Selecting The Right Salesforce Consulting Partner

Congratulations! You’re considering working with a Salesforce consulting partner, perhaps because you don’t have sufficient in-house expertise, or you want to implement improvements more quickly, or you want help staying up to date on all the latest features and functionality. Or maybe all of these reasons!

Now, let’s talk about the choice you face.

Choosing from among a hundred is tough (cereal aisle at the grocery?), but choosing from thousands? Yes, there are literally thousands of Salesforce consulting partners clamoring for your business. Of course, the consequences of a poor partner choice are far more impactful than picking a cereal you dislike.

Selecting the wrong partner can delay your timeline, blow your budget, create long term problems due to poor solutioning or execution, and in the worst of circumstances, result in an even more costly “do over” that frustrates and drives away your staff and your customers.

So, how will you tackle the challenge of choosing the right Salesforce consulting partner for your business?

There are many factors to consider, but we can simplify to three questions:

• What kind of help do you need?
• What factors are most important to you?
• What did you learn when you spoke with someone?

What kind of help do you need?

To avoid being “force fit” into whatever offering a consultant prefers, it will behoove you to give some thought to the type of help you really want. You can conduct a self-examination by considering a few questions, much like preparing for the age-old doctor inquiry, “What brings you in today?”

Symptoms and Goals

• Do you have a particular pain/problem you need to solve? 
• What are the symptoms of the issue? 
• Who is impacted? 
• How is the issue affecting your business? 
• When the issue is resolved, how will your situation improve? 
• And don’t stop with just the immediate pain points. Zoom your lens out a bit further and consider, what are your broader goals? 
• Within the next year, do you plan to grow? 
• Will more staff or customers be using the system? 
• Do you want to integrate with other systems for a smoother overall experience?

Engagement

Not all consulting partners offer all types of services, so it can help to be informed about the main engagement models and consider which best suit your needs.

Are you interested in one-time help or support over an extended period, and how do you want a contract structured? The following are some industry terms you’ll want to get familiar with: 

Audit

An evaluation of your Salesforce org to assess its performance, identify issues or areas for improvement, and provide recommendations for corrective actions. Time required for an audit will depend on several factors including number of custom objects, integrations and managed packages.

Quick-Start

A rapid and condensed engagement model aimed at quickly implementing one of the Salesforce Cloud products, often involving predefined templates, workflows, or best practices to expedite the process.

Project

Various types of engagement models for delivering specific outcomes or results on a specific timeline.

• Fixed: A project with a predetermined scope, timeline, and cost.
• Estimated: A project with an approximate scope and cost, subject to adjustments based on actual effort and resources required.
• T&M (Time and Materials): A project where the client pays for the actual time and resources utilized, often used for complex or evolving projects.

Bucket of Hours

A flexible engagement model where clients purchase a set number of hours that can be used for various consulting services such as solution design, strategic counsel, or on-demand support. The hours can be allocated based on the client's needs and priorities.

Staff Augmentation

The practice of temporarily or permanently supplementing a client's existing workforce with external consultants or professionals to address skill gaps, increase capacity, or accelerate project delivery.

Managed Services

A comprehensive and ongoing engagement model where a consulting firm takes responsibility for managing specific aspects of a client's Salesforce org, typically provided as a subscription-based service.

Training: A process of imparting knowledge, skills, or expertise to individuals or teams through structured learning programs, workshops, or courses to enhance their abilities and improve performance in a specific domain or area.

Not all partners offer all engagement models, or equally well, and or priced competitively, so you’ll want to communicate up front what you are interested in and ask for direct answers and examples of how the consultant will deliver.

What factors are most important to you?

With the above in mind, you should also give thought ahead of time to which factors of a consultant partnership are most important to you. I know, “They’re all important,” and you’re right, but practically speaking, you know there are always trade offs, so consider ahead which will make the most difference to you for success.

Specific expertise

Salesforce consultant expertise has many different facets: product expertise, feature expertise, industry expertise, particular business process expertise, migration expertise, integration expertise, making specific expertise more important to you. You might have a specific need which not every consultant can satisfy.

It can save you time and money if you convey up front what type of experience you expect from the consultant. For example, perhaps you only use Sales Cloud, or perhaps you also need help with Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Experience Cloud. Perhaps you are seeking specific knowledge regarding Field Service Lighting, or Dispatcher Console. Maybe you are migrating from one system to another and you need a consultant who is an expert at data mapping and migration so you retain all your historical data. Maybe Salesforce is only part of your complex business tech stack, and you need a consultant who can help you manage integrations with Hubspot, Quickbooks, or Mailchimp. 

Whatever it is you need, the more clear you are early in your conversations, the faster you’ll be able to determine whether a consultant is right for you.

Speed

You may be up against a specific deadline, making speed an important factor for you. Perhaps your licenses with another system are going to expire or your ace admin just gave notice and you need help now. How quickly can the consultant get a solution architect on a call to scope for your needs? How quickly can they staff and kickoff your engagement?

Cost

Is your need mission critical with executives already having committed a significant budget, or are you under significant pressure to justify the investment? To an extent, you do get what you pay for, but given the immense competition in the marketplace for Salesforce Consultants, you may be able to negotiate.

Skill sets

Perhaps you want to onboard a junior Salesforce administrator for basic, rote tasks or a senior Salesforce developer with specialized expertise. Maybe you need a project manager skilled in tracking against milestones and sharing weekly progress reports, or you need a business analyst to gather detailed requirements from stakeholders. Perhaps you need a solution architect to help you evaluate and determine the best path forward. All of these are specific skill sets, and not every consultancy staffs all roles.

Location

Given that Salesforce is SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and hence can be accessed and managed from anywhere over the internet, you may not need a consultant to be onsite. You may be able to save significant money by foregoing travel-related expenses and interacting remotely.

Availability

Consultants reside all over the world, so availability and time-zone capability become critical. You may not care about a consultant’s geographic presence, but you may absolutely care whether a consultant’s working hours overlap with those of your team.

Communication & Collaboration

Look for a Salesforce consulting partner who values communication and collaboration. They should be able to work closely with your team and understand your business goals and objectives. They should also be responsive and transparent in their communication. Regardless of geography, some consultants can communicate quite well in English and  some cannot, so before jumping to stereotypical conclusions, have a conversation.

Size

The size of an organization isn’t necessarily positive or negative, but bear in mind that a consultancy with only a few staff will be limited in its ability to scale for your needs, whereas a firm of 100 or more has a much larger community of individuals from whom to draw upon for knowledge-sharing. Much larger firms may charge higher rates, staff with more junior individuals, or choose not to contract for smaller engagements. Inquire with a consultancy how large they are, what their attrition rate is, and how they invest in their staff to continuously upskill and stay satisfied.

What did you learn when you spoke with someone?

It can be a hassle to arrange meetings and carve out time from your busy schedule for conversations, and it’s tempting to think that internet research is sufficient for your decision process. But influential marketing doesn’t always accurately represent the end result you’ll experience. Have a conversation with a consulting company and assess:

• Do they listen to you and can they reiterate what they heard accurately?
• Do they ask good questions that reflect their knowledge of your products and business processes?
• How quickly are you able to speak with a solution architect?
• Did they customize their proposal to your needs, or do you feel ‘fit into a box’

It’s crucial to choose the right Salesforce consulting partner for your needs, so you get the most out of the platform. Taking the time to consider answers to the questions shared here can help you make the right choice.