Salesforce for Beginners: A step-by-step guide to creating, managing, and automating sales and marketing processes

Get a 360-degree view of the Salesforce platform and learn how to use it for sales, service, marketing, and automating business processes.

Key Features

• Understand how to use core Salesforce objects for maximum efficiency
• Build various dashboards and reports to analyze results and improve visibility in your business processes
• Learn the basics of Salesforce administration and mobile app set up

Book Description

Salesforce is the world's leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, helping businesses connect with their constituents and partners. This book will give you a comprehensive introduction to managing sales, marketing, customer relationships, and overall administration for your organization. You'll learn how to configure and use Salesforce for maximum efficiency and return on investment.

You'll start by learning how to create activities, manage leads, and develop your prospects and sales pipeline using opportunities and accounts, and then understand how you can enhance marketing activities using campaigns. Packed with real-world business use cases, this Salesforce book will show you how to analyze your business information accurately to make productive decisions. As you advance, you'll get to grips with building various reports and dashboards in Salesforce to derive valuable business insights. Finally, you'll explore tools such as process builder, approval processes, and assignment rules to achieve business process automation and set out on the path to becoming a successful Salesforce Administrator.

By the end of the book, you'll have learned how to use Salesforce effectively to achieve your business goals.

What you will learn

• Understand the difference between Salesforce Lightning and Salesforce Classic
• Create and manage leads in Salesforce
• Explore business development with accounts and contacts in Salesforce
• Find out how stages and sales processes help you manage your opportunity pipeline
• Achieve marketing goals using Salesforce campaigns
• Perform business analysis using reports and dashboards
• Gain a high-level overview of the items in the administration section
• Grasp the different aspects needed to build an effective and flexible Salesforce security model

Who this book is for

If you're new to Salesforce and want to learn it from scratch, this book is for you. No prior knowledge of Salesforce is required to get started with this book.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started with Salesforce and CRM
2. Understanding Salesforce Activities
3. Creating and Managing Leads
4. Business Development with Accounts and Contacts
5. Using Opportunities Effectively
6. Achieving Business Goals Using Campaigns
7. Enhancing Customer Service Using Cases
8. Business Analysis using Reports and Dashboards
9. Setup and Configuration
10. An Overview of Sharing and Visibility
11. Using Sandboxes and Change Sets
12. Configuring Objects for Your business
13. Third-Party Applications and Salesforce Mobile
14. Understanding the Workflow Rules
15. Implementing Process Builder
16. Approval Processes
17. Assignment Rules

Sharif Shaalan was first introduced to Salesforce as an end user in 2007. His range of experience, from a sales rep to technical architect, helped him successfully lead more than 80 implementations including projects that were showcased on the main stage at Dreamforce. In 2013, Sharif was chosen as a Salesforce MVP, and in 2020 he was inducted into the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame. Sharif is a regular speaker at Salesforce conferences and has obtained more than 10 Salesforce certifications. He is the founder and CEO of Agile Cloud Consulting and continues to be an active Salesforce community contributor.