportunity at an early stage. We do not need to wait until we know that they will say yes to get it documented in Salesforce, because the Opportunity Workspace is designed to keep you focused and active on driving this deal to a close. So entering your ops early in the process allows you to take advantage of all those features.

9:56Get really familiar with the Assistant feature on the Home tab. It has some handy alerts and shortcuts to keep your opportunities from getting stale. And create some custom list views on the Opportunity tab-- closing this week, closing this quarter-- so you have a shortcut to the list of opportunities that need your attention. In this Nugget, we learn to create a new opportunity record in Salesforce. From here, continue on to the other Opportunity Nuggets to learn how to get the most from Path and the other features on the Opportunity Workspace.

10:27I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00Take a moment to ponder how you have managed your potential deals up to this point and all the things that you need to do when you're working a deal-- prepare information, send it to the customer, scheduling meetings, communicating with everyone, collaborating, negotiating, and you get to keep track of where you are with all of this and you have to do that for each individual opportunity. It's a lot. And, hey, if you're not a sales user, you maybe didn't realize all the moving pieces that are tracked when someone's working a deal, so this is going to be really good context for you so that you know how this whole thing works.

0:34The Opportunity Workspace, it has features to support all of this communicating, and tracking, and logging. This part of Salesforce has been really creatively designed to keep you focused on actions that move your deals forward-- less speedy tracking of everything that you've done that you need to do on that deal. So, that's what we're going to talk about in this Nugget. There is one feature called PATH, which is the primary tool of the Opportunity Workspace. It is such important information, I broke that out into its own Nugget, so be sure to watch the Nugget on using PATH as well as this one.

1:07For this Nugget, let's focus on all the other core features of the Opportunity Workspace. Specifically, I want to talk about the activity timeline, editing details on the Opportunity-- and there's a couple of different ways to do that-- the Notes feature, and Contact Roles. And this Nugget is hands on, so navigate to an Opportunity that you can use for this exercise that you can make some modifications to. And if you don't have one, go ahead and create a test record that you can delete at the end of this lab. I know that when you first look at this screen, it seems like there is a lot going on, so I'm going to break it down for you.

1:37The first thing you'll notice is this top section. This is the record highlights. It's got the name of the Opportunity, the Opportunity logo, and then some other critical fields that your admin has decided would be helpful to see right here at the top. And then there's this section. This is PATH. PATH is used to do three critical actions-- update the selling stage, input critical data, and receive coaching during the selling process. And that is all covered in the other Nugget. So in this Nugget, we're going to focus on everything else. Notice up here at the top you have at it Edit, Delete, Clone.

2:11And if you see this drop down over here, there's going to be more options. Ignore following or follow-- just ignore that part for now. Edit-- this is my shortcut to see all the data contained in the fields and to make changes to critical fields, such as the Amount field or the Close Date. There is another way to see and edit the data, but I tend to click this one when I want to see everything all on one screen or make edits. I'll click Save to apply that change. And you may not see a Delete button. Many users do not have delete permission on Opportunities.

2:42That's actually pretty common. And Clone allows you to create another record that copies the data from this record into a new fresh record. Down in the center area here, you have three tabs-- Activity, Chatter, and Details. You may have others, maybe some custom tabs, but these right here are the common three. When you click the Details tab, this is the second way that you have to see and edit the data in the fields. Notice the pencil and the other icons here. This is how you get into edit mode. You just double click on any one of these and the screen will change and you'll get a Save button.

3:16If needed, update the Amount or the Close Date on your opportunity. Now, you can use this method to update the sales stage. But, there are two other methods-- one using PATH and the other is using a kanban view, so be sure to learn about those options as well. So, click Save when that's complete. And if I click back on Activity, see these four subtabs? These are the productivity tools to log what's already been done or for planning your future actions.

3:46This right here is why I keep saying that Salesforce Lightning is focused on action. Notice that the details of the data in the fields? That's not that prominent on the Opportunity Workspace. Instead, the most prominent is this Activity tab. This is where you log your interactions with clients. Log a Call could be actual phone calls, but many firms also use this Log a Call feature to log any client interaction-- a live meeting, a phone call, a client dropping, a client calling you. Log a Call can be used to log any interaction.

4:18You can create tickler tasks of key activities and to dos for this deal. You create these for yourself or for someone else. You just put in a subject line, a little bit of details, a due date. It's really easy to create tasks for yourself. You can also create calendar events to schedule meetings with the client or with internal colleagues regarding this deal. And, you have the option to send an email from within Salesforce. Now, not all firms use this email feature. Some prefer to still use your G Suite or Outlook for sending emails to customers, but there are two key benefits for emailing a customer through Salesforce.

4:56You can take advantage of templates within Lightning and the correspondence is automatically attached to the client data for others to reference at any point. I'm just going to take a second here and send Edna an email using one of my templates, so you can see how easy this. This is a template that I actually created for myself, put it in my own private folder. And within just a few clicks and Send, and that's on its way. And now it will also show up on the Activity timeline of something that I did. Scheduled future activities show up in this Next Step section here on the Activity timeline.

5:30And you may have figured out by now that you can check this little box right here to mark tasks as complete, which will move them into the Past Activity section once this page refreshes. And if you're in sales and you're sitting here thinking, ooh, yeah, good features, but I'll pass. I'm not a logger, I don't log. I'm going to give you some advice. Salesforce is about putting sales data at everyone's fingertips. And it's critical that sales leadership trusts the pipeline data. So if you don't have your data in Salesforce at all, or if you have really lean data that's not being kept updated, you might hear from someone that you don't want to hear from.

6:08And, there's another scenario to consider, and I have seen this happen. If there's ever any kind of account conflict where two people are going after the same customer but didn't realize it, the person with the best documentation of all of the activity that they've put against the account, that's the one that can really prove that it should be their account. If you have nothing logged on your deal, no data about all that touches, no logged calls, no information or notes meetings with the client at your fingertips easy to produce, there's a chance you might not come out ahead in a conversation about account conflict.

6:42So that's just between you and me. Log that stuff, just in case you need it. And the Chatter tab, this is where collaboration meets working the deal. You can use Chatter to get input, advice, and guidance on this deal. You can at mention another user and they'll be alerted that their assistance is requested. So, if your organization uses Chatter, just notice you have the Chatter feature right on your Opportunity Workspace. Now, let's look at Notes. It's over here on the right. Notes is a place where you can capture information specifically about this opportunity. It can be shared with other people, shared with anybody who has access to this opportunity record.

7:17This is a fantastic place to keep meeting notes, observations about the client or the deal, and any other intel that the client shares with you, so that it's always saved right on this Opportunity. And, there's no chance of it getting lost. To add a new note, you just click on this little action arrow here and click New. And this top section here becomes the subject line that shows up in lists. And then you type all your notes down here. And, I'll tell you my trick. On Opportunities, I tend to have just one note that I update as the deal progresses. Most of my records have just one note from me.

7:48And here and there, someone else will add a new note to capture their observations, which is incredibly handy. The last feature to explore is Contact Roles. Marketing always asks me to cover this, because they want and need this data to analyze the through line from contacts and leads to campaigns to opportunities. But, it's also another way for you to get the critical details of the deal all captured. This is the tool you use to know who you are working with at the client site and the role that they play. To add information, you just click here and click Manage Contact Roles.

8:22You first add the names of the contacts that you're working with down here. And then watch-- when you click, you get a list of recent contacts. And if yours is on the list, you just click on it. Or, you might need to start typing the name to initiate a search. Then you click over here to select their role on this particular deal. Once you have some populated, then you can select who from this list is your primary contact for this opportunity. And notice, you can choose any one for this list of contacts even if it's a partner, or a distributor, or an attorney.

8:53If they're a contact in your Salesforce database, you can add that name here. And then click Save when you're done adding names. And those names are now visible right here in this Contact Role section. And it's very obvious who's the primary contact on this Opportunity. And while we're here, I might as well mention files. Not all firms use this feature. Most have some outside document management system in place of this files feature, but if that's not the case for you, just note that you can add important documents in this area. I've seen draft proposals, presentations, blueprints for an install site.

9:25It's just another handy way to keep everything related to the deal in one place for easy reference. Those are the core features of the Opportunity Workspace. You will be actively managing all of your opportunity records, coming to them every day, every few days, to keep this information and activity consistently updated so that you always know where you are with potential deals and so that sales leadership, when they're viewing data in aggregate, they have an accurate perspective on the health of the pipeline for your organization. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00Of all the features and efficiency tools on the Opportunity Workspace, using Path to manage opportunities through your selling process, it's my favorite. Let's take a look, and I think you'll see why. I'll navigate to my sample opportunity, where I have the full-blown amazingness of Path all set up to show you. So Sales Path is this embedded tool right up here on the Opportunity record. It's a visual representation of the stages required in a complete sales process. So there is this basic default version that shows us all the stages, and it has some helpful shortcuts, or your admin can do some additional setup and turn this into an incredibly helpful sales coach and guide.

0:39To give you a tour of the full functionality-- and if your Org isn't set up this way, talk to your admin and your sales leaders, because you and your colleagues, you need this. Notice that this opportunity is in the stage Needs Analysis. The previous stage, Qualification, is marked with check mark, telling me that that stage has been completed. And when I click the Down arrow, this reveals a screen with two areas. The left lists the fields that are relevant or critical at this current stage in the process. And look how easy it is to update the fields.

1:12I love this field's thing. When I'm training reps that have never used a system like this, there's always a point when someone says, but I don't know all this information. I don't know what to put in all those fields! Am I supposed to just wait to create the record until I know all this? No, no. Create the opportunity, complete what you can, and then fill in the rest as the deal develops, because if you know the key fields in each stage, there's no question which data should be captured as the deal progresses. And then on the right, we have guidance for success.

1:43It's targeted coaching, policy reminders, specific direction, and maybe even some gotchas for this specific stage, Needs Analysis. This information was written by my sales leaders, sales operations, with input from our top reps, the people that I would normally go to for advice. We tapped all of their best thinking and plugged it in right here, so that I have it all in context, right at my fingertips. There might even be some links to other documentation or videos that would be helpful for me at this stage in the deal.

2:16Do you hear how excited I am? This is going to solve so many challenges with opportunity management, with the biggest challenge always being keep those opportunity stages up to date. Look how easy Path makes it. Right now, this opportunity is on the stage Needs Analysis. I click this to mark that stage as complete. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, while I pull together the proposal, get it sent off to the client, once that's done, mark that stage as complete. And as I continue to work this opportunity through each stage, I'll get to the point where I am done.

2:50Maybe I've won this opportunity. I click Closed, and then I select which closed stage am I looking for? Close Lost? Close Won? And that's it, then I get a final message here telling me, oh, wait there's still a few more things you need to do, even though this particular opportunity is done. So that's how Path works on an opportunity record. A few things to wrap this up, the official name of this feature is Path. You might also hear it called Sales Path. That's because it started as a tool that we used to manage leads and opportunities through the selling process, but it has expanded now to be available on other objects, accounts, campaigns, even custom objects.

3:30Any object that is used to track a progressive series of actions or steps can have a Path configured to guide you through the process. Oh, and remember, you have access to Path and Opportunities in the Salesforce mobile app too, so you can update your opportunities easily from anywhere using the app. You do not have to wait until you're back at your desk. In this Nugget, you learned how to use my favorite, favorite efficiency tool in Salesforce-- Path. I hope this has been informative for you, and I'd like to thank you for viewing.