Shannon Gregg 0:14 How do you make your Salesforce org sellable?
That is such a good question. I know there are a lot of people out there who are interested
in the answers to that. So I'm joined today by Natalie Battista of cloud adoption solutions.
I'm Shannon Gregg, also of cloud adoption solutions, we are going to talk to you for
a few minutes about how to make your Salesforce org one that is sellable when you're in an
event, an m&a event. Hey, Natalie, I'm so happy to be with you today.
Natalie Battista 0:43 Hey, nice to see you, too. Thanks for getting
on this call with me.
Shannon Gregg 0:47 Well, we've been having this question. And
so you and I decided that we would have this conversation sort of out loud, because we've
been through this actually before together, where we've had multiple Salesforce instances
that needed to be integrated or absorbed or considered. And one of the things that we
know that's really important whenever you're looking to make an acquisition or be acquired,
is having really, really good data to say, what's in the future of this pipeline? What's
happening here? So tell me, Natalie, what do you think is driving this sort of, I think
renewed interest in making sure that Salesforce orgs are sellable?
Natalie Battista 1:27 That's a good question. So a lot of times
our clients come to us, and they just need basic cleansing or data cleanup, and you throughout
the conversation to hear that they may be getting purchased. And sometimes that conversation
triggers things, you know, as an admin, so one of the things I think about is, you know,
if there isn't an admin dedicated to that org, so typically, you're gonna see a messy
org. And by messy, I mean, are there duplicate roles? Are there old reports? Are the layouts
all over the place? Are there record types, like tons and tons of record types against
objects. So what I tried to think about in making something sellable is just making your
org presentable. And at the same time, making sure there's governance around what you do
on a monthly basis. So not only are you making sure you have a duplicate rule, but every
month, you're looking at your duplicates, and you should be doing that, regardless of
if you're getting purchased. So it should be a normal monthly admin test to look at
certain things. And that's where this conversation kind of started.
Shannon Gregg 2:41 It really should be. And I think, you know,
best practices are best practices, because they have to be practiced, right? It's not
something you can do once and set it aside, you have to keep trying it over and over again.
And I think, you know, you and I both experienced multiple times on the enterprise side where
there's that sort of fire drill, where somebody comes rushing at you and says, produce a report
for me of our pipeline for the next six quarters, or show me what happened, what's our difference
between new business and existing business over the past five years. And so pulling in
those sort of lagging and leading indicators depends on a really clean seal Salesforce
instance. And that's before the acquisition even happens, right?
Natalie Battista 3:22 Right. And you'll see people in a frenzy saying,
Oh, my gosh, our close dates are from six months ago. And then you want to ask them,
why are you asking for these reports. And usually, there's a reason behind it. So it's
not only that management wants it, but it could be that someone else is looking at it
for a specific purpose. And that could be for a purchase. So in addition to just looking
at pipeline, and looking at your reports in general, you know, part of the cleanup activity,
our old reports, if before reports aren't getting run, then that's one place right there,
you can start your cleanup. If your dashboards haven't been refreshed in months, okay, then
you have to ask yourself, Is anyone using these, if not, get rid of them, or archive
them? Whatever your process is. That way, you can have either a monthly or a quarterly
action to start a cleanup process, whether it be from reports or from duplicates, or
are your accounts inactive? And are you marking them as such? If not, maybe something you
want to monitor, take a look at.
Shannon Gregg 4:26 Those are such good tips, Natalie, and I think
having good hygiene all of the time. Whether or not you're involved in some sort of m&a
event is is just going to make everybody's lives easier, and it helps for coaching and
helps her understanding what the business is going to look like what it's shaping up
to. But we know we've seen instances where we've been acquired and we've been the acquirer
where there is a CRM system on the other side that they want you to fit into, or there may
not be a CRM system but they know The value of your company can depend on what's in the
pipeline. So tell me a little bit about the sort of differences when you're looking at
somebody who doesn't have an org versus somebody who does have an organ, how you're presenting
your org to them.
Natalie Battista 5:13 Sure. So let's say you're the parent company,
you're the one purchasing another company. And if you don't have a lot of process built
within your own org, one of the things that you're going to be looking at in something
that you're going to be purchasing is process. Is there automation? Are there a lot of administrative
burden areas in your org that you're trying to get rid of? Are you using workflow rules,
and they're using process builder, so you want to take a look to see if there's a similarity
between the way you are automating something. And what I also would take a look at is how
much code is in there org versus how much is in your org because of you're absorbing
them, you're absorbing not only their data, but their process, which includes code. So
you want to make that transition as smooth as possible. One other thing I would look
at is historical data. So how much data you want to bring in? Do you want two years worth?
Do you want five years worth because the more you bring in, then you need to look at your
storage needs. So everything kind of wraps around each other. And it's a long, complex
conversation. And I think the best place to start is just looking at your setup menu.
And if you're an admin, just going through your setup many of you and just thinking to
yourself, okay, have I run the optimizer, maybe I should, maybe I should implement Salesforce
best practice, or my users using the system, click on your User button in your setup menu,
take a look to see when they logged in list. Because you're looking at license count, the
parent company is not going to want to add licenses for people who aren't using the system.
So just by looking at your setup menu, it can give you all those you know, Quick Hits,
take a look at your email templates, take a look at your email deliverability, your
processes, your email alerts, your field updates, just to make sure everything's up to date.
And in order. Even if this is something where you're as a parent looking to absorb best
practices. If you're going to acquire a smaller company or another company, they're going
to want to assimilate as easy as possible. So you want to kind of make some consistency
and some kind of, you know, compromises during that transaction too.
Shannon Gregg 7:32 It's great that you bring up that idea of
consistency and compromises because there's so much that goes into this because there's
the philosophical sort of sales process. So are you using Miller Heiman? or using Sandler?
Are you using some sort of opportunity management system that tells you, this is how we do that?
So there's that sort of idea of how you do sales process? or How are you doing service
process? You know, do you have a tier one? Do you move to tier two? Do you have auto
assignment rules, how all those things sort of go in terms of how the people do their
job, and use Salesforce to do it? And then there's that technical side that says, How
do we make sure that we're assimilating everything in a way that makes sense, you know, getting
rid of data redundancy, but keeping the data that's really important, because when somebody
is making an acquisition, they're looking for efficiencies, right, they want to be able
to say, we know there's going to be some efficiencies in terms of how we manage clients, because
there's probably some client crossover, how we go to market, you know, there's probably
some sales, territory crossovers. And so the cleaner your orgs are on both ends, the easier
it is to take on that, that sort of process of evaluating the, you know, philosophical
process compared to the technological process. And, and that, I think, is, you know, one
of the most interesting things about this topic,
Natalie Battista 8:49 I think, if you were at least making an attempt
to clean up these items, the person who's acquiring he was going to look at you and
say, okay, they're trying to keep this word clean. And like we said, In the beginning,
these are things that you should do monthly or quarterly, this is not just because you're
getting purchased. So anytime you're you're a solo admin or you have a team you know,
set up some tasks for yourself to start cleaning out these things on a regular because it's
only going to you know, benefit you at the end of the year when you have to go through
an audit all of your files and content and to see the last time someone downloaded something.
So just make your life easier by taking you know the small incremental steps and start
with that setup menu. I would say definitely do the optimizer report is that's going to
guide you from a Salesforce best practice, best practice perspective as to what points
you need to start hitting on.
Shannon Gregg 9:39 This is awesome, Natalie, and I feel like
I could keep having this conversation with you for a long time, which is a good thing
because we've scheduled a webinar for June 15 called top Salesforce tips for m&a events
and we're bringing in transition Sherpa Laurie Barkman who is amazing. She is just incredible.
I've I've heard her speaks so many times on mergers and acquisitions from both ends. And
she's spectacular. So she's going to give some great tips for looking at assets during
the merger and acquisition activity. And then you and I are going to be presenting some
additional tips on preparing your Salesforce org in a deeper way, even than we discussed
today. And I know I'm looking forward to it.
Natalie Battista 10:23 Yeah, we definitely lived through that. So
we have some definite good tips to share with you guys.
Shannon Gregg 10:29 We sure have
Unknown Speaker 10:32 good times. Well, thank you,
Shannon Gregg 10:34 Natalie, for joining me today. I think this
was such a good and interesting conversation. I can't wait to have it even more on June
Natalie Battista 10:41 15. My pleasure