9 Salesforce Hacks to Improve Your Quality of Life as a User
Salesforce is a powerful CRM platform, but its sheer range of features can be overwhelming. It has revolutionized how businesses manage databases and customer relationships. Thanks to its extensive suite of tools and features, it can streamline many sales activities, such as lead generation, customer database management, and analytics.
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just getting started, a few clever Salesforce hacks can streamline your work, boost productivity, and improve the overall experience. Here are nine Salesforce hacks that will make your life as a user much easier.
Why Use Salesforce Hacks?
With the following Salesforce hacks, you can customize and optimize your experience to meet your unique needs. When you make the most use of these hacks, you can save time and manual effort and increase overall productivity across many processes.
Salesforce hacks also allow you to uncover hidden features that are not immediately noticeable, but that allow you to benefit from the platform’s capacities.
An increase in customization and effectiveness can improve sales performance and customer management and give you a competitive advantage in the niche market.
The Nine Most Useful Salesforce Hacks
There are many tricks you can use to gain advantages and efficiencies on the Salesforce Platform. Here are nine of them from which any user can benefit.
Customize the Dashboard
Salesforce is a platform that allows users to create custom dashboards with various data representations from their Salesforce objects. Users can modify the dashboard to better accommodate their needs, using key metrics and reports they prefer to see.
The dashboard is composed of widgets that show data from reports. The user can choose which of these widgets to display on their dashboard and edit them as much as they need. They can choose bar charts, funnel charts, scatter charts, donut charts, and more to display the data they work with.
The sales teams can monitor their performance more easily with a customized dashboard. They can also track progress toward targets and gather real-time insights into their sales pipelines.
Use Keyboard Shortcuts
Many tools and solutions provide quick shortcuts to make your job easier. Salesforce offers a wide variety of keyboard shortcuts that allow you to perform quick actions when navigating through menus.
Using Ctrl + / on your PC or Cmd + / on a Mac, you can see all the available keyboard shortcuts. Some of the most helpful ones are pressing E to edit a record, N to open or close your Notes, and G followed by P to go to your publisher.
Other helpful shortcuts include:
G + R: Go to Recent Items.
G + H: Go to the Homepage.
G + O: Navigate to Opportunities.
Keyboard shortcuts are a time-saver because they replace mouse clicks and complex menu navigation. Press a few buttons to make your work in Salesforce more efficient and improve your quality of life.
Leverage List Views for Better Data Organization
If you find yourself repeatedly filtering records to view specific data, create List Views. You can easily configure and save these custom views to display only relevant records – be it leads, accounts, or opportunities.
You can create a List View for contacts by going to the object and opening it, selecting the Gear icon, and clicking New. Set the filters you need to define what you want to see and click Save.
Not only does this reduce time spent searching, but it also keeps your workspace clutter-free by displaying only the data you need.
Use Kanban View for Managing Opportunities
Managing sales pipelines becomes a breeze with Salesforce’s Kanban View. This visual representation allows you to track the status of opportunities at a glance by organizing them into columns based on their stage.
How to switch to Kanban View:
1. Navigate to the Opportunities tab.
2. Click the gear icon and select Kanban.
Now, you can drag and drop opportunities between stages, giving you a real-time snapshot of your sales funnel.
Automate Routine Tasks with Macros
Do you often find yourself performing the same set of actions repeatedly? Salesforce Macros can automate repetitive tasks like sending emails, updating fields, or logging calls.
To create a Macro, go to a record where you want to automate a repetitive task. Click the Macros button in the utility bar and select Create Macro. Enter a name, description, and folder, select the object the macro applies to, and then press Save.
By automating routine tasks, you’ll free up more time to focus on higher-priority work.
Up Your Search Game
With Salesforce, you can do more than just basic keyword research. The platform allows you to locate very specific information with just a few clicks. You can hone your search skills and find the info you’re looking for using operators and wildcards. Let’s see some examples:
AND NOT is an operator you can use to exclude certain terms. You could look for marketing event AND NOT 2023 to discover results that include marketing event, but exclude those that include marketing event and 2023.
OR is an operator you can use to search for multiple terms, but you don’t need the results to include them both at the same time. For example, you look for John OR James to find results that include any John or James, but not necessarily objects from your form data in Salesforce that include them both.
An asterisk is a wildcard that allows you to search for specific terms that match zero or more characters in the middle or end of your searched term. For example, searching for “Ev*24” returns items such as “Event 24” or “Evergreen 24”.
The question mark is a wildcard that finds terms that match one character within the search term. Your search query would look like this: “t?m,” and the results would be “tom” and “tim” and not “tram.”
Use Workflow Automation
You can design automated processes for Salesforce’s apps, experience, and portals with Salesforce Flow Builder. You can use it to configure automations that perform various business processes without using code.
You can build flows visually when you place building blocks in the interface. They can perform various actions, from updating contacts to assigning cases or sending custom messages.
This is one of those Salesforce hacks that boosts efficiency because it cuts out the need to manually perform mundane tasks. It also ensures that you can execute essential processes consistently.
Install Partner Apps using AppExchange
Salesforce is a great tool for businesses, but it can’t do everything. The AppExchange changes that. It allows Salesforce users to add third-party apps like 123FormBuilder and components to make their lives easier.
You can make Salesforce talk and connect with the rest of your online tools for project management, data collection, and management, or financial services easily. For example, you can add 123FormBuilder to sync the lead form submissions you send out with your Salesforce database. Thus, you can take advantage of the powerful formbuilding tool that is 123FormBuilder and Salesforce’s extensive database.
Optimize Reports with Filters and Buckets
If you’re manually digging through reports to find insights, you’re not using Salesforce’s full potential. You can streamline your reporting with filters and bucket fields. Filters allow you to show only the data you need, while buckets let you categorize records without creating additional fields.
To add filters:
1. Go to Reports → Edit a report.
2. Set filters based on criteria like date range, stage, or owner.
To create a bucket:
1. In a report, click on a column.
2. Select Create Bucket Field and categorize the data.
This hack will transform how you analyze data and improve decision-making.
Final Thoughts
By leveraging these nine Salesforce hacks, you’ll find that your daily workflow becomes more efficient and productive. From customizing your homepage to automating routine tasks, these tips are designed to make Salesforce work harder for you, giving you more time to focus on what truly matters—growing your business and building customer relationships. Make these changes today, and watch your Salesforce experience transform!
