Salesforce Review: Pricing & Alternatives

Salesforce provides users with a complete view of their key contacts and customers, including their activities, communications, internal account discussions, products included in a deal, and quoted prices. You can view AI-powered insights and recommended actions that you need to make to win a deal. Plus, you can track changes in your sales pipeline over time with its built-in charts and receive updates on deals.

Below are the main functionalities under Salesforce’s sales pipeline management feature:

• Account and contact management
• Customizable sales processes
• Task management and customer activity feed
• Opportunity management
• Products and price books

Make informed business decisions based on real-time customizable reports and visualize key sales metrics with dashboards. These tools help you easily track sales pipelines, lead volume, and activity conversion rates. You can also personalize these reports and dashboards according to what kind of information each team member needs to close deals faster.

Here are the main functionalities under Salesforce’s sales analytics and reporting feature:

• Customizable reports and dashboards
• Cross filters
• Joined reports
• History tracking
• Opportunity splitsSplit opportunities among your team to track individual efforts and divide commissions based on participation

Salesforce Pipeline Command Center with key metrics, visual cues, and insights (Source: G2)

Salesforce has integration capabilities with many third-party applications, enabling you to synchronize prospect and customer data into the platform from many sources. These connections allow you to manage your social media accounts and projects, and generate email marketing and customer service performance insights. They also help you streamline workflows and enhance your team’s productivity and collaboration capabilities.

Some of Salesforce’s most popular integrations include:

• Google Workspace
• QuickBooks
• LinkedIn
• DocuSign
• JIRA
• Slack
• HelloSign
• Mailchimp
• ActiveCampaign
• Dropbox

Salesforce’s popular sales integrations on the AppExchange marketplace (Source: AppExchange)

Manage your sales pipeline from anywhere using the Salesforce mobile app, which is known to have almost all the functionalities of its web version. View real-time data, collaborate with your teammates, close deals, and send personalized marketing messages on the go. You can also create new CRM records even when you’re offline, and your data will sync immediately once you’re online.

Here are the main Salesforce features that you can access using its mobile app:

• Personalized dashboard
• Reports, lists, tasks, and events
• Forecasting
• Built-in enterprise-grade app security
• Custom push notifications for workflows
• AI voice assistant

Salesforce mobile app (Source: App Store)

Salesforce’s lead generation and management features let users track the progress of all active leads and identify those who need follow-ups. It has a lead scoring function that enables users to spot hot leads and those most likely to convert—increasing the chances of closed deals. It also allows users to engage closely with leads across multiple touchpoints, such as phone, email, and social media.

Here are some functionalities under Salesforce’s lead management feature:

• Lead tracking, filtering, and qualification
• Lead assignment and routing
• Lead scoring
• Duplicate blocking
• Web-to-lead capture

Salesforce lead management tab

Create and send targeted email lists to your prospects and customers and track which of your contacts received your emails. You can also use this platform to schedule meetings, send emails later, and track email engagement. Plus, you can manage and track your marketing campaigns so that you can make informed sales decisions that could impact your pipeline.

Here are some functionalities under Salesforce’s email and SMS marketing features:

• Mass email
• Email scheduling and tracking
• Marketing campaign management
• Email templates
• To-do lists

Salesforce creating an email template (Source: Salesforce Support)

Salesforce makes it easy for users to automate complex business processes and workflows with its low-code drag-and-drop Flow Builder tool. Doing this helps make sales reps more efficient. You can create automated workflow tasks, email alerts, and field updates with this tool. In addition, you can customize CRM profiles, page layouts, and access for different users.

Here are some functionalities under Salesforce’s customization and automation features:

• Flow BuilderAutomate and manage business processes with a point-and-click Process Builder tool
• Lightning App BuilderBuild apps visually using a library of prebuilt and custom components in a drag-and-drop environment
• Automated workflow tasks, email alerts, and field updates
• Customizable profile and page layouts
• Roles and permissions

Salesforce forecast management with Einstein score and prediction (Source: Salesforce)

With Salesforce, you can generate accurate sales forecasts in real time with customizable metrics that align with your business goals. You get a complete view of your team’s forecast on a single page. Out-of-the-box embedded forecast charts provide you with a visual representation of recent forecast changes and historical sales trends.

Here are some functionalities under Salesforce’s forecast management feature:

• Customizable reports and dashboards
• Customizable sales metrics
• Embedded forecast charts

Salesforce pipeline management with Einstein Insights (Source: Salesforce)

Einstein is Salesforce’s AI tool that uses your data to identify upcoming sales opportunities and deals for your agents. It also predicts customer issues and alerts agents of potential cases. Einstein assists with your marketing activities by creating predictive journeys and personalized marketing content based on a prospect or customer’s interests.

Salesforce Map for sales territory planning and management (Source: Salesforce Trailhead)

Salesforce’s territory management allows users to segment accounts, contacts, and deals into specific territories to help users manage similar accounts and customers. It lets you create custom sales territories specific to your business (such as location, product line, or customer characteristics). This helps you develop a logical, flexible structure and map prospects or customers to the most appropriate agent.

Salesforce Map for sales territory planning and management (Source: Salesforce Trailhead)

Salesforce is very popular because it offers cloud-based CRM solutions with robust features and integrations. In addition, you can customize it to fit sales automation needs in almost any industry. These are the reasons why the International Data Corporation (IDC) has ranked it as the top CRM provider worldwide for the 11th consecutive time.

The top disadvantages of using Salesforce are its cost and learning curve. While it offers a small business CRM platform for $25 per user, monthly, it does not have a freemium plan. Plus, the other plans can be quite expensive (starting at $80 per user, monthly) for startups and smaller teams. Moreover, its robust set of features and vast customization options make it a more suitable platform for users with mid-level technical experience.

For most small businesses, HubSpot CRM is better than Salesforce, especially if they’re looking for a free option with robust features for sales, marketing, and service management. It also has a shorter learning curve, thanks to its simpler interface. However, Salesforce is better than HubSpot CRM in terms of advanced analytics tools and mobile capabilities, which include all the features in its web application.