Our Top 5 Salesforce Resolutions to Rock the New Year

The new year is an inspiring time to set goals for better health and happiness. It’s also the perfect opportunity to review your investment in Salesforce and resolve to take better care of it, too. If there’s system pain or room for improvement, read on for our new year strategy.  

1. Plan: Create a Roadmap/Governance Plan 

It seems like a truism, but if you don’t know where you’re going, then you’ll never get there. Any time devoted to goal-setting will help focus your team’s efforts in the new year. Annual planning can be intimidating when you think about where your Salesforce investment needs to go, but time spent defining those goals will help maintain focus on what’s important. This is especially helpful as the year progresses and your team naturally shifts with it. 

Reflect on top-level goals and the key activities that need to happen to support them, then use that to inform your decision making as much as possible.

Identify large company initiatives that will drive your effort over the new year. If for example, you’ll want to set up marketing automation with drip campaigns then put your organizational focus where it will provide the most value and move the needle. Align these efforts across the relevant teams and your organization will be humming right along.

2. Tidy Up: Remove Tech Debt

Garbage in, garbage out. Any time spent removing that garbage is valuable time spent. 

It might not seem like it since removing technical debt isn’t a highly visible activity and, quite frankly, it’s nowhere near as exciting as new functionality. But that technical debt is almost certainly costing your organization time, money, and frustration.

Fortunately, there are many standard tools that are straightforward and free to use. Salesforce Optimizer is a great tool for getting key insights into the health of your org. Health Check also lets Salesforce Admins quickly identify and fix any vulnerabilities or security issues in the system. These two are great starting points and the AppExchange has many others that can help you identify and remove technical debt easily.

Look for unused fields that can be removed, outdated reports, code consolidation, and process builder consolidation. Make a plan to troubleshoot and reserve a portion of each sprint (if you use Agile methods) or a portion of your capacity (for instance 10%) to address it. 

3. Eat Mindfully: Add New Functionality Intentionally

You’ve developed a plan and determined how to address your technical debt. Connected to those two with efforts is the need to add new functionality intentionally.

It’s so easy to go to the Salesforce AppExchange, download a great new tool, and instantly have it at your fingertips. But if there’s no plan around adoption, implementation, and how it fits into your current system, it won’t matter how great the tool is if it’s unused. And when that’s the case, new functionality can subtract value rather than add it. 

In our experience, it’s crucial to consider how new functionality will impact others. Keep the focus on your current needs, what value it will specifically provide, how it will be used daily, and expected ROI. If you want to turn on new functionality that crosses teams, make sure they are brought along and bought into it first to ensure adoption. Surprises aren’t a great change management strategy. 

If for example, you want to turn on Marketo Sales Insight to give the sales team insight into marketing activities, you’ll want to consider a few things. First, do they already have another way they find this out? What other tools are currently in use and do they need to be limited instead to help focus the sales team?

If you start with the solution, you’ll certainly get the desired solution but you won’t necessarily answer the problem you’re trying to solve. That’s why we recommend thinking about outcomes rather than tools. Asking why will get to the root of the issue.

We also recommend learning about the features that are already included in your Salesforce subscription through Trailhead. Learn all of the functionality you can use with your current setup before adding other solutions to it.

The struggle against shiny objects is real. And there are a ton of great tools out there that can provide insight and efficiency. But the costs can really stack up when there’s no connected strategy underpinning them.

It may be an initial $5 per user per month but is it really? How many users need licenses? Will you need this tool forever? Is there a free tool instead? Or could it be a process builder? Just because something seems cheap doesn’t mean that it is. 

4. Exercise: Use The System! Reports Can Drive You Forward

In order for the system to work, you have to spend time on its continual improvement and the right reports will help you measure your org’s fitness.

First things first, define what metrics you’re going to use to measure your use of it. How will you know that you’re using the system effectively? What does it look like on a daily basis? Break down your big hairy goals into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound ones so you can make real progress on them. 

There are plenty of free, out of the box options you can use to measure these goals. Find the ones that suit your specific needs. You can define clear measures of success like how many demos are booked and how many calls are logged. 

Perhaps most importantly, make sure your behaviors are matching your goals. Once you’ve identified the goals, make sure you’re doing the things day to day that will support them. 

5. Save Money: Find Unused Licenses/Applications and Identify Cost Savings or Justify Your Spend

We say this often, but Salesforce is an investment for any organization of any size. And managing that investment wisely is crucial. Measuring system use on a regular cadence can help with this task. After all, making sure people are logging in and using the tool before you make new purchases can help inform your budget and expectations around it. 

Managing your license count and installed packages is also an important part of this process. What else are you paying for? Is it still bringing value to your organization? As part of your efforts to eat mindfully, are these other tools or functionalities something that should be pulled into Salesforce? Think about where you are spending money and time and what savings might be available there. 

This effort will also help when it comes time to justify your Salesforce spend. Pointing to specific optimizations that provide x amount of time saved is good for user experience and the bottom line. 

Things to consider: How many clicks does it take for your sales team to create a quote? Does it make sense to pull into Salesforce? Will it save your salespeople time? 

Also worthy of consideration, saving money doesn’t always mean cutting spending, it can also mean increasing efficiencies and improving customer experience. Time and effort are also valuable. 

With a little resolve and teamwork, you’ll be ready to take the new year by storm and make the most of your investment in Salesforce. 

Here’s wishing you a happy, productive, and prosperous new year from our team to yours.