Getting started with Salesforce
I am looking to implement a CRM for my workplace. Why are we bothering at all? Here are our goals (draft):
- to consolidate and make available contacts which are stored in each staffer’s Outlook
- to create a platform where membership information can be kept and used as needed
- membership information will track geography, issue identification, events attended, levels of engagement, organizational affiliations
- be able to perform mass emailing like action alerts
- be able to generate address labels, call-lists, walk-lists
- possibly store our organizational “story bank”
- keep media contacts
- store donor information
My first impressions of Salesforce have filled me with dread. It’s certainly not an out-of-the-box CRM, at least not for our purposes. I have found myself repeatedly looking at SugarCRM and vTiger to see if they might be easier to implement. But, for now I will proceed on faith. After all, the smart and reputable folks over at OneNW have a lot of good things to say about Saleforce.
The first thing I learned, thanks to this blog, was to create a developer account, rather than a trial non-profit account. The reason being that it doesn’t expire unlike the 30-day trial. I do also have a non-profit 30 day trial, so hopefully, I can learn everything I can to move forward.