B E S T P RA CT I C E P A P E R
Strategies for Selecting Sales Apps from
the AppExchange—and Beyond
Abstract
Balancing expected benefits
against required investments is at
the heart of many business
decisions. To help you make those
decisions, this article shows how
various sales application
categories compare, provides an
overview of popular sales
applications, suggests an
approach for choosing between
them, and provides ideas on
where to go from there.
.
The AppExchange gives salesforce.com customers an easy way to address business needs across the organization.
The only problem is choice: With hundreds of preintegrated, on-demand applications available, you may be
wondering where to begin.
Although AppExchange applications are not limited to sales solutions, examining which solutions would benefit
your sales organization is an excellent starting point, because automating sales-related processes can quickly
increase profits and drive competitive advantage. Keep in mind that different types of sales applications differ in
the value they provide and the resources they require, so it’s important to weigh each application’s unique value
proposition carefully against associated resource requirements.
This article provides an overview of how sales applications compare on this continuum and gives you suggestions
for a general approach to choosing applications that includes the following steps:
1. Determine company goals
2. Review available sales solutions
3. Evaluate solutions and vendors
4. Extend solutions to the service and marketing areas
5. Extend solutions beyond CRM
1. Determine Company Goals
As a first step, you’ll want to determine which of your sales processes could be improved. To get started, outline
your overall sales process, looking for key barriers to selling. You can then prioritize processes, look at the
applications that support those processes, and evaluate them in terms of the business benefits they provide versus
the resources required to deploy and maintain them. To help you in this task, we’ve mapped common applications
that support typical sales processes along those lines.
Typical Business Benefits vs. Level of Resources Required
for Various Sales Applications
Sales Configurator for
Field Sales
More
Resources
Sales Configurator
for Electronic
Commerce
Incentive Compensation
Integrated with Opportunity Mgt.
PRM for Sales
Lead Generation Apps.
Sales Analysis
Forecasting/Pipeline Mgt.
Sales Content Mgt.
Presentation Builder
Level of
Resources
Call Scripting
Funds Mgt.
PRM Suite
Sales Configurator for
Inside Sales
Opportunity Mgt.
with Sales Methodology
Proposal Gen. & Quote Gen.
Opportunity Mgt.
Order Mgt.
Promotions Mgt.
Queue & List Mgt.
Account Mgt.
Don’t assume that the sales
applications with the greatest
business benefits and fewest
required resources are necessarily
the best for you. Instead, use this
framework to understand relative
benefit and resource requirements
for those applications that best
support your sales strategy.
Contact Mgt.
Data Enrichment Services
Wireless
Apps for
Field Sales
Less
Resources
Low
Business Benefits
High
Figure 1: The Level of Resources axis estimates the amount of effort, cost, and total resources required to deploy and maintain an
application. The Business Benefits axis estimates the results attainable through improvements in sales effectiveness and sales
efficiency.
2. Review Available Sales Applications
The primary goal of implementing sales applications is to achieve higher profits, which is based on two primary
sources: increased sales effectiveness and increased sales efficiency. In addition, there are many “soft” benefits
associated with streamlining sales processes, such as better time management, the ability to access systems
remotely, and improved communications for all involved.
Applications that Support Sales Effectiveness
Sales effectiveness is a prime contributor to an organization’s "top line," or revenue. The following are examples
of applications that drive increased sales:
::
Presentation builders help salespeople create consistent and effective customer presentations.
:: Lead generation applications identify and funnel quality leads to salespeople, so they can spend more time
selling and closing deals and less time canvassing for business.
:: Proposal and quote generators make it possible to deliver accurate, timely, and well-packaged proposals
and quotes, so that opportunities are not missed because of an inability to generate a response.
:: Sales configurators make it possible for field sales to customize a product at the point of sale. This process
gets the customer involved in visualizing the product, which increases close rates and provides opportunities
for up-selling and cross-selling.
:: Promotion management applications allow sales managers to create rebates and promotions to drive
channel revenues for particular products in defined geographies for a fixed period of time.
:: Funds management applications provide visibility into the utilization of partner marketing dollars to
gauge how funds are being used and to determine which funds are driving the highest ROI.
:: Sales methodologies help sales organizations define and agree on common, enterprise-wide sales processes.
Tight integration between a chosen methodology and the sales software used is vital to achieving optimal
sales effectiveness.
:: Sales analysis or analytics enable sales organizations to perform data analysis, to plan for and measure the
effect of selling activities.
Applications that Support Sales Efficiency
Sales efficiency has an impact on profit and operating margins. The following are examples of applications that
increase profit margin:
:: Incentive compensation applications link commissions to margins, motivating sales reps to sell a more
profitable mix of products.
:: Order management applications increase the speed and accuracy of the order process while decreasing the
associated costs.
:: Partner Relationship Management (PRM) applications help organizations support the entire partner
management life cycle, driving partners to more effectively generate sales revenues by providing tools to
manage and track their sales opportunities.
:: Data-enrichment and account intelligence services put crucial data and insights—information that would
take a user hours or days to find—right inside the Salesforce system. Armed with this insight, sales
organizations can more effectively develop account relationships that yield more value in less time.
Applications that Deliver Sales Volume and Profit Margins
The following are examples of applications that contribute to both sales volume and profit margins:
::
Call scripting applications guide sales personnel through a sale with branch scripting and dialogs, to help
them increase their close, up-sell, and cross-cell rates.
:: Sales content management applications provide salespeople with easy access to the most up-to-date
versions of key information, such as pricing, collateral materials, and product descriptions. Using such
applications can dramatically reduce the cost of storing and delivering sales materials.
Strategies for Selecting Sales Apps from the AppExchange—and Beyond
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3. Evaluate Applications and Vendors
Once you identify and prioritize the sales applications on your short list, you’re ready to shop for and try out
various applications on the AppExchange. Keep in mind that you can further customize applications to meet your
unique needs and that you can install, test, and customize applications in the AppExchange Sandbox. This process
will probably result in several candidates for each application category.
To help you narrow the field, we suggest you evaluate each application—and the vendor that provides it—
according to a set of criteria, such as those shown in Figure 2. As you can see, Ease of Use is weighted heavily—
since salespeople are notorious for not wanting to use technology, we suggest you closely evaluate the
application’s user interface; in particular, look for those that closely match the Salesforce user interface. You may
also want to consider salesforce.com certification, which ensures the application's security, reliability, and quality.
As part of the certification process, applications and services are subjected to a 300-point test plan that includes a
security audit, an integration and functional design review, functional testing, and an audit of a reference
customer.
Application Evaluation Criteria
Figure 2:
Suggested
weighting
Business requirement match
15%
Ease of use
15%
Ease of administration
15%
Ease of implementation
15%
Price
10%
Supplier service and support
5%
Total cost of ownership
5%
Customer references
5%
Solution architecture
5%
Salesforce.com certification
5%
Your rating
Use a worksheet like this one to help you decide between different applications and vendors.
4. Extend Solutions to the Service and Marketing Areas
While your salespeople are getting up to speed on new sales applications, start evaluating other business areas.
Here we suggest that you look at the processes in your customer service and support or marketing areas, since
these areas typically have the greatest impact on revenue generation and customer retention.
To help you prioritize on-demand applications in these areas, Table 1 shows the consolidated results from various
market research sources, including our own quarterly customer survey, to show which applications are in high
demand. Some of these applications, such as Web Self-Service or Case Management, are available as core
Salesforce capabilities. Others, such as High-Volume Email Campaign Execution, are available for downloading
from the AppExchange directory.
Strategies for Selecting Sales Apps from the AppExchange—and Beyond
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About the Author
Prior to joining salesforce.com as
our CRM Success Expert, Wendy
Close served as a CRM research
director in Gartner, Inc.'s research
organization for more than 11
years. During her years at
Gartner, she developed more than
200 research reports on various
aspects of CRM—from sales
automation to customer
experience management to
contact center management.
Table 1
In industry and salesforce.com surveys, respondents indicated high interest in the following applications (listed in
alphabetical order) in the Service and Support and Marketing areas.
Customer Service and Support
Marketing
Advanced knowledge/content/document management
Call scripting
Call scripting
Customer satisfaction surveys
Case management
Data cleansing/data quality services
Collaboration and conferencing tools
Events management
Computer telephony integration (CITI)
High-volume email campaign execution
Customer service analytics
Managing and tracking online advertising services
Defect tracking
Marketing resource management
Enterprise feedback (customer satisfaction surveys)
Wendy has spoken at numerous
CRM conferences and events,
has been quoted on the topic of
CRM more than 1,000 times in
various journals and publications,
and has provided CRM advice to
many of the biggest and most
successful companies in the
world.
Knowledge-enabled service resolution
Most recently before joining
salesforce.com, Wendy was
Gartner's lead analyst on CRM
strategies, technologies, and
suppliers for midsize businesses,
midsize divisions of the large
enterprise, and small firms.
Web self-service
.
Professional services automation
Project management
Quality assurance
Service-level-agreement-management
5. Extend Solutions Beyond CRM
Because of the simplicity and power of the AppExchange, organizations around the world are downloading and
building applications for business processes that cross functions and departments. So if you hear co-workers
complain about a lack of tools and spreadsheet nightmares, pull them aside and show them how applications on
the AppExchange could solve their problems. One of the benefits of the AppExchange is that you can solve shortterm tactical issues while keeping long-term strategic goals in focus.
Also, as you’re addressing problems in your own organizations, consider sharing that success with the larger
salesforce.com community. If you’ve built a custom application (or components) that might be helpful to other
companies, look into packaging the application and listing it on the AppExchange.
Resources
:: Salesforce.com: AppExchange for Dummies
:: Gartner Inc., Sales Applications: Balancing the Pain and Gain, April 23, 2003
:: Gartner, Inc., What’s Hot in the World of CRM Applications, March 1, 2006
For a wealth of additional information about extending on-demand success with the AppExchange, go to
www.successforce.com
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