Case Analysis 2 - A Salesforce Sales Admin Challenge The Scenario

You're a Salesforce administrator for a multinational information technology company that manufactures and sells equipment hardware and related services globally. The company's go-to-market strategy for selling all its products has been to use technology resellers as a sales channel to the end-client. The company also has a global sales organization that supports its CRM strategy by nurturing and growing existing and new relationships with both the technology resellers and the end-customers directly. This strategy is supported by Salesforce. Sales and Marketing teams target end clients as well as resellers.

The Problem

Unfortunately, total sales with the firm's 3 largest technology reseller partners have been steadily declining for the past 6 quarters.

The global VP - Sales is conducting a complete review of the current CRM strategy and has been given a mandate by the CEO to make any changes necessary to improve the sales results. As part of this global initiative, your manager has asked you to provide recommendations on how best to help the local sales team increase sales with these resellers.

Some Relevant Facts

The characteristics of your sales partners:

• Hardware and technology expertise
• Global coverage
• Strong distribution network

The characteristics of your sales team:

• Doesn't use Salesforce as much as it could
• Employee feedback says the system is too difficult to use
• Was not trained on Salesforce
• Senior Management doesn't follow through on Salesforce usage, leading to team members not seeing value in the tool

The current Salesforce configuration:

• A technical configuration for ease of use i.e., integration with email platform for client communication tracking and note keeping.

Your Task

Outline how would it determine the functionalities in Salesforce that would best support the sales team's effort with these partners.

Provide examples of the configuration changes that would make within Salesforce. Why do you think your changes would be effective in driving increased sales figures with your resellers?