The life of a sales development rep isn’t easy. As you know, sales teams must juggle a multitude of tasks in order to be successful every quarter. Thankfully, the Salesforce AppExchange features thousands of Salesforce integrations that can help you and your team move faster and exceed your quota.

It can be challenging to find and implement quality Salesforce integrations, so keep reading for a list of steps you can follow to make the process easier.

Define Your Problem

Before you begin searching for solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange, you need to understand the problem your team is facing before trying to solve it.

Try to clearly define or articulate the specific issue at hand by writing it down. Then try to figure out why they are experiencing the problem.

Perhaps your sales team is trying to avoid sales churn. Dig deeper and find out what may be causing clients to stop using your product. You may need to get in touch with your product team instead of finding a tool on the AppExchange to get insight for the churn.

Are your emails to key contacts bouncing back? Find out the reason. Maybe your key contacts have moved on to a new role at another company.

Map Out A Solution

Once you have clearly articulated the problem that needs solving, start mapping out a potential solution. If you struggle with sales churn that is not product-related and your SDRs are having trouble keeping track of their prospect’s job movements, you may want to search for a tool that can automatically track contact job updates.

You should write down all of the capabilities that you would like the tool to have. Once you have your list, you can begin searching Salesforce AppExchange for solutions. If you were searching for a tool that tracked prospect job updates, you would come across SifData, an application that updates Salesforce anytime a prospect switches jobs.

Research Your Shortlist

After conducting your search, come up with a shortlist and research each tool before implementing any of them. Look at their list of features, see what is being done at each version update and take a look at their reviews on the AppExchange.

Don’t forget to do some offline research as well. Ask your sales reps, and any other sales people in your network, if they have used the tools that you are considering using. This is a great way to get some genuine reviews from people that you trust.

Also, take a look at trustworthy sales blogs, like Saleshacker and SalesCollider and see if they have mentioned about their experience using that tool. You can perform a google search to find reviews, but pay attention to who the review is written by before factoring it into your decision. For instance, if you find a review by an anonymous sales rep, you probably shouldn’t let that review influence your decision. It’s important to know the company they work for, so you can know if it’s similar to your organization.

Compare Features

Once you have your well-researched list of potential solutions, you can start comparing them on a feature by feature basis. You should pay special attention to the list of capabilities you defined when mapping out your solution. Take that list of requirements, and sort them by level of importance.

Check whether each tool has the requirements you wanted and include notes on each tool’s capability that you acquired from your research. Then assign each feature a ranking. Your ranking system will differ depending on which requirements you prioritize. After ranking each feature, you should be able to narrow down your shortlist.

Depending on the structure of your sales team and the use case for the integration, you may be able to test multiple tools at the same time. However, it would be easier to just test one at a time so that you can really focus on whether it works or not.

The Trial Phase

You should monitor your new Salesforce integration very closely after you launch it. Generate a report on metrics that you expect the tool to improve before you start using it. After you launch, monitor those metrics to see if the tool is helping to improve your sales process. The timeline for testing will vary depending on your organization and the problem that you intend it to solve.

If you were testing SifData, you could compare how many opportunities were created with contacts that had changed jobs before and after using the tool. You would see that it helped sales, customer success, and marketing teams stay in touch with champions who were already familiar with your product or service.

In addition to metrics, ask your top performing team members how they like the new integration. Is it saving them time? Do they enjoy using it? They will be the ones using the tool the most, so you need to make sure they adopt the technology you selected.

The Salesforce AppExchange is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. It can be difficult to sort through the thousands of solutions in order to find quality tools like SifData, which helps companies eliminate churn. However, if you follow the steps above for evaluating and implementing a new solution, it will make the process much easier.

Find us on the Salesforce AppExchange, today.