I recently had the pleasure of reading “Lightning Sales Ops” by Matt Bertuzzi. The book is available on amazon.com right here for UNDER A BUCK on Kindle. Or a printed copy for a reasonable $9.95 (at the time of this writing). I’ll share my blunt feedback here: EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK. I don’t care if you are an admin, consultant or developer. There’s two things here that are magic, which I’ll share below.
Philosophy
This is why the book is relevant for anyone. This book has serious HUSTLE. Imagine you are an admin for a call center with dozens of BDR/SDR reps (BDR/SDR = the people who fill the top of the funnel and make tons of phone calls every day). This book attacks the problem and challenges of these groups. It cuts to the heart of the staff’s job and comes up with a series of practical, useful solutions. Barely any of them require a semblance of code. It’s Admin Gold!
My takeaway from this is that I suspect there are series of similar fixes available for any user group in Salesforce, ever. Reading this book can give you a problem:solution analogy to your own situation. Look at the thought processes that are shared here and emulate them in your org. How can you craft simple, yet effective solutions? It’s an analogy:
BDR/SDR Problems:: Solutions presented in Lightning Sales Ops
YOUR Problems :: < < insert solution here > >
If you can see how these problems exist and solutions crafted, you’ve got a process or mental rubric to attack your challenges.
Second – Lots of good stuff.
I’m going to highlight some solutions that are in the book that are wonderful. Simple, yet effective. And the book does not just talk about these concepts, it gives you resources to build them. Actual formulas, flow layouts, and related resources so you can literally copy what’s there and have the same exact things in your org. It also has links to everything online so it’s easy for you to copy/paste syntax or formulas into your org.
- Ways to alert staff that there are duplicate records owned by other people
- Custom search button to look for suspected duplicate records
- “Search Google” button to make it a one click activity to open a pre populated Google search
- Detail on the Leads vs. Contacts conversion conundrum
- Construct and execute a pre-flight checklist in as few mouse clicks as possible so your team does not waste their time
- Improved flows and methods for lead assignment (works with any type of assignment including cases)
- Domain formula fields – use a customer’s email domain to see if there’s other “hits” in the system
- Visual indicators so reps know if someone else is actively working on a record
- Limit how many records a user can own at any given time
- Easy change owner processes
- Ability to flag high priority leads based on variable criteria
- Discussion on an internal service level agreement with the sales team to indicate acceptable behaviors and management of data
- Progressive notifications for hot leads to assure the team will not miss any
- Formula field which will exclude weekend dates from SLA calculations
- Linking campaigns to different depths of a given funnel stage
- Effectively use the lead status field through simplification
- Using Contact Status fields effectively
- How to optimize page layouts for your users (i.e. don’t think like a technician when building them)
- Build a way to automate collecting linkedin URLs
- Formulas to cut up territories based on area code of the lead
- Reporting on connect rates by hour and defining what a “connect” is
- How to setup and maximize the utility of Sales Path
- A whole bunch of ways to use tasks better
- Use process builder to formalize your sales cadence
- Use reports to enhance how you leverage your cadence, see what is effective and not effective
- Define qualification criteria and streamline the qualification process
- Make handoffs easier between BDR/SDR teams and Sales
- Enhance timestamps on all sales related activities – improve reporting!
- And then lots and lots and lots of reporting ideas!
Ok – so as you can see this small, inexpensive book is loaded with ideas that can save your users’ time, and have a DRAMATIC enhancement on your organization. I can’t recommend that you read it highly enough. And of course, if you need help implementing all of the above, give me a shout! 🙂
Disclosure – I’m friends with Matt. He’s a great guy but I wouldn’t promote his book unless I thought it was great. I’m receiving no compensation for writing this post except maybe an extra high five next time we meet.
