Essentials

Salesforce, Winter ’25

Last updated: September 20, 2024

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names and marks. Other marks appearing herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
CONTENTS

Essentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Understand the Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Getting Around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Set Up the Most-Used Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Going Beyond the Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Get Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
WHAT IS SALESFORCE ESSENTIALS?

Salesforce Essentials lets you see all of your customer information in one place. Sell smarter and faster with built-in intelligence, and
provide personalized service to every customer. Build reports and dashboards to fit your needs so you can dynamically visualize your
company’s vital data, such as deals won and cases closed.
Salesforce helps you manage your relationships with your leads, soon-to-be-signed customers, happy customers, and customers who
reach out to you for help. Salesforce Essentials gives your small business the benefits of a massive platform and ecosystem with Salesforce,
but with a quick setup and simple customizations.

Note: For usage restrictions that apply to this product, see this document.

Understand the Basics

Get to know the foundational features in Salesforce like Accounts, Leads, and Cases. Learn how to import your data into Essentials.
Take your data to the next level with custom fields, reports, and dashboards.
Getting Around in Salesforce Essentials
Learn how list views can help your and your team manage your customer information and be more productive. Get to know the
utility bar to help your team be more productive.
Set Up the Most-Used Features
Get more done in less time by setting up your sales pipeline, automatically turning incoming emails and social media posts into
cases, utilizing self-service, and adding a phone.
Going Beyond the Basics
Give your team more automation and productivity by routing incoming work (like cases) to the best-fit person for the job. Use Chat
and Messaging to provide instant conversation to your customers through web chat and Facebook Messenger. Use Macros to
complete multi-step tasks with a single click.
Get Help
Having some trouble? We can help.
Essentials Resources
Learn more about Essentials with helpful videos and a guided journey. Or, hit the trails with our Essentials-focused modules on
Trailhead.

Understand the Basics

Get to know the foundational features in Salesforce like Accounts, Leads, and Cases. Learn how to import your data into Essentials. Take
your data to the next level with custom fields, reports, and dashboards.

Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Search for terms and brush up on your Salesforce knowledge with the Essentials glossary.
Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials
Learn best practices for importing your customers’ data into Salesforce. You can turn your spreadsheet into Account, Contact, Lead,
and Opportunity records in Salesforce using the Data Import Wizard.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Keep Track of All the Details with Accounts

Accounts keep track of contact information and details for any business, customer, or provider that you work with.
Know Exactly Who You’re Talking to with Contacts
Contacts are individual people you communicate with to move a business deal forward. If you work with other businesses, Contacts
are associated with Accounts, or companies you’re doing business with.
Close More Deals with Leads
Snag a business card or see some new opt-ins for your newsletter? Those are leads, or customers who are interested in your product
or service.
Track Your Open Deals with Opportunities
Opportunities are business deals in progress. Track progress by moving each opportunity through a series of business milestones
called stages, like Prospecting, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, and Contract Signed. The goal is to “win” the opportunity, or move it to
a final stage that represents a successful outcome for your business.
Track and Solve Customer Issues
Use cases to track customer feedback and issues. In Salesforce, all the information you need to solve the issue is right in front of you
with related contact information, past cases, articles, and more. Say goodbye to jumping from tab to tab and close cases faster.
Get the Details You Need with Custom Fields
Capture all the data that’s important to your business by adding custom fields.
Keep Tabs on Every Detail with Reports
See how your business is doing, make better purchasing decisions, and keep tabs on your progress with reports.
Track Your Progress with Dashboards
Take a look at how your business is doing in a single glance with dashboards. You select the metrics that matter and Salesforce
brings the data to life with graphs, charts and more.

Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Search for terms and brush up on your Salesforce knowledge with the Essentials glossary.

General Terms
Account
Companies that you’re doing business with.
App Launcher
Where you can find compatible apps for Salesforce, including Salesforce standard apps like the Service console and connected apps
like DocuSign and G-Suite.

Chatter
A Salesforce collaboration application that lets your users work together, talk to each other, and share information, all in real time.
Chatter users can collaborate on sales opportunities, service cases, campaigns, and projects with embedded apps and custom actions.
Contact
People who work for the accounts. For example, Adam Smith works at DreamScape Flowers and is the contact for the account.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Contact Role
The relationship your company has to a specific contact, such as influencer, evaluator, or decision maker. For example, Adam Smith
decides what your company’s tasks are for his business.
Customer Relationship Management
Also known as CRM, a technology that allows you to manage relationships with your customers and prospects and track data related
to all your interactions. It also helps teams collaborate, both internally and externally, gather insights from social media, track important
metrics, and communicate via email, phone, social, and other channels.
Custom Field
A field that can be added in addition to the standard fields to customize Salesforce for your organization’s needs.

Dashboard
A visual representation of data reports, shown as charts, gauges, tables, or metrics. The components provide a snapshot of key metrics
and performance indicators for your organization. Each dashboard can have up to 20 components.
Field
A piece of data stored in an object.
Lightning App Builder
A point-and-click tool that makes it easy for you to customize your Salesforce apps like the Sales app or the Service Console app,
and give your team all the information they need, all in one place.
Lightning Experience
An intuitive, intelligent interface that helps sales and service teams work more naturally and productively.
List View
View a filtered list of records, such as contacts, accounts, or custom objects.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Object
A type of data that you want to store, like a Contact, Account, or Lead.
Report
A display of records that meet certain criteria for your business.
Task
A piece of work that needs to be completed with respect to a record.
Utility Bar
A fixed footer where you can quickly access common productivity tools, such as Notes, Quip, Phone, and even custom tools.

Sales Terms
Activities
The events and tasks that your sales rep manage in Salesforce.

Activity History
A list of records that displays all completed tasks, logged phone calls, expired events, email, and any associated records.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Campaign
Track marketing initiatives with campaigns. For example, Adam Smith can use Campaign to analyze how many leads the company
is generating, how much pipeline they’re building, and how many deals they’re closing as a result of marketing efforts.
Einstein Activity Capture
An artificial intelligence feature that relates each email to a lead contact or opportunity.
Lead
People and companies that you’ve identified as potential customers.

Opportunity
A feature that tracks your sales and pending deals.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Opportunity Stage
A standard field that tracks the status of an opportunity.

Pipeline
A comprehensive view of your opportunities, no matter what stage they're in. It includes everything from the newest prospect to
that opportunity with pen in hand, ready to sign.
Salesforce Inbox
Allows you to see your Salesforce data in your email on both your mobile device and your desktop.
Sales Stages
Steps you take to sell your product or service.

Service Terms
Assignment Rules
Automatically assign incoming cases to specific people on your team so that the right people work on the right cases.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Case
Also called a support case, customer feedback or issues that need to be addressed.
Case Feed
A news feed that shows you and your team everything that is happening with a case. The feed also shows you a timeline for a case’s
history and contains information to help you and your team resolve the case.

Channels
A combination of phone, email, text message, social media, and more that you use to answer customer questions and comments.
Console
Also known as the service console, the console is where all Salesforce service features come together. On a single screen, you can
get a 360-degree view of each customer and where that customer is in your support process.

Escalation Rules
Automatically escalate cases to the right people when the cases aren’t solved by a certain time.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Help Center
Create a help center that lets your customers help themselves. Display Knowledge articles that answer common questions, and
provide a contact button so they can log a case for the issues that require human intervention.

Knowledge Base
Find, share, and store articles or answers related to cases to speed up service. Or, connect your Knowledge base to your help center
to let customers find answers on their own.
Macros
Automate common processes for your support team to save them clicks as they help your customers.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Messaging
Lets customers talk to your support team using SMS text messaging or Facebook Messenger.
Queue
Queues help you prioritize and distribute work, like cases and leads, across your team. Users in the queue can assign work to
themselves, or you can use assignment rules or routing to assign work automatically.
Quick Text
A predefined message, like a greeting, note, phrase, or answer to a common question. You can insert quick text into emails, chats,
and more by using a keyboard shortcut.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Salesforce Essentials Glossary

Routing (via Omni-Channel)

Push incoming work items like cases and leads to the right person on your team, so your customers can get help in a timely fashion.
Omni-Channel uses queues to sort work items by priority, so the most important work items are pushed to your team first.

Social Customer Service

Businesses can listen and respond to customers across various social platforms. Your team can pick up issues that have been posted
by customers and address them from the Service Console app.
Web Chat
Lets customers have a live chat with your support team through your website.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials

Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials

Learn best practices for importing your customers’ data into Salesforce. You can turn your spreadsheet into Account, Contact, Lead, and
Opportunity records in Salesforce using the Data Import Wizard.
Use the Data Import Wizard to import your customer information into Salesforce. Anyone in your org can import accounts, contacts,
and opportunities. To import leads, make sure that you have the necessary permissions, or ask your Salesforce admin for help.
Our video demo walks you through preparing your data file for import, creating a custom field, and using the Data Import Wizard to
create new Accounts and Contacts in Salesforce. Watch the demo: Import Your Data Into Salesforce Essentials (5 minutes)
Before you start your import, clean up your import file and follow our best practices. You can view the following video playlist to get
more information: Data Import How-To Series

Note: If you want to import objects that aren’t supported in the Data Import Wizard like tasks or notes, or to update your
opportunities from a .csv file, you can use a different tool called dataloader.io. To learn more, see Choosing a Method for Importing
Data.

Pre-Import Checklist
Before you import your data, run through this checklist to make sure that you’re well prepared. We guide you through getting an
overview of the import process, fixing up what’s already in Salesforce, and preparing your spreadsheet for a smooth import.
Match Your Information to Salesforce Fields in Data Import
Matching your information to Salesforce fields helps you make sure that all the details you need get to the right place. When you
match your information to fields in Salesforce, you’re telling us where to put your data during the import.
Fix Data Import Errors in Salesforce Essentials
If there are errors during your data import, we tell you in the attachment in the summary email. See some of the most common
errors and our best tips for fixing them.
Migrate Your Accounts, Contacts, and Leads to Essentials from Other Editions
Use reports to set up your accounts, contacts, and leads for import into Salesforce Essentials.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials

Migrate Your Opportunities, Tasks, and Events to Essentials from Other Editions
Use reports to set up your opportunities, tasks, and events for import into Salesforce Essentials.

SEE ALSO:
Import Your Company’s Data in Essentials
Choose an Import Tool

Pre-Import Checklist
Before you import your data, run through this checklist to make sure that you’re well prepared. We guide you through getting an overview
of the import process, fixing up what’s already in Salesforce, and preparing your spreadsheet for a smooth import.
Salesforce comes to life when you import your data. Fix up what’s in Salesforce and tidy your spreadsheets to facilitate this process.

See How It Works

Action Details
Watch setup videos Our data import series has a lot of useful information to help you
get started. For tips and tricks for how to create a clean import file,
start with Clean Your Import File and Best Practices for Importing
Data.

Take a hands-on workshop Learn how to clean and import your data into Salesforce with our
live and on-demand hands-on workshop. Follow the data import
process from the beginning for a smooth data import journey.

Fix What’s Already in Salesforce

Action Details
Fix incomplete information in Salesforce If you already have some information in Salesforce, make sure that
it’s all filled in. Complete and accurate records help us prevent
duplicates and errors when you import more information. For every
Salesforce record, include first and last names, email addresses,
phone numbers, company names, job titles, and whatever else
you use to distinguish your contacts, deals, and accounts.

Check for required fields Required fields are in place to make sure that your data is organized
correctly. To avoid errors, verify that they’re included in your
spreadsheet.
The following fields are required for accounts, contacts, and leads:
• Required fields for Accounts: name
• Required fields for Contacts: last name
• Required fields for Leads: last name, company name
The required field names are listed in red during the import process,
but you can look at what’s required before you start. For example,

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials

Action Details
create an opportunity and see which fields are marked as required.
You can also click Save before entering any information to highlight
the required fields.

Customize fields Create the custom fields you need in Salesforce before importing
data. When you include the names of your custom fields in your
spreadsheet, your information has somewhere to go in Salesforce.
To create custom fields, go to Setup > Object Manager.

Get Your Spreadsheet in Tip-Top Shape

When you clean up your spreadsheet, your import goes much more smoothly because every bit of information has its place in Salesforce.

Action Details
Keep accounts and contacts in the same place Save time and import contacts and accounts together by including
both in your .csv file. If you prefer, you can import them separately
using dataloader.io instead of the Data Import Wizard in Salesforce.

Delete any duplicates Make sure that your file doesn’t contain duplicate entries. You can
have multiple contacts for one account, but avoid entering the
same contact twice or importing the same person as both a contact
and a lead.

Format properly Clearly separate fields in your spreadsheet. For example, if you
include addresses, make sure that there are separate columns for
street, city, state, and zip.

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Action Details
Include email addresses with names You have two options to match your data: either by name or by
email. Emails are more unique than names, so it’s best practice to
keep your contacts and accounts matched by email.

Edit the record owners When you import new data, include an Owner Full Name column
to keep items assigned properly. If you don’t include owners, you’re
made the owner of everything that’s created during the import.
When you update existing data, use record owner IDs to link your
records to an owner in Salesforce.

Triple-check the spelling You can edit the spelling after your data is imported, but it’s difficult
to find what you’re looking for if a name or company is misspelled.
You can also end up with duplicates if you have two different
spellings of the same name.

After you clean up your data in Salesforce and in your spreadsheet, you’re ready to start your import. Export your spreadsheet as a .csv
file, then start the data import process in Salesforce.

SEE ALSO:
On-Demand Workshop: Importing Your Contacts in Essentials
Create Custom Fields
Delete Multiple Records and Reports

Match Your Information to Salesforce Fields in Data Import

Matching your information to Salesforce fields helps you make sure that all the details you need get to the right place. When you match
your information to fields in Salesforce, you’re telling us where to put your data during the import.
It’s easier to correct your .csv file than it is to update individual Salesforce records later on. We recommend naming the columns in your
.csv file to match fields in Salesforce before you start your import, so your data ends up in the right place. You can also match your
information to Salesforce fields during the import process.

Tip: If you need help, you can contact our support coaches directly by logging a case.

Get the names for the object you’re importing (lead, contact, account, opportunity, or campaign member) and use them in your .csv
file.
1. Go to Setup > Object Manager.
2. Click the name of the object you want to import.
3. Click Fields & Relationships.
4. Save the names from the Field Label column.
5. In your .csv file, change the column names to match the names you saved from Salesforce.
During the import process, we try to match your data to Salesforce fields for you. You can review what we matched and make changes
after you upload your .csv file. And don’t worry—we let you know if we’re missing something important or if there’s data that doesn’t
have a place to go.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials

Fix Data Import Errors in Salesforce Essentials

If there are errors during your data import, we tell you in the attachment in the summary email. See some of the most common errors
and our best tips for fixing them.
In the error file you receive from us, there’s an extra field that describes errors for each item in detail.

Note: The .csv file contains only the data that didn’t import into Salesforce. For example, if you have an invalid email address for
a contact, the account information gets imported, but the contact information doesn’t.

Tips for Fixing Import Errors

Follow these tips to get your import finished quickly and correctly.

Tip Details
Use the error file as your import file Fix the errors in the error file, then use the error file (not your
original file) when you run your import again. Your import processes
faster when there are fewer items in the .csv file.

Use the update option to avoid duplicates When you run your next import, select the option to update the
existing information in your org. The setting tells us to look for a
matching record to update before we create a new one, so you
don’t end up with duplicates. For example, to fix errors in your
accounts using the Data Import Wizard, select Update Existing
Account Information.

Use the added fields during your next import The .csv you receive from us often contains new fields. When you
run your import again, map the added field to the related field in
Salesforce. For example, if you have an invalid email address for a
contact, the error file contains an added field called AccountId.
Map the AccountID field to Contact: Account ID during the next
import.

Know how to delete and start over Sometimes, the best course of action is to delete the items you
imported and try again. To delete lots of data at once, go to
Setup > Data > Mass Delete Records.

Common Import Errors

Let’s look at the most common import errors and how to fix them.

Error Details
Required fields are missing Items in your spreadsheet don’t have values for at least one required
field. Include a value, or if possible, make the field not required.
Required fields are set on an object’s page layout from Setup >
Object Manager.

The new owner must have read permission Items in your spreadsheet are getting reassigned to someone who
doesn’t have permission to view them. If you haven’t set owner
IDs on your spreadsheet, items could be reassigned to you because

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Error Details
you’re performing the import. Ensure that record owners have read
permissions activated on their profile in Setup > Users.

Enter an email address that matches the format Fix the email addresses listed in the error message, including any
myemail@company.com typos.

Always Check Your Work

After you run any import, look for your new data in Salesforce. Verify that your information is mapped correctly.

Migrate Your Accounts, Contacts, and Leads to Essentials from Other Editions
Use reports to set up your accounts, contacts, and leads for import into Salesforce Essentials.
Before you migrate, clean up your data. For example, look for outdated information and duplicate records.
To export contacts, create a custom report type using Contact as the primary object. You use this report to create a .csv file that you can
import into Essentials.
To migrate data to Essentials, create and export a report for each object that you want. Follow these steps for accounts, contacts, and
leads.
1. From the Reports tab, click New Report.
2. Select an object.
You can create a single report for both accounts and contacts. Include all the fields that you want to import from both objects.

3. Click Continue.
4. In your report, include the required fields and any additional fields that your company uses.
• For accounts, the Name field is required.
• For contacts, the Last Name field is required.
• For leads, the required fields are Company, Last Name, and Status.

5. Click Save & Run.

6. Give your report a name and click Save.
7. From the menu, click Export.

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8. Select Details Only.

9. Under Format, select Comma Delimited .csv.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Importing Data into Salesforce Essentials

10. Click Export.

11. Repeat the previous steps for each object you want to import into Essentials.
12. Import your .csv files into Essentials from Setup > Integrations > Data Import Wizard.

Note: Use matching to prevent duplicates when you import your data into Essentials.
• Accounts: Match account by Name & Site.
• Contacts with emails: Match Contact by Email and match Account by Name & Site.
• Contacts without emails: Match Contact by Name and match Account by Name & Site.

SEE ALSO:
Import Data with the Data Import Wizard

Migrate Your Opportunities, Tasks, and Events to Essentials from Other Editions
Use reports to set up your opportunities, tasks, and events for import into Salesforce Essentials.
Before you migrate, clean up your data. For example, look for outdated information and duplicate records.
To migrate data to Essentials, create and export a report for each object that you want.

Tip: We recommend filtering your reports so that you have some .csv files that contain customer email addresses and some that
don’t. Email is the most accurate way to import your data into Essentials because email addresses are unique to each customer.
Follow these steps for opportunities, tasks, and events.
1. From the Reports tab, click New Report.
2. Select an object.
Create four reports for opportunities:
• Opportunities with accounts

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• Opportunities with contacts (After exporting the report, use filters to create one .csv file that includes email addresses and one
that doesn’t.)
• Opportunities with leads
Create one report for both tasks and events with the objects you use, including accounts, contacts, opportunities, and leads. After
exporting the report, use filters to create .csv files for:
• Tasks with other objects, with emails
• Tasks with other objects, without emails
• Events with other objects, with emails
• Events with other objects, without emails

3. Click Continue.
4. In your report, include the required fields and any additional fields that your company uses.
• For opportunities, the required fields are Name, Stage, and Close Date.
• For tasks, the required fields are Assigned To, Subject, Status, and Priority.
• For events, the required fields are Assigned To, Subject, Start, and End.

5. Click Save & Run.

6. Give your report a name and click Save.
7. From the menu, click Export.

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8. Select Details Only.

9. Under Format, select Comma Delimited .csv.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Keep Track of All the Details with Accounts

10. Click Export.

11. Repeat the previous steps for each object you want to import into Essentials.
12. Import your .csv files into Essentials using Dataloader.io.

Tip: Keep the following guidelines in mind when you import your .csv files using Data Loader.
• Essentials can use only Batch API.
• Use Insert for a first-time import and Upsert when you already have data in your Essentials org. Upsert means that you’re
updating existing information with what’s in your .csv and adding any new information that’s on your .csv file but not in your
org.
• To import opportunities associated with contacts, insert using Opportunity Contact Role. Look up the primary contact by name
or email depending on which .csv file you’re using.

SEE ALSO:
Dataloader.io: Importing Data Into Salesforce

Keep Track of All the Details with Accounts

Accounts keep track of contact information and details for any business, customer, or provider that you work with.

Why Do We Use Them?

Accounts make it easy for anyone in your business to find a customer or business partner’s contact information.

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Why Are They Important?

Keeping important details handy for contacting customers and providers makes your outreach effective and efficient. Accounts also
make it easy to see when you have more than one deal in the works as well as previous transactions with a customer.

SEE ALSO:
View and Convert Leads on an Account
Fill Account Fields Automatically
Things to Know About Accounts

Know Exactly Who You’re Talking to with Contacts

Contacts are individual people you communicate with to move a business deal forward. If you work with other businesses, Contacts are
associated with Accounts, or companies you’re doing business with.

Why Do We Use Them?

Human-to-human conversations create, transact and close business deals. (The robots haven’t taken over yet). Contact records help you
track all of the conversations and transactions you’ve had with another person.

Why Are They Important?

Tracking your communication with another person ensures that you don’t repeat yourself, bombard a prospective customer with emails,
or otherwise hinder a positive experience. You can know exactly where you stand with this person by reviewing their contact record.

SEE ALSO:
Manage Contacts
Things to Know About Contacts

Close More Deals with Leads

Snag a business card or see some new opt-ins for your newsletter? Those are leads, or customers who are interested in your product or
service.

Why Do We Use Them?

It’s much easier to make an interested person a purchasing customer with marketing and outreach efforts. Even if they don’t purchase
after your first attempt, keeping their contact info in Salesforce means that you can easily try again.

Why Are They Important?

Customers take time to go from discovering your product to purchasing it. While getting to know your business, these potential customers
are called leads until they show they are likely to purchase. Separating potential customers from your likely-to-purchase ones in

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Track Your Open Deals with Opportunities

Opportunities and Accounts keeps your reports accurate and makes it easy to spend your marketing budget and time on the right
customers.

SEE ALSO:
Manage Leads
Things to Know About Leads
Leads FAQs

Track Your Open Deals with Opportunities

Opportunities are business deals in progress. Track progress by moving each opportunity through a series of business milestones called
stages, like Prospecting, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, and Contract Signed. The goal is to “win” the opportunity, or move it to a final stage
that represents a successful outcome for your business.

Why Do We Use Them?

Opportunities let you visualize potential future revenue and business success. Opportunities also represent how your sales representatives
are spending their time and can provide valuable insights for coaching.

Why Are They Important?

Opportunities are the core of your business’ success. If you win opportunities, your business grows. You can create reports to understand
why opportunities are won or loss to improve your sales process for the future.

SEE ALSO:
Manage Opportunities
Things to Know About Opportunities

Track and Solve Customer Issues

Use cases to track customer feedback and issues. In Salesforce, all the information you need to solve the issue is right in front of you with
related contact information, past cases, articles, and more. Say goodbye to jumping from tab to tab and close cases faster.

Why Do We Use Them?

Cases unify the information about a customer, including account, contact, product, and history data, so your team can have all the
necessary information at hand. The case feed shows updates about the case's progress, so anyone on your team can pick it up where
you left off.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Track and Solve Customer Issues

You can respond to customers right from the case using email. If the case is from a known customer (whom you've saved as a contact),
then you can email them right from the case feed. You can also respond in the case feed if the customer reached out on social media
and you get cases logged automatically from posts, direct messages, and tags.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Track and Solve Customer Issues

Why Are They Important?

You and your team can more quickly identify customer pain points and address them while delivering quality service.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Cases for Your Team
Manage and Work with Cases
Things to Know About Cases

26
What is Salesforce Essentials? Track and Solve Customer Issues

Set Up Basic Case Management in Salesforce Essentials

Cases are the foundation of customer support in Salesforce. You can set up a case management system that lets you collect cases and
assign them to your team with no manual oversight.

Collect Cases
You can let cases come to you automatically from your email, social media pages, help center, or web form on your company’s website.
If you’re well-versed in all things Salesforce, you can use a flow to provide a more customizable way for customers to log cases.

What You Can Do Where To Learn More

Get cases from emails to your support email address. Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases

Get cases from a web form that you place in your website. Provide Web Forms

Get cases from your help center. Create a Self-Service Website

Get cases from posts and messages to your business Facebook, Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases
Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube pages.

Get cases from customer interactions. Phone (Add-On)

Chat & Messaging (Add-On)

Get cases from a custom flow (advanced). Flow Builder

Embedded Service for Web in Setup

Assign Cases to Your Team

Use queues and automated rules to get cases assigned to your team without monitoring your case list.

What You Can Do Where To Learn More

Assign cases to a queue, where certain members of your team can Set Up Queues
choose cases from a list. Queues can help your team prioritize work,
too.

Auto-assign cases to queues or people on your team with Set Up Assignment Rules
conditional rules. You can also use rules to send email notifications
when new cases are created or assigned.

Escalate cases based on criteria like priority, associated account, Set Up Escalation Rules
age, and more. You can set multiple criteria and use filter logic to
get as specific as you’d like.

Assign cases to your team automatically based on your team’s Route Work with Omni-Channel
availability and the priority of the work.

Automate Your Case Management Process (Advanced)

Bake even more automation into your case management process with auto-response rules and Process Builder.

27
What is Salesforce Essentials? Track and Solve Customer Issues

What You Can Do Where To Learn More

Send an auto-response to customers when a case is logged for Set Up Auto-Response Rules
them. You can let them know that they’ll hear from your team
soon, send them troubleshooting tips, or other relevant
information.

Create a process to automate your regular work duties. Process Builder

Note: You can have up to five processes with your Essentials subscription. Use them wisely!

5 Easy Ways to Keep Your Customers Happy

The MVPs of successful businesses are their loyal customers. Repeat customers are more likely to buy from your business a second time
as well as spread the word about it to new customers. It also costs less to retain them than it does to acquire new customers. So here
are some ways to get started.

What to Do Details
Make communication a top priority Customers have high expectations about the speed and frequency
of communication. The first step is setting expectations for yourself
or your team. Get aligned on getting back to customers within a
day or less to build trust and keep customers up-to-date. Whether
by tweet, text, DM, or email, keep your customers updated if they’ve
asked a question or logged a case. It’s a great opportunity to turn
an issue into an awesome customer experience.

Make it easy to find help Many customers prefer self-service solutions over speaking with
support. Write knowledge articles for the features, products, or
services that people often ask about to reduce inbound emails and
let your customers help themselves!

Set realistic expectations Make claims to customers about the quality and features your
product that you can deliver. Unmet expectations can break trust,
so it’s key to be truthful and transparent.

Take to your customers like real people Skip the marketing speak and technical terms when you’re talking
to customers. They appreciate your candid advice and you can
resolve their questions faster.

Create moments of connection Whenever you can, show the customer that you care. Whether it’s
a personalized message on their birthday or a coupon code around
the holidays, let them know you’re grateful for their support.

How to Talk to Your Customers Like Real People

If your customers have a question or concern, they come to you for answers. Skip the customer-service speak and use phrasing that
shows you care. Build trust and help them focus on solutions.

28
What is Salesforce Essentials? Track and Solve Customer Issues

New customers on the verge of purchasing and customers that are devoted fans look to you for answers if something goes wrong. Such
interactions can be the reason a customer comes back for more or heads out the door. So here are some tips to keep the conversation
flowing.

Tip Details Instead of This Do This

Get to the point Customers want you to tell it to “It looks like it’s just a hiccup “Our system doesn’t recognize
them straight. To sell them a with our servers. This never your password. Let me sign in
product or service, give them a happens. We always rank at the for you to reset it.”
real-life example of success that top of the list for companies in
relates to their business. When our industry.”
you troubleshoot a problem, tell
them what went wrong and
how you can fix it. Customers
are short on time and appreciate
it if you are direct and candid.

Meet them where they are If a customer is upset or angry, “Well, if you can’t login, you “From what you said, it sounds
chances are that they just need probably entered your password like you’re having trouble
someone to listen. Let the incorrectly. Try it again.” logging in. If you’d like, I can
customer explain what’s wrong reset that for you or give you a
and repeat their main points new password.”
back to them in a calm,
understanding tone. That way,
the customer knows their
frustration is heard and you’re
ready to fix it. It’s also hard for
them to respond in a loud, angry
tone when you’re being cool
and collected.

Be transparent If things are a little complicated “Adding that new security “If you add the security features,
to fix, let the customer know feature could increase your bill your monthly contract will be
upfront. If adding new features by a little bit, but it won’t be too $5.00 per month. You get the
will cause the final cost to bad.” added security of knowing
increase, make that clear. Avoid exactly who’s logging in and
wasting customers time and be 24/7 password recovery.”
clear that you are there to help.

Know the details Learn a few things about the “Tell me a little bit about your “I see your company specializes
customer’s account before you company so I can help you.” in web design and you’ve been
get on the phone with them or growing fast. Have you been
bring up their info as you work using sales stages to keep deals
through their case. Give moving through your pipeline?”
personalized advice. It’s is a
great way to show them you
know your stuff and that you
care about their business.. In
Salesforce, the Activity Feed is
your one-stop-shop for the key

29
What is Salesforce Essentials? Get the Details You Need with Custom Fields

Tip Details Instead of This Do This

details, which is key when you’re
short on time.

When a customer has questions, be respectful, empathetic, and most of all, human. Make a genuine connection and provide the answers
that they need.

Get the Details You Need with Custom Fields

Capture all the data that’s important to your business by adding custom fields.

Why Do We Use Them?

Every business has it’s own set of terms and details it needs to capture. For example, a clothing designer may need to know height and
weight wheras a mechanic needs the make and model of your car. Adding custom fields to your records allows you to capture information
that goes beyond the basic name, email, and address fields that are included in every Salesforce record.

Why Are They Important?

Adding fields to your records reminds you to capture those details when you speak to a customer or partner. It also helps you keep
important information in a single place, saving time and making it easier to find the information you need.

SEE ALSO:
Create Custom Fields

Keep Tabs on Every Detail with Reports

See how your business is doing, make better purchasing decisions, and keep tabs on your progress with reports.

Why Do We Use Them?

Reports help you feel confident about the decisions you make by backing them up with data. They also provide a record of your business’
progress over time, so you can see any changes that affect your bottom line.

Why Are They Important?

Reports show whether you’re on the right track or if you need to make a change. From specific details about how your sales are going
to stats on customer cases, reports can look at your business from every angle you need.

SEE ALSO:
Reports and Dashboards
Creating and Using Reports

30
What is Salesforce Essentials? Track Your Progress with Dashboards

Track Your Progress with Dashboards

Take a look at how your business is doing in a single glance with dashboards. You select the metrics that matter and Salesforce brings
the data to life with graphs, charts and more.

Why Do We Use Them?

Your business has a lot going on. With dashboards, you get to see it all at a glance so making data-driven decisions is simple and easy.

Why Are They Important?

With dashboards, you get that big picture view of your business without having to dig through individual reports. With all of the parts
of your business coming together in a single place, you can see how they affect one another as well as your bottom line.

SEE ALSO:
Reports and Dashboards
Creating and Using Dashboards

Getting Around in Salesforce Essentials

Learn how list views can help your and your team manage your customer information and be more productive. Get to know the utility
bar to help your team be more productive.

Manage Your Essentials Subscription

Add or subtract users, update the credit card on file, and more from the Manage Subscription page in Setup.
Get Started with the Setup Assistant
Get up and running fast with the Essentials Setup Assistant. Use this to-do list to make sure you’ve completed the most important
steps to grow your business.
Filter Your Lists to Find What You Need
Use a list view to see a filtered list of records, such as only contacts, accounts, or custom objects.
Keep Your Productivity Tools Handy
The utility bar is a fixed footer where you can quickly access handy utilities and common productivity tools. Your admin can also add
custom options.

Manage Your Essentials Subscription

Add or subtract users, update the credit card on file, and more from the Manage Subscription page in Setup.
You can find the Manage Subscription page from the gear icon.

31
What is Salesforce Essentials? Manage Your Essentials Subscription

The following is a list of all actions you can take on this page.

Note: To upgrade your subscription or switch between monthly and annual billing, reach out to your Account Executive. To find
his or her contact information, log into store.salesforce.com and look under Your Account Contact.

Add or Subtract Users

To change the number of user licenses you’re paying for, click Manage licenses. This option is available for your overall number of users,
and the number of users able to access certain paid add-ons.

Your add-ons and extra features appear in the Your Subscription section.

What You See What It Means More Info

Essentials Edition - Inbox Promotion As an Essentials subscriber, you can enjoy Set up Inbox
Inbox at no charge. Inbox lets you integrate
your email and calendar with Salesforce.

32
What is Salesforce Essentials? Manage Your Essentials Subscription

What You See What It Means More Info

Digital Engagement Your first chat license is free with Essentials. Offer Live Customer Support with Chat and
As you add users, the option to add more Messaging
chat licenses appears here.

Dialer for Essentials Create a phone in Salesforce that lets your Phone Options in Salesforce Essentials
team take and make calls from one phone
number.

Sales Dialer Create a phone in Salesforce with additional Phone Options in Salesforce Essentials
features, like multiple phone numbers,
personal voicemail, and more. Contact
Salesforce to purchase this add-on.

File Storage Add more file storage beyond the 1 GB Data and File Storage Allocations
allotted.

Data Storage Add additional data storage beyond the 10 Data and File Storage Allocations
GB allotted.

After you add users, your bill is updated and your user licenses are active within about 30 minutes. After you subtract users, your bill is
updated at the start of the next billing cycle. This could be the next month (monthly billing) or the next year (annual billing).

Update Your Credit Card on File

If you’ve missed a payment due to an expired credit card or have another need to change your payment method or billing address, click
Update payment method.

Add More Features

You can purchase add-on features that expand what you can do with Salesforce. Click Add On next to the feature.

33
What is Salesforce Essentials? Get Started with the Setup Assistant

Cancel Your Subscription

There’s a cancellation button at the bottom of the page. Indicate why you’re leaving us, then click Cancel Subscription. This cancels
the auto-renewal at the next billing cycle, either next month (monthly billing) or next year (annual billing). Your account remains active
until then.

Get Started with the Setup Assistant

Get up and running fast with the Essentials Setup Assistant. Use this to-do list to make sure you’ve completed the most important steps
to grow your business.
The Essentials Setup Assistant a prioritized list of the tasks that will help you get the most out of Salesforce. From adding users to editing
records, the setup assistant gets you moving on the path to success.

Where to Access the Setup Assistant

You can find the Setup Assistant by clicking on the Home tab in Sales Essentials.

34
What is Salesforce Essentials? Filter Your Lists to Find What You Need

Filter Your Lists to Find What You Need

Use a list view to see a filtered list of records, such as only contacts, accounts, or custom objects.

Why Do We Use Them?

You can use a list view to go over your sales and service records with different filters.

35
What is Salesforce Essentials? Keep Your Productivity Tools Handy

Why Are They Important?

You can view just what you want and nothing more.

SEE ALSO:
Create a List View
Pin a List View
Edit List View Filters

Keep Your Productivity Tools Handy

The utility bar is a fixed footer where you can quickly access handy utilities and common productivity tools. Your admin can also add
custom options.

36
What is Salesforce Essentials? Set Up the Most-Used Features

Why Do We Use It?

The utility bar provides access to different utilities and productivity tools in one place.

Why Is It Important?
By having everything you need to be productive in one place, you and your team can be more efficient and save time doing tasks.

SEE ALSO:
Customize Your Console with Utilities

Set Up the Most-Used Features

Get more done in less time by setting up your sales pipeline, automatically turning incoming emails and social media posts into cases,
utilizing self-service, and adding a phone.

Customize Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials provides standard and customizable tools to suit your unique business needs. Need to see a to-do list when
you start your day? Don’t have a full-time staff member to run your help center? Have unique metrics you’re holding your support
staff to? We’ve got brainstorming questions and best practices around customizing Essentials to meet your needs.
Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages
Sales stages help you organize how your business closes a deal, starting from lead creation and going all the way through closing
an opportunity.

37
What is Salesforce Essentials? Customize Salesforce Essentials

Sync Emails and Activities

Automatically bring your business emails and events into Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture. Then your deals, cases, and
contacts will show any related emails and events.
Offer Customer Support in Essentials
Salesforce Essentials makes offering customer support easy. Track and solve your customers’ issues with cases, so nothing slips
through the cracks. Keep your customers happy with self-service, live web chat and messaging, and phone support.
Let Your Customers Help Themselves
Give your customers the gift of self-service. When your customers can answer their own questions, your team can spend more time
making deals and solving bigger customer issues. Write and organize articles with Knowledge that provide information about your
business and answer common questions. Serve up your categorized articles in a help center so your customers can find exactly what
they need. If they have a question that requires human intervention, they can log a case to your team. (Or if you’re feeling spiffy, you
can offer live chat, too).
Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases
Use Email-to-Case to turn incoming emails to your support email address into cases in Salesforce. Social Customer Service automatically
creates cases for social media mentions, posts, or direct messages from your company’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram
pages. Set up Email-to-Case, Twitter, and Facebook with guided setup flows.
Use a Phone in Salesforce
A phone lets your team take and make calls alongside their other work in Salesforce. You can create a phone with Salesforce using
Sales Dialer or Dialer for Essentials, or you can integrate a third-party phone product.
Get the Most from Tasks
Tasks are to-do list items that help you keep track of your workload and meet important business objectives. If you're an individual
contributor, you can use task reminders to stay on top of upcoming deadlines. If you're a manager, you can use tasks to align business
processes and monitor productivity.

Customize Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials provides standard and customizable tools to suit your unique business needs. Need to see a to-do list when you
start your day? Don’t have a full-time staff member to run your help center? Have unique metrics you’re holding your support staff to?
We’ve got brainstorming questions and best practices around customizing Essentials to meet your needs.

Customize the Home Screen

When you first open Salesforce, to get a birds eye view into the health of your business, you can choose the insights to showcase on
your homescreen.
Make a Few Decisions
1. What is the first thing I want to see when I open Salesforce?
2. What information helps me keep my finger on the pulse of my company? Reports, tasks and events are among the most popular.
3. Have I completed all the steps under Hi there, Trailblazer? If so, remove it from the Home Screen to make room for other information.

Customize Your List Views

Filter your records to help you work more efficiently. Create custom list views so you can segment your data to focus on the right
customers and business deals.
Make a Few Decisions

38
What is Salesforce Essentials? Customize Salesforce Essentials

1. What information do I need to an up to date list of often?

2. How do I segment my records? For example: Which leads do I prioritize? What opportunities have the most value?
3. If I want to segment customers by custom data, what custom fields should I add to records to filter by?
4. What list view do I want to see when I open accounts, leads, or opportunities?
Best Practices
1. Don’t delete the default view of all records. This way, you have them if you need them.
2. Pin the list view of records you want to see when you first open the page to make it the default.
3. Use list views to send list emails to customers in bulk.

Customize your Reports and Dashboards

Data is key to measuring your success. Create reports and dashboards that help you keep an eye on key initiatives and outcomes.
Make a Few Decisions
1. What insights do I want into my business?
2. Where do I spend money and is that the best use of my funds?
3. How effective are my sales and support people? Do I hit my quotas?
4. Are my customers happy?
5. What fields should I add to my records to enhance my reports?
Best Practices
1. Attend the Salesforce Essentials workshop on creating reports and dashboards.
2. Consider tying compensation to Salesforce reports, so employees are more motivated to work in the app and to complete records.

Customize your Help Center

You can support your customers with a self-service Help Center. Reduce your support ticket queue by answering customer questions
using public-facing knowledge articles.
Make a Few Decisions
1. What are my customers’ frequently asked questions?
2. How can I categorize content so customers can find it quickly?
Best Practices
1. Host an internal knowledge base as well as a customer-facing one to display in your help center.
2. Choose an article editor and set up a review process. You can document reviews in your internal knowledge base.
3. Start with a single category of articles, like frequently asked questions, and scale as you go. You can always add extra categories.
4. Mine the content you already have, such as webinars, slide decks, and one-pagers. Turn that content into articles.

Customize your Opportunity Stages

Closing a deal or earning revenue takes a series of business milestones to achieve. Steps might include a discovery session to determine
the customer’s needs, a presentation on how your product or service can benefit the customer, delivery of the business contract, and
contract negotiations. Create custom opportunity stages to tailor the pipeline to your unique use case.

39
What is Salesforce Essentials? Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

Make a Few Decisions

1. What is my sales process from start to finish?
2. What are the business milestones I want to monitor?
Best Practices to Consider
1. A stage is a business milestone. A task is a step you take to achieve the milestone. For example, a stage is when you make a discovery
call to find out a customer’s needs. A task for that stage is to schedule the call.
2. Use path guidance to add up to 1,000 characters of instruction on how to successfully achieve an opportunity stage.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up the Lightning Experience Home Page
Create or Clone a List View in Lightning Experience
Customize Fields
Reports and Dashboards
Essentials Reporting and Dashboards Workshop
Give Customers Access to Your Knowledge Base Through Help Center
Guide Users with Path

Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

Sales stages help you organize how your business closes a deal, starting from lead creation and going all the way through closing an
opportunity.

Why Do We Use Them?

Creating sales stages means that you have a process to follow every time you work with a customer. That way you can be sure that every
customer gets an all-star experience when they purchase your product or services.

Why Are They Important?

By creating custom sales stages, your sales process reflects your business, making it easier to sell to customers and close more deals.
Want to see it in action? Our 1-mnute feature tour will show you how it all works. Watch the tour: Set Your Sales Process (1 minute)

How to Troubleshoot When Your Sales Are Down

When your team’s sales aren’t on target for a particular month, it can be difficult to find a solution. Follow our troubleshooting tips
to help your team reach their sales goals.
Take Your Sales to the Next Level
An upward trend isn’t only a time to celebrate—it’s a time to refine the recipe for your team’s secret sauce. A winning streak can
turn into a long-term trend when you learn what’s going well and why. Use these tips to help you keep up a winning streak.
Maintain a Healthy Sales Team
Your team succeeds when you invest in fostering a positive, happy work environment where everyone can succeed together. See
our best tips for maintaining a healthy sales team that’s mutually supportive and excited to make sales.

40
What is Salesforce Essentials? Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

5 Sales Secrets from Top Sales Execs at Salesforce

Closing deals is crucial to growing your business. If you don’t have tons of experience convincing customers to sign on the dotted
line, don’t worry. Here are some proven techniques from our top sellers at Salesforce.

SEE ALSO:
Trailhead: Leads & Opportunities for Lightning Experience

How to Troubleshoot When Your Sales Are Down

When your team’s sales aren’t on target for a particular month, it can be difficult to find a solution. Follow our troubleshooting tips to
help your team reach their sales goals.

Problem: You’re Not Winning Deals

A dip in your won opportunities, or won deals, can influence your overall sales.
Before you jump to conclusions, do a little research.
• Ask your team how the personalize their pitches to each prospect. Unless they’re well-versed in what their prospect does and what
they care about, they’re missing an opportunity to delight them.
• Check if market conditions that are influencing your business.
• Check whether team members struggle to close their won opportunities. It might be a good time to update your training and
materials.
• Make sure that your sales process is solid. Your team can have trouble keeping up with the steps to get their deals to the finish line.

Problem: Some of Your Teammates Don’t Perform as Well as Others

A down trend in individual performance can be due to several factors.
For a small dip (under 5% for the month), make minor adjustments.
• See if sales decreased across the team or for individuals. A top performer may be burned out or having a hard time.
• Look for external factors such as a product issue, service issue, or change in your competitors.
• Improve your team training and provide more management reviews to provide continuous feedback and help the team maximize
sales.
A larger drop in performance (somewhere between 5-10% for the month), indicates that it’s a good time to bolster your sales team.
• Is your team in a rut? Help them find ways to freshen up or innovate their sales techniques.
• Prepare your team to give dynamic presentations and pitch to prospects anytime, anywhere so they don’t miss opportunities. Save
presentation slides, fact sheets, and other materials in a public folder and block off time for your team to practice their pitch.
• Do you have enough headcount? If your small team is overworked or your teammates are playing too many roles, their sales can
suffer.
If the drop in performance could be related to high staff turnover, focus on building loyalty and retention.
• Try improving your new-hire training and implementing team feedback. New-hire training can be the positive first impression that
builds loyalty and excitement in your growing team.
• Keep employees happy with programs like in-office perks, performance-based bonuses, and other incentives.
• Conduct an anonymous survey, lead a listening tour, or hire outside help to figure out why people leave.

41
What is Salesforce Essentials? Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

Problem: Sales Are Getting Smaller

Sometimes your wins are high, but revenue per win declines.
When you notice a dip in your team’s average sale size, you can make a few adjustments.
• Optimize your average price or SKU to give your customers more value.
• Revise your average list price or discounts.
• Coordinate sales efforts across your entire team to increase deal sizes.
If your average sale size is down significantly, focus on ways to increase sales size.
• Can your team clearly articulate the value your company brings when qualifying customers? Help them achieve this to make your
customers more receptive to your message and to reduce price pushback.
• Consider bundling products.
• Focus your team’s efforts on target opportunities that they can win.

Problem: Your Team Is Losing More Deals Than They’re Winning

It can be discouraging to see more losses than wins in a month. Before you take it to heart, check on your process and customer
relationships.
If you’re losing opportunities, take a look at your sales process.
• Track which competitors are winning your prospective customers. Bonus points if you can also capture why.
• Make sure that your process includes dropping weak opportunities quickly so your team can focus on promising deals.
Take the opportunity to strengthen relationships with your current customers. If you prioritize revenue generation over customer service,
your current relationships may suffer. Customer loyalty leads to continued support.
When your win rate needs a bigger boost, it’s time to listen to your customers.
• Consider appointing a customer advisory board to help you understand and respond to what creates value for your customers.
• Implement a referral program for your existing customers to help you connect with the right decision-makers at new companies.

Problem: New Opportunities Are Scarce

It’s hard to find that sweet spot of having a few deals on the table without spreading your team too thin.
With a small decrease in opportunity volume, figure out why and nip it in the bud.
• Look for any external factors that caused your team to focus on fewer opportunities.
• Make sure that your team employs the right narrative and provides valuable insights on their first contact with prospects. If they
don’t spend enough time on the phone, they might not be making a strong impact with leads and prospects.
For a significant decrease in opportunity volume, keep digging.
• Check if your sales are dropping. Fewer opportunities in the mix could be the culprit.
• Help your team employ a variety of methods to break through to prospects, and equip them with your own data to leverage as they
acquire new customers.
Keep in mind, too, that fewer opportunities can be due to fewer leads to qualify. Check on the health of your sales pipeline, from marketing
and lead generation to closing deals.

Problem: Your Team Is Taking Too Long to Close Deals

When you leave a deal in limbo, you leave money on the table.

42
What is Salesforce Essentials? Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

If your team takes a little longer than usual to close their open deals, figure out why.
• Check for issues with your sales stages. If your stages don’t accurately reflect your team’s workflow, your teammates could be
struggling to track their efforts.
• Make sure that your team might is closing their deals in Salesforce as soon as the details are hammered out.
• Implement consistent reviews of your sales pipeline and momentum. Help them to review and improve their processes.
A big increase in days to close can mean that your longer sales period contributes to a decline in closed won opportunities and total
sales.
• Avoid complicating your sales process and look for ways to decrease the number of stages or the number of days per stage.
• Schedule regular reviews of stalled opportunities and support your team as they resolve their challenges.

Problem: Your Team Is Entering Data Incorrectly

Heads up! When any metric changes considerably, it’s likely a data-quality problem. Your sales could be better than they look.
If you suspect a data-quality problem, make sure that everyone on your team is entering and classifying opportunities in the same way
and on time. Double-check your field mappings and filters so that your reports and dashboards properly display the information you
need.
If you’re still stumped, you can always contact us for help. Our business and success coaches are happy to help you figure out what’s
going wrong.

Take Your Sales to the Next Level

An upward trend isn’t only a time to celebrate—it’s a time to refine the recipe for your team’s secret sauce. A winning streak can turn
into a long-term trend when you learn what’s going well and why. Use these tips to help you keep up a winning streak.

Capture Your Team’s Winning Ways

If your won opportunities and overall sales are really on a roll, awesome job! While you bask in your team’s success, keep a record of
everyone’s tips, lessons, and sales materials so team members can benefit from each other’s wins.
Keep the momentum going.
• Encourage your team to share sales tips and provide feedback about your sales process. They may have key stories or data that they
use to impress prospects.
• Save sales presentations and fact sheets in a public folder where anyone on your team can access them.
• Ask your team to share lessons learned from deals they didn’t win. Veterans and new hires alike can benefit from an open discussion
about mistakes.
• Share customer feedback with the team. Show them how they help customers with a shoutout for a job well done.

Scale Your Success

A small rise in won opportunities is a great sign that your team is doing something right. Find ways to scale and pinpoint how you do
it.
Automate some tasks.
• Set up a clear sales process to guide your team through qualifying leads, sending quotes, and closing open deals.
• Point out best practices and tips, so the team can keep learning.
• Create email templates for the most common interactions with customers and prospects.

43
What is Salesforce Essentials? Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

• Ask your team to sync their emails and calendars with Einstein Activity Capture to eliminate manual entry of contact information,
upcoming meetings, and more.
• Create a flow for your team to request approval to offer discounts or request travel budget to visit a customer.

Gain Insights from Your New Customers

Your new customers can give you a ton of useful information about what you do well. Listen and share their insights with your team.
Learn why your customers choose you.
• Help your team follow up on recent wins as they continue to focus on new sales. Your customers will appreciate that you still prioritize
your relationship with them after they paid you.
• Ask your new customers which competitors they turned down for you and why. Knowing if they chose you for your product design,
quality, customer service, awesome people, or another reason tells you where you excel and where you can improve.
• Get some shining testimonials for your marketing materials to help generate new leads.

SEE ALSO:
Learn Best Practices for B2C Businesses
About Flows
Standardize Email with Email Templates

Maintain a Healthy Sales Team

Your team succeeds when you invest in fostering a positive, happy work environment where everyone can succeed together. See our
best tips for maintaining a healthy sales team that’s mutually supportive and excited to make sales.

Give Your Team the Tools They Need to Sell Better

Set up your team for success. Help them find the tools they need, when they need them. Enable them to show up confidently, find
resources, and access metrics that help them improve.
Our recommendations:
• Make sure that your team deeply understands your products so they can answer questions. Does your team have the product
knowledge and know-how to sell with conviction and passion?
• Train your team to be proactive to explain how your products can relieve pain points that customers may not be aware of.
• Encourage your team to focus on making deeper connections before they grow their client lists, crunch numbers, and worry about
details like call times. Help them understand and leverage relationships between the company and its top-tier customers.
• Provide mobile tools that let your team be productive on the go.
• Prepare your team to give dynamic presentations and pitch to prospects anytime, anywhere.
• Qualify new leads so that you direct the best ones to your team. Better leads can close faster.

Leverage Tribal Knowledge

Each teammate brings unique perspectives and experiences to your company. Encourage your team to learn from each other to support
learning and growth
Our recommendations:

44
What is Salesforce Essentials? Make Selling Simple with Sales Stages

• Foster team camaraderie and support. A little healthy competition now and then can be a great motivator, but too much competition
can be counterproductive.
• Pair every new hire with an experienced mentor to help them learn the ropes.
• Capture your team’s best tips and knowledge in a centralized place where everyone can learn from each other.

Nail Your Onboarding Process

Effective onboarding sets up your new hires for success. And it’s an opportunity to work out kinks in your sales process and build team
loyalty from day one.
Our recommendations:
• Get feedback from your team to optimize your onboarding process. Streamline your process to help make incoming teammates
productive as soon as possible.
• Consolidate best practices for onboarding and selling. Your new hires will appreciate that they can find everything they need to get
started.
• Use onboarding to help build loyalty and retention.

Support Them When They’re Down

There will be times when your team doesn’t hit its targets. A healthy team shows compassion and support when times are tough.
Our recommendations:
• Reach out to team members who struggle more than others. Are there work or personal reasons or extenuating circumstances for
performance decline?
• Keep an eye on factors outside your team’s control, such as product and service issues or competitive threats. An outside perspective
can help lift morale when your team is feeling down.
• Update or improve sales training and management reviews during low points. The extra attention can help support sales.
• Stay up-to-date on industry news to help your team innovate their sales techniques. A good start is Quotable by Salesforce.

SEE ALSO:
Trailhead: Sales Team Enablement
Quotable by Salesforce

5 Sales Secrets from Top Sales Execs at Salesforce

Closing deals is crucial to growing your business. If you don’t have tons of experience convincing customers to sign on the dotted line,
don’t worry. Here are some proven techniques from our top sellers at Salesforce.
Before our sales leaders take to the phones or send out an email,
Do your homework
Before you reach out, have all the important details in hand and a list of questions to ask. Here are the questions our experts make
sure to cover in that first call or email:
• Who are the decision makers?
• What is the budget?
• Has the prospect used something like your product or service before?
• What’s the timeline?

45
What is Salesforce Essentials? Sync Emails and Activities

Make sure they’re ready to have a purchasing conversation

Sometimes customers are interested in learning more about your product, but aren’t ready to make a decision. Ask them upfront
where they’re at in the decision making process so you know just how much effort to spend on trying to close the deal.
Be up-front
When you’re talk to a prospect or a customer about costs, your offerings, or what to expect, make sure to provide accurate information.
Help them make well-informed decisions about your product and build trust that you will deliver what you say you can.
Look for signals
Do they respond to your emails? Pick up your phone calls? Are they enthusiastic? Sometimes the simplest indications of readiness
are a sign for you to follow up, send a proposal, or move on to a more qualified lead.
Always bring it back to the customer
At every opportunity, bring the conversation back to the customer. Use their industry as an example in your demo, shape meetings
around what works best for their schedule and timeline, and find ways to solve their pain points in your pitch. It shows that your
product or service would provide value to the customer—the ultimate clincher in closing a deal.
Use the tips from our top sales people to help you focus on what’s important to the customer, show the value of your product, and
move decision makers through your pipeline. Pick up on subtle clues throughout the prospecting process so you can track your
progress and decide if the deal is worth pursuing. Spend time on deals that are likely to convert to save time and keep your business
growing.

Sync Emails and Activities

Automatically bring your business emails and events into Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture. Then your deals, cases, and contacts
will show any related emails and events.

How Do I Set It Up?

From the home page, select Connect to Email and Activities.

46
What is Salesforce Essentials? Sync Emails and Activities

Then follow the steps in the guided setup. Once you’ve successfully set it up, a confirmation banner appears at the top of your screen.

Note: If you use Email-to-Case to create support cases from your emails, make sure to use a different email address for Einstein
Activity Capture. What's Email-to-Case?

What Should I Do If It Doesn’t Connect?

If your emails and activities aren’t syncing after you complete the setup flow, try enabling Einstein from Setup. Here’s how to do just
that.
1.
Go to Setup and enter Permission Sets in the Quick Find box.
2. Select Inbox With Einstein Activity Capture and click Manage Assignments.
3. Check the box next to your name and click Remove Assignments.
4. Click Okay in the pop up and then click Done.
5. Check the box next to your name and click Remove Assignments.
6. Click Done.
7. Go to your profile by clicking on either your profile image or the placeholder image in the top right of your screen.
8. Click Settingsin the drop down.
9. In the Quick Find box, enter Einstein Activity Capture.
10. Click Settings.
11. If an email address appears, click Disconnect then Reconnect. If no email address appears, click New Accountand follow the
prompts.

47
What is Salesforce Essentials? Offer Customer Support in Essentials

How Can I Check If My Email Is Connected?

If you’d like to see what email accounts are connected, there’s an easy way to do just that.
1. Go to your profile by clicking your profile image or the placeholder image in the top right of your screen.
2. Click Settings in the dropdown.
3. Type Einstein Activity Capture in the Quick Find box.
4. Click Settings.
5. Dismiss the modal to see a list of your connected accounts.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Einstein Activity Capture
Use Einstein Activity Capture

Offer Customer Support in Essentials

Salesforce Essentials makes offering customer support easy. Track and solve your customers’ issues with cases, so nothing slips through
the cracks. Keep your customers happy with self-service, live web chat and messaging, and phone support.
With your Salesforce Essentials subscription, you can offer stellar customer service with no additional cost. When you want to offer more
ways for your customers to reach you, you can add more features for an extra cost from the Manage Subscription page in Setup.

Note: The support features that require an extra cost are Sales Dialer, Dialer for Essentials, Web Chat for Essentials (for more than
one user), and Facebook Messenger for Essentials (for more than one user).

What You Can Do What To Get

Track and solve customer issues without breaking your team’s Cases
current workflow.

Get cases created for you from incoming support emails. Email-to-Case

Let customers fill out a form on your website that logs a case for Web-to-Case
your team.

Get cases created for you from posts and messages to your business Social Customer Service
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube pages.

Write articles that cover FAQs, troubleshooting steps, and other Knowledge
information that your customers contact you about.

Create a branded self-service site where your customers can read Help Center
helpful articles and contact your team. You can also offer web chat
here.

Create a phone number inside Salesforce to easily call leads and Phone
customers, log calls, and more. Or, integrate a third-party phone
product so it works in Salesforce.

Chat with customers who are browsing your website or help center. Web Chat for Essentials

48
What is Salesforce Essentials? Let Your Customers Help Themselves

What You Can Do What To Get

Use Facebook Messenger to interact with customers inside Facebook Messenger for Essentials
Salesforce.

Route cases, chats, messages, and leads to someone on your team Omni-Channel
automatically.

Let Your Customers Help Themselves

Give your customers the gift of self-service. When your customers can answer their own questions, your team can spend more time
making deals and solving bigger customer issues. Write and organize articles with Knowledge that provide information about your
business and answer common questions. Serve up your categorized articles in a help center so your customers can find exactly what
they need. If they have a question that requires human intervention, they can log a case to your team. (Or if you’re feeling spiffy, you
can offer live chat, too).

Write Useful Help Articles for Your Customers and Your Team
Use Knowledge to write and share articles, so your team can leverage your communal knowledge to help customers faster. You can
also surface your Knowledge base in your help center to let customers find answers on their own.
Create a Self-Service Website
Help Center lets you share Knowledge articles that answer common questions, so your customers can help themselves. You can
also provide Chat or a contact button so that customers can reach out to your team for the issues that require human intervention.

Write Useful Help Articles for Your Customers and Your Team
Use Knowledge to write and share articles, so your team can leverage your communal knowledge to help customers faster. You can also
surface your Knowledge base in your help center to let customers find answers on their own.

Why Do We Use It?

Knowledge helps your team answer customers' questions with articles. You can also let customers can find answers to their questions
on their own in your help center.

Why Is It Important?
Knowledge helps improve the productivity and speed of your team, so they can get customers the answers they need faster. It also lets
you offer self-service to your customers by making your articles public in a help center, so customers can find answers on their own.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Knowledge with a Guided Setup Flow
Create and Edit Articles
Use Your Knowledge Base

Create a Self-Service Website

Help Center lets you share Knowledge articles that answer common questions, so your customers can help themselves. You can also
provide Chat or a contact button so that customers can reach out to your team for the issues that require human intervention.

49
What is Salesforce Essentials? Let Your Customers Help Themselves

Why Do We Use It?

Help Center offers a centralized place for your customers to help themselves with any questions they have about your business.

Why Is It Important?
Help Center is a quick and easy way for your customers to get the answers they need without waiting to get in touch with someone on
your team. Your team saves time by letting customers answer common issues with articles, so they can focus on closing the tricky cases
that your articles can’t solve.

50
What is Salesforce Essentials? Let Your Customers Help Themselves

Prepare for Your Help Center

Get ready to create your branded, self-service help center. Plan or write your articles and their categories, decide which topics you
want to feature, and gather your branding materials.
Build an Effective Self-Service Help Center
Customer-friendly support doesn’t have to be complicated or burdensome for your team. Offer a self-service help center as an
effective and cost-efficient way to grow your business. Follow these tips to get the most value out of self-service.

SEE ALSO:
Prepare for Your Help Center
Set Up Help Center with a Guided Setup Flow

Prepare for Your Help Center

Get ready to create your branded, self-service help center. Plan or write your articles and their
EDITIONS
categories, decide which topics you want to feature, and gather your branding materials.
A help center enables your customers to help themselves when they have questions or run into a Essentials is available in:
common issue with your product or service. Before you dive in, let’s make sure that you have Lightning Experience
everything you need to get your help center up and running smoothly.
Available in: Essentials,
Enterprise, Performance,
Plan Your Articles Unlimited, and Developer
Editions
Know what kinds of articles you want to publish and share with your customers before you start.
If you can write some of all of your articles ahead of time, that’s even better—you can get a more
accurate preview of your help center if you have some content to display.
How Articles Work
Articles are written and published using Salesforce Knowledge (you can publish up to 500 articles with your Salesforce Essentials
subscription). You can make anyone on your team a Knowledge user so they can create and publish drafts, edit articles, and delete
articles.
You can have public articles and internal-only articles. We recommend planning for both, because an internal Knowledge base can
help your team align and share information. For your help center, you’ll include public articles, so your customers can access your
awesome content.
Categorizing Your Articles
When you write articles, you can organize them into categories (called data categories) and groups of categories (called data category
groups). These tools help you sort your articles so your customers can do less searching.
You can create categories and groups for different regions, products, types of articles (like FAQs versus troubleshooting steps), or
whatever works best for you. For example, you could create a data category group called US Regions, which includes the data
categories West, Midwest, South, and Northeast. So when you write an article that lists the locations and hours of your stores on the
west coast, you would select the West category. Then, a customer in Nevada can look in the West category to find the nearest location
faster.
You can create categories for your articles before or during the Help Center guided setup flow. Either way, we recommend planning
out the categories you want ahead of time so you can set up everything faster.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Let Your Customers Help Themselves

Share and Manage Featured Topics

Your help center has tiles on the homepage that let your customers read articles within a particular category. We call these featured
topics. You can set your featured topics when you use the Help Center setup flow.
Creating New Topics During the Setup Flow
If you don’t create your data categories before starting the flow, you can create topics. We do some heavy lifting behind-the-scenes
to create data categories for them. When you’re ready to publish articles, simply assign them to the data categories we created, and
they’ll appear in your help center.
Selecting Data Categories During the Setup Flow
When you’ve already created data categories and data category groups before starting the flow, you can select the ones you want
to appear as featured topics. We create topics from those data categories to make them show up in your help center’s homepage
tiles. Any articles that you publish (or have published) using those data categories appear in your help center.
Managing Your Topics
You can edit your featured topics in Experience Workspaces in Setup. From there, go to Content Management > Topics > Featured
Topics.

Add Branding to Your Help Center

You can add a logo, login page background, page header, and featured topic tile images. You can also choose colors for different elements
on your help center.
To select colors and add a logo, login page background, and page header, use Experience Builder. See Brand Your Community for more
details.
To add featured topic images, use Experience Workspaces. From there, go to Content Management > Topics > Featured Topics.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Help Center with a Guided Setup Flow
Help Center Setup Flow Next Steps
Introduction to Help Center
Use Experience Builder
Manage Your Featured Topics

Build an Effective Self-Service Help Center

Customer-friendly support doesn’t have to be complicated or burdensome for your team. Offer a self-service help center as an effective
and cost-efficient way to grow your business. Follow these tips to get the most value out of self-service.
When you build a customer-friendly self-service help center, you set up your customers and team members for success. Your customers
are happy to get the answers they’re looking for. Your team is happy to focus on trickier issues, making sales, and checking off other
to-dos.

Make Sure That Customers Can Find Your Content

Your self-service site isn’t useful if your customers don’t know where to go for help, so make it easy for customers to find.
• Include a link to your help center on your website’s most highly trafficked pages. Consider including links in other places, too, like
in email communications, member pages, and product pages.
• Help customers find answers by adding a search bar on your help center.
• Use labels, categories, or tags to guide customers to the right place.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Let Your Customers Help Themselves

• Consider optimizing your content for search engines, as your customers could turn to a web search before they find your resources.
Include keywords that your customers might search for in your titles and content.

Write Clear, Relevant Articles

Helpful articles are clearly written, informative, and useful. Use simple and clear language to describe what customers need to know.
Cut details that don’t help them succeed.
For a relevant and useful help center, gather your customers’ most common questions and turn them into articles. We recommend that
you start with a variety of content such as common support requests, troubleshooting steps, FAQs, and detailed product information.
You can include images and videos for a more hands-on approach that your customers will love.
You don’t have to start from scratch—look to your team’s past interactions with customers. You or someone on your team likely answered
basic questions about your company, helped a customer fix an issue, or wrote out a step-by-step tutorial for your products. Start with
what you have to be able to quickly write and publish your initial set of articles. You can make adjustments later.

Open the Lines for Feedback

Listen to feedback to build trust with your customers. Start by anticipating what your customers want and offer a few articles to them.
But if you let your them provide feedback, you can gather useful data that takes the guesswork out of your customer support.
Our recommendations:
• Offer readers the opportunity to vote on or rate articles to show you if they think the information is useful.
• Include a contact form in your help center so customers can reach out if they can’t find the answer to a question.
• Offer more support such as email, phone, live chat, or messaging apps, and show those links prominently on the page.

Include Article Maintenance in Your Team’s Processes

Your help center isn’t a one-time task. Your team should always listen to customer feedback and find new questions and solutions to
document. We recommend hosting regular reviews to go over feedback data and re-read articles to make sure that you’re truly helping
your customers.

Add Branding for a Seamless Experience

Give your customers a consistent experience between your help center and your corporate site. Use the same colors, icons, header, and
footer across all your web properties, and use the same domain or subdomain.
Branding doesn’t stop at visuals. Create a style guide for your team to keep your articles consistent in voice, tone, and formatting regardless
of who writes them. Look for similar examples online to consolidate and adapt as you write your first articles.

Keep Mobile in Mind

Smartphone users increasingly turn to their phones instead of a desktop when they want answers. Your help center should be responsive
and reformat to fit on the viewer’s screen. If you omit mobile, you lose opportunities to help and maintain customer relationships.
A self-service help center is the first place your customers go for help, so make it relevant and easy-to-use. When you nail self-service,
your customers are happy to avoid a lengthy phone call or a game of email ping-pong. Your team is freed up to focus on complicated
support issues, sales, and everything else they need to get done.

SEE ALSO:
Salesforce Blog: 4 Steps to Write Amazing Support Content for Your Small Business Help Center

53
What is Salesforce Essentials? Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases

Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases

Use Email-to-Case to turn incoming emails to your support email address into cases in Salesforce. Social Customer Service automatically
creates cases for social media mentions, posts, or direct messages from your company’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram
pages. Set up Email-to-Case, Twitter, and Facebook with guided setup flows.

Why Do We Use It?

Your customers are reaching out to you across multiple channels, like email, Facebook, and Twitter. Instead of sending someone from
your team to camp out on each channel to wait for messages, you can turn your customers’ interactions into cases in Salesforce. Then
you can prioritize and assign them all together.

Note: Salesforce Essentials comes with the Social Customer Service Starter Pack, which means that you can select any 2 engagement
channels out of the box.
When you’re working on cases from your support email address, you can insert email templates, add attachments, and send your response
right from the case. No more hopping between your email and your case list.
With social cases, the following interactions become cases for your team:
• Facebook: Posts to your company’s Facebook page. If you want to use Facebook Messenger in Salesforce, see Chat and Messaging
for Essentials on page 63.
• Twitter: At-mentions and direct messages to your company’s Twitter account
• YouTube: Comments on videos in your company’s channel
• Instagram: Comments and replies on your company's posts
You can like, unlike, view source, and delete social media posts from the case feed.
Want to see it in action? Our 1-mnute feature tour will show you how it all works. Watch the tour: Create Cases from Emails and
Social Media Posts (1 minute)

Note: Emails larger than 32 KB are truncated when they come in as cases, so you’ll have to check your inbox to see those messages
in full. And if you use Einstein Activity Capture to sync your emails and calendar, make sure to use a different email address for
Email-to-Case. What's Einstein Activity Capture?

Why Is It Important?
Save time and let your email and social media interactions come to your team where they already are: in Salesforce. Gathering your
customers’ questions in one place lets you and your team manage your open tasks more efficiently and make sure that every customer
is heard.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Email-to-Case with a Guided Setup Flow
Set Up Facebook or Twitter with Guided Setup Flows
Set Up Social Customer Service

Respond to Social Media Interactions in Salesforce Essentials

Join customer conversations on social media without monitoring your accounts in separate tabs. Connect with Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, and YouTube to respond to posts and direct messages in Salesforce. You can also create cases from social posts, so your team
can provide customer service everywhere your customers are.

54
What is Salesforce Essentials? Use a Phone in Salesforce

You can connect your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts to Salesforce. Salesforce Essentials comes with the Social
Customer Service Starter Pack, which means that you can select any 2 engagement channels out of the box.
Twitter
See your company’s at-mentions, replies, and direct messages. You can reply, retweet, favorite, and follow from Salesforce, or click
tweets to view and respond to them on Twitter. Use the guided setup flow to get cases created for you when your company account
receives at-mentions and direct messages.
Facebook
See your Facebook timeline in Salesforce. You can reply to and like posts from Salesforce, or click posts to view and respond to them
on Facebook. Use the guided setup flow to get cases created for you when customers post on your business page.

Note: Make sure that you have a business page associated with your Facebook account.

Instagram
See comments and replies on your company’s Instagram photos in Salesforce. You can send replies in Salesforce.

Note: Make sure that your Instagram account is a business account, and that it’s linked to a Facebook account. It also needs
to be linked to a business page on that Facebook account.
YouTube
See comments on your company’s videos in Salesforce. You can reply in Salesforce, or click comments to view and respond to them
on YouTube.

Use a Phone in Salesforce

A phone lets your team take and make calls alongside their other work in Salesforce. You can create a phone with Salesforce using Sales
Dialer or Dialer for Essentials, or you can integrate a third-party phone product.

Why Do We Use It?

Adding a phone to Salesforce saves you money because you don’t have to purchase phones and individual phone lines for your team.
Depending on the phone option you choose, you can automate your tasks, customize your greetings and wait music, and use contact
requests to let customers request a call back later.

55
What is Salesforce Essentials? Use a Phone in Salesforce

56
What is Salesforce Essentials? Use a Phone in Salesforce

Why Is It Important?
Bringing a phone into Salesforce gives you everything you need in one place. You can talk to customers and log your conversations so
that everyone on your team stays up-to-date with what you’ve discussed. You can pull up related records like an account or case during
a call to get the context you need to close a deal or answer the customer’s questions.

Phone Options in Salesforce Essentials

Use Salesforce to make and log calls with Sales Dialer or Dialer for Essentials. Or, connect a third-party phone product to Salesforce
using Open CTI. All of our phone options let you make and receive calls in Salesforce and log calls to related account and contact
records.
Create a Company Phone for Your Team
Create a single phone number that connects your customers to your team. Your team can take and make calls from Salesforce.
Personalize conversations based on past call history, take notes, and finalize a deal or case details all within Salesforce. Align your
customers’ phone experience with your company by uploading your own recorded messages and wait music.

Phone Options in Salesforce Essentials

Use Salesforce to make and log calls with Sales Dialer or Dialer for Essentials. Or, connect a third-party phone product to Salesforce using
Open CTI. All of our phone options let you make and receive calls in Salesforce and log calls to related account and contact records.
Dialer for Essentials
Dialer gives you one phone number that your entire team can use to take and make calls in Salesforce. Personalize conversations
based on past call history, take notes, and finalize a deal or case details all within Salesforce. Use contact requests to let your customers
request a callback when they don’t want to wait, so your team can get back to them later. Upload your own recorded messages and
wait music to align your customers’ phone experience with your company.
Sales Dialer
Sales Dialer brings you the same calling, call history, and call logging that Dialer for Essentials offers. It also boasts more functionality
like multiple phone numbers, personal voicemail, pre-recorded messages for customers, local presence, call bridging to a physical
phone, call recording, and more. However, you can’t use contact requests, and call monitoring is not supported.
Use a Third-Party Phone Product
Connect your third-party phone implementation to Salesforce so you can take your phone calls in Salesforce with your other work.
We provide a guided setup flow that lets you get set up in only a few minutes if you use one of our partners: Supported for Amazon
Connect, b+s Connects for Cisco, Five9, and NewVoiceMedia. If you use a different product, we may have a package that you can
use in the AppExchange to set it up manually.

Note: Sales Dialer and Dialer for Essentials can’t be used together. You can use either one alongside a third-party phone product,
but your team members can’t be added to both phones.

SEE ALSO:
Dialer for Essentials
Sales Dialer
Set Up Your Third-Party Phone in Salesforce

57
What is Salesforce Essentials? Use a Phone in Salesforce

Create a Company Phone for Your Team

Create a single phone number that connects your customers to your team. Your team can take and
EDITIONS
make calls from Salesforce. Personalize conversations based on past call history, take notes, and
finalize a deal or case details all within Salesforce. Align your customers’ phone experience with Essentials is available in:
your company by uploading your own recorded messages and wait music. Lightning Experience
Dialer for Essentials consolidates your company’s phone calls to one phone number, so incoming
Available in: Essentials
calls have a better chance of connecting to someone on your team. Your team takes the calls from
Edition
either the Sales app or Service console app, where they can view and update related records like
contacts or leads, see call history, take notes, and log calls.

Note: Dialer for Essentials is for use only by customers in the US and Canada, and is intended to be used to dial US and Canadian
numbers only.
When you’re open and available, the customer hears your Greeting While Open message and Wait Music. When you’re closed, they hear
the Greeting While Closed message.

If your team doesn’t pick up the call, the customer hears either the No One Available message or the Customer Callback message
depending on your settings. If the customer requests a callback, they hear the Callback Confirmation message.
Want to see it in action? Our 1-mnute feature tour will show you how it all works. Watch the tour: Use a Phone in Salesforce with
Dialer for Essentials (1 minute)

58
What is Salesforce Essentials? Get the Most from Tasks

Get the Most from Tasks

Tasks are to-do list items that help you keep track of your workload and meet important business objectives. If you're an individual
contributor, you can use task reminders to stay on top of upcoming deadlines. If you're a manager, you can use tasks to align business
processes and monitor productivity.

Optimize Tasks as an Individual Contributor

Use tasks to set deadline reminders, manage records, and organize your work week.
Optimize Tasks as a Manager
As a manager, you can use tasks to align business processes and monitor productivity.

Optimize Tasks as an Individual Contributor

Use tasks to set deadline reminders, manage records, and organize your work week.
The task reminder field is where the magic happens. You can elect to receive notifications as a task’s deadline approaches or when the
task is overdue, which helps you prioritize work. Create a task reminder to customize a slide deck two days before delivering a pitch. Or
give yourself a heads-up two hours before you promised to update a customer on their support case. Reminders ensure that deadlines
never slip through the cracks.
Tasks can be one-time or recurring. A recurring task can come in handy for a monthly account outreach or a daily reminder to follow up
on a high-risk support case.
As an individual contributor, you lean on tasks for two reasons:
• Manage standalone to-do list items: Set a weekly to-do list item to review a pipeline. Add a reminder to check case updates.
• Manage specific records: Set a task to take action on a lead, contact, campaign, or contract.
You have four options to manage tasks:
• List Views: Want to know today’s priorities? Check Tasks Due Today and Overdue Tasks in the Tasks object when you start your shift.
• Split View in the Service Console: Want to see task details from the list view? Open your list of Tasks Due Today or Overdue Tasks in
split view, and then open individual tasks without losing sight of the full list.
• Kanban board or sprint wall: Need to know the status of your to-do list items or those of your whole team? Use your kanban board
or sprint wall to monitor tasks that are new, in progress, on hold, or completed.
• Mobile App: Travel for work? Stay organized by viewing and managing tasks on your mobile phone.

SEE ALSO:
Start Using Tasks

Optimize Tasks as a Manager

As a manager, you can use tasks to align business processes and monitor productivity.
Keep your team organized with group tasks. You can create one to-do list item, and then assign it to multiple individual users or a
predefined group. For example, help ensure that all employees take HR compliance training or send a promotion to their managed
accounts. Group tasks can be recurring, such as for a monthly team meeting or a quarterly revenue review. Assigning the same task to
everyone keeps the team aligned and efficient.
You can check team productivity in two ways.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Get the Most from Tasks

• Create an All Open Tasks or All Overdue Tasks report see a birds-eye view of employee productivity. Show these reports to your team
to indicate how they’re doing with task management. You can stay on top of this report data week over week with email notifications.

• Want to dive into individual tasks and leave comments to a user? List views bring report data to life with the ability to access each
to-do list item and then follow up.

Build an "All Open Tasks" Report

Create an All Open Tasks report to see how many open tasks your team must complete by a certain date, week, or month.
You can compare these numbers weeks over week to see improvements or declines in productivity.
Build an "All Overdue Tasks" Report
Create an All Overdue Tasks report to see the volume of past due tasks. You can compare these numbers week over week
to see improvements or declines in productivity.

SEE ALSO:
Start Using Tasks

Build an "All Open Tasks" Report

Create an All Open Tasks report to see how many open tasks your team must complete by a certain date, week, or month. You
can compare these numbers weeks over week to see improvements or declines in productivity.
1. Navigate to the Reports tab.
2. Click New Report.
3. Select Tasks & Event for the report type.
4. Click Filters.
5. Apply the following filters:
a. Change the Show Me filter to All Activities to see all the activities created.
b. Change the Date filter to All Time. If you want to filter your report to see tasks based on a certain due date, change the Date
filter. For example, switch to This Week to only see tasks that are due for the week.
c. Change the Show filter to Tasks to see only open tasks.

6. Save your changes.

7. Give your report a name and choose whether to make it public or private.
a. If you select Private Reports, only you can see the report. If you select Public Reports, then everyone with access to reports
in Salesforce can see the report.

8. Save your changes.

You can subscribe to a report to receive it by email.

SEE ALSO:
Schedule and Subscribe to Reports

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Going Beyond the Basics

Build an "All Overdue Tasks" Report

Create an All Overdue Tasks report to see the volume of past due tasks. You can compare these numbers week over week to
see improvements or declines in productivity.
1. Navigate to the Reports tab.
2. Click New Report.
3. Select Tasks & Eventfor the report type.
4. Click Filters.
5. Apply these filters:
a. Change the Show Me filter to All Activities to see all the activities created.
b. Change the Date filter to Last 30 Days to see the open tasks that were due within the last 30 days. You can filter the report to
see tasks that were due yesterday, today, or within the last 30, 60, 90, 120 days.
c. Change the Show filter to Tasks to see only the open tasks.

6. Save your changes.

7. Give your report a name and choose whether to make it public or private.
If you select Private Reports, only you can see the report. If you select Public Reports, everyone with access to reports in Salesforce
can see the report.
8. Save your changes.
You can subscribe to a report to receive it by email.

SEE ALSO:
Schedule and Subscribe to Reports

Going Beyond the Basics

Give your team more automation and productivity by routing incoming work (like cases) to the best-fit person for the job. Use Chat and
Messaging to provide instant conversation to your customers through web chat and Facebook Messenger. Use Macros to complete
multi-step tasks with a single click.

Divvy Up Work On Your Team with Routing

Use Omni-Channel to route work items (like cases, leads, chats, and messages) to the best-fit person on your team based on your
team’s availability and the priority of the work. The most important work items are pushed to your team first.
Offer Live Customer Support with Chat and Messaging
Offer your customers instant conversation with web chat and Facebook Messenger for Essentials. Chats and messages are delivered
to team members alongside their other work in Salesforce, so they can handle cases, chats, messages, and everything else side by
side.
Automate Your Tasks with Macros
A macro automates a common process so your team can help customers with fewer clicks.
Learn Best Practices for B2C Businesses
If you’re running a small business that works with customers directly, you’ve definitely got a lot going on. Whether it’s stocking
shelves or responding to questions, managing your business is an all-consuming task. With Essentials, you can bring email, tasks,
and all your other to-dos right into Salesforce. Here are our top recommendations for getting the most out of Essentials.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Divvy Up Work On Your Team with Routing

Add Your Apps to Salesforce Essentials

Want to extend the functionality of your Salesforce platform? Not sure where to start? While Salesforce Essentials doesn't come with
API access, our support coaches have gathered what they believe are the most essential apps to extend functionality. Check out our
AppExchange to integrate some of the tools you already use and love with Salesforce.
Re-engage Inactive Leads and Customers
If a lead or customer hasn’t purchased or accessed your product in about 30 days, consider them inactive. This behavior doesn’t
mean they’re no longer interested; it’s just time to remind them about your great products and service.
Manage Your Contacts with These Best Practices
Storing and managing contact data in your CRM means that you get to know your customer and understand the timeline of your
relationship with the customer. You also get a big-picture view of how all your customers benefit your business.
Automate Your Business Routines
Save time by automating your business practices. Rules, Process Builder, and Flows turn your repetitive workload into automated
actions that do work for you.
Best Practices for Marketing Teams
Marketing outreach is key to attracting new leads and retaining customers. Whether you want to send a promotion to a loyal customer
or reach multiple new leads with an offer, we have tools to help.

Divvy Up Work On Your Team with Routing

Use Omni-Channel to route work items (like cases, leads, chats, and messages) to the best-fit person on your team based on your team’s
availability and the priority of the work. The most important work items are pushed to your team first.

Why Do We Use It?

Omni-Channel helps customers reach the right person on your team for their needs. Your team members don’t have to search for the
next issue to solve—it’s pushed right to them in the Service Console.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Offer Live Customer Support with Chat and Messaging

Why Is It Important?
Omni-Channel pushes the highest-priority cases to your team. Your customers’ most important needs are addressed first, letting you
help them more efficiently.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Omni-Channel with a Guided Setup Flow
How Does Routing Work?

Offer Live Customer Support with Chat and Messaging

Offer your customers instant conversation with web chat and Facebook Messenger for Essentials.
EDITIONS
Chats and messages are delivered to team members alongside their other work in Salesforce, so
they can handle cases, chats, messages, and everything else side by side. Essentials is available in:
Lightning Experience
Web Chat Available in: Essentials,
Enterprise, Performance,
Embed web chat into your website or help center with the option to let customers log a case when
Unlimited, and Developer
your team’s away. You can display the chat button for customers in your website and help center.
Editions

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Offer Live Customer Support with Chat and Messaging

Your team can accept chats in the Service Console. The first 100 characters of the customer's message appear in the chat header, so you
can easily differentiate between all your in-progress chats (1). The Past Chats tab lets you quickly refer to previous chats with the customer
(2).The handy toolbar gives you what you need to provide speedy service (3).

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Offer Live Customer Support with Chat and Messaging

Facebook Messenger for Essentials

Facebook Messenger for Essentials connects your business’s Facebook page to Salesforce, so messages to your page don’t go unseen.
Make sure that you have a business page ready to go before setting up Messaging.
You can respond to messages in the same place as your chats: right in the Service console. Your chats, messages, cases, and everything
else open in tabs so you can take on multiple conversations at a time. Easily create related records so you don't lose important information,
and your customers always get what they need.

How to Get Started

Essentials comes with 1 license of Web Chat and 1 license of Facebook Messenger for Essentials, so you can start right away. When you're
ready, you can purchase more licenses for your team from the Manage Subscription page.
Want to see it in action? Our 1-mnute feature tour will show you how it all works. Watch the tour: Talk to Customers in Real Time
with Chat and Messaging (1 minute)
The Chat and Messaging setup pages are where you can dive in using simple guided setup flows. If you’re adding your team, the users
you select during each flow can immediately start receiving chat and message requests. All they have to do is use the App Launcher to
switch to the Service Console app, open Omni-Channel from the utility bar, and change their status to Available - Chat or Available
- Messaging.
To add web chat to your website, paste the provided code snippet into your website before the closing body tag (</body>) on the
pages where you want the chat button to be displayed.
To add web chat to your help center, drag the Embedded Service Chat component into your help center using the Experience Builder.
Then open the security settings in the Experience Builder and add your chat endpoint URL as a trusted site. The chat endpoint is in your

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Tasks with Macros

embedded chat code snippet as the baseLiveAgentContentURL. (If you lost your code snippet, you can find it in Setup >
Embedded Service.)

SEE ALSO:
Set Up Chat
Set Up Messaging
Manage Trusted URLs

Automate Your Tasks with Macros

A macro automates a common process so your team can help customers with fewer clicks.

Why Do We Use Them?

Macros speed up the process of getting your customers the support they need by automating repeated tasks for your team. Instead of
jumping around to find the right tools, you can solve a customer issue with a single click.
The Macro Builder is where you set the logic behind the magic. The left side of the page displays a canvas with a sample record for the
object you selected, like a case (1). The right side of the page lets you specify the instructions and details for the macro (2).

Set the instructions and logic that you need to get everything done in one click. You can use macros to send canned responses, escalate
cases that meet certain conditions, attach a commonly-reference Knowledge article, change a case's status, and more.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Tasks with Macros

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Learn Best Practices for B2C Businesses

Why Are They Important?

By saving you and your customers time on getting support, you can focus on optimizing your service for the future.

SEE ALSO:
Set Up and Use Macros
Add Logic to Macros

Learn Best Practices for B2C Businesses

If you’re running a small business that works with customers directly, you’ve definitely got a lot going on. Whether it’s stocking shelves
or responding to questions, managing your business is an all-consuming task. With Essentials, you can bring email, tasks, and all your
other to-dos right into Salesforce. Here are our top recommendations for getting the most out of Essentials.

Bring Your Emails into Essentials, Automatically.

If you’re ever frustrated when you’re trying to look at multiple tabs to write a single email, have we got news for you. All of that can be
viewed on a single screen with Essentials. With Einstein Activity Capture, your emails and events are automatically brought into Salesforce.
That means you see contact information for each customer, how they last interacted with your business, and any other relevant info on
a single page. The best part about it? Once you set it up, you’ll never have to juggle all those sheets, documents, and tabs again.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Add Your Apps to Salesforce Essentials

Create One Giant Database.

Every time a customer comes into your shop, looks at a property, or inquires about your services is a great opportunity to get contact
information for your next email campaign or promotion, right? Storing their information in the Contacts object makes it easy for you to
find their info or see any interaction they’ve had with your business. And don’t forget, you’ll see all emails related to that contact thanks
to Einstein Activity Capture.

Note: The Contacts object includes an Account field that you’ll need to fill out. Use a dummy name like CustomerAccount to fill
in this field for individual customers. Then you’ll be able to sort by that dummy name in both the Contacts and Accounts objects.

Turn Customer Questions into Cases.

If you’re working with customers on a regular basis, then you know that customers love to ask questions. Queries about sizing, contracts,
hours of operation and more. You may not have support agents waiting to tend to their every need, but you do have cases! With
Email-2-Case and Web-2-Case, customer emails or submissions from your company’s website are automatically turned into cases and
brought right into Essentials. Then you can sort or rank them to make sure that top priority cases get your attention ASAP.

Set Reminders and Create Tasks to Level Up Your Customer Experience.

Ever get a coupon for your birthday that causes you to go out for some retail therapy? What about nudge every few months that your
teeth need a cleaning? These timely, helpful reminders keep business coming back to you and let customers know you care about them.
Let Essentials remind you when it’s time to follow up or send that annual birthday email to keep customers coming back for more.

SEE ALSO:
Use Einstein Activity Capture
Sync Emails and Activities
Turn Emails and Social Media Posts into Cases
Tasks
Events and Calendars
Activity Reminders and Notifications

Add Your Apps to Salesforce Essentials

Want to extend the functionality of your Salesforce platform? Not sure where to start? While Salesforce Essentials doesn't come with API
access, our support coaches have gathered what they believe are the most essential apps to extend functionality. Check out our
AppExchange to integrate some of the tools you already use and love with Salesforce.

Re-engage Inactive Leads and Customers

If a lead or customer hasn’t purchased or accessed your product in about 30 days, consider them inactive. This behavior doesn’t mean
they’re no longer interested; it’s just time to remind them about your great products and service.
We recommend sending a virtual hello through email. An inactive person probably doesn’t want to be put on the spot with a phone
call. Snail mail is more likely to find its way to the recycle bin than the customer’s thoughts. Email is the happy medium of outreach to
someone who just needs a nudge. After all, most people check their inbox daily.
A few best practices can speed this email on its way.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Re-engage Inactive Leads and Customers

• Create an email template to ensure that your message is clear and well thought out. Add a merge field to capture the lead or
customer’s first and last name. If you have different audiences, you can make a few email templates. It’s always easier than writing
a message to each person from scratch.
• Add the Email Opt Out field to your record page layout. Select it when a lead or contact says they no longer wish to receive
communication from you. If you send an individual or mass email to a person with this field selected, the email is not delivered to
the addressee.
• Add the Last Activity field to your lead and contact records to show the date and time that you last communicated with your customer.
• Send the email one of three ways

Problem Solution How It's Done

Don’t have many customers who go One by one Open the lead or contact, and send the
inactive? Want to keep a close eye on email template from there.
communications?

Torn between having a large, inactive group Manually, in bulk Pull inactive leads or contacts together in a
or customers but still want oversight into list view. Filter this list view by the Last
who receives an email? Activity field. Select all records in the list
view, and send a list email with the
template.

A little extra effort on the front end saves Automatically in bulk Use Process Builder to send emails weekly,
you time on the back end. monthly, or quarterly to inactive leads. You
create your own process, but you can check
out our sample recipe for ideas.

Create a Process to Re-engage Inactive Leads

You can use Process Builder to email inactive leads when it’s been 30 days since their last communication.

SEE ALSO:
Individually Opting Out of Email
Turn On Activity Metrics
Work with List Views in Lightning Experience
Email Templates

Create a Process to Re-engage Inactive Leads

You can use Process Builder to email inactive leads when it’s been 30 days since their last communication.

Create a Field to Capture Last Activity Date

1. Click the gear icon, and open Setup.
2. Search for Einstein Activity Capture Settings in the Quick Find box and turn on Activity Metrics under the
Capture settings.
3. Create a custom field on the Leads object by navigating to the Object Manager and selecting the Leads object.
4. Select the Formula Data Type.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Re-engage Inactive Leads and Customers

5. Select Formula as the Data Type and Date/Time for the Formula Return Type.
6. Label the field Last Activity Date and use this formula: ActivityMetric.LastActivityDateTime
7. Save your changes.

Create Process Criteria

1. Search for Process Builderin the Quick Find box.
2. Click New.
3. Name your process. For example, 30-Day Follow-up Email to Leads.
4. Click inside the API Name box to copy your process name over.
5. Click The Process starts when, and choose A record changes.
6. Save your process.
7. Click + Add Object.
8. Choose Lead from the Object dropdown menu.
9. Below Start the Process, select when a record is created or edited.
10. Save your changes.
11. Click + Add Criteria.
12. Name your criteria. For example, Is still an active lead.
13. Add two conditions: Status > does not equal > picklist > Unqualified (not interested at this time). Note: if you’ve rename
your Unqualified status, select the status where the lead is marked as lost or not interested.
14. Click + Add Row, and choose Converted > equals > boolean > False.
15. Click Advanced, and check the box to make changes only when specified changes are made to a record.
16. Save your changes.

Create an Email Alert Process Action

1. Under Scheduled Actions, click Set Schedule.
2. Add x days after Last Activity Date. For example, if you enter 30 for the days, the automation will trigger 30 days after the Last
Activity Date.
3. Save your changes.
4. Click + Add Action.
5. Choose Email Alert from the Action Type dropdown menu.
6. Name the action. For example, 30-Day email reminder since last contact.
7. You have two ways to add an email alert: If you've already created one, search for and select it. If you don’t have an existing email
alert, click to create one. Note: We’ve linked to an article that explains how to create an email alert and template at the end of this
help topic.
8. Make sure that you use the Lead object and select Email Field as the Recipient Type. Tip: Select Current User’s email address in
the From Email Address field. This ensures the email comes from the Lead owner’s email address and not from a generic email.
9. Save your changes.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Manage Your Contacts with These Best Practices

Create a Task to Log the Email in the Activity Feed

1. Click + Add Actions again.
2. Choose Create a Record as the Action Type.
3. Name the action 30-Day Follow-Up Email Sent.
4. Select Task for the Record Type.
5. A Set Field Values box appears. Choose the following values: Assigned To ID > Field Reference > Owner ID Priority > Picklist
> Normal Status > Picklist > Completed.
6. Click + Add Row, and choose Subject > String > 30-Day Follow-Up Email Sent.
7. Click + Add Row, and choose Name ID > Field Reference > Lead ID.
8. Save your changes.
9. Click Activate.

SEE ALSO:
Einstein Activity Capture
Process Builder

Manage Your Contacts with These Best Practices

Storing and managing contact data in your CRM means that you get to know your customer and understand the timeline of your
relationship with the customer. You also get a big-picture view of how all your customers benefit your business.

Store and Organize Customer Data

A traditional business card can only be held in the hands of a single person at a given time. A CRM lets you take that business card data
and store it in a place where your whole team can access it. When managing data access and getting to know your customer, keep these
tips in mind.
• Make sure that everyone has easy access to the data: If everyone on your team has a Salesforce license, everyone can view the
contact’s details right in the app. If only one of you has a Salesforce license, it’s a best practice to export and email the data to the
right people. Either way, the data is readily accessible and deliverable.
• Keep your data clean: The biggest troublemaker in any contact management system is dirty data. This includes duplicate entries,
inaccurate information, and incomplete records that make your reporting inaccurate. Make it a priority to keep that info squeaky
clean to save yourself time later on.
• When in doubt, add the contact: Not sure about adding someone as a contact? Just do it. Whether it’s a person you eventually
market to or someone you buy from, adding any contact (and all of their information) to your database can help grow your network.
• Use automation whenever you can: Salesforce brings your emails, phone calls, and related notes into your contact record for
you. Avoiding the manual misery of entering data into the contact record makes it much easier for you to keep things up-to-date.

Examine Your Relationship with Each Customer

Access each customer's activity feed to see the entire timeline of your relationship with them. You can see how deals moved through
the pipeline, the email campaigns sent, and the customer support provided. If you have many contacts, it's practically impossible to
remember every interaction. A CRM can help you keep track of the work your team does with each contact.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

• Add to the paper trail: Some activities, such as emails, phone calls, and status updates, are automatically added to a contact’s
Activity feed. Others are not. If you take action behind the scenes to move a contact forward, add an internal note to the feed so
others working with the contact know.
• Attach related docs: If you have docs that exist outside of Essentials, you can attach them to the contact so the full picture is
available.
• Review the data: Read through the activity feed before engaging a customer so you don’t duplicate efforts with a teammate. This
can also help you provide a tailored experience based on what they’ve done so far.

See the Big Picture of How Your Customers Correlate to Business Success
Run reports to get a high-level view of the customer base: Create a report to show your team a snapshot of the customer base. This
could be something like, Days Since Last Activity per Contact, or # Opportunities per Contact. Use
list views to segment customers: If your team prefers to look at the individual tasks making up the data, a list view is the best option.
You can segment customers by fields on their profile or important dates and times.

SEE ALSO:
Creating a Custom Report

Automate Your Business Routines

Save time by automating your business practices. Rules, Process Builder, and Flows turn your repetitive workload into automated actions
that do work for you.
Choosing the right tool depends on your goal.
Assignment, Escalation, and Auto-Response Rules are pre-defined. These rules work with the lead or case records. Specifically:
• Lead assignment rules automatically route a new lead to the right user.
• Web-to-lead and case auto-response rules automate your first reply to a lead or customer.
• Case escalation rules let you automatically route a case to the right user.
If you want to do something outside the narrow scope of rules, check out Process Builder. A Process is a simple if/then statement: If
certain criteria are met, then take an action.

Example: If the VIP field is checked on a Contact record, then send an email to all VIP contacts.

Use Process Builder to automate record creation, record updates, emails, and more.
Flow Builder is your backup plan when you want to do something Process Builder can’t. For example, you want to automate record
deletion. Or you want to base your criteria on more than one kind of record. Flows help you automate such edge cases.
Our Support Coaches compiled a list of recipes for common business processes you can automate.

Create a Round Robin Lead Assignment Rule

Keep your team's workload even by auto-assigning new leads to each user.
Reach Out to Customers After Winning an Opportunity
Our process builder recipe can automate your communication with a contact or customer from whom you won an opportunity.
After winning an opportunity, you often have a reason to reach out to the contact or customer. For example, you want to thank
them. Or you want to send them a survey to rate customer satisfaction. Maybe that follow-up is even an opportunity to cross-sell.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

Remind Your Sales Team When a Renewal Comes Due

Create a Process to remind users when a customer's recurring subscription comes due. Reduce churn by nurturing your recurring
revenue.
Allow Customers to Opt Out of Emails
Give customers the choice to opt out of marketing emails. Flow builder logs a lead or customer's unsubscribe request in Salesforce.
Process Builder launches the Flow when there’s a new unsubscribe request.

SEE ALSO:
Assignment Rules
Set Up Auto-Response Rules
Set Up Escalation Rules
Process Builder
Flow Builder
Choosing Which Salesforce Flow Feature to Use

Create a Round Robin Lead Assignment Rule

Keep your team's workload even by auto-assigning new leads to each user.
Round robin assignment means that each new lead is assigned to a different user until everyone has been assigned the same amount
and the cycle repeats.
For example, if you have three users:
• Lead 1 is assigned to user 1
• Lead 2 is assigned to user 2
• Lead 3 is assigned to user 3, then the cycle repeats
• Lead 4 is assigned to user 1
• Lead 5 is assigned to user 2
• Lead 6 is assigned to user 3, then the cycle repeats.
You can set up round robin lead assignment with a few custom fields and a lead assignment rule.

Create a Lead Number f+Field

Creating a Lead Number f+Field gives each new lead a unique ID.
1. Open Setup.
2. Search for Object Manager, and open it.
3. Click Lead.
4. Click Fields & Relationships.
5. Click New.
6. Select Autonumber, and click Next.
7. Name your field Lead Number.
8. In Display Format, enter {0}.
9. In Starting Format, enter 1.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

10. Check the box to Set this field as the unique record identifier from an external system, and click Next.
11. Give user permission to the right people, and click Next.

12. Uncheck all Page Layout boxes, and click Save & New.

Create a Round Robin Field

The round robin field tells the system to assign each new lead to the next user in order.
1. Select Formula, and click Next.
2. Name your field. For example: Round Robin.
3. Select Number.
4. In the Decimal Places dropdown, choose 0, and click Next.
5. Select Advanced Formula.
6. In the Test (Number) =field, paste in this formula: MOD(VALUE({!Lead_Number__c}),3)+1. There are two things to
note: 1) The phrase Lead_Number pulls the name of the field you created in the previous section. If you gave it a different name,
make sure to update it in the formula. 2) Replace the number 3 with the number of users you want in your round robin rotation.

7. Click Next.
8. Give user permission to the right people, and click Next.
9. Uncheck all Page Layout boxes, and click Save.

Create a Lead Assignment Rule

The lead assignment rule ensures that leads are assigned evenly across users.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

1. In Setup, search for Lead Assignment Rules, and open it.

2. Click New.
3. Name your rule Round Robin Assignment Rule, and click Save.
4. Click to open Round Robin Assignment Rule.
5. In the Rule Entries section, clickNew.
6. In Sort Order, enter 1.
7. Set the rule criteria by choosing Round Robin in the Field dropdown, Equals in the Operator dropdown, and 1 in the Value field.
8. Select the user this rule applies to.
9. Optionally, select an email template to tell the user that the rule has been assigned to them.
10. Repeat steps 5 through 9 for each user in your round robin rotation. Give each user in your org a number. Every time you add a user
to the round robin rotation, change the sort order and the round robin equals number to the user's number.

Allow Round Robin Lead Assignment on Manually-Created Leads

1. In Setup, click Object Manager.
2. Click Lead.
3. Click Page Layouts.
4. Open Lead Layout.
5. Click Layout Properties.
6. Next to Lead Assignment Checkbox, check the box to Show on edit page, and click Okay.
7. Save your changes.

Reach Out to Customers After Winning an Opportunity

Our process builder recipe can automate your communication with a contact or customer from whom you won an opportunity. After
winning an opportunity, you often have a reason to reach out to the contact or customer. For example, you want to thank them. Or you
want to send them a survey to rate customer satisfaction. Maybe that follow-up is even an opportunity to cross-sell.
Start with creating a process.
1. Open Setup.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

2. Type Process Builder into the Quick Find box, and open it.
3. Click New.
4. Name your process Opportunity Task Creation.
5. In the Process Starts When dropdown menu, select A record changes.

6. Save your changes.

Base the Process on an Opportunity Being Edited

1. On the Process map, click + Add Object.
2. From the Object dropdown, select Opportunity.
3. Select to start the process when a record is created or edited.

4. Save your changes.

Tell the Process What Criteria Causes it to Run

1. Name your criteria Oppportunity Closed as Won.
2. Under Criteria for Execution Actions, select Conditions are met.
3. Under Set Conditions, choose Stage > Equals > Picklist > Closed Won.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

4. Under Conditions, choose All of the conditions are met (AND).

5. Save your changes.

Tell the Process What To Do When Criteria are Met

1. Click Add Action on the process map.
2. Choose Create a Record from the Action Type dropdown.
3. Name your action Create Task.
4. Select Task as the record type.
5. Under Set Field Values, select Assigned to ID > Field Reference > Owner ID.
6. In the next row, set Priority > Picklist > High.
7. Next, select Status > Picklist > In Progress.
8. Click +Add Row, choose Subject > String , and then enter a subject line for your task.
9. Click +Add Row, and choose Related To ID > Field Reference > Opportunity ID.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Automate Your Business Routines

10. Save your changes.

11. Activate your process. It now runs whenever criteria are met.

Remind Your Sales Team When a Renewal Comes Due

Create a Process to remind users when a customer's recurring subscription comes due. Reduce churn by nurturing your recurring revenue.

Create a Process
1. Open Setup.
2. Search for Process Builder in the Quick Find box, and open it.
3. Click New.
4. Name your Process something like Subscription Renewal Reminder.
5. Under the process starts when dropdown, select A record changes.

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6. Save your changes.

Tell the Process That It's Based On an Opportunity Being Edited

1. Click + Add Object on the process map.
2. From the Object dropdown, select Opportunity.
3. Under start the process, choose when a record is created or edited.
4.

5. Save your changes.

Tell the Process What Criteria Causes It to Run.

1. Click + Add Criteria on the process map.
2. Name the criteria Opportunity Closed as Won.
3. Under Define Criteria for this Action Group, select Conditions are met.
4. Under Set Conditions, choose Stage > Equals > Picklist > Closed Won.
5. Under Conditions, select All of the conditions are met (AND).

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6. Save your changes.

Tell the Process What to Do When Criteria are Met.

1. Click + Add Action on the process map.
2. Under Action Type, select Create a record.
3. Name your action Create Renewal Opportunity.
4. Under Record Type, select Opportunity.
5. Under Set Field Values, choose Close Date > Formula, enter the formula TODAY () + 365, and click Use this Formula.
6. In the next row, select Name > String > Renewal.
7. In the next row, select Stage > Picklist > Qualification.

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8. Save your changes.

9. Activate your process. It now runs whenever criteria are met.

Allow Customers to Opt Out of Emails

Give customers the choice to opt out of marketing emails. Flow builder logs a lead or customer's unsubscribe request in Salesforce.
Process Builder launches the Flow when there’s a new unsubscribe request.
Build your email opt-out flow and process with these steps.

1. Complete Pre-Work for the Email Opt-Out Flow

Create one queue, activate two fields, and connect your support email address before building your Flow.
2. Create an Email Opt Out Flow
Create a Flow that lets leads and contacts unsubscribe from your email campaigns.
3. Create a Process to Trigger the Email Opt Out Flow
You created a Flow to check the Email Opt Out box when leads and contacts unsubscribe. Now tell the system to launch that Flow
when a new case enters the Unsubscribe Requests queue.

Complete Pre-Work for the Email Opt-Out Flow

Create one queue, activate two fields, and connect your support email address before building your Flow.

Create an Unsubscribe Requests Queue for Cases

1. Open Service Setup.
2. Search for Queues, and open it.
3. Click New.
4. Name your Queue Unsubscribe Requests.
5. Move Case to the Selected Objects column.
6. Find the users who need access to the queue, and move them to the Selected Members column.
7. Save your changes.

Connect Your Support Email Address So Customer Emails Automatically Become Salesforce Cases
1. Open Setup.
2. Search for email-to-case in Quick Find, and open it.
3. Scroll down to the Routing Addresses, and click New.
4. Give your email address a Routing Name like Support Email Address.
5. Enter your email address, and fill in the rest of the fields.
6. Save your changes.
7. Verify your email address via the verification email that's sent to you.
8. Back on the Email-to-Case landing page, click the name of the email address you just added.
9. Look for the yellow banner with a support address that was created for you by Salesforce. Copy and paste that email address into
the email forwarding settings for your email client.

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10. Click Edit.

11. Select Queue from the Case Owner dropdown.
12. Search for the Unsubscribe Requests queue you just created.
13. Select your desired case priority.
14. Set the Case Origin field to Email.
15. Save your changes.

Add the Email Opt Out Field to Contacts

1. Go to Object Manager > Contact > Fields & Relationships > Email Opt Out > Set Field-Level Security.
2. Choose which users have visibility into this field.
3. Save your changes.

Add the Email Opt Out Field to Leads

1. Go to Object Manager > Contact > Fields & Relationships > Email Opt Out > Set Field-Level Security.
2. Choose which users have visibility into this field.
3. Save your changes.

Create an Email Opt Out Flow

Create a Flow that lets leads and contacts unsubscribe from your email campaigns.

Create a New Flow

1. Open Setup.
2. In the Quick Find box, search for Flows and open it.
3. Click New Flow > Autolaunched Flow > Create.

Check the Email Opt Out Box When a Lead Unsubscribes via Email-to-Case
1. Click and drag Update Records on the canvas.
2. Provide a label like Update Lead.
3. Click Specify conditions to identify records, and set fields individually.
4. Select Lead as the object.
5. Select Conditions are Met as the Condition Requirements.
6. Select Email > Equals > New Resource.
7. Select Variable as Resource Type.
8. Provide an API Name like WebEmail.
9. Select Text as Data Type.
10. Check both Available for input and Available for output check boxes.
11. Click Done.

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12. Confirm {!WebEmail} is listed in the Value field.

13. Under Set Field Values for the Lead Records, select HasOptedOutOfEmail for the Field.
14. Select $GlobalContstant.True as the Value.
15. Click Done.

Check the Email Opt Out Box When a Contact Unsubscribes via Email-to-Case
1. Click and drag Update Records on the canvas.
2. Provide a label like Update Contact.
3. Specify conditions to identify records, and set fields individually.
4. Select Contact as the object.
5. Select Conditions are Met as the Condition Requirements.
6. Select Email > Equals > Web Email.
7. Under Set Field Values for the Lead Records, select HasOptedOutOfEmail for the Field.
8. Select $GlobalContstant.True as the Value.
9. Click Done.

Activate the Flow

1. Drag the small circle from Start to Update Records: Update Lead.
2. Drag the small circle from Update Records: Update Lead to Update Records: Update Contact.
3. Save your changes.
4. Name your Flow something like Unsubscribe Flow, and save your changes.
5. Click Activate.
6. Click the Back button.

Create a Process to Trigger the Email Opt Out Flow

You created a Flow to check the Email Opt Out box when leads and contacts unsubscribe. Now tell the system to launch that Flow when
a new case enters the Unsubscribe Requests queue.

Create a New Process

1. Open Setup.
2. Search for Process Builder and open it.
3. Click New.
4. Name your Process something like Case.
5. In the A process starts when dropdown menu, select A record changes.
6. Save your changes.

Tell the Process to Run When a Case Is Created

1. Click Add Object.

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2. Choose Case as the Object.

3. Choose the Start the process only when a record is created.
4. Save your changes.

Tell the Process to Run When a New Case Enters the Unsubscribe Requests Queue
1. Click + Add Criteria.
2. Name your Criteria something like New Unsubscribe Case.
3. Under Criteria for executing actions, select Conditions are met.
4. Under Set Conditions, choose Owner ID (Queue) > Name.
5. Click Choose.
6. Set the Operator as Equals.
7. Set the Type as String.
8. For Value, enter the name of the Queue. In this case, Unsubscribe Requests.
9. Click + Add Row.
10. In the fields, enter Email Address > Does not equal > Global Constant.
11. Under Conditions, select All of the conditions are met (AND).
12. Save your changes.

Run the Flow When the Above Criteria Are Met

1. Under Immediate Actions, click + Add Action.
2. For Action Type, choose Flow.
3. For Action Name, call it something like Launch Flow.
4. Under Flow, Choose the Unsubscribe Flow you just created.
5. Click + Add Row.
6. In the fields, choose Web Email > Field Reference > Email Address.
7. Save your changes.
8. Click + Add Action again.
9. Under Action Type, choose Update Records.
10. Give it an Action Name like Update Case to Status Closed.
11. For Record Type, chooseSelect the Case record that started your process.
12. Under Set new field values for the records you update, enter Status > Picklist > Closed.
13. Save your changes.
14. Click Activate > Confirm.

Best Practices for Marketing Teams

Marketing outreach is key to attracting new leads and retaining customers. Whether you want to send a promotion to a loyal customer
or reach multiple new leads with an offer, we have tools to help.

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Problem: You Spend Too Much Time Retyping the Same Emails
Create an email template once to send a common communication as many times as you want. Use merge fields to personalize the
message. Merge fields pull field data like contact name or opportunity value into your message. Insert an email template when you send
email from a record page.

Problem: You Want Wide and Simultaneous Marketing Communications Distribution

List email lets you send separate emails to multiple leads or multiple contacts in a single action. You can send up to 200 emails from a
contact or lead list view at a time. List email is great for small-scale sales campaigns or basic marketing outreach.

Problem: You Want More Marketing Reach Than List Email Offers
If your marketing efforts outgrow list email, use Campaigns instead. For example, you want to email more than 200 people at once. Or
you want to email leads and customers together. And you want to track the success of your outreach. Send list email from a Campaign
(instead of a list view) to accomplish these goals. Campaigns also work with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, Marketing Cloud
Account Engagement, or a third-party application in the AppExchange to help you deliver more robust marketing outreach.

SEE ALSO:
Email Templates
Send List Email in Lightning Experience
Get to Know Salesforce Campaigns

Get Help
Having some trouble? We can help.
You can reach out to the Essentials Assistant chatbot or log a case any time to get personalized help. We also have tons of resources to
help you get on your way.
If you have a question about signing in, resetting your password, or something else quick and easy, the Essentials Assistant is the fastest
way to find a solution. To chat with the Assistant, click the floating chat icon.
If you're experiencing a technical issue or have questions that require more hands-on assistance, log a case. To log a case, open in-app
help and click Contact Us.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Essentials Resources

When you log a case, we recommend that you write down what sort of error messages popped up (if any) and describe in detail the
issue you're running into.
You can also search for help articles in our in-app help when embarking on your troubleshooting journey. In addition, you can always
check our resources page, ask the trailblazer Community, or join a hands-on workshop.

Essentials Resources
Learn more about Essentials with helpful videos and a guided journey. Or, hit the trails with our Essentials-focused modules on Trailhead.

Resource What It Is
Success with Salesforce Essentials A guided journey that helps you get set up, learn best practices,
and supercharge your sales and support teams.

Essentials Trailblazers Community A community where you can get your questions answered, learn
best practices, and stay up-to-date on product announcements.

Essentials Hands-On Workshop Hands-on workshops run by friendly experts ready to guide you
on your Salesforce Essentials journey, and they're available live and
on-demand.

Videos

Series: Salesforce Essentials 1-Minute Feature Tours (English Only) See Essentials in action, one minute at a time.

Series: Getting Started with Salesforce Essentials (English Only) Two videos to help you learn the basics of CRM and Essentials.
Learn the concepts behind how Salesforce works, then see it all in
action in Essentials.

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What is Salesforce Essentials? Essentials Resources

Resource What It Is
Import Your Data into Salesforce Essentials (English Only) A video that walks you through preparing your data file for import,
creating a custom field, and using the Data Import Wizard to create
new accounts and contacts in Salesforce.

Series: Getting Started with Help Center (English Only) Two videos that show you how you can easily build a branded
self-service site that helps your customers quickly find answers to
their questions and to get in touch with your support team if they
need more help. Knowledge lets you write helpful articles, and
Help Center lets you display them for customers.

Salesforce Essentials YouTube Channel (English Only) A YouTube channel where you can find more helpful videos and
demos of Salesforce Essentials.

Trailhead

Discover Salesforce Essentials A set of educational modules that walk you through how to use
Essentials and why it’s an ideal solution for your small business.

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