Posted at 4:28 AM by Rakesh Gupta, on July 9, 2019
Salesforce’s State of Sales report contained the following findings: (1) the number of Inside Sales Reps, around the world, increased by 7% since 2015; (2) Sales Reps are spending significantly more time in front of a screen; and (3) yet, they only spend 32% of their daily time selling – the rest of their time is spent on (A) looking up information; (B) planning which leads to contact next; or, (C) closing tasks by wading through multiple systems. Ouch!! On average, the report finds that Inside Sales Reps use six different tools to do their job thereby, negatively impacting their ability to close new businesses. This has to change!!
High Velocity Sales
Salesforce High Velocity Sales at the rescue! It is a set of tools that automatically prioritize leads, based on the probability of its conversion, using Einstein lead scoring. The High Velocity Sales includes tools such as Einstein Lead Scoring, Sales Cadences, Work Queues, Lightning Email and Lightning Dialer (at an extra cost). Each of the above features makes the Inside Sales Reps more productive and efficient thereby, helping them to reach out to more leads in less amount of time.
Advantages of using High Velocity Sales, as an outreach tool, includes:
Speedy conversions by removing potential choke points or leakages.
Consistency set of specific and common procedures for reps to follow.
Monitoring and tracking the best activities for each lead.
Reviewing real-time rep progress on important KPIs.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of different prospecting initiatives.
Before going ahead, let us discuss the Sales Cadence.
What is Sales Cadence?
Acquiring leads is an important step in any marketing effort. Once Inside Sales Teams have a list of leads, they are ready to undertake outreach. But, wait! Let us take a step back and ponder following questions as a preamble to understanding Sales Cadence: (1) How often do you want your reps to reach out to leads? (2) How would you like them to reach out to lead – using call or email? (2) How do you want to capture call disposition? (3) etcetera.Read the rest of this entry!
Posted at 9:13 PM by Rakesh Gupta, on October 23, 2015
When there is a chance of further negotiations with a lead, it can be converted into an account,contact, optionally an opportunity. In short, once the lead status has reached a certain stage, it can be qualified as a potential. On conversion, all the lead details are transferred in creating an account, contact and optionally an opportunity. The lead conversion process is a manual process, if you want to automate it then you have to use Apexcode. This article will help you to understand how to automate lead conversion process using the Process Builder. Let’s start with a business use case.
Business Use Case
Pamela Kline is working as a System administrator at Universal Containers (UC). She had received a requirement a to auto convert marketing qualified leads (i.e. leads with Rating equals Hot) and create an account and contact record.
Solution for the above business requirement
There are few possible solutions for the above business scenario, but I’ll use Apexand Process Builder to solve this. Before proceeding ahead, you have to understandLeadConvert Classin Salesforce. To call anApex method, add Apexaction to your process and select an Apex class with an @invocable method Annotation. It allows us to extend theProcess Builderby writing Apexcode that meets certain criteria and then invoking the Apex from our Process. If the class contains one or more invocable variables, manually enter values or reference field values from a related record. @InvocableMethod Annotation support bulk operations.
Apex Method
Now, we have to understand a new Apex annotation i.e.@InvocableMethod. This annotation lets us use an Apex method as being something that can be call from somewhere other than Apex. The AutoConvertLeadsclass contains a single method that is passing the ids of the Leads whose Rating changed to Hot. Create the following class in your organization.
Public class AutoConvertLeads
{
@InvocableMethod
public static void LeadAssign(List<Id> LeadIds)
{
Database.LeadConvert Leadconvert = new Database.LeadConvert();
Leadconvert.setLeadId(LeadIds[0]);
LeadStatus Leads= [SELECT Id, MasterLabel FROM LeadStatus WHERE IsConverted=true LIMIT 1];
Leadconvert.setConvertedStatus(Leads.MasterLabel);
Leadconvert.setDoNotCreateOpportunity(TRUE); //Remove this line if you want to create an opportunity from Lead Conversion Database.LeadConvertResult Leadconverts = Database.convertLead(Leadconvert);
System.assert(Leadconverts.isSuccess());
}
}
Below mentioned Apex Class is now bulkified
Public class AutoConvertLeads
{
@InvocableMethod
public static void LeadAssign(List<Id> LeadIds)
{
LeadStatus CLeadStatus= [SELECT Id, MasterLabel FROM LeadStatus WHERE IsConverted=true Limit 1];
List<Database.LeadConvert> MassLeadconvert = new List<Database.LeadConvert>();
for(id currentlead: LeadIds){
Database.LeadConvert Leadconvert = new Database.LeadConvert();
Leadconvert.setLeadId(currentlead);
Leadconvert.setConvertedStatus(CLeadStatus.MasterLabel);
Leadconvert.setDoNotCreateOpportunity(TRUE); //Remove this line if you want to create an opportunity from Lead Conversion
MassLeadconvert.add(Leadconvert);
}
if (!MassLeadconvert.isEmpty()) {
List<Database.LeadConvertResult> lcr = Database.convertLead(MassLeadconvert);
}
}
}
Modify the above class as per your business requirement. Follow the below instructions to create a Process for the above business requirement.
1. Click on Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | Process Builder and click on the New button, Enter Name, API Name and then click on the Save button.
Define Process Properties
2. The next step is to add entry criteria. For this click onAdd Object, selectLead object and for the entry criteria, Select when a record is created or edited, as shown in the below screenshot, once you are done click on theSave button.
Evaluation Criteria
3. The next task is to add ProcessCriteria, To do this click on Add Criteria, enter Name, Type of action and set filter conditions(In this case set [Lead].Rating Equals Hot as shown in the following screenshot.
Process Criteria
4. The next step is to addan Immediate action to Process. Click onAdd Action(Under Immediate actions), Select the type of action to create (In our case Apex), and then fill out the fields to define the action, as shown in the following screenshot.
Add Action – Apex
Under Apex Classsection, It will list out all the classes that contain methods annotated with @InvocableMethod Annotation.
5. Once you are done, click on theSave button, it will redirect you to Process canvas. Finally, theProcess will look like the following screenshot.
Don’t forget to active the Process by clicking on the Activatebutton.
It’s time to test this feature
1) Navigate to the Lead tab, identify theLead record and click on Lead Name to open record detail page, as shown in the following screenshot.
Sample Lead
2) Now update theRating to Hot, as shown in the following screenshot.
After Update – Rating to Hot
Once you are done, click on the savebutton, It will display the similar screen as shown in the following screenshot
Converted Lead
Note: – I will suggest you to implement this first on your developer org, test it and then move it to production. The same approach will work for case assignment rule. Download Apex and Test class from GitHub.
