Why Do So Many Companies Use Salesforce? Explaining the ROI of CRM | Salesforce Explained

What's up, everybody? I'm Brian Tong, your guide to all things Salesforce. And this is Salesforce Explained. It's the series where I talk Salesforce and technology without all the jargon or the buzzwords. So make sure to subscribe to the Salesforce channel and turn on those notifications so you never miss an episode. Now, today, I'm getting as real as it gets. I'm talking about your bottom line, which, if you've read the headlines recently, you know, I'm guessing that you probably care about that a lot. Now, you probably know Salesforce is supposed to be valuable for your business, but just how do you measure the ROI and how do you maximize it? Look, you know, I got you here, so in this episode, I'm breaking down all things ROI and time to value when it comes to your CRM and Salesforce investment. And if you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Take a big step back. Okay, what even is CRM? Well, might I recommend starting with episode one of what is Salesforce? Before diving into this episode of about how Salesforce saves you money. You know, I heard it has a really good host who knows how to explain things. Okay, first up, let's play a little game. Just put a light bulb emoji in the comments. If any of this sounds like your company. Your sales team is using their inboxes and spreadsheets to track their deals. And as a result, things fall through the cracks or end up siloed off in someone's inbox. Or meanwhile, the marketing team has a few different tools for tracking their campaigns, events, and email marketing. Without an easy way to tell sales which leads are ready for some direct outreach or accurately measure the amount of pipeline they're generating. Don't forget your service team responding to customers on a completely different system. So they can't easily tell marketing who to stop emailing because they have an open ticket. And then here comes your leadership team. They're asking you to manually update spreadsheets so that they can look at the business big picture. But by the time the spreadsheets are updated, they're already out of date. Yeah, it's not pretty, but did you know that the average enterprise company uses a whopping 976 applications to get work done. Well, the thing is, all these fragmented systems mean high costs, team silos, and stalled growth. And it means that you have to spend time and money figuring out how to make this all work together. So it means a lot of contracts to manage and likely paying for licenses that no one is using. It it means less time innovating and more time fixing things that are broken. And then there's how your customer feels when they talk to teams who don't share information. Yikes. Yeah, this is just not good. So, having disconnected systems creates major inefficiencies. So it makes sense that using connected systems helps reduce complexity and costs. Simplifying your tech stack alone can lower your annual spend by 20%. Nice. And if you've watched our Salesforce Customer 360 episode, you. You know, this is exactly where Customer 360 comes in. Now, Customer 360 breaks down those silos so you can connect your teams and data all on one platform. And if you haven't watched it, you know, this is my shameless plug that you should go watch the ridiculously handsome host break it down for you. Okay. Because here's another piece of the puzzle. Cutting costs alone is not going to help your business long term. Companies who invested in technology during the pandemic grew at five times the rate of those who did not. And the way to weather an economic downturn is to make the right investments that will help you deliver great customer experiences and set you up for future success. You know, it's about investing in tools with the highest ROI and then quick time to value. So here's a simple equation. To calculate roi, you take your net income, then the initial cost of the investment, and divide by that number and multiply it by 100 and boom, the ROI. I know you probably know what ROI is, but it's important to remember that investing in something that doesn't cost much is one way to improve your roi. But if you can also increase your net income, that improves ROI as well. Okay. Return on investment. That is a way to measure an investment's profitability. And your CRM is an investment whose ROI you can and should measure. In fact, 89% of all Salesforce customers see a positive return on their investment in just the first year. But just how does customer 360 give you so much value? Well, look, let's just dive into that. Salesforce Customer360 helps your teams work on one platform using tools that are all connected, which offers everybody a shared view of customer data. So not only can everyone share information in one view, but automation, intelligence, and real time data. They help everyone on their team personalize customer experiences together. We're talking about automation, right? Technology can automatically do things that you're used to doing manually with clicks, typing. In fact, I have a whole video on this. So, yeah, go watch it. Also, Intelligence AI is your friend. You know, you are very smart, but you only get smarter when tech is predicting outcomes and helping you make decisions. We also have real time data. All of this only works if the data changes as fast as the world around us. So this means data is right here, right, right now, not a minute, hour or day old. Yeah, I've got an episode on real time too, so go watch genie. Okay. Our last term customer experience. And you guessed it, I created a whole episode on this hot topic too. So when you give your entire business all those tools, you're quickly going to see more productivity, more collaboration, and real Results. Like a 27% faster automation of business processes, a 26% increase in employee productivity, and a 29% increase in sales productivity. And that sounds like really, really good, but for reals. All right, just imagine this. Your marketing team is busy creating customer journeys that include email, sms, push notifications and paid advertising. With automation and then AI, they're delivering personalized content based on real time customer data. This is boosting conversion rates and. And they're able to better understand campaign ROI and where to funnel future marketing dollars. In fact, they're reporting a 28% improvement in marketing ROI. And now the handoff between marketing and sales has improved. Marketing uses salesforce to automatically route and assign leads to the right people. With the help of AI, those same salespeople can focus on the leads and deals most likely to convert and close. Plus they can automate repetitive monotonous stuff like data entry, so they're more efficient in their day. And by automatically generating renewal opportunities, tracking amendments and swaps, your sales team can grow renewals and increase customer lifetime value. And all of that is just a measurable impact. And boom. You're now seeing a 29% increase in revenue. The support team is loving that they get a single view of the customer with history from every touch point, so they can resolve customer needs more quickly. Self service and bots help customers find their answers fast. Omnichannel routing can route service requests from any location, like phone, chat or social channels, to the right person at the right time. And all these streamlined processes and guided workflows are giving your business a 27% decrease in support costs. What about your IT team? They're enjoying 25% lower costs thanks to automation. Now, complex business processes like approvals can be automated with drag and drop simplicity, while leaders get insights 29% faster than asking people to pull reports based on outdated and incomplete data. But Customer360 helps you cut costs and reduce complexity by using apps that are all on one platform. And those apps boost your productivity, drive efficiency and help you generate more revenue. All important pieces of the ROI equation. That's the secret sauce that unlocks so much more roi, so much faster automation, intelligence and real time data for every team. That's how you help your teams get more done with less across every department. Now check this out. Here's some data to, you know, mull over a little bit. Businesses that adopt the Salesforce360 platform see a 32% increase in customer satisfaction and a 30% increase in customer retention. Sound good, right? In fact, 98% of businesses meet or exceed their ROI goals with customer 360. That is 98%. I mean that's a pretty incredible return on any investment. Now if you want to get started with customer360 but don't know where to begin with Salesforce or CRM or you haven't been watching this series, the great news is that there is a perfect place to start with a free trial of Salesforce. Easy with only a few clicks. You can get started right away with a suite for sales, service and marketing tools that will help you drive more ROI and success for your business from day one. And you can always head over to Trailhead for hands on learning. Alright everybody, be sure to like and subscribe. Turn on your notifications so you never miss an episode of Salesforce Explained. We'll see you next time.