Recommended Solutions for Maximizing Sales Department Growth

AB

To address the issue of new sales executives investing time connecting with existing contacts who are not influential in furthering the business relationship, the Consultant can recommend the following two potential solutions:

1. Implement the Account Contact Role feature (Option A): The Account Contact Role feature in Salesforce allows you to define the roles that contacts play within an account. By implementing this feature, the Consultant can recommend creating predefined roles such as "Influencer," "Decision Maker," "Champion," or any other role that aligns with the sales process of Cloud Kicks.

Sales executives can then assign appropriate contact roles to each contact associated with an account. This helps the sales team to identify and focus their efforts on the contacts who are influential in driving business relationships forward. By understanding the roles of different contacts, sales executives can prioritize their interactions and allocate their time effectively.

2. Add a Lookup field to Contacts to indicate Influential Contacts (Option C): Adding a Lookup field to the Contacts object allows you to establish relationships between contacts themselves. In this case, the Consultant can recommend adding a Lookup field called "Influential Contact" to the Contacts object.

Sales executives can use this field to identify and link contacts who are influential in the sales process. By associating influential contacts with other contacts, the sales team can quickly identify which contacts are more likely to further the business relationship and allocate their time accordingly.

Detailed Explanation: Option A suggests implementing the Account Contact Role feature, which provides a standardized way to assign roles to contacts within an account. This helps sales executives to understand the importance and influence of each contact in the sales process. By leveraging predefined roles, the sales team can prioritize their engagement with contacts and focus on building relationships with those who have a significant impact on business outcomes.

Option B, which suggests adding an Influencing Contact multi-select picklist field on the Account, is not the ideal solution in this scenario. While it allows you to identify influential contacts, it does not establish the relationship between contacts and does not provide a structured way to capture this information. Therefore, this option is not recommended.

Option C suggests adding a Lookup field to the Contacts object to indicate Influential Contacts. This solution enables the sales team to establish direct relationships between contacts themselves. Sales executives can select and link influential contacts to other contacts, allowing them to easily identify the influential individuals within their network. This approach provides a flexible and scalable solution to manage influential contacts efficiently.

Option D, which proposes tracking time invested in a custom field for each contact, might not directly address the issue of connecting with influential contacts. While it can provide insights into time allocation, it does not provide a specific mechanism to identify or differentiate influential contacts from others. Therefore, it may not be the most effective solution in this case.

To summarize, the recommended solutions for Cloud Kicks' fast-paced growth of its sales department are:

• Implement the Account Contact Role feature (Option A)
• Add a Lookup field to Contacts to indicate Influential Contacts (Option C)