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Salesforce.com Configuration Best Practices for Sales Analytics

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Table of ContentsOPPORTUNITY BEST PRACTICES 4Values, stages, close date, ownership, closed reason, and segmentation.

OPPORTUNITY LINE ITEM BEST PRACTICES 19Product families and segmentation, line item values, and history tracking.

USER MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES 22The hierarchy of user roles and handling records when users change teams.

SALES ACTIVITY BEST PRACTICES 25Choosing tasks and events, as well as understanding their segmentation, related records, and

completion.

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IntroductionThis guide is intended to give you an overview of how Salesforce.com should be configured to enable accurate, reliable analytics for your sales team. You will find recommendations for how you can set up the key portions of your CRM to make analyzing the data as simple as possible. While helpful for customers of InsightSquared, these recommendations do not apply solely to our solutions. Whether you are using Salesforce’s native reporting, Microsoft Excel, or any third-party analytics platform, following these recommendations will improve your chances of success.

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OPPORTUNITY BEST PRACTICES

This section covers values, stages, close date, ownership, closed reason, and segmentation.

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Opportunity ValueAn opportunity is the lifeblood of every sales funnel: it’s a potential sale. It is not a business or a person. The minimum standard for information on an opportunity is a projected amount of revenue, a projected close date, the maturity of the opportunity (its stage), the next step toward being won, the final decision maker, and the business challenge being solved.

PRIMARY OPPORTUNITY VALUE

Choose a Consistent ValueYour first step is to agree with your colleagues on how to measure value on your opportunities. For example, you may talk about the annual contract value of your pipeline, but talk about bookings as total contract value, so apples-to-apples comparisons are impossible or tedious. Or, you may talk about the value of your renewals differently than your new business, so you can’t measure your total pipeline, set a total goal or forecast, or report a combined bookings. As you bring your data into the forefront in your decision-making, there will be plenty of complexities and different opinions on the best decision. Don’t let the mere value of an opportunity make it any harder. Work together to find one best source of truth for the purpose of reporting.

This applies not only to opportunity types but also applies to pipeline and deals. Op-portunities in the pipeline should have the same value field as closed won deals. For

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example, if you report the value of the pipeline in total contract value, then you don’t want to report the value of deals in annual contract value.

It is important to have a consistent internal language when discussing opportunities to reduce the need to change contexts when shifting from one report to another. Also, if the value that your organization forecasts is different from the value that is recognized, then it is extremely challenging to forecast accurately, as the inputs are not directly related to the outputs.

Always Record a ValueWhen you create an opportunity, give it a value, and keep that value updated, even if it is only the sales rep’s “best guess” or based on generic guidelines. These values and the records of how they change over time are central to improving your forecast accuracy. You can leave it to a rep to take their “best guess” at the value, or make those values more consistent and reliable.

InisghtSquared customers have had success with techniques such as:

1. Teaching your sales development team a consistent method to validate budget and gauge scope. If your organization sells seats, your sales development reps should be required to capture an approximate seat count, which will help calculate a value when the opportunity is created.

2. Confirming your sales development process captures every piece of information that often affects an opportunity’s value. Consider contract length, add-on services, and so on. Once you have this list, every rep will know the info that is necessary to create an opportunity. At the same time, no rep can say they don’t have enough information to know the value.

3. Creating generic guidelines based on your average selling price for deals that “look like” this one. The prospect’s industry and business challenge could be all you need to estimate an opportunity value before more conversations with the prospect.

Follow these steps to keep an accurate pipeline even with these estimated values in the mix:

1. Know the quality-control guidelines you expect everyone to follow (see above).

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2. Reports are easy to filter. You can filter out early-stage opportunities when you know you need to be looking at only well-vetted values, but include all opportunities when you need the complete picture to, for example, improve your forecasting accuracy.

3. You can see whether the initial values turn out to overestimate or underestimate the actual value. In time, you can course-correct your process, and your “guess” at the initial value of an opportunity will become more precise. This, in turn, leads to more accurate forecasting.

The default value field for all opportunities in Salesforce is “Amount.” InsightSquared recommends using this field for your primary opportunity value field whenever possible. If that is not possible and you use a custom field on the opportunity, enable Opportunity Field History tracking for that custom field. Certain types of reporting only work correctly with historical records of the value.

If the custom field is a formula field or roll-up summary field, Salesforce does not allow Opportunity Field History tracking. Instead, use Salesforce Process Builder to record the value in a new custom field, and enable Opportunity Field History for that field. Even if that field is hidden from Salesforce Page Layouts, you are capturing the data and analytics tools can leverage it.

If you use Opportunity Products and Opportunity Line Items, the standard amount field automatically adds up the total price of all the Opportunity Line Items. You will find more information on using line items to establish Opportunity Value in the Opportunity Line Item Best Practices section.

SECONDARY OPPORTUNITY VALUE

You read above about the importance of agreeing with your team on a single value as the source of truth for your reporting, whether it’s annual contract value, total contract value, etc. At times, a different value could give you useful context. InsightSquared calls this the op-portunity’s “secondary” value. It is equally important that you are consistent with your team about what the secondary value should be, and what processes or automations are used to input a reliable number, even if it’s a best guess.

Consider this example: if your primary value is total contract value, then your pipeline will be inflated – correctly – for longer contract lengths. That doesn’t help you quickly assess a

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question like, “Who in my pipeline would be looking to buy the most seats?” To answer that question, you would want to switch the report to display annual contract value.

Reporting tools for secondary values are focused only where this type of context is necessary. You will continue to use only your primary value for most reporting and discussions with your team, for setting goals and forecasts, and so on. It is intended for context, not to swap out the primary value at will. The same logic can be applied to additional values.

CURRENCY MANAGEMENT

If your organization works in multiple currencies, take advantage of Salesforce’s built-in currency management tools. Salesforce currency management takes two forms: standard vs. advanced. External calculations are time-consuming, more prone to mistakes, and hide useful information from integrations like InsightSquared.

In Standard Currency Management, you choose a “home” currency for your organization, and set conversion rates from any other currencies to that “home” currency. The list of currencies is available to your users when working with Salesforce. When looking at an individual record, you will see its value and its currency. When aggregating data, Salesforce will convert all values to the “home” currency. Watch out for two things:

1. Exchange rates are applied to all records. Therefore, when you adjust an exchange rate, the new rate affects both your recent and historical records.

2. When you turn on Currency Management for the first time, Salesforce assumes that all existing records are in the “home” currency, so it does not change any of their values. Moving forward, users will be required to select a currency, but you may want to update your old data manually.

In contrast, Advanced Currency Management allows you to set a date range for each exchange rate. So, adjusting an exchange rate will not affect historical values. Salesforce uses an opportunity’s close date and open/closed status to choose the most useful exchange rate for that opportunity. Additionally, there are Salesforce apps that will automatically update your exchange rates, keeping your organization aligned with shifting markets.

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When to Update Exchange RatesTo help your sales and finance teams work well together, agree on how frequently to update exchange rates, and at what time of the month or quarter. If finance closes the books on the last day of the month, the exchange rates should be updated in Salesforce by then, and those rates should match the rates they are using.

Opportunity StagesOpportunity stages should represent a linear path from a qualified prospect to a win or loss. Thus, an opportunity should only ever move forward in a typical sales engagement. You can reinforce that behavior with strict stage exit criteria, as well as consistent criteria for an opportunity that should be considered lost.

BUILDING THE BEST STAGES FOR YOUR SALES PROCESS

Your stage list should be granular enough to give useful information about an opportunity’s progress, while also being general enough that your reps won’t need to be constantly advancing stages. The most buttoned-up sales processes have 6-8 stages for open opportunities, plus closed won and closed lost.

There should be clear criteria for when opportunities are allowed to enter and exit a stage. A stage is not a subjective judgment call. It should be an automatic decision based on objective guidelines. Salesforce’s documentation gives some useful examples of exit criteria here: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000212655&type=1

At InsightSquared, we have found that our most successful customers use stages that represent where the customer is in the buying process, not what actions the sales team has taken. This way, you are tracking whether the buyer is actually moving toward making a purchase and achieving their goals. Tasks and Events are useful for tracking reps’ actions, but irrelevant to opportunity stages.

Stage exit criteria will be tied to a buyers’ goals. They therefore provide a clear road map for reps to understand what will move an opportunity closer to a win. For example, if the buyer needs to see a quote before they are ready to proceed with their procurement process, “Customer Received Quote” should be required to exit the appropriate stage.

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Adjusting Your Sales ProcessChange your sales process (and therefore the stages) infrequently. In most sales teams, process changes take months to take hold. Plus, you want to give yourself time to see enough opportunities travel a process, so you can evaluate whether the process is working well.

Multiple Stage ListsMost organizations only need one stage list since it represents a single, agreed-upon sales/buying process. However, you may have different stages for opportunities that do have a drastically different process (e.g., new business vs. renewal). Different teams working the same opportunity types (e.g., SMB vs. Enterprise) should have the same sales stages. The sales/buying process should be the same, even if the reps need to execute different actions to usher a buyer through a stage.

Example of Opportunity Stages

COMMON PROBLEM: PRE-QUALIFICATION STAGES

An opportunity should only exist when there is a real, qualified opportunity to sell to a prospect. Make your pipeline inflow meaningful by rigorously controlling the qualifications for an opportunity. In order to be created, each opportunity should have a projected amount of revenue, a projected close date, a next step toward being won, the final decision maker, and the business challenge being solved.

Pre-qualified opportunities will muddy your view of your forecast and pipeline inflow, and make some metrics unavailable. Watch out that you don’t put opportunities in

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pre-qualification stages, often referred to as pre-sales, qualification, development, or nurture stages. Pre-qualified stages often lead to:

Complicated ForecastingPre-qualified opportunities throw off your forecast because they don’t represent an opportunity to sell to a prospect. They represent an opportunity to create an opportunity, which is a different process and a different forecast. Essential information, like opportunity value, is also not captured yet for pre-qualified opportunities.

Unavailable Lifecycle MetricsAs for other metrics, creating opportunities in a pre-qualification stage makes created date cohorting meaningless. When the opportunity was created no longer has any bearing on any further aspects of the opportunity lifecycle. Your opportunity created dates are a goldmine of information. They are a direct and easy path to see whether, when you changed your sales process, opportunities created afterward performed differently. Since pre-qualified opportunities haven’t entered the sales process yet, they skew the numbers, and are difficult or impossible to tease out. Similarly, pre-qualification stages skew your sales cycle, since the time spent in pre-qualification stages is included in the lifespan of an opportunity. Your most reliable, accurate metrics come from well-maintained opportunities.

COMMON PROBLEM: POST-SALES STAGES

Opportunity stages should represent the stages of the sales/buying process itself. Any post-sales actions should be tracked separately from stages. If it’s necessary to use post-sales stages to track data (for example, delivery or implementation), these op-portunities should use a separate record type so that they can be easily separated from true sales opportunities.

COMMON PROBLEM: “ON HOLD” STAGES

Holding stages exist for one reason: a sales rep is afraid to lose an opportunity. Even despite the best intentions, “On Hold” becomes a dumping ground for opportunities where no one is actually working a sales process. We see these opportunities ignored for weeks, months, or years, with only the occasional resurrection.

“On Hold” stages are a missed chance for incredible insights and mask critical problems in your sales process:

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• An opportunity must be lost before it contributes to your stage conversion rates in your sales funnel. If every opportunity was left “On Hold” until it was won, all your conversion rates would be 100%, which doesn’t allow you to truly analyze your sales process.

• The sales cycle of your won vs. lost opportunities allows you to assess whether an open opportunity “looks like” a typical loss or a typical win.

• It’s only when you lose an opportunity, and record its lost reason, that you can see where in your sales process reps are not succeeding.

• When a prospect is simply a tire kicker, putting them “On Hold” doesn’t fix the problem. It ignores it.

Sales reps should be empowered and encouraged to lose an opportunity that isn’t working and progressing, describe why (like poor qualification for budget), and set next steps. For example: “We’ll reach out to you before the start of your next fiscal year so that we can help you plan your budget.”

COMMON PROBLEM: OPEN OR CLOSED, WON OR LOST

Each stage in Salesforce is configured with one of three types: Open, Closed/Lost, or Closed/Won. Ensure that these are set accurately for your stages. InsightSquared recommends that you employ no more than one stage for each Closed status.

PROBABILITY AND FORECAST CATEGORY

ProbabilityEach Stage is assigned a probability in your Salesforce configuration. Ideally, the probability should match the historical win rates for opportunities from that stage to quickly give you an accurately-weighted pipeline.

If you rely heavily on a weighted pipeline forecast, you can allow reps to override the probability for any opportunity. You will get a more granular forecast, but will need to keep your reps consistent and realistic through monitoring and training. A common alternative, which may be more manageable, is Salesforce’s forecast categories.

Forecast CategoryIf your organization wishes to leverage forecast categories as a forecasting tool,

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InsightSquared recommends using Salesforce’s standard forecast categories. They will give you better analytics than a custom field and are typically defined as follows:

• Closed includes amounts for closed/won opportunities• Commit adds amounts you are confident about closing (including Closed)• Best Case adds amounts you are likely to close (including Closed and Commit)• Pipeline adds amounts from all other open opportunities (including Closed, Commit, and Best Case)• Omitted means the amount does not contribute to your forecast

Mapping to StagesTo force consistent usage of forecast categories, you can map them to stages and prevent overrides. However, your reps will have limited control over their forecasts this way. Especially if they are judged on their forecasts, it may drive unwanted behavior, like holding back opportunities from late sales stages simply so they won’t enter commit. You can further force correct stages with very firm exit criteria and having stages built in such a way that moving an opportunity into a late stage should coincide with the rep’s ability to forecast it.

Renaming Forecast CategoriesIt is possible to rename forecast categories in Salesforce. Regardless of the names, the categories will still be cumulative (e.g., Best Case value includes the value in Commit and Closed). Typically, renaming a category is a band-aid solution, and it is better to change your guidelines around when to use a certain forecast category. For example, if you wish to exclude pipeline from the forecast, it’s best to change the stages that are mapped to pipeline, so they are mapped to omitted. Changing the name of “pipeline” to “omitted” will not be as useful. In general, renaming the standard forecast categories adds complexity and limitations to Salesforce forecasting tools and integrations like InsightSquared.

Forecast Categories in a Custom FieldIf a custom field for forecast category is already in place or is unavoidable, make sure to enable Opportunity Field History tracking on the field. Generally speaking, this approach adds unexpected complications. It is typically worth your time in the long run to adjust your process and guidelines, instead of pinning your hopes to a particular set of forecast categories (which you are likely to adjust again in the future).

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Close DateAn opportunity’s close date is a fundamental piece of information for prioritizing your work and for sales forecasting. At all points during the sales process, the close date should represent the sales rep’s best estimate for when the opportunity will close. A consistent process for managing close dates makes your reporting far more valuable.

CLOSE DATE FOR NEW OPPORTUNITIES

When an opportunity is initially created, it can be difficult to establish a reasonable close date. The best method to set the initial close date is to use your organization’s average sales cycle to estimate the close date. Reps or teams with an established track record may leverage their own average sales cycles for additional accuracy, or the sales cycles for certain types of opportunities or buyers.

Many organizations choose to round the close date to the nearest end-of-month date or end-of-quarter date. While end-of-month rounding doesn’t impact forecasting in as extreme a fashion as end-of-quarter rounding, there is also no particular reason for it. At the same time, there is a downside: you encourage a “hockey-stick” mentality, adding extra end-of-period chaos. InsightSquared does not recommend this.

CLOSE DATE DURING THE SALES PROCESS

During the sales process, the opportunity owner is responsible for maintaining its close date. At no point should a close date be in the past for an open opportunity. Use monitoring and reporting to identify and correct these issues. Close dates should make sense given an opportunity’s stage and the sales cycle. For example, if an opportunity is set to close this month, it’s the last week of the month, and this opportunity is in the second sales stage, the close date is most likely incorrect if your sales cycle is more than one month long. These types of “sanity checks” make your close dates more accurate. Your forecast, in particular, will benefit from this good housekeeping.

CLOSE DATE ON OPPORTUNITY CLOSEOn opportunity close, whether closed/won or closed/lost, the close date should be set to the date the stage change occurred. This can be automated in Salesforce or, at least, set up as a Salesforce validation rule (opportunities cannot be closed if their close date does not match

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the current date). Note that close date is not equivalent to contract start date, shipment date, or any other date. It should be used to capture the date of opportunity close only.

Opportunity OwnershipOWNER VS. CREATOR

Who should own an opportunity?The owner of an opportunity should be the person responsible for moving that opportunity to the next stage in the sales process. Even though there may be multiple individuals involved in the sale of a particular opportunity, there must ultimately be one individual responsible for maintaining that opportunity.

Opportunity HandoffSalesforce does not, by default, track when an opportunity changes owners. Most commonly, the business development team has created the opportunity and is handing it off to the sales team (ideally immediately, given our advice about pre-qualification stages above).

It is possible to report on the creator of an opportunity, but Salesforce does not allow you to ever edit that information. InsightSquared recommends using a custom field (of a “reference” type) to capture the user who should get credit for creating the opportunity. Then, you can track the value of the opportunities and deals sourced by a particular business development rep. Use Salesforce Process Builder to automatically populate this field with the opportunity creator, but leave it as editable so you can correct any errors.

OPPORTUNITY TEAMS

If multiple individuals are working an opportunity, you can use Salesforce opportunity teams to capture who they are for reporting purposes. Custom fields can track this data, but they add complexity to managing opportunities and are more limited than opportunity teams. Opportunity Teams allow:

• Defined roles for each member of the team• Member-by-member designation for level of access to the opportunity record (read-only vs. read/write)• Opportunity Splits, enabling your organization to split bookings credit across the team

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• Defaults and groups, making it easier for a sales rep to manage than multiple custom fields

CLOSED REASON

The reason that an opportunity closes is indispensable information. InsightSquared recommends capturing closed reason for both closed/won and closed/lost opportunities although most organizations find the latter to be the more valuable data point. While the reasons for closing an opportunity as lost will vary from organization to organization, there are some common themes:

Timing: The prospective customer might be a great fit for your product in the near future, but for whatever reason – a management overhaul, a spate of layoffs – the timing just isn’t right at this moment.

Need: This prospective customer simply has no need for your product and is doing fine without you. Move along.

Price/Budget: In theory, you would be a great fit for this prospective customer. However, they simply cannot find the room in their budget to accommodate such a purchase at this time.

Competition: They opted to go with your competition instead. Ask these prospective customers what led them to go with your competitor to see what separates you.

Poor Qualification: This prospective customer should never even have been in the pipeline since they don’t come close to fitting the traits of your ideal customer profile.

One trend sticks out from this list of common reasons: they are actually reasons why the engagement has stopped. Recall that it’s best practice for opportunities to represent active

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engagements and, therefore, when the engagement is no longer active, the reason should be recorded. For example, “price” is a good reason to break off an engagement, but “stalled” is not because it doesn’t provide any context for why the client disengaged. It’s important that sales management and sales operations define a valuable list of reasons, and establish training and guidelines for using each of them.

InsightSquared recommends a single picklist be used to capture the primary closed reason. If a prospect exits the sales process due to “features” and “price” as reasons, the rep should assess whether the prospect would have purchased this set of features at a different price (primary reason is “price”), or if a specific feature is missing and there was no justification for buying the current features at any price (primary reason is “features”). Here, process and coaching will be extremely important, and consistency is key. If reps assign reasons by their own rules, or without justification, you make the output data useless.

To combat this trend, InsightSquared recommends adding an additional field to the opportunity, titled: Reason Closed Details. It allows the sales rep to record additional details that may be helpful for future investigation. A secondary reason field can also be added, but InsightSquared recommends the primary field only contain one reason rather than be captured as a multi-picklist.

SEGMENTATION

Segmentation is the process of dividing your opportunity data into smaller groups, or segments, of data. Some segments are natural extensions of information already being tracked on an opportunity (owner, stage, etc.). Other segments are artificial, but help you better understand your data. A segment should be specific enough to be meaningful, but also general enough to provide enough data to spot trends.

Record TypesRecord Types are one key way to segment data. They govern many functions in Salesforce, so you should think beyond simply segmenting data before configuring them. Impacted functions include page layouts and picklist field options. Typically, record types separate processes or job functions, which may require different inputs and outputs on the same type of record. InsightSquared recommends using record types where applicable.

Opportunity TypesIt is common to categorize opportunities in more ways than just their record type. Salesforce’s standard opportunity type field may be useful, or you may use custom fields.

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If your organization does not use record types, then it’s advisable to at least use the opportunity type field.

Considerations for Segmentation Fields

1. The most successful segmentation uses a picklist field. This field should contain fewer than 50 options. The most useful fields contain no more than 10-12 options.

2. Free-text fields should never be used to capture segmentation data. There is no forced structure in a free-text field, so they are prone to differences. Where one automation or user may insert “corporation” in the field, another may insert “Corp” instead. This messiness slows down reporting while you manually reconcile the differences.

3. Multi-select picklist fields should be avoided in most circumstances. While a multi-select picklist gives users flexibility to choose more than one option, you may get unexpected results in your reporting. For example, if you capture the products sold on an opportunity, adding up opportunity values based on this field will count opportunities once per product, inflating the report’s total. Plus, it will not accurately represent the value of each product.

4. Complex segmentation rules, which often require evaluating if-then statements or multiple fields, should be conducted within the CRM itself and not offloaded to external systems. In this way the logic governing the assignment is centralized within the CRM and is controlled by the owners of the CRM system.

5. Where possible, leverage cross-object reference fields. For example, capture sales development rep on an opportunity with a reference field to user, not a picklist of text values. This approach can make reporting on the associated records drastically easier. Note, however, that Salesforce doesn’t actually store the information from the referenced record. It only stores which record is referenced. When a third party like InsightSquared uses the API to access information, the reference result that is returned is always the current reference result, and changing the reference result does not change the record storing the reference. For example, if opportunity territory is a reference to account territory, when account territory is changed, the user will see the new territory in the opportunity territory field. However, the opportunity record itself has not changed, as the reference formula hasn’t changed.

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OPPORTUNITY LINE ITEM BEST PRACTICES

This section covers product families and segmentation, line item values, and history tracking.

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OverviewOpportunity Line Items (OLIs), also referred to as Product Line Items (PLIs) or opportunity products, represent the sale of specific elements, potentially in discrete quantities, on a single opportunity. Using OLIs is, in and of itself, a best practice. A single OLI indicates, “This Product is involved in this opportunity.”

PRODUCT FAMILY

Product Families group together similar products and are the most common way to report on products. There are typically more products than would be useful for sensible segmentation, so reporting on product name is not effective. It often makes sense to segment products not only by family, but by additional segments. For example, products with one-time payments vs. recurring fees. When possible, create the segment on the product, not the OLI. The segmentation will automatically apply to all OLIs for that product. Note, however, that this isn’t possible when you need to override the segment on the line item (e.g., “For this particular opportunity, this product will be a one-time payment instead of a recurring fee”). In those cases, the segment should be indicated on the OLI itself.

OPPORTUNITY LINE ITEM VALUES

The primary reporting value for OLIs is typically the total price. By default, Salesforce calculates the total price as quantity multiplied by sales price. So, the total price field represents the total selling price of a particular product, accounting for quantity and discounting (where applicable). Additionally, Salesforce sets the opportunity’s amount field

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to be the sum of the total price for all the opportunity’s OLIs. Therefore, if your organization reports on amount as its primary opportunity value, it makes sense to report on total price as your OLI value.

HISTORY

Salesforce does not track history on OLIs. It is therefore impossible to report on the evolution of an opportunity over time based on its OLIs. It is possible, however, to track aggregate value changes on the parent opportunity, using roll-up summary fields to add up values from the OLIs, and opportunity field history tracking. Keep in mind, however, that this will only allow for tracking value changes in aggregate; there is no way to use this data to indicate that the value change was due to a particular OLI change.

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USER MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES

This section covers the hierarchy of user roles and handling records when users change teams.

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User Role HierarchyThe User Role Hierarchy’s primary purpose is to control a user’s access to records in Salesforce. When a hierarchy is created, users will have access to records owned by themselves and anyone who falls below them in the hierarchy. It is not necessary for the hierarchy to perfectly match your org chart. Doing so may even exclude certain users from accessing records they should have access to. If cross-role visibility is important, you can use sharing rules, which can enable access beyond the user role hierarchy. However, given the power of the user role hierarchy, InsightSquared recommends that all organizations establish and maintain their user role hierarchy in Salesforce. When setting up your user role hierarchy, consider the following:

1. Roles, profiles, and the org-wide default: If you have established your org-wide default permissions on objects as “public”, there is no reason to have a user role hierarchy at all since everyone can already see everything. However, once you set your org-wide default to “private” then the user role hierarchy determines which records a user can access. Profiles also determine which objects a user can access.

2. Data flows up the hierarchy and across sharing rules: When the org-wide default is private, you need a user role hierarchy to ensure managers can access the records that their teams can access. You may leverage this same functionality further, making certain roles more “senior” to give them broad access (e.g., sales engineering roles above sales manager roles). However, it’s typically better to use sharing rules to grant cross-role access to records. In this way, the hierarchical structure is maintained while still granting users access to the records they need to access.

3. The hierarchy is not a 1:1 recreation of your org chart: The org chart is a great place to start when thinking about laying out the hierarchy. However, there are some cases where you wouldn’t want the hierarchy to match the org chart:a. No one in a given role has a Salesforce license - There is no need to create a role for

individuals who will never be accessing data in Salesforce.b. Multiple roles report to the same manager - Unless there is a need to report on

these roles separately, this is a chance to simplify the hierarchy. For example, if you have three tiers of sales reps, but they don’t need to be able to access each other’s records, consider consolidating the roles into one sales rep role. However, if you need to report on the tiers separately, or give higher tiers access to lower-tier data, then these roles should be separate.

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4. The user role hierarchy will influence the forecasting hierarchy: If you’re planning to use customizable or collaborative forecasting in Salesforce, the user role hierarchy is the default version of the forecasting hierarchy, although you can specify a completely non-user role hierarchy version if you would prefer to do that work. The key relationship here is that there can only be one forecasting manager per role. Therefore, you may need to create separate roles for teams or territories so that each team lead/manager can be a forecast manager.

HANDLING RECORDS WHEN USERS CHANGE TEAMS

When users change teams or roles, you will likely want to report on their old and new records separately. For example, when a user moves from business development rep to account executive, you may want to report on tasks the user performed as a BDR separately from tasks they are performing as an AE. Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution in Salesforce to this reporting challenge.

InsightSquared recommends the original user be deactivated in Salesforce and a new user be created for that individual in their new role. In this way, they can be reported on separately. This does require licensing changes, which can add up to a large administrative burden across an entire sales organization.

An alternative, which requires significant automation, is to record the user’s role or team on their user record and, when that user creates a record, the user’s role or team at that time is stamped on the record. In this way, users can keep the same user accounts, while still enabling reporting based on what role or team the user had at the time.

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SALES ACTIVITY BEST PRACTICES

This section covers choosing tasks and events, as well as understanding their segmentation, related records, and completion.

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Choosing Tasks or EventsThe decision to use the task object or the event object (or both) typically depends on the specific activities being conducted. In general, when reporting on activities, the distinction may not matter. A call task is largely equivalent to a call event. It is far more important to use a field to determine the type of activity performed (e.g., call vs. demo). If you choose to use both tasks and events, the types should either be completely distinct from each other (no overlap) or, where there is overlap, the types should be identical (use “call” in both, not “phone call” in tasks and “call” in events).

InsightSquared recommends tasks record specific actions (make a call, send an email) where there is a due date and an activity date (i.e., the date the action was completed), and events record activities that are scheduled for the future and have a predefined duration. For example, InsightSquared would recommend that call be a task, whereas meeting is a more appropriate event.

SEGMENTATION

TypeThe type field is the primary method to segment tasks and events. As with opportunity segmentation, it’s important that the types be specific enough to capture the necessary metrics, while being general enough that there is substantial data to report on for each type. Another important consideration for task and event types is that the user should be

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able to easily find the right one in the list. To help, make sure that your types reflect the actual activity being performed by the individual. Also, make them general enough that a user doesn’t need to stop, think, and make a decision simply to record that they spoke to a prospect for five minutes.

The subject field is not viable to segment tasks or events. As with any free text field, subject captures all the variations that users or automations may enter (e.g., “call” vs. “Call” vs. “phone call”). Types should give the definite categorization for reporting across many tasks, while subject and description should capture details that would be useful when viewing only that single task. Keep in mind that while type is a standard field on tasks, it’s hidden from the layout by default on events.

The following task types are most common across the InsightSquared customer base: email, call, meeting, demo, and voicemail.

Outcome and Other SubtypesIn order to keep the type list short and general enough for aggregate reporting, InsightSquared recommends a subtype field for additional detail. One frequently-seen subtype is call outcome. It allows calls to be aggregated into a single type, while still capturing the outcome of that call (e.g., connected or left voicemail).

Organizational ConsistencyTeams across the organization should use types in the same ways. If the business development team logs “call” tasks, there should not be a separate “phone call” type for the account development team.

Automation and IntegrationsOften, integrations insert tasks or events directly into Salesforce from external systems. Many organizations’ telephony providers will log calls in Salesforce without any effort from users. In these cases, it’s important to work with the integration vendor to ensure that the integration populates any segmentation fields appropriately.

RELATED RECORDS

Tasks can be related to six entities in Salesforce by default: Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity, Campaign, and Case. Where relevant, InsightSquared recommends that you fill in these relationships. They are a powerful way to track activity, as it will expose the activities

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on the related record. For example, the activity history on an opportunity will show all its related tasks and events.

COMPLETION

Tasks in Salesforce can be indicated as open or closed (which are equivalent to incomplete or complete) via the closed check box. InsightSquared recommends that tasks logged after they occur always be marked as closed. Only log an open task if it didn’t occur, but you wish to keep a record of it or if it’s scheduled to occur in the future.

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ConclusionWe hope you found this guide helpful. Salesforce’s nearly endless customizability means that this overview is only the tip of the iceberg, but it represents many of the core features that drive sales analytics. Remember that your CRM is a goldmine of data that can help you focus and drive your sales process. To truly get the most out of it, you must adopt a data-first mindset when deciding how to configure it.

Keep in mind that Salesforce should not be treated as a static platform. As the needs of your business change so too will your processes and reporting requirements. Be sure to adapt your CRM to meet these needs but, in doing so, be mindful of the recommendations outlined above and be especially mindful of the impact of these changes to your team. Minor tweaks over time are usually easy to integrate into the day-to-day but major changes should be made purposefully, with clearly stated intent and a change management plan in place.

InsightSquared welcomes the opportunity to discuss these best practices with your team and to show you how you can put them to work. Check out our blog, Ramp, where we frequently post the latest news, trends, and recommendations written by and for sales and sales operations professionals.

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Questions?

For additional questions about InsightSquared best practices, reach out to your Account Manager. You can contact the customer team at customers@insightsquared.com.

For technical questions about your specific InsightSquared reporting, please reach out to our Support team (rated #1 Best Support in BI Platforms by G2 Crowd!) at support@insightsquared.com.