Lightning Sales Ops: Building Salesforce for Sales Development Teams Paperback – February 17, 2017

Ok Seriously. If you use Salesforce, do yourself a favor and put it in your cart now. The $10 will pay itself off in the first few pages of this book. This book is flat out awesome. I'd go so far as to say that it's for everyone. Yes, the book focuses on Sales and SDR/BDR process automation using lightning but there are universal truths here that I'll outline first, then give a few specifics.Universal truth #1 - To matter what processes you're working on in Salesforce, by approaching it systematically and with the user in mind first, you can come up with something great. This book shows how to approach BDR and SDR challenges, but there's valuable detail in here for all admins on the process of making your users' lives better.Universal truth #2 - The community is there for you. Matt does a great job highlighting interactions he's had or observed within the Salesforce community. No doubt you can too.Universal truth #3 - The Salesforce platform is BETTER THAN IT'S EVER BEEN. Matt shows how to take advantage of the latest and greatest features to do amazing things for his internal customers. And without writing code!So what about the book, and the solutions found within? As mentioned above, particularly if you're by any means managing sales or a sales team in Salesforce, there's loads of specific, ACTIONABLE content and suggestions in here which will help you improve process, improve output of your team, give better analytics, and basically make you feel pretty good all over. Lots of detail on how to optimize an SDR/BDR's day, how to give them a great user experience in Salesforce, formula fields and automations that can save them time and clicks so they can make more connects, detail on how to write great reports based on this newfound data.I bought copies of this book for everyone on my team and even some of my external customers (Yeah, I'm a consultant). It's gold. Buy it now, you'll be glad you did. I'd have to say, if it were possible I'd give it 10 stars and my highest, unqualified recommendation to buy and read this book!!!

This book great job of describing how SDRs are impacted by Salesforce Lightning. The journey to Lightning has been tough for many admins and the way that Matt talks about his "one-screen" work area may be just what we needed to hear! Lightning is the future and the use cases he talks about apply well beyond SDRs - and can be used by almost all admins to start the discussion around a full move to Lightning. The book is straight-forward and easy to read, the screenshots, formulas, and report ideas help so much. A must-read if you or your company is thinking of moving to Lightning. Now is the time!

This book was an eye opening for me. I was always struggling with what kind of metrics works for inside sales and marketing folks. Matt gives a lot of examples with sample formulas and explains how to set lead stages, opportunity stages which would make the business to decide rather than just for name sake. If you are a salesforce admin, looking for best practices, reports to track your inside sales team effectiveness, this is a must read. Good examples on visual indicators where he gives screen shots on how sales teams can look at a view and decide their day. This book is very practical and also provides some concrete usecases on why you should use lightning as well. Highly recommend this book for salesforce admins, consultants and sales teams!!!

I got my hands on this book when it was initially released. I was gushing after the first session when Matt talks not just of his experience but also of his conversations with other business owners about using Leads or not.The book continues throughout to reference real world users and managers to reinforce the books rational and decision.Matt's use if Lightning throughout further validates that Lightning is a massive step change in the User Interface of Salesforce and explains how to maximise it.Since the initial purchase I've purchased lots and lots more and share it with my anyone I can.This book really is a great example how to write a technology / business book. I hope Matt writes another on Opportunity management?

The book lives up to expectations and shows the what, how and why of configuring Salesforce in a sales org where SDRs play a critical role.While the book offers practical insights including screenshots and code snippets, I would have been interested to know more about how they manage data quality given their alternative set-up. (Not using the Leads object and importing MQLs as Contacts)Other areas of interest that could have been covered in more depth are ABM w/ SDRs (aka. ADRs) and managing lead attribution in a multi-touch campaign with large enterprise accounts.Besides pointing readers to forums for more answers, it would have been interesting to have listed companies who could help with this type of advance Lightning set-up.

This book will soon become known as THE reference guide of all Salesforce admins and sales operations professionals. I originally bought the kindle version and now bought the paperback too, in case I foolishly let my ipad battery run too low!I have zero computer programming or Salesforce Admin experience previously. But this book is packed with so much easy to use and actionable recommendations, I've completely transformed my small sales team's Salesforce org. and our activity and sales are starting to surge! I've made so many tedious functions automatic and everything is streamlined.If you're using Salesforce "out-of-the-box" and haven't configured it to meet your selling needs, know that you are driving your sales team in a Volvo. It might drive just fine and the team will sell. But if you deploy even half of the recommendations in this book, you'll be souped up like a Ferrari.

This is a go to guide for any Salesforce admin supporting sales reps using the platform. Matt does an excellent job breaking down how to make steps more efficient for SDRs using native functionality in Salesforce. He also includes photos and real world examples from a variety of people in the industry including Salesforce community members. This consultant has definitely learnt a few new tricks!