Ramon Ray, editor, SmallBizTechnology.com spoke with Meredith Schmidt, EVP & GM Salesforce Essentials and Small Business Solutions (SMB) at Salesforce. They discussed SMB Essentials and why its a powerful CRM solution specially designed for business.
Why is SMB Important to Salesforce?
While you may have thought Salesforce was only for big enterprises, the company’s leadership is also highly committed to helping small businesses make their dreams come true. Did you know Salesforce started as a small business? If that wasn’t enough of a reason, small businesses were their first customers. Salesforce has over 150,000 companies who started out with Salesforce as small businesses. Meredith shared that small businesses and SMBs are, “the heart and soul of Salesforce” and after hearing her conversation with Ramon, we couldn’t agree more.
So, What is SMB Essentials?
Here is what you need to know about SMB Essentials and how it can work for your small business:
1. Meredith calls SMB Essentials “a new best friend for small business.”
SMB Essentials is designed and built with small businesses in mind. No matter the size of your operation, whether you have 200 people, 50 people, or 2 people, this product is perfect for your small business. Furthermore, they designed it specifically for small businesses, but you still get the beauty of the platform and the benefits of being part of Salesforce.
2. Get Access to Salesforce AI.
One of the benefits of being part of such a large company like Salesforce is having access to their AI. “It doesn’t matter if you are one user, you get AI at your fingertips,” Meredith continues, “It is powerful stuff.”
3. It’s Easy to Use
Essentials takes everything Salesforce has to offer and makes it easy for small businesses. Meredith said it herself, “we built it so it’s easy.”
4. We used it!
We tried it out and it is so easy! Set up is incredibly simple. With just a click of a button, it’s out of the box and ready to use! Essentials connects to your Gmail or Outlook account and that’s it, it’s done. It’s reading your emails and creating tasks for you. Isn’t that incredible?
5. You can set up a Help Center in less than 5 minutes!
You can even use the reports dashboard, to analyze your data. SMB Essentials is a total upgrade from post-it notes and spreadsheets, because, as Meredith so accurately put it, “you can’t get reports from a spreadsheet.” Meredith promises that the best part is, you don’t have to tech-savvy to use SMB Essentials. “Anybody like me or you can do it, and I’m not technical,” she says.
Meredith is all about helping you save time with SMB Essentials. “You’re trying to do a job, and we are here to help you do your job, and really automate those mundane tasks.” This automated, admin-list product will give you more time to focus on your customers. Meredith and the Salesforce team are dedicated to making the “path of success” broader for small businesses everywhere.
