whoever decided sales force was a good idea, needs a lobotomy. So now the focus in cor is getting these sales leads and putting them in sales force. Forget about the actual sales - the revenue generating aspect for the company. They do not care about that. We need leads in sales force, even though sales force does not pay anyone, anything. It's software that someone got kickbacks from someone else to purchase. The concept of sales force is you put a lead in it, and call them back later to close the sale. Call them back. Yes that's right, CALL them back. Do you answer your phone to unknown callers ? Do you respond to unknown texts ? Do we not have an application to block out spam calls that teach customers about ? Why do we focus on non revenue generating telemarketing when we have the potential to put forth the effort into our network and and fiber build out - things that make sense and actually bring in revenue ?
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Just wait. We have to make this CRM system somehow service our customers, place orders, perform customer service transactions and manage inventory. Wait, Salesforce can’t do any of that!
Probably the same geniuses that decided it was a good Idea to start putting all the network(fiber) inventory into Service Now.
We are told by our management team to put every single person / address into sales force. Whether the address is real or not. Whether or not the person is a potential customer or not. It does not matter. All as they care about is sales force content and whether or not its real does not matter. We are borderline Wells Fargo / Enron at this point.
The bottom line regarding CRM tools like Sales Force….ATT requires a platform where every organization both internal and external can pull opportunities, sales data, order status, sales leads, customer information, reports on customer contacts; their history, and opportunities created (as well as numerous other items). Prior to Sales Force, ATT, SBC, Bell South, Verizon, TMobile, American Express, etc., etc. used multiple manual and sometimes disparate tools to project and provide customer information. CRM streamlines and eliminates a lot of redundancy and time consuming steps. The adoption is called ‘progress’ and is sometimes painful and often resistant by many. Learning and understanding how to utilize these tools can be painful but not unlike anything else that requires patience and consistency. Perhaps not the response that the poster wants to hear, but after many years in the business using these tools, I get it.
- eCRM, early 2000s, sold to AT&T by PWC, is the industry standard CRM product (replace spreadsheets and files with leads, opportunities, in a database) from Siebel
- Siebel acquired by Oracle, innovation stops, price goes way up, or both, depending on who's telling the story
- Back here acquisitions blend legacy eCRM into SBC and BellSouth Siebel applications to create ROME (2009), a messy process that yielded more complexity
- Around 2016 or so Marc Benioff has a bad experience at an AT&T store and calls Randall Stephenson, says, "I can fix you." (Not firsthand info, of course, but have seen it from multiple sources).
- Salesforce begins company wide deployment in multiple departments, and pushes toward replacing ROME. ROME declared dead, 2017 or so.
- Salesforce proves more difficult to implement, and what looked great in a demo doesn't translate to seller reality. (Salesforce and its advocates use almost exactly the same happy words used by their eCRM predecessors 15 years earlier).
- ROME not dead, but stuck at old Oracle version and not a popular target for development. Sellers like me just plain stuck.
Leads were entered into ROME before in a like manner. I don't find that aspect frustrating. I agree though, Sales Force has a bit of a learning curve. It was certainly designed for higher-up reporting and not to make my job easier. One of the more infuriating features (or lack their of) is having to open a support request to pre-sales, then having to open a second request to your pre-sales tracking team. Absolutely a waste of time. Why not have the support request to presales autogenerate a request to the tracking team?
Used it at Verizon before coming over. It’s not a bad product and is actually very helpful if used correctly. I was shocked that AT&T isn’t big on it.
May be some board members or C suite fellas were on advisory board of Saleforce and Service now and got free stock. Quid pro quo.
Sales Force software is a CRM tool used to gather customer and yes, lead data information and other data, and make that information available across many different organizations throughout the lifecycle of the customer. Enterprise sales has been using it for many years or some iteration of it (eCRM a Seibel platform) for instance. In the simplest example, this means that business units can view and track the sales progression of opportunities, customer contacts, activities and also create marketing campaigns. You are correct, it is not an easy tool to master; but it beats the heck out of creating and completing those spreadsheets and endless revisions for reporting to sales leadership used in the past. There is not a major corporation in the country that does not use CRM tools for managing their customer relationships. Like it or not, Sales Force or another CRM system is here to stay.
I've used Salesforce and find it too complicated and the views confusing and the support less than stellar.
From a business perspective there are multiple reasons for this mandate to use Salesforce-This is why AT&T is doing this.
Captures sales activity & selling behaviors-which can be used for/against an employee in the same concept as a key-logger does for admin-types.
Forcing all activity leads, contact reach outs to be logged helps AT&T with the new re-orgs/downsizing that are coming across the selling segments. SLED/LED, BAT, Firstnet, etc, it's a way for the remaining sellers to have a view of opportunities in process and to be able to continue the momentum.
This is what happens when you have clowns, YES CLOWNS, that have never spent one hour of time in the seat working the issues. When you manage a business and have no idea what the true issue are your set for failure, PERIOD.
What a joke, just as bad as offering DTV without a DISH! Yelp, still attached that name DIRECT TV to it and customers turn and walk! How many more billions will they loose with that name attached! As someone has the "bright idea" that a store demo for tv sells the product! Naw, man, that name DTV does enough for the "none sale"! When will yall learn!
Sales force has to be used because the company spent $18,000,000.00 to get it. Unfortunately, another poor decision by T.