BEWARE. It's too easy to create a trial for yourself. I was trying to work out how to connect SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud and ended up creating a Trial of the full SalesforceIQ app. This is going to be annoying for them in a few weeks when so many people need to cancel their trials and delete all their data.
Once connected to your gmail it immediately sucks in all your contacts, and (I don't know how many) emails. This all or nothing approach is not cool. Let me connect, then bring in only contacts with a particular group applied to them.
First Impressions
Chrome Extension
- It's a bit slow to open up. But Salesforce generally is in Australia.
- It's a bit slow to refresh the side panel, but so is Cirrus.
- It defaults to a Read Receipt on each and every email - again all or nothing approach is not cool. It is trying to be "easy to set up" but it is a bit over the top. Probably similar to all the bagging that Windows 10 got when it was first released. Go to settings in your Chrome extension and uncheck that.
- It also shows the Log Email popup after you send an email. Again that could get annoying.
- I have found ALL gmail extensions to slow down Gmail so much that it's unusable. I'm finding my Gmail excruciatingly slow at the moment. Lets see if I can last with this extension.
Emails, tasks and notes
- It's ALL about the emails.
- It's all very tasks focused. I'm a big believer in not having tasks, because organisations use them too much for command and control of their staff, which is futile. (I even did a talk on this at a local agile conference).
- Meetings - it brings in all my meetings, including my personal ones. I don't like this. But that's more of a gmail limitation than a SalesforceIQ issue.
- I don't know what is happening, but even emails to people I have set up in SalesforceIQ are not being logged.
Easy
- It's all meant to be so easy - no setup - just get in there and go.
- But there is some setup you can do, to make things work better, so don't just log in and do nothing with it.
- It's all about lists - think spreadsheets.
Cool bits
- I like how you can have your lists as Accounts or Contact based.
- Automated Activity Reporting.
- Intelligence fields - Last Communication, last communicator, Next meeting Date, Days in Current stage - these are things that are hard to do in Salesforce and even impossible to do in Group Edition. This is good.
- I like the stream view of lists - that with filters turned on is a great way to see what is happening or update your lists.
- Ooh, I do like how it immediately finds the Twitter account for the company and puts it in the sidebar panel - that is almost like Nimble CRM then.
Weird bits
- The sample data is not obviously sample - eg Acme corporation.
- I don't like how records added to a list are added to the first status only.
- It has a chatter like interface that is not chatter. I think in needs to be called chatter or at least "the feed" to bring it into line - it is the Stream - seems weird.
- It has "Quick Text" that is not Salesforce Quick Text. I think it needs to be called Quick Text.
- Also, Quick Text can't have merge fields, which is why the fabulousness of the Cirrus Insight chrome extension for Gmail just beats anything SalesforceIQ can do.
- I don't know where their search for companies is coming from, but it could NOT find one of my clients at all. I hope it's not a US based data source like data.com.
- I would really really like to remove the whole closest connections feature. For a small team it means nothing, and just sits there showing you your own photo. It really should be an option.
- So, you sync in all your contacts from Google, but they are in a bit of a mess. SalesforceIQ has a nice Contacts manager, pretty similar to Google's. Merge a contact in SalesforceIQ, however, and it does NOT merge in Google. This is going to get very messy very fast. But I reckon it is a limitation with the Google Contacts API. This is why I don't believe Contacts should exist anywhere except in Google Contacts, and why tools like Evercontact are sooo good.
Not useful bits
- Wow, you really can't track an email for a contact that is not on a list? How annoying is that! That makes the low end version of SalesforceIQ with one list almost impossible to use. Unless you have a field on your list for Type of Contact maybe. Hopefully I'm missing something.
- Even as a a micro business, I still have all sorts of different people I want to track - clients, leads, suppliers, co-partners working on the same project, clients' suppliers, clients' app vendors, and I want to track emails against them.
- It does not appear in the lower end version plan, but even as a micro business, I don't think I can get away with using the lower end version plan.
- You can't add additional contacts fields, but you can add additional Accounts fields - weird, weird, weird. Especially if you use a contact-first model for your lists.
- Whist the starter plan includes 1 list, it seems you can not use the chrome extension to add people to the list. This makes the chrome extension kinda useless then.
Missing bits
- It's ALL about emails - no web to lead, no website tracking - I gather that's where the Hubspot integration comes in.
- Outlook! If you don't use Gmail, you can't use SalesforceIQ for Calendar integration from the looks of it. Weird.
- No Campaigns. Well, I guess you could use different lists in the high end version of SalesforceIQ to function like Campaigns, and with the integration with Mailchimp you have some email marketing, but Campaigns are more than that.
- Whilst Zapier is good, and I can see it will be GREAT for updating the Stream when things happen in your OTHER APPS, Zapier is not ideal for some purposes, and it is not "enterprise level", set and forget software. See my blog post on integrations.
- I can't associate emails ABOUT the client WITH the client. Eg, I email support from Company X about Client Y. I would like to record that email against my "Project" list.
- I could probably add a field to the Account, but that then de-normalises the data model - I can only have one related contact to an account rather than multiple.
- Beware of using Email Aliases, and probably stick with Gmail for emailing.
Pricing
- $25/user/month starts off good - but with one list and no integrations it could be limiting. SalesforceIQ wins over Group Edition.
- $65/user/month - good, and it has integrations - the only one you are going to use at that pricepoint is Mailchimp though, and possibly Zapier.
- $125/user/month - at this pricepoint you had better know for sure that you can use this app to it's fullest potential every day and that your business is never going to grow to a point that it needs any other functionality other than a CRM. I'm not convinced. Spend the extra $55/user/month, add Cirrus Insight for $15/user/month and you have the FULL power of Salesforce to run your whole business - not just CRM.
If the top end version was $65/user/month, the bottom end version was free or $5/user/month, and the middle version was $25/user/month it would be a much better value proposition for me.
Other apps
Yes, shocking, I know, but SalesforceIQ is NOT the only app you will need to run your business. In the keynote video (see SalesforceIQ page), it so conveniently left out the bits about contracts and onboarding and email marketing and delivery and accounting. All the emails and "quick text" in the world will NOT help you create a professional mailmerged document with the contract details, and allow that contract to be signed and emailed back to you. Salesforce EE, with a Contracts object, Drawloop - (formerly Nintex Document Generation) and Docusign, will do that. How will you even do that using SalesforceIQ? (manually in Word?). Yes, you could use Zapier and WebMerge to hack something together, but it is not ideal.
Overall Impressions
This is where I really question the reality of using an app like SalesforceIQ - you will be so stuck from moving forward and growing your business. You will be so stuck in your old ways of using Emails to manage everything - it doesn't force you to do things better.
I just don't get why Salesforce could not have built all of this relationship intelligence and intelligent fields into the platform. Why should only small businesses get this benefit? Larger enterprises need it too - probably even moreso. Why can't I quickly and easily see the last time a record was touched, or do great activity reporting in Salesforce? Why do I have this mish-mash of Activities / tasks and the feed in Salesforce, that I can't accurately report on the feed (yes, something was released in Summer '15 but it is not Activity reporting from the feed).
Why are Small Businesses stuck with using sub-par tools - Why should I use Desk.com rather than full Service Cloud? (Interestingly SalesforceIQ uses Zendesk, and UserVoice themselves) If I am a serious small business, I may want to pay to have the best tools at my disposal. Using SalesforceIQ (and Desk.com) puts me into a path that is not upgradeable. Starting with Group Edition, I can upgrade to EE with no loss of data.
At this stage, I think SalesforceIQ is just too simple to really use it for your business (even mine as a micro business). Yes, you could use it, but you are going to be changing the way you run the business to fit in with using SalesforceIQ. Such a wasted opportunity for Salesforce, when they could have bought all this really cool technology into the new Lightning Experience and made it really rock!
I'm not sold yet. I don't get it yet. I am willing to be a bit more convinced. But as Benioff said in the Closing Q&A session of Dreamforce '15
So, who knows, what is to come...
Questions
- Will it replace Group Edition of Salesforce? I would like to think so. I don't know many people who have jumped from Group to EE.
- Will it replace Professional Edition (maybe not because of Products and Quotes and Contracts).
- Can you move from Group Edition to SalesforceIQ and keep all your historic data? I doubt it.
- Is there an upgrade path to move from SalesforceIQ to SalesforceEE and keep all your data? I doubt it.
- Will there be an integration between SalesforceIQ and Salesforce? I doubt it.
- If Desk.com is meant to be support for SMB and SalesforceIQ is meant to be CRM for SMB, then why don't they have an integration yet?
Notes