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How to Choose a Salesforce Consulting Partner
by Dave Averill, Customer Success Manager, Salesforce.com Foundation
Over the years I have talked to many customers on their journey toward Salesforce and CRM “nirvana”. Choosing the right partner to walk this road with you can be difficult. Here are some strategies that I recommend when you are trying to select a partner:
Learn Before You Buy
Be an informed buyer. You are stepping into a framework with amazing capabilities out of the box and limitless possibilities when you consider additional applications. Watch the free demo videos on both the salesforce.com and the Salesforce.com Foundation website to get a sense of what’s possible. If you are generally intimidated by technology then be sure to find someone on your staff who can support you. Hint: find a millennial.
Set a Goal to Find Two to Three Finalists
Here are a few ways:
- Use the App Exchange to find a certified partner - Find reviews of partners, their products and learn where they are.
- If you know you are going to be purchasing licenses from the Salesforce.com Foundation, then contact your Account Executive (call 1-800-NOSOFTWARE to get connected with your AE) and tell them a bit about your project and ask who they might recommend.
- Use your network to find a recommended partner. Look for someone who is in an organization with your similar size and needs. Ideally, they can educate and support you on lessons learned as well. The old rule of buyer beware no longer applies. There is a multitude of information about potential consultants, their products and projects at your fingertips.
- Post a Request for Proposal (RFP) – See next tip.
- Don’t fall in love with your RFP- A RFP is your best thinking from your current point of view. The only problem might be that you are completely inexperienced in building CRM’s, don’t fully grasp what problems they can solve, and need help to make sure you are innovating and not just making a copy of old, out of date software. It is ok to have a RFP, but use the RFP to start a discussion and get a list of interested consultants.That’s right! You are on the hunt for people you can talk to rather than evaluate on paper. Imagine going to a Doctor and giving him a list of your ailments and trying to find out who can give you want you think you want for the lowest cost. Good consultants have a process. Learn what it is, ask for demos and case studies and determine if you are a fit for how they work.
- Look for an Expert not an Order Taker – Experts are more expensive, ask probing questions that you might not like, and take the lead in your project. They have seen hundreds of projects like yours before and know what the conditions for success are and have a developed process they can walk you through. Order takers are developers who do exactly what you tell them to do. Frankly, you want the former. Additionally, find a partner who is an expert at your type of organizational model if you can. Some partners are great at serving direct service organizations and some are great at serving grassroots environmental organizations.
- Have a Budget – If you don’t have a budget, then you are not looking for a consultant, you are looking for a pro-bono volunteer. It is hard to find good volunteers and they can have very mixed results that may haunt you for years. You get what you pay for often applies here. Additionally, talk budget ranges with your potential consultants as soon as possible and make sure you are in the right ballpark.
- Beware of Data Migration Costs – Do not underestimate the value and the difficulty of bringing your legacy data into Salesforce. Salesforce isn’t hard, but data is, especially when you are merging data from your outlook contacts, multiple excel spreadsheets, Evite, Microsoft Access, your email newsletter database, etc. Data migration can get complicated quickly, it is hard to estimate, it can be very expensive (I have seen it be 5% – 40% of a project budget) and it is worth every penny. If you do not trust your data in your new Salesforce system, your project has a high likelihood of failing.
- Project Management Methodologies – Understand the project management methodology of your consultant and be sure you feel good about the amount of input you will have on the project throughout. Ask to have completed work demoed early and often so you can learn how your new system works and guide it to success along the way.
- Consider These Important Roles- Here are some of the more important roles you may need filled internally and by your partner. Be clear on this before you start your project:
- Strategic Consultant – Salesforce is a powerful platform that can be used for anything from simple contact management to designing a completely new interactive engagement tool for your users. If your aspirations are high with Salesforce you will want to find a consultant who can lead you through a process to identify innovative ways to build new relationships with those who matter most to your mission. If your organization wants to transform how you work you need to find a firm that has a process that connects the future of your mission to Salesforce.
- Data or Requirements Architect – How does your consultant build your requirements? How do they hand them off to their developers? When do I agree to a full project scope before or after this analysis is done?
- Change Management Consultant – For larger organizations, you are not only considering a technology project but it is an entire change management project. Many organizations underestimate the need they have to plan and prepare for this change. Most consultants will provide you with simple assistance here but sometimes failure to give change management enough attention can derail or slow adoption significantly.
- Technical Project Management – This is simply managing the consultants work items as assigned. Most consultancies you work with should be good at managing their own tasks.
- Organizational Project Management – In order for your consultant to be successful they will need someone at your organization to manage the requests they have from you. For example they will need someone to manage access to the right staff, to data they need, to coordinate project plans to accommodate major organizational blackout dates.
- Project Sponsor/Administrator(s) – This is obviously an internal resource at your organization that needs to be in place. This may be the same person as #2. Note that this person is your new most important staff person. They are going to have the institutional knowledge of how your new system was architected, deployed and works. They will know how to help people build reports, fix future problems and reason with the slow adopters. This person will be where you invest Salesforce training and skills. This person is committed to your organization and you should not be going on sabbatical in the middle of your project or leaving right at the end of it.
- Consultant Management – For larger projects, you will likely have more than one consultant involved. Who is going to manage those consultants and who do you point to if an integration between your website, your email newsletter, and Salesforce stops working. Either you need to own that or determine if you need to pay your consultant to own that responsibility. Similar to a housing remodel, you need to be clear who is holding the general contractor responsibilities.
- Phase your Engagements – Trust your consultant and let that trust build by doing phased approaches to your project. Consider paying for discovery separate from your implementation so you can feel confident in the recommendations before you sign the bigger check.
- Ongoing Support and Long Term Relationship – Talk about what happens after you complete your project and think clearly about what happens next. If you are implementing a deep and wide implementation you need to find a partner who has a clear support and account management program as you consider future improvements.
My final bit of advice is find a partner you are planning to trust . If possible meet all the players who will be on your project. Consulting is a people business. Find the best your money can buy.
One other thought,or maybe an enhancement to some of Dave’s points: consider the nature of your organization, your project, and the kind of relationship you want to have with your consultant-the RFP and visioning BEFORE you bring someone on board is important. Similarly, consider whether you going to have internal technical and related support after the work is done, as this may help determine what sort of relationship you’ll want to maintain with the consultant/firm after the work is over.
A few of the very skilled nonprofit admins I’ve worked with shared a trait: they asked their previous consultants how things worked, and wrote down those steps for next time. So at the beginning anything out of the ordinary the consultant would do – then show & tell – and later on most of these routine tasks were handled by the admin. You might not have time to train on every little piece but I think this tied into the ongoing training mentioned above. And don’t just watch! Get your hands on the keyboard and mouse at least once to walk through the steps.
Something else I’ve always wondered about is how others develop documentation throughout the project – e.g., with each deliverable, here’s what we did, and how (at a high level) for later.
Great Advice Ehren! Good questions as well around documentation. I know there are many models out there. A popular model I have seen is for a consultant to do Business Process Mapping(BPM) and use the deliverable workflow documents as a guide to how their organization runs a process. The issue with BPM is you have to keep it simple and have a process for keeping the documents updated. There are lots of others I know so we will see if we can do a round up of documentation best practices in a future post.
Dave — thanks for sharing these insights. Super helpful. I’ll definitely pack them along to guide my last Salesforce journey. Particularly love your point re: the role of the RFP (to get down your best thinking and open conversations). I’ve had the humbling experience of being saved from my own carefully crafted “master CRM plans” a number of times
Again, thanks from writing and keep it coming.
Terrific post and great comments here too! +1 to Drew’s comments about planning for ongoing training needs and the evolution of the CRM. I always make sure to train multiple staff members in Salesforce Administration, so once the “official” project engagement is complete, the organization has staff in-house who can make changes as needed.
Couple of other thoughts:
* Make sure management is bought in to the project from the start. This includes ED’s, board members, senior staff, and anyone who could possibly throw a wrench into the process at a higher level. Obviously this isn’t always possible, but recognizing that you might have to do an internal “sales pitch” is much easier up front than down the line when you’re ready to go and someone holds up the process.
* State clearly articulated project goals at the beginning, before diving into any technology. Much like a mission statement, these goals or “project mission” or objectives or whatever you want to call them should serve as a touchstone throughout the project. If new features are proposed, you can check back in with those goals and ask: “Is this really needed to accomplish what we are aiming to accomplish here?” And those goals can also be whipped out when you need that “internal sales pitch.” They don’t need to be fancy, but at the end of the project you should be able to say whether they were met or not.
* Dedicate sufficient staff time to the project. CRM projects often require process overhauls, and there’s no one who knows your internal processes better than you. Of course a consulting partner should help you think through how to map things best to Salesforce, but that’s best done in partnership with staff, not in a vacuum. Without that time dedicated, you run the risk of trying to get the project done and also “doing your day job” at the same time, which can be challenging.
Dave! Awesome and much needed post! I couldn’t agree more with everything being said by folks here. I would also add to Tal’s comment about us knowing your budget being important not just for the reasons he stated, but also because if you only have a certain amount of money to work with at the start, we may be able to help you prioritize your needs to get the most critical things done for that price, even if it’s not the entire solution you were hoping for. What I really like to hear from a prospective client is, “Yes, we’ve done a bit of research about this and here’s the grand scheme of what we want to do, and here’s what we have to spend right now.” This way, we may be able to break it down and say what’s realistic to accomplish with your budget, and guide you to doing additional work in a subsequent phase. The hardest conversation to have, and one that drives us consultants nuts, is when people say they want $50,000 worth of work and they expect it done for $2,000. This is not realistic, and is a bit insulting to the consultant at the outset. You don’t need to have gobs of money to throw around, but being realistic about what can be done with the budget you *do* have is what makes it easier to assess how we can help someone.
Great post, David. The only thing I might add is a little more meat on the points about the long-term and ongoing nature of these relationships:
1. Training: Plan for ongoing training needs. Most consultants do some kind of training to get the org up and running. But staff turn-over will happen and at times new people who come into an organization will require training as well. Find a partner who is both a great developer and a great trainer.
2. Evolution: I think it’s fair to say that although projects with CRM consultants typically start off with a big bang, the relationships with consultants will go on for quite some time. If your Salesforce CRM is not evolving to keep up with changed within an organization, then over time it will be come less and less useful. Picking a consultant who has a reputation and track record of working with individual clients over a long period of time is super important.
Nice post! From the client side, you need to ‘own’ the relationship and the outcomes. Treat the project as one in which you are working with the consultant, not having them do something for or to your organization. You’ll be better positioned to run with the platform once the engagement is done.
Good points Will. As I mentioned in the article however your consultant should be empowered enough to lead your project. Assuming you found a great consultant with a good process you should let them lead you through there process. That being said their process needs to be one that you have regular check-in and opportunities where you can ask questions, request changes and adjust. I am a big fan of Agile methodologies for this reason. More on this in a future post.
Excellent post Dave! Here are a few additional suggestions:
* Do your homework – You might never be able to debate the merits of Apex code (the programming language that executes on the Force.com platform) and that’s Okay. However, before you write the RFP, figure out what you want and what is possible; reach out to other nonprofits in your sector, consult with volunteers and board members, and read related publications.
* Yes, we need to know your budget – Always include your budget. You may be thinking that you should not disclose your budget because it does not leave a place for price negotiations, I disagree. A budget estimate would allow me, as a technology partner, to evaluate if we are a good fit. Furthermore, it will show me that you are serious about the project, aware of its complexity (you did your homework!), and that you have the budget to execute it. Here is what you should not do: don’t create your project’s budget based on the proposals you received.
* You should have a timeline – Your timeline should indicate at least the deadline for choosing the vendor, a date for the beginning of the discovery, and the date you would like to have the solution fully implemented.
* Distinguish between need and want – Indicate what your most urgent needs are, what is important to have, and what would be nice to have in a world with no budgetary restrictions.
Great Points Tal, You added some of the items I took out because the article was a bit too long. Thanks!
Alicia, thanks for this article! I’ll be pointing potential clients towards it. Your observation about an “Expert vs. Order Taker” is a really helpful distinction. Maybe my favorite point isn’t actually a point, it’s your advice to find someone you trust. This is absolutely critical. The website link below points to a document called “How Projects Work” which we use to set expectations for our clients and which may be helpful for other users.
http://appexchange.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.FileDownload?file=00P3000000AJNR6EAP
Thanks Tim. Just a note that this post was actually written by Dave Averill, Customer Success Manager at the Foundation.
Sorry Dave!
Great post! I have to admit that I’m representing the consulting firm side of the equation so I have a bit of bias, but this post does a wonderful job of outlining what you should be considering. I come from a nonprofit background and have lived through the trials and tribulations of picking the wrong consultants. It’s worth spending the time finding the fit that’s right for you and making sure your consulting partner knows what they’re doing.