Salesforce Lead vs. Opportunity: Explore the Difference RevOps 10 min Salesforce leads and Salesforce opportunities. These terms might be the first to welcome you as you enter the Salesforce world.  However, comprehending these terms is nothing short of vital. This article takes a deep dive into these two crucial terms within Salesforce to help you understand their roles, distinctions, and tips to make the most of them.  We will also explore the conversion process and understand when to convert a lead into an opportunity and why it matters.  Let’s begin. What is a Salesforce Lead? A lead is the initial stage in the customer acquisition process in Salesforce. It represents a potential customer or business entity interested in your product or service.  However, their interest has yet to evolve into a concrete sales opportunity. Leads are often individuals or organizations that have interacted with your company somehow. Some common examples include filling out a contact form on your website or attending a webinar. Let’s consider a software company, XYZ Tech, offering a project management tool. They launched a marketing campaign, and as a result, several professionals expressed interest in the product by signing up for a free demo on the website.  At this stage, these individuals are considered leads within Salesforce. The company has their basic information, like name, email address, and the source of their interest (the marketing campaign), recorded in the CRM system. However, being leads, these individuals have yet to reach the point where they are ready to purchase. They may need further nurturing, information, or engagement to evaluate whether XYZ Tech’s project management tool aligns with their needs.  As XYZ Tech’s sales and marketing teams interact with these leads, providing insights and addressing queries, some may gradually progress to the next stage: becoming opportunities.  What is an Opportunity in Salesforce? An opportunity reflects a distinct stage in the sales pipeline of the Salesforce CRM ecosystem. At this stage, a lead or potential customer has advanced beyond initial interest and is now a qualified prospect with a real chance of making a purchase.  Opportunities are critical in tracking and managing the sales process, as they provide a structured framework for sales teams to pursue and close deals. Each option includes the potential revenue, probability of closing the deal, sales stage, and expected closing date. All these aspects provide a comprehensive overview of the sales potential associated with a prospect. To illustrate the concept of better, let’s return to our example with XYZ Tech. After some time nurturing the leads generated from their marketing campaign, the sales team at XYZ Tech identified a lead named John Smith, who has shown interest in their product. John has held multiple discussions with the sales representatives and attended a product demonstration. He has also expressed his intent to implement the software for his organization. At this point, John transitions from being a lead to becoming an opportunity within Salesforce. The CRM system may now contain the following information about the potential sale:  Estimated deal value,  The stage of the sales process (e.g., “Proposal Sent”) The probability of closing the deal based on historical data and the current circumstances (e.g., 70% chance of closing) The expected closing date (e.g., within the next 30 days). Salesforce Leads vs. Opportunities Understanding the distinctions between leads and opportunities is critical to managing and nurturing potential customers through the sales cycle. While both play pivotal roles in customer relationship management, they serve different purposes within the sales process. Here are some critical differences between Salesforce leads vs. opportunities. Difference 1: Stage of the sales cycle Leads Leads represent the earliest stage in the sales cycle. They are potential customers who have shown initial interest but have yet to be fully qualified or ready for direct sales engagement. Opportunities Opportunities reflect a more advanced stage in the sales process. They indicate that a lead has progressed to the point where there is a genuine potential for a sale. Difference 2: Information depth Leads Leads contain basic contact information, like name and email address. It also includes the source of their interest. They may also have limited data on their specific needs. Opportunities Opportunities include more comprehensive information. They include details on the potential deal size, probability of closing, current sales stage, and expected closing date. The depth of data helps track and forecast revenue. Difference 3: Purpose Leads Leads serve as a starting point for identifying potential customers. They require further nurturing and qualification to determine if they are genuinely interested and their needs align with the offered product or service. Opportunities Opportunities are actionable prospects that have passed the initial qualification phase. Sales teams focus on opportunities to pursue a sale and close deals actively. Difference 4: Conversion process Leads You can convert leads into contacts, accounts, or opportunities when they meet specified criteria and exhibit higher interest or readiness. Opportunities Opportunities come from leads that have undergone a qualification process and are now considered promising prospects. They don’t convert into other Salesforce entities but are worked upon to reach a successful sale. Difference 5: Sales tracking Leads Leads help track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and lead-generation efforts. This is because they represent the starting point of customer interaction. Opportunities Opportunities provide critical insights into the progress of potential sales. They help sales teams prioritize deals and forecast revenue more accurately. When Does a Lead Convert into an Opportunity? The decision to convert a lead into an opportunity in Salesforce is critical in the sales process. It requires careful consideration and strategic judgment.  While the specific criteria for conversion may vary, here are some best practices that should guide this decision-making process. 1. Qualification and engagement Before converting a lead, assess its level of qualification and engagement. Has the lead demonstrated a genuine interest in your product or service? Have they engaged in meaningful interactions with your sales or marketing teams? Qualification may involve the lead’s budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT). 2. Information

7 Salesforce Data Quality Tools for 2025 RevOps 10 min Salesforce data quality tools are like trusty detectives for your business data.  They carefully inspect and analyze your data to make sure it’s accurate, consistent, and reliable. With these tools, you can confidently make important business decisions based on high-quality data that you can trust.  When it comes to handling data from different sources like social media, logs, email, and databases, you need a reliable solution that can effectively scrub, manage, and analyze all that information.  With the right tools in place, you’ll be equipped to tackle any data challenge that comes your way and make the most out of your diverse data sources. What is Data Quality? Data quality is all about having good, reliable data that you can trust. It’s like having a sturdy foundation for your business decisions.  That means no more errors, duplicates, or messy data that can lead you astray. When your data is accurate, complete, and consistent, you can make confident choices and take actions that will drive your business forward. Related Blog: Do You Trust Your Salesforce Data? To ensure data quality, essential processes include data ingestion, profiling, parsing, cleansing, standardization, matching, execution, deduplication, merging, and exporting. Each step contributes to refining and improving the data for effective analysis and utilization. Why Do you Need Salesforce Data Quality Tools? Having high-quality data is a game-changer for organizations.  When you can rely on accurate and reliable insights, it becomes a catalyst for smarter business processes and decision-making. Not only does it save valuable resources, but it also boosts your organization’s efficiency and profitability.  But what are the consequences of bad data? When you’re working with data that’s inaccurate, incomplete, or unreliable, it’s like walking on thin ice. You run the risk of making poor business decisions, flawed strategies, and unreliable analytics. Related Blog: 5 Salesforce Products to Boost ROI in 2023 Inaccurate data can wreak havoc on your business, leading to a multitude of issues like incorrect customer addresses, incomplete records, missed sales opportunities, unreliable financial reporting, and more. These missteps can have a significant impact on your bottom line, reputation, and overall success. By leveraging good data quality software, you can ensure that your business maintains high-quality data, meeting both international and local regulatory requirements. This, in turn, enhances your business agility and efficiency, enabling you to make informed decisions and drive better outcomes. Check the gaps in your salesforce reports, with an no-obligation free CRM scan report. Scan my CRMDownload Sample Report Top 7 Salesforce Data Quality Tools 1. Nektar Nektar is an AI for RevOps that automates all customer information and contact and brings them together, revealing insights that are normally not visible in CRMs. With AI-powered CRM automation, Nektar revolutionizes the Salesforce experience and delivers unmatched return on investment (ROI). Sellers simply forget to update the CRM. This lack of adoption leads to poor data quality, which means revenue leaders don’t get the insights they need. It’s a waste of money. That’s where Nektar comes in. Pricing: Nektar’s pricing is flexible depending on the business and solutions required. Nektar also offers a free CRM checkup to identify key gaps on where revenue is being lost in the sales process. 2. ZoomInfo ZoomInfo is a tool that provides comprehensive sales and marketing intelligence. It offers accurate contact information, deep insights into companies, and the ability to identify buying intent. With ZoomInfo, you can personalize your outreach, stay updated on target accounts, and integrate seamlessly with other systems. It empowers sales and marketing teams to find, engage, and close deals with their ideal customers. Pricing: ZoomInfo offers various pricing packages tailored to different business needs, and they can provide customized pricing based on your specific requirements. 3. Ambition Ambition is a performance management and gamification tool designed to help organizations drive employee productivity and achieve their goals. It provides a range of features and functionalities to motivate and engage employees, track performance metrics, and provide real-time visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs). Pricing: The pricing details for Ambition can be obtained from the software provider or through publicly accessible pricing materials. To make a purchase of Ambition, it is recommended to engage in final cost negotiations with the seller. 4. CirrusInsights CirrusInsights is a tool that integrates Salesforce with your email and calendar, providing a seamless experience for sales professionals. It offers a range of features to enhance productivity and streamline workflows. Pricing: Cirrus Insight offers four pricing editions ranging from $4 to $29, with a free trial available. Explore the editions to find the one that fits your needs and budget. Salesforce Sync $10/year/user Pro  $21/year/user Expert $29/year/user Sync+ $4/month/user 5. HelloSign (Dropbox Sign) Hellosign is an electronic signature platform that allows businesses to securely sign and send documents online. It simplifies the signature process, eliminates the need for paper-based workflows, and enables businesses to streamline their document management. Pricing: Free $0 Essential $15/month Dropbox +eSign $24.99/month Standard Starting at $25/month 6. Ringlead Ringlead is a comprehensive data management platform that helps businesses improve the quality and accuracy of their customer data. It offers a wide range of features and functionalities to enhance data management processes and ensure data integrity.  Pricing: Pricing information for Ringlead may vary depending on the specific needs and requirements of your business. It’s recommended to reach out to the Ringlead team for detailed pricing information and to discuss the best plan for your organization. 7. Clearbit Clearbit is a data enrichment and intelligence platform that helps businesses gain valuable insights about their customers. It provides a wide range of features and functionalities to enhance data quality and drive personalized experiences. Pricing: Clearbit’s pricing may vary depending on the specific needs and requirements of your business. It’s recommended to reach out to the Clearbit team for detailed pricing information and to discuss the best plan for your organization. Make your Salesforce a self-healing data-packed CRM with Nektar! Get a demo! Conclusion Salesforce is one of the steepest investments in your tech stack. But low adoption rates and poor

Unlocking Efficient Growth With a RevOps Function In this blog, we discuss with Eric Welsh how you can give up the hunt and turn to RevOps to drive efficient growth. RevOps 10 min The hype for “growth at all costs” has died down in the last year. Budget freezes across organizations have pushed leaders to drive efficiency with the resources at hand.  Now, it’s all about doing more with less. And the concept is quickly gaining ground among leaders because they can drive efficient growth by keeping costs low.  But how exactly are they doing it? And is it efficient enough with limited funds?  Those are the questions we sought answers to in our conversation with Eric Welsh. Eric is the Director of RevOps at Demostack and has been in RevOps and its adjacent spaces for nearly a decade.  This blog digs into his wealth of experience to bring you insightful nuggets for driving efficient growth. You can also view the full conversation below.  Ep #7: Driving Efficient Growth With RevOps ft. Eric Welsh Defining Efficient Growth for Businesses Today We’ve witnessed, in the last few years, that market conditions can change instantly. At the same time, aggressive growth encouraged companies to raise funds, invest, hire, and innovate quickly.  But when following an efficient growth mindset, the primary question you need to ask yourself is—are you growing in a way that constantly needs funds to survive and thrive? And if the answer’s “yes,” your growth isn’t efficient.  Instead of solely focusing on raising funds, your goals must adapt to the evolving business environment. That means you should be able to drive efficient growth even when the funds dry up with the resources you have so far in your journey.  It begins with paying attention to early cost warnings, allocating and reallocating resources as needed, and facilitating transformational growth (as opposed to just rapid growth).  You need to push for cleaner, more transparent, and standardized process flows that avoid a lag in scaling. It also means you may have to turn to digitization and automation to maximize your resources.  What Makes Revops the Perfect Choice to Drive Efficient Growth? Revenue operations or RevOps is an end-to-end operating model that helps organizations run their business in an interconnected way across GTM functions like sales, marketing and customer success. The function’s primary responsibility is driving visibility and accountability among leaders, stakeholders, and teams to: Identify new opportunities  Improve win rate and conversions  Plug data and revenue leaks Optimize workflows and processes Boost profitability Refine the customer experience  As Eric points out, RevOps is based on 4 key pillars—Process, Data, Platforms, and People.  Given that it advocates and strives for efficiency in every single action, it’s no wonder the function is becoming increasingly popular for businesses: B2B companies investing in RevOps have experienced 10-20% increases in sales productivity. If your reps are productive, your revenue process is more efficient and has a better chance of succeeding. Leadership positions in RevOps topped the list of fastest-growing job titles in the US this year. And Gartner predicts that 75% of the highest-growth businesses globally will deploy a RevOps model by 2025.  RevOps moves beyond a conventional approach that segments individual teams. Instead, it strives to create balance, better communication, and collaboration among functions—bringing them together.  The result? It maximizes your revenue while simultaneously minimizing costs.  Problems That Revops Solves for Today’s Efficiency-Focused Businesses Businesses face prevailing challenges that snowball into revenue leaks and inefficiency. Here are 3 key challenges that could affect efficient growth.  1. Buyers Want More, but Are You Ready for It? 85% of sales reps met or exceeded their sales goals in 2021. That number dropped a little in 2022 to 82%. While that may seem like a small figure, it’s a big jump in 12 months.  The underlying cause is that buyers want more, but not all sellers can live up to these expectations.  Buyers want more solution-based pitches showing how the product aligns with their use cases. But your reps may focus on the old-fashioned product approach (which comes across as more sales-y). Customers also want sellers to personalize their pitches and have more interactions to discuss the solution. In comparison, reps may be caught up with finishing non-selling tasks and filling up the pipeline.  A lack of effort and understanding at the rep’s end could cost you a long-term customer. 2. Pipeline Visibility Is Poor As much as 71% of revenue professionals report that their marketing, sales, and customer success functions are not fully aligned. That translates into a lack of visibility into the customer journey through the sales pipeline.  Poor quality data is to blame here, primarily data that remains stuck in silos between revenue teams. If they don’t have access to complete and accurate data across the funnel, they can’t talk to each other and exchange information. Subsequently, you miss profitable opportunities. 3. Inaccurate Predictions Slide Into Forecasts 16% of salespeople attribute unrealistic quotas as one of the top reasons for sales job turnover. But where do these unrealistic quotas come from? Inaccurate forecasts.  As much as 80% of organizations don’t have a forecast accuracy greater than 75%.  To sum it up, inaccurate forecasts cost you earnings and employees. In the larger scheme of things, this may also ruin your reputation among customers and job seekers alike.  Faced with the above 3 challenges and limited funds, businesses are now looking to invest in solutions that are hard-wired for efficiency. Subsequently, this efficiency evolves into effective revenue growth.  We’ll see, in more detail, how RevOps has massive potential to drive efficient growth and business profitability.   How Revops Drives Efficient Growth for Businesses Eric sums up RevOps’s purpose so clearly. It’s the problem-solver, troubleshooter, and growth-focused sibling of all operations functions.  This ability to solve problems and do it with resources at hand is what makes RevOps a frontrunner for navigating efficient growth. Here are 8 ways RevOps can help: Data hygiene & orchestration Refined alignment Streamlined tech stack Better forecasting Leadership buy-in Consistent performance tracking Improved rep productivity Happy customers  Let’s dive into each one of them below. 1. Data Hygiene & Orchestration You can make the

Nektar.ai Recognized as a High Performer in G2’s Summer 2023 Report Celebrate Nektar.ai’s success! Explore why they’re a High Performer in G2’s Summer 2023 Report. Discover their exceptional offerings today. Product In G2’s Summer 2023 Grid Reports, Nektar.ai has been recognized as a High Performer in the ‘AI Sales Assistant’ category. Less than 4 quarters since our global launch and less than 2 quarters since we’ve been listed on G2, this is a testament to the value and impact our customers have experienced with Nektar. Being an AI-enabled revenue efficiency platform, Nektar helps eliminate the problem of: Siloed revenue data across marketing, sales, customer success tools Stale, incomplete, and incorrect contact and activity data in Salesforce Broken visibility and monitoring of the customer journey and lifecycle (because of the data siloed in function-specific tools) Navigating multiple dashboards and spreadsheets to get meaningful insights   Outperforming the Average Rating Across Every Parameter Nektar is one of the few solutions in the category that has outperformed the average rating across all parameters. 100% agreed Nektar offers high-quality customer support (category average 96%) 100% affirmed Nektar is easy to do business with (category average 96%) 99% believe Nektar met their business requirements (category average 95%) 98% said Nektar is easy to set up (category average 94%) 97% agreed Nektar is easy to use (category average 95%) 96% said Nektar is easy to manage (category average 95%) What our Customers Say What our customers love about Nektar: Nektar filled in a major gap when migrating from Hubspot to SFDC by retrieving historical emails. Instead of starting out w/ bad data in SFDC, we had extremely accurate activity and contact data. Beyond that, Nektar captures all email communication in SFDC without requiring a plugin or our reps to take any action. No longer do we have to remind reps to log things or instruct them to download a plugin. – Ben K., Director of Sales, ArmorCode Nektar.ai has been a game-changer for us in terms of capturing and utilizing buyer and activity data to make better decisions and close deals faster. – K. Hastu, Vice President of Growth, MoEngage The fact that our Salesforce today is filled with contacts and activities that would have been otherwise remained buried in inboxes and calendars is a gift. All this with zero need for adoption – literally, nobody in Zluri had to do anything. This powerful automation by Nektar is remarkable.  – Rohit R, Marketing, Zluri Nektar offered a more direct sync into our CRM that was less error-prone and didn’t require setup by our customer-facing reps. Thanks to the historical sync, we saw Day 1 benefits across functions and systems.  – Alex Dyson, Senior Manager of Revenue Operations, Signifyd Nektar came in and automated data capture, preventing data leaks and saved hours of sales reps’ time, thus enriching the database and leading to better insights that we can trust.  – Manohar Nandigam, Sales Enablement Lead, MoEngage Inc What problems is Nektar solving for its customers? Nektar has allowed us to make more informed decisions and unlock the true potential of our sales pipeline.  – K. Hastu, Vice President of Growth, MoEngage We were dealing with a significant leakage of our activity data in our CRM and Nektar helped add 3000+ activity and 150+ contacts during our seamless onboarding process, without any user adoption needed.  – Bryant Krieger, Director of Revenue Operations, Archipelago  Getting all of our Prospect and Customer data into Salesforce.com. Nektar helps fill in our data gaps which saves us valuable time. In the past, I’ve seen sales teams struggle to update Salesforce.com, Nektar makes capturing every Contact and Activity simple for us via automation. No more waiting on sales reps to update Salesforce!  – John Aguilar, Senior Director Sales Operations, Lily.ai Nektar helps to get all the buyer data into Salesforce and fills in the gaps that would have taken 50+ weekly revenue-generating productive hours from the sales team on a weekly basis. No more waiting on anyone to update Salesforce!  – Karthik Rajaram, Senior Sales Operations Manager, MoEngage Inc With Nektar we were able to identify 2000+ contacts that was buried across communication channels and 70% of our buyer activity got added back to SFDC.  – Raghu R., Sales Ops Manager If you’re solving for revenue leaks and struggling with bad CRM data, you need Nektar. Come talk to us. In this blog

How to grow to 10 Mn ARR faster! Master the art of accelerating growth to $10M ARR smoothly and avoid common pitfalls on your startup journey! Sales Sales Leadership You started with a great idea, managed to put the funds and founding team together, went through weeks and months of burning midnight oil, endless iterations, deep frustrations and necessary pivots. You have reached a point where you are now part of the lucky few (less than 10%) startups that hit that elusive product market fit and potentially graduate from seed to series A stage. You are looking to move up the gear now and push the growth pedal. Perfect! Nothing seems to be in your way and you are nearing that definitive $1Mn ARR mark, that seemed “impossible” at some point in time, and can’t wait to scale your business to a 10X from there. You see the demand for your product, you see the opportunity ahead. Boosted by the success you have had so far in building the product and your team, you want to accelerate the rocket ship, but a lot can go wrong as one pushes this growth pedal. There is a treacherous path that awaits you, what you do now can easily turn the intended blitz scale into a blitz fail.   What not to do? Lose focus & spread yourself thin!   #1 biggest mistake founders make at this stage is chasing new shiny things that they see or get introduced to, be it new market segments, new categories, new areas where you have zero or almost no traction. It’s easy to get swayed in trying a lot of things to grow faster and lose the focus which got you to your product-market fit. We all want to grow faster. Almost none of the founders and their investors are happy with the monthly growth rate once they hit the $1Mn ARR mark. And that’s when mistakes happen aplenty. Skip stages & put fire on fuel! A lot of founders skip stages to hit the $1Mn mark faster. The number is not as important as the learning and experience in identifying the problem that resonates with the customers and users and solves them in a way that’s differentiated from other options out there. The point to push the growth pedal will come soon but before that one needs to be able to create a scalable sales playbook and processes which are backed by a solid understanding of your customer’s needs, where and how to find your customers, how to approach them, how to engage them in a conversation, gain a deep understanding of the value offered, and the ability to help solve a customer’s problem. Scaling too soon will result in putting the fuel on the fire. The proven route to scale from $1Mn to $10Mn efficiently! Double down on what is working. Period. If SMBs are your core, stay there, at least until $10m ARR. Do not chase customer segments where you have zero, or only a token, traction. It’s too late to make these segments work as you’ve already established your initial, organic customer traction and segmentation. Segment & analyze your customer and put proportionate effort into your customer segments that work. Break your customers into say small, medium and larger segments and calculate the revenue breakdown. If 50% of your revenue is smaller customers, 30% medium and 20% large, align your energy and efforts proportionately. Go with your solution to similar customers who have the same “Hair on Fire” problem that you originally solved to hit the product market fit. Optimize effort of your resources on what matters most. Align your marketing budgets, product time, development resources, sales headcount in line with the proportion of business from successful customer segment and the identified sweet spot. Don’t go after super enterprise customers if that’s not your core. Same way, don’t go for a freemium model if that didn’t work before $1Mn ARR. Don’t get distracted. Adding anything new that did not work before is just going to distract everyone now. Continue to do Step 1. Invest in customer success: Go all-in on customer success. Get your net promoter score above 60. Done well, customer success will become the second-order revenue and convert your startup into a mini-brand that drives revenue acceleration. Make your existing customers happy and they will both buy more from you, and get you more customers. Hire a real management team. Every startup hits a wall around $4-$5 Mn ARR and it’s needed to have your VPs join in by this time. In term of the sequence, hire a VP Marketing definitely before or by the time you hit $1Mn, followed by VP Customer Success, VP Sales, VP Product, VP Engineering, VP Finance. As a rule of thumb, get a VP for an additional $1Mn in ARR is a safe strategy. Always be looking for great candidates, spend 20% of your time on hiring. Raise prices, definitely for the new customers while you grandfather early adopters(get them to give you references, reviews and testimonials). Your value delivered goes up and thus should be your price. Most startups have a problem with their product being underprice until they hit $1Mn ARR. Justify the premium pricing you would want your new customers to pay by becoming a stronger brand, delivering better value and offering a wider feature set. Move to value selling model. Measure what works & what doesn’t. Build an operational cadence and rigour to run all initiatives and functions through data. You will get a lot of questions answered if you look at data first. Get others in the team to do the same. Align the team on strategy: Set ambitious goals but make sure you align the whole company behind that. It’s important to maintain the culture of transparency and support with your team while you get onto the scaleup journey. Build foundation pillars. Make sure you can transition to self-serve solution which is sales assisted and not get onto the debate of self serve vs sales assisted. Providing a great

How Activity Tracking Can Help You Get Better Visibility into Deals RevOps 10 min There hasn’t been a time that demanded sustainable revenue growth more than now. Economic headwinds of the last few months have forced businesses to rethink their revenue growth strategies and focus on efficiency. This means getting away with anything that does not make a positive dent in revenue or causes revenue to leak across the sales funnel. But cutting deep costs is not the only way to increase profits. It’s about doubling down on what’s working. And investing time and resources in strategies that help the whole company march towards the same objective – increased revenue.  And there is one sure shot way of achieving this. By knowing exactly what’s happening with your deals. And how can you do that? Activity tracking. Let’s dive deep.   What is Activity Tracking? Activity tracking in sales refers to monitoring and recording the various actions and behaviors undertaken by sales professionals as they engage in their sales activities. It involves tracking and measuring the specific activities performed during the sales process, such as the number of calls made, emails sent, meetings scheduled, demos conducted, and deals closed. The purpose of activity tracking in sales is to gain insights into the sales process, assess individual and team performance, and make data-driven decisions to improve sales effectiveness.    What is an Activity Tracking Software? An activity tracking software is designed to monitor and record the various activities performed by sales representatives or teams. These activities typically include interactions with leads and prospects, customer communication, follow-ups, and other sales-related tasks. The primary purpose of activity tracking software is to help sales managers and team leaders assess and improve the productivity and effectiveness of their sales teams. Why Do We Need Activity Tracking? Accurately and comprehensively capturing activity data poses a significant challenge. Despite 67% of businesses utilizing 4 to 10 digital tools, they need to track the activity data generated by these tools completely and precisely. Additionally, 79% of opportunity-related data sales representatives collect never enters the CRM. Moreover, the data recorded in systems like CRM could be more reliable, plagued by issues like outdated, missing, or incomplete entries. This lack of data accuracy is a concern for as many as 70% of revenue leaders, leading to substantial financial losses averaging around $15 million per year for organizations. The presence of accurate and complete activity data in systems like CRM creates misalignment among teams in terms of their technological tools and objectives. When sales teams grapple with questions about updated prospect contact information or the correctness of email IDs in the CRM, their efficiency could improve, positively impacting both businesses and customers. Due to lacking confidence in the data, sales, and marketing teams work in the dark, unable to leverage the full potential of significant investments like CRMs. This situation results in poor returns on investment for such resources.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO6zZpHUoIg&t=1s How Does Poor Activity Data Affect Revenue? Poor data and a lack of activity data in the CRM can harm gaining accurate insights and lead to revenue leakage throughout the customer journey. Here are some key points to consider: 1. Inaccurate or incomplete data When data quality is compromised, it becomes challenging to extract meaningful insights. Only complete or updated information can lead to correct assumptions and flawed decision-making. 2. Missed opportunities Important customer interactions and touchpoints may go undocumented without comprehensive activity data. This lack of visibility can result in missed opportunities to engage prospects, address their needs, and nurture relationships, leading to potential revenue leakage. 3. Ineffective sales strategies The absence of activity data hinders the ability to analyze and optimize sales strategies. Without a clear understanding of which activities drive results, aligning sales efforts with customer preferences and needs becomes difficult, resulting in suboptimal outcomes. 4. Inefficient resource allocation With activity data, it’s easier to assess the productivity and effectiveness of sales teams. This can lead to misallocation of resources, including time, effort, and budget, resulting in revenue leakage and diminished returns on investment. Clean data is essential for Activity Tracking Software as it ensures accurate and error-free information, leading to reliable insights into sales team activities and facilitating better decision-making and performance analysis. With clean data, the software can provide a comprehensive view of sales interactions, prospect engagement, and customer behavior, enabling businesses to identify opportunities, optimize processes, and enhance overall sales efficiency.  Moreover, clean data minimizes the risk of misinterpretation or skewed reporting, fostering greater trust in the software’s output and empowering sales managers and teams to take data-driven actions to achieve their goals. Benefits of Activity Tracking Software Here’s a look at the various advantages of an activity tracking software: 1. Clear visibility into deals Increased visibility into deals serves as a prerequisite for enhancing productivity. When you have comprehensive activity data, you better understand each deal’s status, identify areas that require improvement, and prioritize values that need immediate attention.  Consider the importance of deal reviews in a successful sales process. By utilizing insights derived from unified activity data, deal reviews can evolve from impromptu events to impactful sessions, where sales managers gain clear visibility into the intricacies of every deal.  As activities related to each deal are automatically captured and updated, managers no longer need to remind sales representatives to input data into the CRM constantly. Instead, both reps and managers can access a comprehensive view of contacts and deal specifics within the pipeline, allowing them to focus on urgent matters. 2. Identification of winning rep behaviours Activity data enables you to correlate the productivity of your sales representatives with their performance. For instance, you can obtain crucial insights to answer important questions such as:  Activity data helps map sales reps’ productivity to their performance It provides answers to critical questions such as time allocation, engagement with high-value customers, decision-maker involvement, adherence to best practices, sales target progress, account engagement, and lead follow-up Insights from activity data serve as leading indicators for real-time coaching and decision-making Managers gain

Unlocking Data Success: How RevOps Can Transform Data Hygiene for Companies Data hygiene is an essential prerequisite for revenue growth. Read about the role RevOps can play in championing this cause. CRM RevOps In today’s hyper-competitive business landscape, organizations are increasingly recognizing the indispensable value of data in driving growth. However, the sheer volume, velocity, and variety can pose significant  data cleaning challenges. Data hygiene issues can hinder decision-making, customer experiences, and overall operational efficiency.  As a RevOps team, you need to be able to help all teams. A big part of it is making sure all the different tools and systems are connected. RevOps is there to plan, help with processes, building process paths and writing those out. It is also the keeper of truth. When it comes to numbers, we need to ensure that people have actionable data, and we help them with the best process to move forward.  – Trent allen, revenue operations manager at maxio In this blog, we re-look at our conversation with Trent Allen, Revenue operations manager at Maxio – the financial revenue operations platform. We discuss Revenue Operations (RevOps), and how it can offer a strategic approach to address data hygiene concerns to unlock untapped potential. Listen to the full conversation here: Ep #9: Championing Data Hygiene With RevOps ft. Trent Allen Let’s begin with what’s data hygiene and how RevOps can help solve the issue of unclean data: What is Data Hygiene? Data hygiene refers to the practices and processes used to ensure data’s cleanliness, accuracy, and reliability. It involves maintaining and improving data quality throughout its lifecycle, from creation to disposal. Organizations can minimize errors, inconsistencies, redundancies, and other issues impacting data integrity and usefulness by implementing data hygiene measures. Data hygiene is crucial in RevOps by ensuring accurate, reliable, high-quality data across all revenue-related functions. Clean data enables informed decision-making, as it provides accurate insights and trends. Check out our entire conversation with Trent, around Revenue Operations, and how it can facilitate data hygiene. https://youtu.be/-Zi6T1Ny9jI?si=BEKxKMTmlCLGwzsb What is RevOps? And What Role Does Data Hygiene Play in it? RevOps, short for Revenue Operations, is a strategic approach that aligns and integrates an organization’s sales, marketing, and customer success teams. It optimizes revenue generation by breaking down silos, improving collaboration, and streamlining processes across these departments. RevOps teams typically work on aligning sales and marketing strategies, implementing and optimizing sales processes, managing and analyzing customer data, and leveraging technology tools to improve operational effectiveness. RevOps ensures a cohesive and coordinated approach toward revenue generation by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success efforts. It promotes better communication, eliminates inefficiencies, and enables data-driven decision-making. A critical aspect of coordinating various departments is ensuring the cleanliness and accuracy of data, which is where data hygiene comes into play. RevOps recognizes that high-quality data is essential for making informed decisions. By implementing data hygiene practices, RevOps teams work to cleanse and maintain data integrity, eliminating errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies. I think a big part  is making sure all the different tools and systems are connected and that the data is passing between them fluidly, so that the end-user can save their time.  – Trent allen, revenue operations manager at maxio How Can RevOps Facilitate Data Hygiene? A company’s data is like a garden—a vast expanse of information, ripe with potential. However, just like a garden, data requires meticulous care and attention to thrive. This is where Revenue Operations (RevOps) steps in as the expert gardener, armed with the tools and strategies to ensure optimal data hygiene. Here are a few ways in which RevOps can contribute to maintaining clean and accurate data: 1. Data Governance RevOps can establish data governance policies and standards across the organization. This includes defining data quality metrics, data validation rules, and data ownership responsibilities. RevOps ensures that data is managed consistently and effectively by setting clear guidelines. 2. Data Integration and Alignment: RevOps teams work towards integrating data from various sources, including sales, marketing, and customer success systems. They can identify and resolve inconsistencies, redundancies, and inaccuracies by aligning data from different departments. This process improves data integrity and ensures a single source of truth. 3. Data Clean-up and Enrichment Data cleaning and enrichment includes reviewing and updating customer and prospect information, eliminating duplicate records, and correcting errors or inconsistencies. This enhances data accuracy and reliability. 4. Data Analytics and Reporting Data analytics tools and techniques can provide insights into customer behaviour, revenue trends, and sales performance. RevOps identifies patterns, anomalies, and data quality issues by analyzing data. This information helps in addressing data hygiene challenges and improving overall data quality. 5. Training and Education RevOps teams can train employees across departments on data hygiene best practices. This includes educating teams on data entry standards, data maintenance procedures, and the importance of data quality. By increasing data literacy within the organization, RevOps promotes a culture of data hygiene. Clean data ensures accuracy, integrity, and reliability, leading to improved decision-making and strategic planning. Data hygiene enhances operational efficiency, as it reduces errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies that can hinder processes. You want to be careful about what you allow to be manually input, if the data is flowing to your center of truth, then it can have a huge impact. Every team has a different model, and with us, we have made RevOps to be the centralized pillar of truth for the company.  – Trent allen, revenue operations manager at maxio Benefits of Having a Data Hygiene Strategy Let’s have a detailed look at the various benefits of Data Hygiene:  1. Accurate decision making Clean and accurate data serves as a reliable foundation for making informed decisions. By ensuring data integrity, organizations can trust the information they rely on, leading to more accurate insights and better decision-making at all levels. 2. Improved operational efficiency Data hygiene minimizes errors, redundancies, and inconsistencies in data. This leads to streamlined processes and increased operational efficiency. Clean data allows employees to access and use relevant information quickly, saving time and

10 Tips for Efficient Pipeline Tracking RevOps 10 min When times are tough, you need twice as many opportunities to close one deal. And to get more opportunities, you need quality prospects. A sales pipeline can give you an overview of what your selling cycle looks like. But how do you zero in on the right deals? How do you know they won’t fall flat a month down the line? Meticulous pipeline tracking is the answer. It brings sales reps closer to the moment of truth – will the deal close or not? Let’s get started. What is Sales Pipeline Tracking? Pipeline tracking puts every deal under the scanner.  It tells you how each one stacks up in terms of revenue potential – which deals are likely to convert, by when, and what stage they are currently in. Reps can then work backward from the goal and focus on the ones that will give them the best chance of hitting quota.  Let’s understand with an example. Let’s say your conversion rate for the month is 12% on a pipeline worth $1 million.  To achieve a quota of $300,000, you will need to double the number of opportunities you have lined up. Many people think the sales pipeline and sales funnel are the same.  There’s a difference, and it’s this: Sales pipelines represent the sales cycle from the seller’s perspective.  Sales funnels visualize it from the other side – the customer’s perspective. Related Resource: 5 Ways to Improve Your Sales Pipeline Visibility With sales pipeline tracking, you can: Pinpoint lagging deals and take steps to revive them. Estimate how many deals are likely to close in the next month or quarter. Analyze sales productivity by individual or team and see if they are doing the right activities. Share actionable advice on the best way forward. Make deal forecasts more accurate Identify opportunities for sales optimization What are the Components of Pipeline Tracking? Pipeline tracking has three key components: 1. Opportunity Stages These stages show the relative position of a deal since entering the sales funnel. 2. Conversion Rates This is the rate at which leads turn into opportunities and opportunities into sales. 3. Pipeline Value This is the total dollar value of the pipeline as a whole. It represents the total revenue potential of every active opportunity. 10 Tips for Efficient Pipeline Tracking For pipeline tracking to be effective, sales teams must: 1. Define the right pipeline stages Pipeline stages like ‘closing’ or ‘negotiation’ can be confusing for reps in the middle of a busy day.  To be fair, many sales managers use the default stages available in Salesforce or other tools.  But this ends up affecting pipeline visibility, forecasting accuracy, and revenue numbers.  The key is to: Be as specific as possible when describing each stage. For example:  ‘first call – no answer’ or ‘quote sent for approval.’ Make sure that pipeline stages relate to the sales process. Have a limited number of deal stages – no more than 7. 2. Define clear exit criteria for each stage Now that we’ve defined our pipeline stages let’s think about the exit criteria for each.  You can do this through a series of Yes/No questions based on the status of an account.  Depending on the deal stage, a few good questions could be: Has the rep qualified the customer by asking relevant questions? (Needs Analysis stage) Is the rep in contact with the economic buyer or the champion? (Initial Meeting/Needs Analysis stage) Has the customer confirmed they’re OK with the proposal/ mutual action plan? (Proposal stage) Has the customer agreed to sign the contract? (Negotiation stage) Clear exit criteria enable reps to move deals from one stage to another with ease.  Why not specify review criteria so reps can clean up their pipeline too?  You can benchmark the average closing time per rep and then track the following: The number of days a deal has been open The number of days since the last activity The expected close date mentioned by the rep In any case, tell your reps to reach out one last time before dropping a lead. You never know if they might have a future requirement. 3. Define the right pipeline metrics Pipeline metrics play a key role in setting KPIs and sales quotas based on the goal.  Some key metrics are: a. Number of new leads This is the total number of new leads entering the pipeline. Many businesses track new leads by source. Others prefer to track them at the opportunity stage. b. Pipeline value This is the total projected value of the opportunities you currently have. c. Conversion rate This includes converting leads to opportunities or closing opportunities into deals. d. Sales Cycle Length This represents how long it takes your reps to finally close a deal. Other key pipeline metrics include: Annual recurring revenue Average revenue per user Average deal size Pipeline velocity Related Resource: 15 Sales Metrics You Must Track 4. Streamline lead scoring Why do some opportunities score high but don’t convert?  And what about opportunities you didn’t pay much attention to but ended up closing?  If this happens too many times, it could be a sign that reps are not qualifying leads enough.  And this could create bottlenecks a couple of months down the line.  Review your lead scoring criteria – plus the lead qualification methodology.  This can help focus on opportunities with the best potential for closing. 5. Prioritize pipeline reviews Many sales managers focus all their attention on late-stage (negotiation) deals.  And that’s important from the revenue point of view.  But sales reps do need a big-picture view of the pipeline as a whole.  Pipeline reviews can help identify the winnable deals earlier in the funnel and find ways to achieve quota.  Managers can verify the ‘real’ opportunities and coach accordingly.  Now, it’s not possible for busy sales teams to have pipeline reviews every day.  But managers can share pipeline reports so that reps know what’s going on. Beginning of the 90-Day Phase: Vision and Execution 6. Customize Salesforce

7 Salesforce Reporting Tools to Consider in 2025 RevOps 10 min Salesforce reporting tools are vital assets for businesses that want to go beyond just acquiring leads and closing deals. These comprehensive solutions are a game-changer for sales leaders who want to ace their sales and customer relationship management. Salesforce reporting tools also enable data-driven decision-making, which is a must-have for a successful business. If you are looking for a reliable reporting tool for Salesforce, you are in the right spot. This article will explore the top seven options offering various features and salesforce reporting capabilities to address your reporting needs. So, let’s get started. What is a Salesforce Reporting Tool? Salesforce‘s reporting tool is a data reporting software that helps extract, organize, and analyze data from the Salesforce platform. The platform provides users with functionalities to transform raw data into meaningful insights. As a result, it helps businesses make informed decisions, track performance, and drive growth. Salesforce reporting tools offer varied capabilities to cater to diverse reporting needs. They empower users to create customized reports and dashboards, visualize data in various formats, and drill down into specific details for deeper analysis. These tools also integrate seamlessly with Salesforce’s data model, allowing users to leverage the full potential of their sales data without the need for complex coding or technical expertise. 8 Salesforce Reporting Tools for 2023 Let’s look at the top Salesforce reporting tools in 2023 you can consider for your business: 1. Tableau Tableau is a powerful Salesforce reporting tool that offers seamless integration within the Salesforce ecosystem. With its built-in reporting module, Tableau allows users to connect directly to Salesforce data and create interactive reports.  Tableau’s ability to embed visuals directly within the Salesforce application sets it apart, providing users with a cohesive experience. Moreover, data can be securely passed back and forth between Tableau and Salesforce, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of your data throughout the reporting process. Key features: Full information availability Self-service analysis and visualization Data blending Knowledge and skill sharing 2.G-Connector G-Connector bridges the gap between Salesforce.com and Google Spreadsheet, enabling efficient data exchange between the two platforms. With G-Connector, users can effortlessly connect their Google Spreadsheet to Salesforce.com, allowing manual and automatic data synchronization.  The versatile tool offers multiple methods to create data snapshots in Google Sheets, ensuring flexibility and convenience. A standout feature of G-Connector is the ability to set up a shared Google spreadsheet, enabling the Sales team to enter and update sales data in one central location easily. Key features: Automatic data exchange Snapshots of Salesforce data Single shared Google spreadsheet Notifications for team members 3. Jotform Jotform is a supercharged online form builder that offers a number of subproducts and features, eliminating manual data entry and automating your workflow.  It makes generating Salesforce reports effortless by allowing users to collect data and create beautifully designed dashboards & dynamic reports – all automated and ready to go at any time. Jotform also offers a handy analytics tool so you can keep track of where you are with your projects easily. Key features: Dynamic reports and dashboards Analytics and visualization Integrations to automate other apps including Salesforce Building complex workflows with approval flows 4. Klipfolio Klipfolio offers a cloud platform app for building real-time business dashboards. Users can create highly customized dashboards with tailored metrics and data visualizations fueled by multiple data sources, including Salesforce.  The tool connects businesses to hundreds of data sources, ensuring comprehensive and up-to-date reporting. The beauty of Klipfolio lies in its flexibility and accessibility, as the dashboards can be monitored from anywhere, on any device. As a result, Klipfolio enables businesses to gain real-time insights and easily make data-driven decisions. Key features: Flexible data connection Highly customizable metrics and data visualization Data mashups Publish data to TV wallboards Pre-built content 5. Conga Composer Conga Composer is a robust Salesforce reporting tool that empowers businesses to create error-free, templated digital documents directly within Salesforce. The application automatically populates richly-formatted templates with data from Salesforce.  Businesses can effortlessly generate reports, proposals, contracts, and other important documents, saving time and ensuring accuracy. In addition, seamlessly merging Salesforce data into customized templates streamlines the reporting process. It enables businesses to create professional documents easily. Key features: Generate documents in multiple formats Store documents wherever possible Accurate, consistent, pixel-perfect documents 6. Smartsheet Smartsheet is a Salesforce reporting tool that aims to increase the productivity of sales teams. It also enhances visibility into sales operations while maintaining the established workflows. With Smartsheet, collaboration and sharing become effortless across both Salesforce and non-Salesforce users, eliminating the need for manual data exports to spreadsheets.  The tool streamlines the reporting process by enabling auto-synchronization between Salesforce and Smartsheet. It eliminates redundant steps and allows teams to manage their pipelines efficiently. Key features: Synchronize Salesforce data to Smartsheet to make bulk changes Set criteria for real-time alerts Real-time data with advanced sharing across teams Auto-synchronization between Salesforce and Smartsheet.   7. InsightSquared InsightSquared offers several advanced features to enhance your sales operations. With real-time updates, InsightSquared’s RevOps dashboards provide immediate access to critical data. As a result, you can stay on top of your business performance in real time.  The tool’s Activity Capture feature generates insightful reports on your team’s activities and seamlessly shares the data. In addition, automated activity tracking eliminates the need for manual updates, boosting your sales team’s productivity. Key features: Real-time updates of RevOps dashboards Activity Capture  Analytics and visualization Current Challenges in Salesforce Reporting Let’s explore some of the challenges in Salesforce reporting and how you can overcome them: 1. Data complexity and integration Sales data can originate from various channels, including CRM systems and marketing platforms. Integrating and consolidating this data into a cohesive reporting framework can be daunting. Organizations must invest in robust data integration solutions and ensure data quality and accuracy to overcome this challenge. 2. Manual and time-consuming processes Many businesses still need to rely on manual processes for sales reporting, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. Extracting data from multiple sources and creating