Salesforce.com Secrets of Success: Best Practices for Growth and Profitability

I am a Sales Manager by trade so being in charge of my company's CRM database is not my first choice. This book is an excellent read for people like me who are trying to squeeze the potential out of using SalesForce as a profit engine for my small company. The lessons Dave teaches clarify the complex environment that integrating an e-commerce, accounting and licensing database can bring if your not a programmer. I feel like I can tackle integration projects with a fresh perspective that will give my team a CRM system built for success.

I really enjoyed digging into this book. It is well organized and well written. The book helped me grasp how the data is structured in SFDC and how best to tie my marketing programs into SFDC.

I did a few implementations of Salesforce and knew there were lessons learned in the process and David's book hit them right on target. I could not stop reading this book as each chapter related to something I ran into and wanted to know more about. This will definately help in my next implementaton and I apreciate the way David wrote this book, easy to read and right to the point. He didn't waste my time with fluff.

I didn't know David Taber before buying his book, though we live in the same area. Our organization implemented Salesforce about six months ago and have had great success with it in the Professional Services Department, but things had stalled in getting other departments, such as Sales and Marketing, to use the system. We actually hired David as a consultant largely based on the depth of knowledge he showed in the book. In particular he tackles the hurdles that Salesforce adoption has in organizations and gives astute advice on how to address them. We are a smaller company than the Salesforce tutorials address, and I found better takeaway help from David's book than I did from the online Salesforce materials or the phone help salesforce provided with our expensive enterprise edition installation. It did take working with David (or you could use other consultants) to go from very skeptical about Salesforce's value to us to developing a focused plan, customization, and adoption by other departments. David practices what he writes about--it's not consultant vapor-advice. I should add that I have done a lot of high-level editing in my career, and David writes well and has created a structure that you can dive into in any section. I highly recommend the book for those who have stared at Salesforce screens and said "Why don't they let me do this simple thing" as well as organizations that need a comprehensive strategy to get value out of the Salesforce platform.

Great book written by a consultant with a deep understanding of SalesForce, SFA applications and Marketing in general. Lots of useful information (and humorous sidebars) including gotcha's and how to's that you can't get in typical documentation. Tips on how to get buy in, user adoption and ongoing success with SalesForce. A great reference for existing users when questions and issues arise. Defintely worth the investment as it can prevent many costly upfront incorrect assumptions and expectations.