When new employees start work within any business, training is important! The new employee may be an expert in their field, however, every company has their own culture, systems and expectations that need to be taught in order for the new employee to effectively carry out their role within the new organisation.

We have talked in previous articles about the benefits and improved efficiency Salesforce brings when implemented within a business. However, crucial to the success of Salesforce is the way the system is used to maximise its output. Salesforce has a myriad of benefits, however, if the system is not being accessed correctly by its users, its full potential will not be realised. Similarly, if current employees with Salesforce knowledge are using the system efficiently and then new employees without proper training are not, this will have a negative effect on the accuracy of data and systems within the organisation. Training is therefore crucial to the adoption of the Salesforce system.

With today’s increased workloads and deadline expectations, often management don’t have enough time to properly train new users. Unfortunately, then jeopardising the efficiency of internal systems, such as Salesforce. As well as decreased efficiency, untrained users can often also be a security risk if they are not using the system properly. As part of the training within Salesforce, there is an automated process that allows new users to temporarily work under a “training” profile, without the need for 100% one to one attention.

This hands-off initial training strategy for new Salesforce users works by creating a limited “training” profile, which allows users to go into the Salesforce system, learn how to use Salesforce while preventing them from deleting or modifying existing records. This custom profile allows for a greatly simplified user experience for new users, so they are not overwhelmed by fields, objects, and tabs, and also allows for a custom home page where the user can find videos and helpful training material.

There is no real substitute however for a comprehensive training program. Salesforce training for all new employees should be implemented as part of an induction process, as well as improved training on the system for long term members of staff, to help the whole workforce and management team effectively understand and use Salesforce.

Some of the tasks we recommend you include in Salesforce training for a new employee to give them the basic system knowledge are: –

• Log in process and profile access.
• Using chatter to send messages to the admin, a group, etc.
• Setting up a new client and adding contacts.
• Sharing new contact records. This is a great way for new users to understand any security issues involved with sharing contacts.
• Searching for your user profile on Salesforce, so employees are familiar with how search results are displayed
• Creating a helpdesk request. You want users to get comfortable with coming here to submit requests and get additional help.

When considering any in-house training you are conducting on the Salesforce system there are also various things we recommend you think about before you enter in to the training: –

• What do you want Salesforce Training to do for your business? What is the goal of the training?
• Know what you want to teach
• Expect mistakes and have strategies on how to guide employees to best practice
• Keep your Salesforce training engaging
• Foster collaboration within your organisation, keep communication channels open, allow people to work together and be open to ideas from your team about improvements to internal systems.

Training new staff is an integral part of any recruitment process, it is important to get employees up to speed on Salesforce as soon as possible in order to ensure the business runs as smoothly and effectively as possible. Contact us today for more information.