Salesforce Starter vs Salesforce Sales Cloud: Which is a better fit?

Sharilee: Hi, my name is Sharilee and I am the director of a prevention coalition. Everything that we do is about strengthening families and building resilience in youth and helping educate parents about how to be better parents. We give Salesforce a five star rating. We love it. So we actually have used several different software programs and some of them we still use. One particularly we use Trello and it certainly has its benefits, especially when we have with the full team. I've used Trello a lot with the team. The reason that we got into using Salesforce was actually just a recommendation from one of our team members knew someone that used it, and so we met and they told us about it and we decided to give it a try. And there are things about Salesforce that we really love. So we use Salesforce for the things we really love about that, and we continue to use the other programs for the things that we love about them. So one of the things we really love about Salesforce is the task list. And to be honest, that is the main thing that we use it for. I'm sure we are only using a fraction of the capability of the software. There is a pretty steep learning curve with that, or at least a perceived steep learning curve, and we just have not had the bandwidth on our team to be able to really go in and do a lot of the research. But the task list is, it's just phenomenal to be able to, I love how I can basically do just a quick brain dump within the task and have everything right there. If I need to assign something to another team member, I can just assign them. Do the instructions, my assistant and I can pass the tasks back and forth. And so yeah, we really love the task list and that is, again, the main thing. We have set up some of the other parts of it. We haven't used the other parts near as much. We mostly use the task list and it has really been a game changer for us being able to keep track of what we need to be doing day to day. So as I mentioned it's not necessarily an easy... Well, the task list was very easy. That part was really easy to pick up on. Setting up some of the other things was not an easy process, and I assigned my assistant to do that, and she had to do some research and sometimes reach out to her friend that had recommended it. We have set up some of the other processes. We have not utilized them to near the capacity that they provide. Because there is a learning curve and we just have, I mean, we're just very, very busy always and just have not, again, have not had the bandwidth to be able to really get in and figure out the other components of the program and how to set them up. And even just remembering the things that we have done. Then when we go back to we have to change it or whatever, we pretty much have to start from scratch and figure it out again. So it's not an easy program necessarily, but the parts that we have figured out we really love. Again, I really recommend Salesforce for the task list. If that is something that would help you to stay on task, for you to be able to really know what you have. I love the fact that I can wake up every day. I pull up my task list and there it is right there for me. I'm very much a filer, so I have figured out a filing system to where I can just really have things in the order that they need to be done, and I highly recommend it for the task list. Some of the other things that I have seen that are available I think also would be very, very helpful for many of you that are considering the program. They're not necessarily things that we have used at this point, but from what I have seen, Salesforce really can be an all-inclusive program for an organization that takes the time to really figure out how to use all the components.

Angel J.: My name is Angel, and I'm the HMIS Operations Manager for a company that is now 60 plus employees large, and I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud five out of five. Prior to Salesforce Sales Cloud, we used a multitude of different softwares, including softwares like Trello. We used Google Office, we used Microsoft Office, Microsoft 365. We used Zendesk. We used a lot of different softwares and tried to use them in a way that was collaborative, but it often left us with too many things to manage in different spaces. We chose Salesforce Sales Cloud because it is one of the top leaders in the industry. We knew that it had its own reputation, and it also brought to it a lot of tools already in-house. One of our top needs is for security and safety of our data. So Salesforce was able to handle some of the HIPAA requirements that we have for our data. We also wanted to make sure that it was a platform that all 60 plus of us could interact with inside of one system instead of having multiple softwares to handle our daily needs. And then we also wanted to use some of its intuition, such as the Einstein, where it helps us to make better decisions, helps us to understand what our activities are, keeps track of what we do in the system, and helps us to grow in using the system. This is one of the reasons why we chose Salesforce Sales Cloud. Getting started with Salesforce Sales Cloud, I would say was not the easiest route. You will definitely need someone that has the knowledge of Salesforce. At the very least, knowledge of database technology. We did have to source out some of the needs to Salesforce consultants, which were very easy to find. Salesforce did help us get these consultants, but it was not a one-stop, set up, everything works automatically. And we do not use it just for sales. We use it for customer management more so than sales. So the bit that we had to have customized was something that was not already in the box. So it wasn't the easiest, but it also wasn't the hardest. The advice that I have for anyone considering using Salesforce Sales Cloud for their business is to make sure that you document all the things that you need from Salesforce. Figure out the reason why you believe that Salesforce is going to serve you, so that you can aim at those specific products and add-ons that Salesforce already has in their system. They are very good at understanding some of the things that their system can do with what you have, but making that documentation and going through that with the employees, going through that with your organization prior to coming to Salesforce is probably going to be key. It does get costly if you don't understand what you're doing with Salesforce and you have to have multiple consultants try to figure it out for you. So if you can get organized and document what your needs are before you come to Salesforce, it'll help you pick the best products that Salesforce has to offer.