Salesforce Blog & Technical Advice - FMT Consultants Inc.

When your organization attends multiple events per year, capturing leads and entering them into your CRM can be time-consuming and inefficient. Sometimes, it takes weeks for your leads to receive follow-ups and nurturing emails from you. Here comes Pardot, a powerful marketing automation software that integrates with Salesforce. Pardot offers capabilities such as forms and engagement program to help your organization to collect leads and nurture them efficiently and effectively. We came up with a scenario where an organization can best utilize Pardot. Pardot helps Higher Ed reduce administrative work and expedite prospect follow-ups An Oregon university focuses a lot of their recruitment efforts at college recruitment fairs. Their process was simple. Representatives will hand a pen and piece of paper to interested applicants for their contact information. The admissions counselors would receive a stack of paper with the applicants' information for follow-up. While each student eventually received an email, […]

You have probably received emails from Salesforce telling you that in October with the Winter 2020 release, Lightning will be turned on. What does this mean for your organization? We answered some of the most frequently asked questions for you and also discuss how Lightning’s features can help your organization become more productive. Question #1. I’ve seen them, but what does that mean? Right now, if you are in Salesforce “classic,” you would have to click ‘Setup’ and flip a few switches to turn on Lightning. Keep in mind, those switches are going to be set to “On” this coming October. Question #2. How does that impact me? Well, it means that users who have the permissions to use Lightning will be able to switch back and forth between the two user interfaces. Question #3. So that doesn’t mean everyone will automatically be in Lightning and we won’t have Classic […]

The sales funnel metaphor is somewhat misleading; in real life, the process never goes as smoothly as liquid down a funnel. In the last decade, digital marketing, artificial intelligence (AI), and CRM have drastically changed the process of converting new leads into customers. Given this, it’s increasingly important that business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing teams are aligned in their views on a sales funnel strategy and lead generation as a whole. This article answers some common questions, including: How is the sales funnel defined? Why is the sales funnel still relevant? How do you align sales and marketing in sales funnel stages? How is the sales funnel changing? How do you manage and optimize the sales funnel? How do you balance human skills with data insights throughout the sales funnel? A simple definition of a traditional sales funnel A sales funnel represents the ideal path companies hope buyers take to […]

Today’s B2B marketer has a plethora of marketing tools to leverage, and nowhere is data and technology more prevalent than in B2B marketing. Let’s go through four B2B marketing trends poised to have the greatest impact through the remainder of the year and on.   An Omnichannel Experience We’ve heard multi-channel marketing thrown around for the past couple of years. Organizations transitioning from the multi-channel framework to an omnichannel strategy is a trend worth mentioning. With an omnichannel marketing approach look to see established marketing teams have success across digital environments extended reach regardless of channel or device. The days of siloed digital engagement and activities are gone, and companies are understanding the importance of creating a unified and consistent brand image no matter which channel they are using to engage their audience. Below we created a quick snapshot of what we’re talking about which includes only a handle of […]

It has been a few years since Salesforce launched Lightning Experience. Lightning is Salesforce’s latest component-based framework developed for users with less programming experience. It is designed to maximize sales rep. productivity, complete with analytics and in-line intelligence that will drive sales precision. Since the launch, Salesforce has been encouraging its customers to migrate from Salesforce Classic to Lightning.   Why should you move to Lightning? There are two main reasons why you should consider migrating from Salesforce Classic to Lightning: 1) All users will eventually be transitioned over and 2) Lightning has significantly more power. To expand on point #1, Salesforce recently released this statement: “Starting in October 2019 with the Winter ’20 release, Salesforce will turn on Lightning Experience for all organizations on a rolling basis. When it’s turned on, standard profile users and custom profile users with the Lightning Experience User permission enabled will see the ‘Switch […]