Salesforce Sales Cloud Reviews

Pros
Our onboarding team uses Salesforce for onboarding new customers. It allows us to track communications, activities, mark task that have been completed and create reports and dashboards to show how accounts are progressing through the onboarding process. Salesforce is the best in class tool when it comes to customization and trackability. We can setup whatever fields we need and collect whatever data we need based on various workflows. You can also create automated tasks.

Cons
Salesforce is a bit clunky and slow at times. We had to have training by a Salesforce expert to implement the systems we needed, so I wouldn't say it's very user-friendly (but that's expected when you have such a robust system).

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It is very easy to navigate through and simplifies the process. Most who use excel or something else find themselves losing contact with many contacts. This makes that easier to track.

Cons
I cannot make my home screen the way I want. It is set up how my company (Colliers) wants it set up - not the way I would like it to be set up.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
I have been using, recommending and adopting salesforce.com for my sales teams for ten years in several different digital technology, media and advertising organizations. I can say unequivocally that the CRM software has evolved from being a supplement and "nice to have" to a must buy and necessary and vital tool for doing business. The key to any business solutions and software product is getting the team to adopt and use it. Training and practice is essential. Its like your golf game, the more you practice the better your score or working out, no pain, no gain. I like the social media and conversational abilities you can have with sales team; the app is excellent for quick reviews and checking on status of pending, pitches and prospects; the flexibility and customization options based o salesperson, account, deal size, industry vertical. In one organization we adopted it for internal sales data use and tracking and also incorporated product data about our partners, customers, audience metrics and analytics and distribution platform.

Cons
Depending on the level of subscription, will also vary with the amount of personalized training you receive. I would also say there needs to be more attention and customization devoted to industry verticals that contain many nuances regarding customer segments and rev streams. This includes the advertising and digital sales industries where there are multiple customer touchpoints and rev streams including agencies, direct to client, programmatic, 3rd party vendors, ad tech partners etc. I also think saleforce.com needs to develop more compatible software and training that integrates salesforce,com into other software linked to finance, accounting etc.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
This product was very easy to install and includes a cloud version. For most small, medium and some larger size businesses, this software will meet all of your Sales and Marketing needs. This software is a great overall value for the price point. Customer service is great!

Cons
There is a slight learning curve as this software has so must functionality and is very robust. Other than that the possibilities for your sales team with this software are limitless.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The marketing automation is hands down the best in the market. The ability to nurture prospects through the sales cycle is amazing. Lead generation tools are top-notch, sales tools, and the sales system is set up for growth, and customer retention is a breeze as well.

Cons
It is expensive to implement. We needed a consultant to help us with setup, which was not cheap. Also the learning curve for over 200 employees took time.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
A huge amount of feature breadth and a strong ecosystem as well as enterprise grade quality and trustworthiness in its software and versions. Like the SSO option and deeply integrated with marketing tools as well.

Cons
It is a pain in the ass to export things from SFDC, even copying records from a SFDC table to Microsoft Excel for casual analysis makes my brain hurt at how difficult it is. The mobile experience is still very lacking and limited. Licensing is a royal pain as we have two level, called the haves and the have nots.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

Pros
Managing customer information is convenient and easily modified.

Cons
The user interface is a little too complicated for new users. The abundance of features can seem overwhelming at first.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It had an insane amount of features and when the server was good it was fast

Cons
If the company did not invest in setting up a good sales workflow, you don't get the max out of your staff. It is utility GUI and ugly to stare at 40 hours a week. Too many clicks to do simple things. Managers worried more about dashboard reporting than you actually doing the work.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

Pros
It allows for a lot of customizations that are needed by the organization but it requires a lot of time and money to set it up and deploy.

Cons
Too slow and cumbersome. User interface is not the best. It is good for salespeople but I would not necessarily recommend it to the marketing team.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
We are currently using Salesforce at work and its making our life easier to navigate here at work. We are getting rid of 4 others databases and replacing it with Salesforce.

Cons
Getting it set up has been interesting and a long process but by the time its perfect it will cut the time in half when entering information.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Salesforce is a fantastic option for larger businesses that need powerful sales and service functionality within an integrated environment. I was just one team member of many, but I believe the tracking ability of a robust pipeline of prospects and the tools available to capture, recall, execute and update records through an elongated sales process allowed me to be more effective and efficient with my client time. Salesforce brags on its sales, marketing, and analytics toolset and in general these did not disappoint. The drill-down capabilities from the analytics dashboards were useful. Also, the ability to tie your email correspondence with prospects to quickly recall your last interaction was critical.

Cons
The internal tools for messaging and communication appeared archaic to me and almost always circumvented in favor of our own favorited instant messaging and posting platforms. The design of the data input screens was oddly spaced and placed. It wasn't the best flow when capturing info. However, admittedly, the platform allowed for great automation in the workflow and setup of custom fields. I don't believe my company spent the time evaluating the best use of the tool. And so my advice is to get a good definition of your processes and standards so that you can utilize Salesforce to the fullest.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Salesforce is hugely customisable, as a consultant, I am always asked to customise the system to fit the needs of the client, and I have not yet found a requirement that cannot be met, it may take knowledge and expertise from multiple different types of people (admins, developers, specialists etc.) but with enough understanding the sky is the limit.

Cons
There are certain limitations which may need to be overcome when setting up a new CRM system, if you are coming from a complex CRM previously, then achieving the same functionality is not always easy, but that is the reason you are switching systems, to gain benefits, not just to put a new interface on to the same solution.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Salesforce can do (almost) anything and integrate with (almost) any other platform. The platform is incredibly deep and extensible. If there’s a thing you’d like a cloud-based database to do, Salesforce can do it. It also integrates well with a huge range of other platforms.

Cons
Sometimes, the depth makes the interface a slog to navigate, or makes it challenging to figure out how to implement the customization you’re looking for. For administrators and developers, the learning curve can be steep. It’s also not always immediately apparent what you can do from within Salesforce, and what requires an additional integration.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
HIGHLY customizable. All data fields can be pulled into reporting/dashboards. To implement properly, you have to reverse-engineer what metrics are important to your business. Once you have a comprehensive understanding of the reporting that you want to see then you can build fields, pick-lists, radio buttons, etc so you capture all relevant data. The beauty is that you are not at all limited to the out-of-the-box configuration (which is good, but generic). In the past I have built in lead sources and ROI, appointment setting quality grading, commission reporting, stack ranking, and many other highly customized reports. Start with the end in mind and then find a good implementation partner who can execute on your plan.

Cons
Cost and support at the lower levels. Unless you have (pay for) their premium support, their customer service is not quick to act.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Once you have your Salesforce process setup and streamlined, it's great to use. It's easy to access leads and opportunities and manage data inside them with relatively few issues. I also like the dashboard feature which allows you to see a lot of data from different reports in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I have never used the Zoho CRM, but I know my company switched over and has been using it for over 2 years now.

Cons
The setup process can be difficult and might require some degree of coding logic. Like all software sometimes features won't work and you'll have to contact the salesforce administer within your company to fix it. Also, the reports can kind of be tricky to set up. My biggest complaint is that no two people can edit a file at the same time. There have been times where I've spent 15 minutes inputting information in a file and tried to click save only to see an error message saying that someone else has edited the file. So I wish it would allow for real-time editing amongst co-workers or at least allow me to refresh the page while saving all the data I have already typed up. I'm also not a fan of "lightning mode", which is the new UI that they are trying to push. Salesforce classic is just so much easier to use, and you can see so much data at one time when looking at leads/opportunities.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The fact that you can have access to your information anywhere is comforting.

Cons
Convoluted. There are lots of hoops you need to jump through in order to really have this software work for you. An GOD FORBID you have any issue because support is not great. At least in my experience.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
This software allows for a very nice layout by which you can see all of your opportunities, stages of the sales life-cycle, quotes, and notes. It is very easy to customize and save reporting so you can run reports daily or weekly. With email tracking you can see how often your emails are read or if a client has even seen an email. There is a lot of connectivity with other programs such as Act-On so marketing can also see how their performance is affecting sales.

Cons
The program is not intuitive to use. Some things like customizing reports are very simple while other things, such as printing or customizing a quote are more challenging. There are items on Salesforce Classic view which are not visible in the "better" Lightening view. Seeing daily tasks requires customizing the tasks field rather than just appearing on your dashboard as a daily list. Once a lead has been changed to an opportunity the view changes and you can no longer see tasks that you had previously set up. Notes become harder to find and this usually causes the sales team to create a duplicate account for each client which is messy and harder to keep track of.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10

Pros
Since integration of SalesForce to our sales engineering team we have full visibility of quote, inquiry and sale pipeline activities. In previous systems these activities we're silo functions which depended on spreadsheet analysis lots of discussions and sales person memory. Salesforce has proven a great central repository and clearing House for all of this information. The linking with Outlook was a critical piece of this which we purchased from a third party.

Cons
The front end pricing seemed ok. BUT it took a LOT of customization to get the level of user friendly interface and process integration we needed. We ended up having to expand the customization scope twice after the initial contract. So the overall cost per user and startup was much higher than budgeted.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
In every company I have consulted for and worked for, we have used or switched to Salesforce. Once built out properly, it is an asset that is scalable and will continue to benefit your sales team. The functionalities are endless: Leads, Accounts, Opportunites, Metics calculators, pipeline management tables, Groups, and options to create products too! (This one was difficult to construct but I was more than ecstatic that I could use this for wholesale as well) Let's talk about customer support: Very comprehensive. There is a whole website dedicated to tutorial videos, live chats, and Q&A boards. If you still can't figure out the problem they do have a real human you can speak to who will help you out.

Cons
The learning curve to set up your salesforce correctly is rough if you have not done any Salesforce admin work before. Starting off with a small group is easier, and the program is more forgiving when you have fewer accounts, leads, etc, but as your org grows, you will want to ensure that Salesforce is set up correctly. Errors with when you have a lot of data will take a long time to fix.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Very easy to use and setup customizations. There are a lot of options to customize the system to your needs without having to write code. Going from test to live in super fast and easy. It is updated three times a year that bring a lot of new features that improve what we can do in the system, Salesforce becomes more powerful each time. The ad hoc reporting is incredible to have.

Cons
The price is pretty high for some who are not going to use it all. There are a lot of extras that would need to get bought for you to get everything you want from the system. It might not be clear what is an extra. It lacks some functions that you might expect from a system like conditional fields cannot be highlighted.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It is a great tool to track and analyze all sales and marketing data. It has plenty of customization and integrations available.

Cons
SFDC has a mind of its own, you need to know what you are doing if you are an administrator, however that doesn't mean you can't learn. Currently, not all functionality is available in Lightnighting (we use lightning and I keep being sent back to classic to fix some stuff).

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
-Highly customisable with deep and wide integration with my organisations SaaS or natively developed applications. -Allows you to produce very detailed reports to track my own activity and history. Which can also be used by management to track team progress and activity. -A customisable dashboard that allows frequently uses tabs to be populated to a "bookmarks bar" which allows for faster navigation. -Great search feature that allows for search across the entire CRM database.

Cons
-Due to its high functionality and range of options it can be overbearing to use at times. -Requires internet connection which means there is occasional latency and is not accessible at all times. -Visually, it's not the most appealing tool that I've ever used. -Steep learning curve for those that have not used it before, but then that goes for most CRM tools.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Salesforce is one of the greatest software nowadays. It has a lot of data stored plus it’s very secure to use so you don’t have to worry about anything happening to your data. Also, it has a cross-platform which means you can use it for iOS, Android, phones, tablets, etc. This software also provides you with information about the client/candidate, is he hired by someone, what he should do next and so on. It creates a general relationship between you and the client. What you have done and what the client has done. Also, Salesforce offers you the first ten licenses for free if you are a non-profit person or company.

Cons
The main thing that I dislike about Salesforce is the price. It’s quite expensive and every other license that you buy just gets more expensive, so because of that, you should probably ask someone more informed before purchasing. Another thing that I dislike is that they often change their managers. Imagine having one manager and making a good relationship with him and they suddenly change him. You need to start building a new relationship which in some cases can be frustrating. And last but not least, their customer service sometimes can be irritating because most of the people that are hired are not friendly and helpful.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Let me, first of all, start off being admitting that I do not currently use Salesforce in my business but used it quite extensively during my time in Corporate America as an account manager and program manager. As an account manager, we were required to enter all activities and customer interactions in SF. It was a very user-friendly and intuitive interface. I am certain that it has changed quite a bit since then but was still a great platform back then. Some of the features I enjoyed most were emailers and scheduling call backs (served as an assistant). Even though I forecasted during my role as an account manager, I did not appreciate the value of being able to track revenue forecasted by account and service managers until I transitioned into a role as a national program manager. I even worked with engineers to develop a special promotional code that allowed me to track revenue for my program forecasted by my co-workers deals. Although it was a lot of work, this was a huge milestone for me and the company. For the first time, we we able to track revenue for a particular funding source. As an entrepreneur, I have an even greater degree of appreciation for forecasting revenue. SalesForce gets thumbs up from me.

Cons
I have no "least" liked features. Perhaps, the only semi-negative I have to share is that we had to develop a special backend program to track revenue for my program. But even that is a compliment to SF. The fact that their software is so flexible speaks volumes.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The non-profit organization that I work for, Interfaith Caregivers has been using Salesforce for a year. I'm so glad that we decided on this system because I have used it previously in other places of work. One of the reasons why we went with Salesforce was to manage a marketing/fundraiser campaign that we have every year. We were able to store our donor and board members and create a campaign just for them to use as a communication tool and to begin the fundraiser campaign for our annual gala. It was also very easy and much needed to track donor and fundraiser payments for the gala. We are able to store multiple templates which consist of donor thank you letters in the template field. This is a very helpful feature!

Cons
It is hard for me to dislike Salesforce. I appreciate the fact that we were able to get the nonprofit discount. Also we were able to use the 10 free licenses since we have 10 employees! I would say the only thing is that I look forward to seeing how Salesforce will continue to grow and evolve and offer other packages to improve the CRM experience. Currently I have not ran into any problems.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10