The Top 10 Benefits of Salesforce Essentials for Your Business

Technological advancements are driving the modern world with extensive developments and innovations. This is paving the way for well-organized workflow for businesses and other organizations dealing in customer service. At present, businesses and large enterprises are using superior technologies like CRM, ERP and lots more to streamline their work process and expand growth to attain productivity. However, small businesses and companies often find it difficult to implement CRM software because of the costs and challenges involved in it.  

Researches reveal that 66% of business leaders remain occupied with three or more areas of their company, with many of them performing complex tasks such as managing data on a manual, ad-hoc basis. So, it is normal for anyone to try to trim their bulk of responsibilities so that they can concentrate on advanced tasks such as growth, productivity, etc. In such cases, you will require a tech assistant to help you out with your complex daily operations. This is where Salesforce Essentials come to your rescue. For a few years, since its inception, Salesforce Essentials helped many businesses, especially small ones to operate smarter, perform better, sell efficiently, and grow faster.  

In this article, we will cover, 

• What is Salesforce Essentials? 
• To whom can Salesforce Essentials be the most useful? 
• Salesforce essentials vs Professional 
• The major benefits of Salesforce Essentials for your business 
• Salesforce Essential Limitations 

The above-mentioned sub-topics will help you understand the concept better and you can make use of it to operate your work operations smoothly.  

What is Salesforce Essentials?  

Salesforce essentials is a hybrid sales and CRM support crucial for small businesses that require affordable CRM solutions. It is easy to use, install, and manage and enables you to create strong and healthy relationships with customers. Salesforce Essentials consists of a collection of CRM implementations developed to help companies grow, reach potential and new clients, manage leads, and sell more quickly in a smarter way.  

It offers all the features and resources you need to communicate with your customers seamlessly and exchange data. Moreover, it has different tools you need to shape your company and business as a whole.  

Here are some of the important features of Salesforce Essentials: – 

• Contacts and account information are easily managed.
• The Einstein Activity Capture tool automatically synchronizes customer data from email.
• It is capable of customizing the sales process and includes detailed sales funnel stages.
• Task management and activity feed available.
• Continually projecting deal values
• Comprehensive tools for receiving and responding to customer queries.  
• It has free, built-in configurable reports and dashboards. 
• It offers collaboration tools. 
• Customer feedback management option, which is also effective case management.
• It has tools for providing customer service via email, phone, live chat, and social media.
• Remote contact management.
• Consists of a mobile app, which has all the functions of the Essentials desktop version 
• Includes the Lightning app builder and app exchange 
• Compatible with DocuSign, Dropbox, HelloSign, Nicereply, CodeScience, ActiveCampaign and Zapier 
• Email optimization (Web and email case capture and autoresponse) 

To whom can Salesforce Essentials be the most useful? 

As already mentioned, Salesforce Essentials is extremely beneficial for small businesses that require affordable CRM software. You just need to pay substantially less for Essentials as compared to other CRM platforms including Salesforce’s other offerings – for tracking, reporting, dashboards and support tools. But there will be a limit of 10 users. 

You must think of considering Salesforce Essentials when choosing CRM software if you are into any small business that requires integration into the Salesforce ecosystem. We are all aware of the fact that the Salesforce is the industry leader for a reason. When you can’t access all of what Salesforce has to offer, you can definitely go for Salesforce Essentials that are pocket friendly. With time you will be able to understand whether any other, more expensive plans are right for your business or not.  

Salesforce Essentials vs Professional 

Salesforce has different editions which differ in their purposes and features. To start with the basic difference, it can be said that Salesforce Professional builds upon the features of the Essentials edition, but it is more like a basic CRM. Professional one gives you access to a fully featured functionality, but not with much flexibility of the more advanced editions. 

Salesforce Essentials is recommendable for small businesses, and suitable for startups and small organizations that require basic CRM features. This is a user-friendly interface and provides valuable guidance to walk you through the features and customizations to get you started. Essentials Edition of Salesforce also has default features to carry out basic business sales needs. 

On the other hand, Salesforce Professional Edition is designed for small and medium-sized businesses that want to tackle their full sales cycle in a centralized location, including forecasts, user profiles, and real-time sales data. It is still a straightforward CRM that offers features like customization, connectors, and administrative tools.   

The Professional edition was developed for enterprises that are in need of a full-featured CRM to manage their work operations. Organizations can effectively handle their entire sales cycle with the help of Professional Salesforce Edition. On the contrary, start-ups and small businesses do not need extensive customization or integration facilities in the beginning. But they do require automation of the entry-level processes of their marketing and sales teams. This is why they prefer the Essentials edition that serves their purpose and is also an affordable edition.  

The cost of Salesforce Essentials Edition is $25/user per month whereas the cost of Professional Edition is $75/user per month.  

The Major Benefits of Salesforce Essentials for your Business 

As mentioned in the features, Salesforce Essentials offers businesses and companies with many useful resources. Here are 10 major benefits of Salesforce Essentials that can empower your business.  

• Streamline Sales operations 

Salesforce Sales Cloud Essential is a module offered by Salesforce Essentials that provides multiple facilities of customization to salespersons. With this they can make use of the app’s Einstein Activity Capture feature to get a personalized overview of sales information, optimize sales activities, and track emails, contacts, and conferences.  

• Increases Efficiency of work 

Salesforce Essentials can effectively enhance the spirit of employees and boost their productive nature by offering them resources for managing leads and strengthening discrepancies among departments. Work operations can be simplified with the use of appropriate features and stats while other necessary but repetitive tasks can be performed quickly with clarity. This will contribute to a company’s productivity and streamline workflows by creating competitive advantage series like data management and unified business operations.  

• Better Customer service 

Salesforce Essentials consists of a Salesforce Service Cloud Essential feature that enables salespersons to connect with various support platforms which are easily accessible from any computer to fix bugs and resolve issues faster. Tasks such as assigning jobs to experts, instructing the appropriate agents with questions and multiple other tasks can be easily automated with the help of Salesforce Essentials.  

• User-friendly 

As it is a user-friendly system, Salesforce Essentials is preferred by businesses across the market. a report states that 93% of small businesses reported that the easy setup of operators is necessary for evaluating new types of technology for their companies. One of the common questions from UK businesses is asked about the ways to integrate their new CRM into their regular work life without disrupting the already existing processes. Salesforce Essentials provides extensive support to these businesses from defaulting back to spreadsheets. Salesforce Essentials is an easy platform to carry out business operations and provide a strong service to clients.   

You can skip the data entry part and directly upload the necessary data from your email, calendar, spreadsheets, support channels, and more into Salesforce Essentials. Moreover, multiple tabs related to connections, leads, prospects, assignments, and other angles of sales operations are shown next to one another for easy access. Also, the sales funnel configuration panel is a self-explanatory section and can be understood by all easily.  

• Manages Business Processes 

Upgraded and newer technologies are easily introduced with the help of Salesforce Essentials. Business owners who are new to Salesforce CRM systems require flexible and constructive suggestions for carrying out their business operations. The user interface of Salesforce Essentials is very interactive and convenient. Moreover, it consists of Trailhead, a friendly and interactive treasure-trove of knowledge that provides proper usage instructions and the ability to analyze or execute business campaigns with the help of Salesforce Einstein Capabilities. All of these make Salesforce Essential an effective solution for managing all types of business processes.   

• Provide Detailed Reports and Analytics 

Salesforce Essentials has reports and data visualization tools that help you understand your company’s workflow better. Salesforce Essentials enables you to monitor your company’s performance, ranging from advertising campaign data to sales and multiple relevant indicators. This is how fallacies and chances of future risks can be prevented, and findings efficiently circulated among various departments of the company. You are also safe from losing anything with a flexible unified dashboard and real-time metrics.  

• Automation of Tasks 

Operating sales processes are way more difficult than it sounds and involves lots of time and effort. Dozens of activities are executed within a large operation such as data entry, delivery, document verification, and multiple other time-consuming tasks. These are important tasks and have to be performed efficiently within a system but the duration can be reduced with the use of appropriate resources. Custom Salesforce Essentials is designed to address issues like this and automates numerous tasks.  

• Scalability  

Growth is a prime objective for all businesses. Around 40% of small business owners in the UK prioritize growth over anything which means scalability is an important part of any tech solution. One of the drawbacks of expanding small businesses lies in starting with SMB-specific software that lacks enterprise features. This is why companies have to look for an option that is capable of accommodating larger operations, investing in purchasing it or subscribing to it, and transferring data from the old system to the new system. This procedure undoubtedly takes time and often results in negative reviews from customers affecting a company’s image. But with Salesforce Essentials the process can be done easily and the users can upgrade to an advanced model.  

• Seamlessly Integrates with Other Apps 

CRMs that integrate seamlessly with others make the survival of small business owners easier across the market. For effective business operations, the apps need to interact with each other. Salesforce Essentials integrates smoothly with Google Cloud’s G Suite, enabling you to easily access your email, calendar, and data. Moreover, it provides you with the full G suite for your business at no cost for the first three months.

If your business requires an extension beyond Google, you can make use of AppExchange. This is where you can get access to different systems that customize the functions of your CRM, allowing you to handle the potential of the entire business ecosystem.  

• Operates with Modern Technologies 

Salesforce Essentials can be easily operated with modern technologies such as AI, ML, and lots more. This is why companies, especially the small ones, can save time and money by automating data entry and updating information. As a result of which, sales processes are simplified, customer service is improved, and human employees can invest more time in advanced business operations that require human intellect and intervention.  

This is all about the benefits of Salesforce Essentials for which superior functionality and effortless integration are possible within companies, the small ones in particular.  

However, there are also a few limitations involved in the process of Salesforce Essentials which will discuss in the next section.  

Salesforce Essentials Limitations 

Like everything else, Salesforce Essentials also has some limitations. Some of the noticeable ones are as follows,  

• Limited analytics/forecasting tools.  
• Lack of workflows i.e., this doesn’t let you build in approvals),  
• Lack of roles and permissions  
• Lack of built-in billing and price-quoting functionality 
•  Dashboard filters and dynamic dashboards are not available 
• Custom big object is limited to 100 
• Custom fields per object is limited to 5 
• External objects are not allowed 

Although there are limitations, we cannot deny the importance of Salesforce Essentials in the long run when it is extensively used by businesses and mostly preferred by small businesses.  

Wrapping Up 

Undoubtedly Salesforce Essentials is blissful for small businesses as it offers them affordable entry to one of the leading and most powerful CRMs on the market. If you keep on monitoring your costs as you expand and keep your limit to 10 users, this small business edition of Salesforce is something you should definitely consider. It has gained the reputation of “Salesforce’s best product yet” among small businesses because of its functionality as well as compatibility with other applications. This is indeed an asset to get started with Salesforce CRM Software for marketing purposes and customer service.  

So, are you someone new to Salesforce services and seeking professional help? Connect with us at Webuters to get access to a very effective and profitable tool for your company. 

Our experts at Webuters can provide you with Salesforce Essentials services which are affordable and will look after your costs while allowing your business to expand adjusting within the data caps. So hurry up and get in touch with us today!