Lead qualification blends two measurement indexes—scoring and grading—to create a full picture of a prospect’s interest and suitability. You define how important various interactions with your marketing content and website are by assigning point values to activities with a score. You define how valuable specific information about a prospect is with a grade. In this way, defining an ideal score and grade to identify your ideal prospect creates a lead qualification model for your business.

Lead Qualification Process

Let’s look at how Get Cloudy creates a lead qualification model for its business. To create the model, the team will go through the following steps.

• Discovery: Align with Sales and Marketing teams.
• Data: Collect and integrate data.
• Define: Develop ideal prospect and profile thresholds.
• Engagement Metrics: Set up an automated marketing process.
• Monitor: Monitor, fine-tune, and iterate on data.

And Alli has the following criteria.

Example of Lead Scoring:

To create a custom formula field in Salesforce for lead scoring based on the number of employees and the industry, follow these steps:

1. Identify the Fields Involved

• Number of Employees: This is typically a standard field on the Lead object.
• Industry: This is also a standard field on the Lead object.

2. Create a Custom Formula Field for Lead Score

• • Go to Setup in Salesforce.
  • Navigate to Object Manager and select Lead.
  • Click on Fields & Relationships.
  • Click on New to create a new field.
  • Choose Formula as the field type and click Next.
  • Enter a Field Label (e.g., “Custom Lead Score”) and the Field Name will auto-populate.
  • Select Number as the return type, and specify the Decimal Places (usually 0 since lead scores are typically whole numbers).
  • 
  • Click Next to proceed to the formula editor.
  • 
  • After creation of custom formula check the Lead score.
  • Open the leads tab and select one record give industry as “Technology” and employee number was 250.
  • 
  • After that check the lead score.
  • 
  • The lead score was 20.
  • Later than give employee number was 50 and verify the lead score.
  • 
  • Now the lead score was automatically updated to 5.
  • 

Opportunities Management

Opportunity management in Salesforce Sales Cloud is a core feature designed to help sales teams track and manage potential sales deals from start to finish. Here’s a brief description and some practical examples:

Description:

• Opportunities in Salesforce represent potential revenue-generating deals. They allow sales teams to manage the entire sales process, from initial lead qualification to deal closure.
• Each opportunity is linked to an account and can have related contacts, products, stages, and activities.
• Salesforce offers various tools and features to manage opportunities, such as forecasting, reporting, and automation.

Practical Examples:

• Tracking Sales Stages:
  • Description: Opportunities progress through different stages, such as “Prospecting,” “Qualification,” “Proposal/Price Quote,” and “Closed/Won.”
  • Example: A sales representative logs a new opportunity with a potential client. The opportunity starts in the “Prospecting” stage. As the rep gathers more information and the client shows interest, the opportunity moves to the “Qualification” stage, and eventually, after negotiations, to “Closed/Won.”
• Forecasting Revenue:
  • Description: Salesforce allows sales teams to forecast potential revenue based on the value and probability of closing each opportunity.
  • Example: A sales manager reviews the pipeline and sees that the total value of all opportunities in the “Proposal/Price Quote” stage is $500,000, with an 80% probability of closing. This helps the manager forecast potential revenue for the quarter.
• Automated Follow-ups:
  • Description: Salesforce can automate follow-up tasks or emails based on opportunity stages or activities.
  • Example: When an opportunity moves to the “Proposal/Price Quote” stage, Salesforce automatically creates a follow-up task for the sales rep to check in with the client a week later. Additionally, an automated email can be sent to the client to thank them for considering the proposal.
• Opportunity Products:
  • Description: Opportunities can be associated with specific products or services, allowing for detailed tracking of what is being sold.
  • Example: A sales rep adds different software packages to an opportunity, each with its price and quantity. This helps in creating accurate quotes and tracking what products are driving revenue.
• Opportunity Teams:
  • Description: Multiple team members can collaborate on an opportunity by being assigned different roles, such as Account Executive, Sales Engineer, or Legal Advisor.
  • Example: For a large deal, the sales rep adds a sales engineer to the opportunity team to assist with technical aspects of the proposal and a legal advisor to handle contract negotiations.
• Pipeline Reports and Dashboards:
  • Description: Salesforce provides reports and dashboards to visualize the sales pipeline and monitor the status of opportunities.
  • Example: A sales manager uses a dashboard to see how many opportunities are in each stage, the total expected revenue, and which deals are at risk of being lost. This helps in making data-driven decisions and prioritizing efforts.
• Close Date Management:
  • Description: The close date is a critical field in opportunities that helps in planning and forecasting.
  • Example: A sales rep sets a close date for an opportunity based on the client’s decision timeline. If the deal is delayed, the close date is adjusted accordingly, which updates forecasts and alerts the manager to potential pipeline slippage.
• Competitor Tracking:
  • Description: Salesforce allows you to track competitors associated with opportunities to analyze win/loss reasons.
  • Example: A sales rep logs that a competitor is also vying for the same deal. After the opportunity is closed, whether won or lost, the rep records the competitor’s influence and the reasons, providing valuable insights for future deals.

Account and Contact Management

Account management in Salesforce Sales Cloud involves various features and functionalities to manage and maintain customer information effectively. Here’s a breakdown of the key components and capabilities:

1. Accounts:

• Accounts represent organizations, companies, or individual customers that you are tracking in Salesforce.
• You can associate accounts with contacts, opportunities, cases, and more to get a complete view of your relationship with each customer.

2. Contacts:

• Contacts are the individuals associated with an account. Each account can have multiple contacts.
• Contacts hold personal information such as name, phone number, email, and role within the company.

3. Opportunities:

• Opportunities are potential revenue-generating deals associated with accounts. They track the sales process from the initial lead to close.
• Opportunities are linked to accounts and help in forecasting and pipeline management.

4. Activities:

• Activities include tasks, events, and emails related to an account. They help track customer interactions and ensure follow-ups are completed.
• Activities are crucial for managing customer relationships and ensuring timely communication.

5. Cases:

• Cases represent customer issues or requests associated with an account. They help in tracking and resolving customer service issues.
• Cases can be escalated, tracked through various stages, and reported on to ensure customer satisfaction.

6. Notes & Attachments:

• You can attach files, notes, and other documents to an account to store important information.
• This ensures that all relevant data is accessible from one place.

7. Account Hierarchies:

• Account hierarchies allow you to represent the parent-child relationships between different accounts.
• This is useful for managing complex organizational structures or different branches of the same company.

8. Reports and Dashboards:

• Salesforce provides powerful reporting tools to analyze account data, such as sales performance, account activities, and pipeline health.
• Dashboards give a visual representation of key metrics to monitor account performance.

9. Automation (Workflows, Process Builder, Flow):

• Automate routine tasks such as updating account information, sending notifications, or creating follow-up tasks.
• Triggers can also be used to enforce business rules, such as preventing the deletion of accounts or automatically creating related records.

10. Integration with Other Systems:

• Salesforce can be integrated with other systems like ERP, marketing automation, or custom applications to ensure seamless data flow and maintain a single source of truth.
• APIs, middleware, or AppExchange apps are often used to facilitate these integrations.

11. Customizations:

• Custom fields, page layouts, record types, and validation rules can be configured to match your business processes.
• Salesforce also allows for more advanced customizations through Apex code and Visualforce pages.

12. Security & Sharing:

• Account data can be protected using Salesforce’s robust security model, which includes role-based access control, sharing rules, and field-level security.
• This ensures that only authorized users can view or edit account information.