3 Ways You Can Enhance the Salesforce Account Object

In an ideal world, our sales teams would spend all day selling, but more often than not, they end up bogged down in manual data entry.

As a Salesforce Admin, you have the power to change that. By eliminating the high effort, low value data entry, you can add huge value to your users by activating automated fields and putting customer insight at their fingertips.

In this article, we’ll explore 3 key features for Salesforce accounts you can enable to supercharge sales user productivity in Salesforce.

1. Automated Account Fields

No sales user likes entering data, especially not addresses, websites and phone numbers. It takes too much time and involves flipping back and forth between tabs, as you Google the company, then copy, and then paste into Salesforce.

With Automated Account Fields, Salesforce will suggest accounts as you start typing. If a matching account is selected, Salesforce will populate the record with available data such as the correct legal name, website, phone number and address.

In addition to reducing manual data entry (yay!), using the data available from Salesforce will ensure good quality account data, improve data hygiene and avoid duplicates.

Limitations to Consider

Although this is a fantastic feature, it does have some limitations:

1. When you enable the feature, you may notice if you hover over the ‘i’, that it says it provides data for US-based companies only.

“Displays US-based companies in the Account Name field as sales reps enter information. Reps can select a suggested company from the list, making it easier to create new business accounts.”

In my experience, it does pick up companies outside of the US. For example, I was able to find Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited and Jaguar Land Rover Limited with their respective UK addresses and phone numbers.

2. Salesforce may not have as much data as you would like for all accounts. For some companies it may only have the name and website.

3. Automated Account Fields are not available for mobile (yet!)

2. Account Logos

How are logos productivity boosting you ask? Well, company logos are both visually appealing and easily recognisable, so why not add logos to your Salesforce accounts?

People love images: it’s a fact. No matter what context, images have been shown to increase appeal and engagement.

In addition, sales users can easily identify the account they are trying to create, or, locate the correct record when viewing existing accounts.

You can’t tell me you don’t love it with the added logo?!

3. Salesforce News

Give your sales users access to instant, relevant news about an account, their industry and competitors. Not only is a thorough understanding of your customer and their industry critical to success, News can also be used as an all-important icebreaker.

By staying up to date, sales users demonstrate they are knowledgeable experts in their field, while asking a pertinent question can make a prospect feel important and valued, ensuring subsequent conversations are productive and personable.

To get the most accurate News, it’s important that the account records are complete with as much data as possible. A website is key to seeing the most relevant results. Yet another great reason to enable Automated Account Fields!

News can appear on the Home tab, accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities. You have the option to display as a list or a carousel which can be selected in the Lightning App Builder page setup:

My preference is for the carousel:

Users can even get News on the move, via the Salesforce mobile app.

How to Enable Salesforce Account Settings

Your Salesforce Admin can enable these features in Setup > Feature Settings > Sales > Account Settings.

Select Edit, then tick the boxes next to “Enable News”, “Enable Automated Account Fields” and “Enable Account Logos”. Click Save.

If your company has any policies that restrict IP addresses or domains, you may need to whitelist the list found here before you can use these features.

Summary

In this article, we’ve seen 3 great sales productivity features that you can enable right now. You’ll improve data quality, create visually appealing account record pages, as well as reducing dreaded data entry. Your sales users will be free to get on with the business of selling and building long-lasting customer relationships!