Starter Suite > What is Starter Suite video

What's up, everybody? I'm Brian Tong, your guide to all things Salesforce, and this is Salesforce Explained. It's the series where we talk Salesforce and technology without the jargon or buzzwords. Now, make sure that you subscribe and turn on your notifications so you never miss an episode. Today, we're talking about Starter Suite, one of the fastest and easiest ways for companies to start with CRM. You're ready? Well, hey, let's get this party started!

So, what is Salesforce Starter Suite? Well, the short answer is that it's a simple all-in-one CRM that doesn't break the bank. But here's the more official answer: It's a complete CRM suite that combines marketing, sales, and service tools in a single app. It's the easiest way to get started with CRM because of its step-by-step guides and in-app prompts. Now, not sure what a CRM is or why you need one? Don't worry, we're going to get to that in a minute. But for now, let me show you what makes Starter so special, especially for beginners.

First of all, you can sign up in just three steps. That's it. Then, follow its step-by-step guide to get familiar with the app and use prebuilt tools to find more leads, win more deals, and keep customers happy. When building Starter, Salesforce took a long, hard look at how top sellers, marketers, and customer service teams have been using Salesforce’s core products over the past 20 years. And that's how Starter became the perfect CRM to meet their needs while staying simple and affordable. And when I say affordable, I mean $25 per user per month affordable. Yeah, pretty sweet, right? It's also a great introduction to Salesforce Customer 360, our entire portfolio of Salesforce products. When companies use all these CRM solutions together, they can connect with their customers in a whole new way. If you're curious about Customer 360, we've got a video for that, so just click the link in the description to check it out.

Now, let’s talk about why you should use a CRM and more specifically, Starter. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It's technology that's all about putting your customers and potential customers at the center of your business by unifying your customer data. Think of it as a digital warehouse for all your customer info across marketing, sales, service, and any other department in your company. Why is that so important? Because a connected customer experience is key to driving brand loyalty—and yes, we’ve got the stats to back that up. Think about this: 70% of customers expect all company representatives to have the same information about them, and 79% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. To create those connected experiences, you need your customer data in one place. But what good is that data if you don’t know how to use it? Well, Starter makes that part so much easier, too. With its suite of built-in tools, you can find more leads with ready-to-use marketing campaigns, win more deals faster with built-in sales best practices, and keep customers happy by resolving their customer service cases efficiently.

Now, let’s talk about how Starter can grow with your company. If you're a startup or a small or medium-sized business, you can hit the ground running with CRM fast and then conveniently upgrade your CRM to add more features and customizations as your needs change. This makes scaling your business a breeze. For established companies, Starter can help you prove the value of CRM in one department before expanding it across the entire company. And since it's so simple to sign up, onboard, and start using the tools right away, you can quickly prove the value and see the impact of CRM before you fully commit. I promise it’s the easiest approval that you’ll ever get from leadership. They'll be all like, “How are we not using this already?” and you’ll be like, “I know, right?”

Now, let’s see Starter in action. So, you've got a business or you work at one, and you know that CRM could do wonders for your company. But you know, it’s a little intimidating to get set up, right? Nope! Let me show you just how easy it is. All you have to do is fill out the free trial form. Yes, you heard that right. You can get a free 30-day trial of Starter. You just click a few buttons, and you are literally up and running in minutes. After you create your account, you can use simple sign-on with Google, Microsoft, Slack, or your email, which means you don’t have to keep track of another password. It’s the little things, right? Then, you can fill out this survey to make sure the tutorial you're about to see is tailored to you. So if you're a salesperson, it'll show you how to use the sales features first. You can always visit the guidance center whenever you need help or want to learn about other features too. And boom, you're ready to start wowing your customers from day one. Pretty cool, right? And spoiler alert, it gets even cooler. With the Spotlight feature, you’ll get intelligent recommendations based on your actions. So, if you just had a bunch of new leads come in but you haven’t reached out to them yet, Spotlight will suggest sending them an email.

Now, what's the first thing that you want to do to your shiny new CRM? Let’s load this thing with data, baby. With Starter, you can import data from a variety of places. I can easily upload a spreadsheet and even connect my data from external sources like Google. Now that we’re all set up, let’s do a little crash course on those marketing, sales, and service tools.

First, we’ll find more customers. Let’s say your website is picking up steam, and you're getting tons of new leads coming in daily. With Starter, you can market to them right away with email campaigns. You can use premade templates to send them a beautifully branded email, personalize messages to them with segmented email lists, deliver relevant content with customer journeys built with flows, and find the best time to send emails with Einstein send time optimization. This AI feature uses machine learning and engagement data to automatically send an email at the best time for your recipients. After all your emails go out, you can also see how they’re performing with analytics.

Next, we’re winning deals. On the Starter homepage, you’re going to see a complete view of your contacts, leads, opportunities, and more. It has pre-built sales stages that help keep your team on track and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. You can stay ahead of your business goals with customizable reports and dashboards. If you want, you can just use the fancy default dashboards, which are pretty good too. It's like you have a top sales coach built right into your CRM.

Now we want to talk dollar signs. Here we have what's called Pay Now. This is a commerce feature that helps you get paid now. It allows you to generate and send payment links to your customers without ever leaving Starter. You can create a branded checkout page with preset amounts and a variety of payment options, and you can send a pre-composed email to your customer with the payment link and opportunity details.

So, we just won all those customers, but how do we keep them happy? That’s the magic question. Let’s click our handy service nav right here and head to our customer service tool. Here, you can manage all your support cases. Your team can open a customer's profile and see how they've interacted with your company in the past. So, when a customer reaches out for help, they have all the info they need to support them right there. Check out these awesome knowledge articles. Not only can your team use them to find answers fast, but your customers can also use them to get answers on their own without reaching out for help. You can also seamlessly integrate your email support channel so you can track all your communications in one place.

Now, you can see how this one CRM suite helps you start with CRM fast and grow even faster. I don’t have time to show you every amazing feature in Starter, but I can tell you to hit the link on your screen to learn more and get started with your free trial.

Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time on the next video!