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Forecasting Benefits

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As stressed before, planning is critical to the growth of any business. Part of that planning includes forecasting.

Forecasting is more than predicting. You can apply systems that actually help manage your sales process. Boost your sales efficiency. Affect your quotas through action. Prepare for contingencies. Identify process shortcomings. Get visibility into sales pipelines. You can coach and mentor salespeople with stuck opportunities. Forecasting improves the efficiency of your entire sales operation.

Forecasting also helps your marketing. You can add value to your customer relationships. Easily determine how many calls, emails, and campaigns you need to reach your goals.

Best of all you can automate these tasks with salesforce.com.
Request your free Live Salesforce Training forecasting datasheet for more details.

New Training Methods

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College of Future Could Be Come One, Come All - Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Training and education is taking on new dimensions. Online classes are connecting students globally. Knowledge and collaboration can be with over 100,000 participants. Courses began in computing and engineering where automated scoring is possible. Humanities tests are more subjective. Students score these tests. They follow guidelines developed by the professor.

These classes are massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Because of the huge number of participants, crowd-sourcing methods such as forums and student grading are characteristics of the classes. The low or no cost draws the large number of participants. It is still not clear how this model will be sustained and pay for itself. Organizations investing in the technology and committing resources must find a way to pay for it.

While becoming popular and offered by more and more educational institutions, it is clear that MOOCs are not substitutes for traditional learning. For one thing, recorded classes lack live interactivity with the instructor. Asking questions is obviously not possible. Forums are imminently less effective.

For the academic world and businesses, the ideal scenario is still live classroom instruction. This can be delivered online or onsite in a classroom setting. Recorded sessions are best if specific to individual needs. A hybrid combining live with recorded instruction can maximize results while keeping costs under control.

College of Future Could Be Come One, Come All

Training for 21st Century Jobs

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It is on the evening news, in newspapers and center stage in countless conversations. There are thousands of available jobs without skilled workers to fill them. This raises questions. Is our workforce to blame? Is it the lack of government initiatives? Are businesses at fault or is the core problem our educational system? The answer is likely a combination of all.

In our new economy, old skills are no longer in demand. As Tom Friedman notes in the accompanying article, “welding is now a STEM job — that is, a job that requires knowledge of science, technology, engineering and math”. Many well paying jobs that will keep Americans in the Middle Class require technology matched with traditional skills.

Our unemployment problems are not cyclical. Some manufacturing jobs will never come back. Colleges and trade schools are behind in teaching needed skills that can address unemployment and changing business needs.

Many believe that additional investments in education instead of cutting support are part of the solution. Otherwise, we cannot complain about technology jobs moving overseas. The current need for education is not to focus on literature, humanities and the arts. We need to focus and invest in an agile education system that provides workers with skills in demand instead of skills that are 20 years out of date.

 

How to Maximize Salesforce Adoption

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There are different reasons for Salesforce implementations failing. Here are two:

KISS – (Keep it Simple Stupid)

Organizations commit tremendous resources and energy to determining what they need from their salesforce instance. This is also known as needs analysis. Often different departments such as marketing, sales and service drive these determinations. At other times, IT heads the initiative. The resulting plan is frequently a complicated roadmap and equally challenging implementation.

When team members face a complex system, no one will use that system. All your best intentions and planning that went into the development of your instance is wasted.

Yes, but my business is different. I have extraordinary needs, etc. Good! Then you need to pay special attention: Keep it Simple. Help develop solutions that are easy to learn and easy to follow. Folks will use only what they can understand. Keeping it simple is the hardest job.

Training

This should be obvious. However, many companies miss the mark completely when it comes to training. This is true not just for salesforce training but for all training. Employees do not learn by osmosis or by following another employee.

Team members must have the skills needed to do their job. Just because they performed, the “same” function at another business does not mean they will know how to do their function with you. Your business is unique. Invest in the success of your employees. OK, I am convinced. What type of training should I provide? Since this is a salesforce blog, we will focus on salesforce training.

  1. Videos– can be helpful in learning some basic skills. The big issues are that a viewer is unable to ask questions or work interactively. Videos are a passive medium.
  2. Slide Shows– are also limiting in a similar manner to videos. Slides are passive without the ability to do exercises or ask an instructor questions.
  3. Tailored Curricula– create content to match your precise need and salesforce instance. This approach avoids the limitations of generic training that does not align with your industry and business methods.
  4. Instructor Led– the ideal instructor led training situations avoid videos and slides, utilizing a live salesforce instance. Classes should be small with 5-10 participants and questions should be encouraged. Interactivity and hands on exercises in a salesforce program are ideal.

To sum it up, “keep it simple” and “invest in your team”. Reap the benefits from an empowered workforce that is motivated and given the tools to excel.

Increase Adoption – Free Salesforce Training Videos

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Salesforce.com is one of the most, if not the most powerful tool any business can use. In order to get the most from the application training is a must. Adoption or the proper use of Salesforce is critical to your company in order to get the most out of Salesforce.

Training should be more than the mechanics of using the application. Individuals should also learn best practices. So if your organization wants to increase efficiency, business development, leads, closing ratios and ROI, start with these easy to use on demand Salesforce training videos. These sessions include Fast Start, Social Media – Twitter and Chatter, Administration, Data Types, Reports, Dashboards, and Custom Fields.

Over 35,000 individuals and some of the largest corporations benefit from opur training every day. Tell us what you think. Let us know what other salesforce training topics you would like covered.

Free Salesforce training Videos