Anyone here use Salesforce.com?

[TwinCities]

I'm looking at a variety of CRM's trying to figure out what the best one might be. It looks like Salesforce.com is king of the hill. I hate they bill 12 months in advance though!

Anyone have experience with Salesforce?

[Niktamer]

We do, its good for large operation. Else you can find formidable & affordable tools that do the job. It really depend on the size of your staff / rolodex /targeted markets.

We like the very good customization options, they have strong apis, quick support and billing... .

If you can make sure your teams use it, go for it.
You need to have leader or a strong strategy to make sure to implement it in the daily work culture.
If you can achieve that, sky is the limit.

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Just saw news that Salesforce is planning to lease a major portion of what will briefly be the tallest building in the Western US, the TransBay Tower, currently under construction in San Francisco (a taller tower is already underway in LA, and will open a few years after the Transbay, now Salesforce, Tower):

Salesforce on Friday announced that it will lease half of the Transbay Tower in South of Market once its completed, which is expected in 2017.

"It is clearly something we have been planning for," Mayor Ed Lee said at a news conference Friday morning at 50 Fremont St., the site of Salesforce's current headquarters.

The cloud computing company also announced that it expects to hire up to 1,000 new employees in San Francisco in the next year. Salesforce currently employees about 4,000 people in The City, according to the company.

ADG

[avalanche]

It's an incredible platform with nearly endless potential. At first it can be daunting, but if you spend the time to learn it and use it, you will love it!

[Naughty Webby]

It's good for huge companies with a tech team to support it, customize it for their workflows and sales cycles, etc. They like to brag about all the fortune 500s that use it. More power to them.

But just because it's good for big companies doesn't mean it's good for everyone!!!

For a smaller co, 50 or less users, it's probably terrible. Go with some lighter weight and more flexible.

Salesforce also make it extremely hard to get your data out if you change your mind. You'll lose some data for sure if/when you leave.

[avalanche]

Originally Posted by Naughty Webby

It's good for huge companies with a tech team to support it, customize it for their workflows and sales cycles, etc. They like to brag about all the fortune 500s that use it. More power to them.

But just because it's good for big companies doesn't mean it's good for everyone!!!

For a smaller co, 50 or less users, it's probably terrible. Go with some lighter weight and more flexible.

Salesforce also make it extremely hard to get your data out if you change your mind. You'll lose some data for sure if/when you leave.

I would definitely agree that it's not for everyone and not for very small shops.

However, I was having this same conversation last week and we likened it to OpenX. To some it is bloated and to complex to use, but if you want something scalable and powerful it is close to, if not the best available.

I wouldn't agree that you can't get your data out of it. We run a mirror of our SalesForce system for safety offline. The data is there and if you have a skilled staff to do the export properly you can get it out. It's really no different than any other database, it depends how intricate you make it... the more intricate, the more difficult it will be to successfully remove and setup elsewhere.

But, lastly, this is all partially what we love about SalesForce, you can highly customize it however you wish, it's really a blank slate.

[Naughty Webby]

Yes, but it will draw resources towards it that might be better used elsewhere. And the "tweaking" is never done. It really depends on the needs, and the resources at hand.

For simple contact management, it is way overkill. For a simple sales cycle / drip program I again feel it is overkill.

If you've never actually moved out of salesforce, you might be surprised how difficult it is and how much data will be lost. I'd talk to Salesforce about this issue before committing to them.

[TwinCities]

Thanks for the feedback guys. It is only a couple of us that would use the CRM and I too was worried Salesfore was overkill and going to be overcomplicated. I still haven't ruled it out though because it seems like almost every 3rd party app/tool out there integrates with Salesforce.

I was actually looking at http://www.nutshell.com too which does allow for some integrations as well. Anyone with experience with Nutshell?

[ajrocks]

I worked with SF for a long time. It is a great software package but it does really need to be customized to work for an online non traditional sales market. It's not geared toward affiliate marketing at all. The sales funnel it uses as it's foundation just doesn't jig right out of the box.

Using a CRM is a smart move on your part but you might need to look at investing some money into customization. Don't bother wasting your time with the free ware stuff; It's not worth investing your time into.

[TwinCities]

Bump for more feedback.

[NETbilling]

It was overkill for us so we switched to Zoho

[AdultKing]

I recommend Daylite for smaller operations.

[teomaxxx]

I am short CRM.

[corvette]

we use sf, it was tough to implement, but now that its setup, it is overkill, but looking at other products a few months back we considered before the yearly contract renewed, it seemed one of the most cost-effective solutions, then when you consider the cost of implementing the new system in, we decided to stick with sf

[Robin]

Salesforce is a great platform with a huge potential. However as many people said already it needs quite a lot of customization. For this you would require a dedicated tech support.
Besides all this is very easy to work with, helps you be more organized and put together good business strategies.
Easy to track all the actions of the people from the company that are using it. I wouln't recommend it for small businesses though

[BareBacked]

Originally Posted by avalanche

I would definitely agree that it's not for everyone and not for very small shops.

However, I was having this same conversation last week and we likened it to OpenX. To some it is bloated and to complex to use, but if you want something scalable and powerful it is close to, if not the best available.

I wouldn't agree that you can't get your data out of it. We run a mirror of our SalesForce system for safety offline. The data is there and if you have a skilled staff to do the export properly you can get it out. It's really no different than any other database, it depends how intricate you make it... the more intricate, the more difficult it will be to successfully remove and setup elsewhere.

But, lastly, this is all partially what we love about SalesForce, you can highly customize it however you wish, it's really a blank slate.

How many employees do you have using it?

[SykkBoy]

Like Mitch, we made the switch to Zoho for much of the same reason.

[iwiiiiiiiiii]

It depend what you want to do with your CRM. Salesforce is overkill for small business, I tested some opensource ones like openerp, it's cool, my wife uses capsule crm in google apps it does what she needs. There is also vtiger or the open source of sugarcrm. So really it depends on the features you're looking for.

[TwinCities]

It seems like the consensus is largely that it's overkill for small business. I was looking at http://www.pipedrive.com too which seems to have some great reviews.

[ilnjscb]

It depends on your business. All CRMs are complex if you want them to really add value.