Description
Book SynopsisDavid Taber is an internationally recognized IT marketing and management consultant with more than twenty-five years' experience, including twelve years at the VP level or above. His company, SalesLogistix, is a certified implementer of Salesforce.com solutions, with 100 clients in North America, Europe, and Asia. Taber also writes for CIO.com and has a library of more than one hundred fifty articles on Salesforce issues.
Trade Review"Cloud computing is changing everything. David Taber has written the definitive guide to navigating this transformation. Every functional vice president should read this book in order to understand how to get maximum value from Salesforce.com, integrate social media into operations, maximize sales and profits, and become a truly customer-focused company."
--Dave Kellogg, CEO, Host Analytics
"David Taber maps out our dreams for SFA/CRM, its technical and adoption challenges, and real-world executive strategies for managing the organizational/political work of a Salesforce.com implementation. His guidance is masterful, and this book captures it."
--Rich Mironov, CEO, Mironov Consulting
"I have reread David Taber's Salesforce.com® Secrets of Success more than a few times now, and I open this book first when I start a new project. Somehow I always seem to find the perfect tips to save me time, strategies to deliver a better project, and anecdotes to make me look good in front of customers.
"Salesforce.com® Secrets of Success is my go-to guide for accurately framing a problem, avoiding disaster, and explaining the best solution to my project sponsor.
"Read this book, and benefit from David Taber's extensive experience with the Salesforce. com platform while you enjoy his intelligent and witty navigation through the politics and pitfalls of project delivery."
--Dan Weiss, Senior Consultant, Appirio
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xxi
About the Author xxiii
Introduction xxv
Executive Summary 1
What Every CxO Needs to Know about Salesforce.com 1
Why Are You Looking at an SFA or a CRM System? 3
Keeping the Big Picture in Focus 6
Your Role in Driving Project Approval 10
Your Role Once the Project Is Under Way 16
Your Role in the Adoption Cycle 25
Your Role after Deployment: Using SFDC to Help Drive the Ship 30
Essential Tools for the Executive 34
Part I: Planning and Implementation 37
Chapter 1: Planning Ahead 39
Developing a Model of Your Customer Relationship 40
Setting Goals at the Business Level 42
Setting CRM Requirements: Who, Where, What, and Why 43
Organizing and Publishing Project Documents 47
Prioritizing Requirements 49
When Requirements Should Bend 53
Knowing Your Boundaries 54
Making the Business Case 58
Agile Project Metrics 75
Avoiding the Big Bang Project 76
Outsourcing 78
Setting Executive Expectations 81
Getting the Right Resources Committed 82
Chapter 2: Reports and Data 85
The Executive View 86
New Things You Need to Measure 89
Scoping the System via Report Mock-Ups 93
The Crux: Semantics 94
Reports-Inside versus Outside 96
Scoping the System via User Screen Design 99
A Guided Tour of the SFDC Object Model 102
What's in a Namespace? 108
SFDC's Data Requirements 110
Historical External Data 123
The Days of Future Passed 123
Chapter 3: Preparing Your Data 127
Getting the Lay of the Land 127
Migrating Data from an Existing SFA or CRM System 129
Migrating Data from Other Systems 140
Your Big Weekend: Doing the Import 140
There's Got to Be a Morning After: Deduping Records 142
The Morning After the Morning After: Enriching Data 147
The Ultimate Job Security 148
Creating a Cost Model for Clean Data 151
Chapter 4: Implementation Strategy 153
Big Bangs and Waterfalls 154
The Agile Manifesto 155
You Really Have to Plan: Agile Development Is Not Enough 157
Wave Deployment 158
What's in a Wave? 159
Planning the Sequence of Waves: WaveMaps 161
Collecting Resources for a Wave 168
Starting the Wave 173
As a Wave Takes Shape 176
Dirty Little Secret: The Data Are Everything 178
During the Wave: Real-Time Scheduling 179
Kicked Out of a Wave 183
Wave Endgame 183
Deployment 184
Getting Ready for the Next Wave 187
Postimplementation Implementation 188
Part II: People, Politics, Products, and Process 193
Chapter 5: People and Organizational Readiness 195
Using the SFA Maturity Model 196
Part I: What Does Management Want to Achieve, and How Hard Will It Be? 197
Part II: Is Your Organization Ready for Its Target Level? 205
Part III: How Big Is the Gap? 213
Understanding the Next Wave of Users 215
User Training 218
What User Readiness Means for Deployment 220
Postdeployment User Frustration 221
How Many Administrators Does It Take to Screw In a Light Bulb? 222
Chapter 6: Working the Politics 225
It's Not Just Big Organizations 225
Who's the Champion? 226
Who Pays for the System Implementation? 231
Who Will Own the System? 233
Who Owns the Data Now? 236
Dealing with Review Committees 242
Identifying and Dealing with Opposition to the Project 243
The Politics of System Adoption 244
Identifying and Dealing with Adoption Problems 249
Indoctrination 251
The Politics of Restriction 252
Chapter 7: Products You Will Need 255
Don't Overdo It 258
First, Seek to Understand 259
Next, Weigh Your Options 264
Essential Toys: Featurettes 270
Essential System Administrator Tools 272
Essential Add-Ons for the Marketer 276
Essential Features for Sales Management 278
Essential Tools for Support 284
Essential Extensions for Finance 287
Essential Features for the Executive 289
Chapter 8: Optimizing Business Processes 291
What Is a Business Process? 292
How Do Business Processes Fit Together? 293
Which Business Processes Do You Need to Think About? 296
Analyzing Business Processes 306
Example Business Process Analysis 311
How Much Should Be Changed? 316
Best Practices with Business Process Redesign 317
Making the Changes 321
After the Changes Are Made 322
Part III: Best Practices 325
Chapter 9: Best Practices for Sales 327
Universal Best Practices 327
People Buy from People 330
Job One: Define and Document the Sales Model 332
Sales Development Reps (SDRs) 335
Inside Sales Reps 350
Outside Sales Representatives 355
Field Sales Engineers or Product Specialists 368
Sales Management 369
Chapter 10: Best Practices in Marketing 397
Marketing Organizations 397
Lead Generation and Collection 401
Campaign Management 412
Lead Handling 418
Lead Cultivation and Nurturing 430
Lead Qualification and Conversion 431
Partner Marketing 434
Customer References 434
Advertising and Messaging 437
Public Relations 438
Product Management/Product Marketing 440
Marketing System Administrator 444
Marketing Executives 447
Chapter 11: Best Practices in Customer Support 457
Support Organizations and SFDC 457
Universal Support Best Practices 459
The Customer Order Support Center 471
Order Expediting, Distribution, and Shipping 474
Customer Help Desk 475
Technical and Warranty Support 476
Professional Services 482
Service and Support Executives 485
Chapter 12: Best Practices in Finance and Legal 489
Driving the Investment Decision 490
Keeping Expectations Reasonable 493
The Path to Project Success 494
Accounting and Ongoing Operations 495
Mergers, Integrations, and Divestitures 506
Fundraising 507
Legal 508
Human Resources 511
Chapter 13: Best Practices in IT 513
Level of IT Engagement 514
Skills IT Will Need 518
Planning for the Implementation 521
Implementation 531
Ongoing Usage 541
Index 557
