The CRM system–Salesforce has become the leading sales and marketing partner for many organizations today. It is now a global requisition due to its vast competence across Salesforce clouds, products, system integration capabilities, and industries. 

Regardless of the benefits it brings, we often make mistakes while implementing Salesforce. Reason? It appears with a vast range of services and features that might complicate or even confuse business processes. Therefore, a need for a Salesforce consulting partner is the best bet. 

Although finding a consulting partner can be pretty daunting as the market keeps changing and new competitors take place, choosing the right Salesforce consulting partner might become challenging, and before you know it, a big blunder or mistake may occur just because your Salesforce solution partner wasn’t a good fit for your business proceedings. 

On that account, we will help you in avoiding mistakes while choosing a consulting partner by providing common solutions that will help you prepare yourself from making the right decision in the future. 

Let’s begin by understanding the roles of a salesforce consulting partner! 

What are the Responsibilities of a Salesforce Consulting Company?

The primary role of a Salesforce solution partner is to advise, manage and implement the CRM edition and various tech tools, so they perform effectively. This helps the client company to pivot its business operations at its core, while its CRM and customer engagement run their magic. Additionally, the role of your Salesforce consultant is to also design and maintain the databases that authentically connects client company with their targeted leads. 

Let’s see the responsibilities in detail mentioned below:

• One of the main responsibilities of the Salesforce Consulting Company is to provide improved business-client engagement. They must constantly interact with the customer, learn about their needs, offer and execute solutions, and, if necessary, put out fires. They must also provide support and training following project deployment.
• Making and overseeing project plans. The reputation of Salesforce Consulting Partners is built on choosing the best project based on its nature and scope. To keep the client pleased at all times, ongoing communication is necessary throughout the process.
• A capacity for strategic decision-making. These days, businesses use consulting services to help them with critical decisions that affect the operation and growth of their businesses. This also applies to the obligations of Salesforce consulting partners to their clients.
• Salesforce from A to Z. These Salesforce consulting partners handle all of the planning, development, training, and deployment-related headaches and issues for your Salesforce CRM as well as other digital tools and solutions. They offer post-deployment support & maintenance services as well as practical training for various departments.

Is it a wise decision to work with a Salesforce consulting partner, despite the fact that the duties undoubtedly win people’s trust and lift their burdens? Let’s talk about this below!

Is it Worthwhile Hiring a Salesforce Consulting Partner?

Source:– https://www.quora.com/Is-it-worthwhile-hiring-a-Salesforce-consulting-partner 

This question has a clear YES as the answer! Since it has been around for ten years, Salesforce development services are widely used all over the world. The following are some advantages of selecting a Salesforce solution partner:

It is a full-service solution for partner management, reputation management, community management, sales, marketing, and service.

• Boost client happiness and loyalty
• Third-party applications can interface with Salesforce.
• Accelerates the productivity of sales
• It accelerates your company’s growth.
• It meets the requirements of both small and medium-sized companies.

Evidently, hiring a Salesforce consultant is only useful if their staff is committed to the project and makes errors while overseeing your company procedures. However, to avoid any errors, we have listed a few typical errors while choosing a Salesforce Consulting Partner.

Common Mistakes While Choosing a Salesforce Consulting Partner 

1. Not having a clear definition of business goals

You are supposed to lead the way in business. A consultant is not supposed to do that. Prior to making your choice on the implementation style. Understanding why you require the suggested remedy in the first place is crucial. How does it relate to your company objectives? What issues is it going to help you with? After implementation, in what directions do you want your business to go?

Without a thorough grasp of these components, you risk wasting time, resources, and work on a poorly utilized Salesforce solution and failing to fully exploit its potential.

You must unambiguously specify the following in order to use your Salesforce installation to determine the proper direction for your company:

• Determine your company goals. List the things you want to accomplish over the next three to four years using the Salesforce platform.
• Establish the ideal project timetable.
• Establish a budget.
• Choose a cooperation model.
• Identify the project’s stakeholders.
• Define the functions of the salesforce partners.

2. Lack of basic Salesforce knowledge 

This step is often overlooked.  To be on the same page with your implementation partner or consultant, you need to be familiar with the most common terms and capabilities of the Salesforce platform. Educate yourself with product demos, Case Studies, and Whitepapers on the Salesforce websites to know about the features relevant to your business domain. Knowing how Salesforce has helped companies around the world in your domain, will help you speak the same language as your partner.

3. Prioritizing price over quality 

You do want the greatest Salesforce Consulting Partner money can buy, of course. And a propensity to be drawn to less expensive offerings is constantly present.

However, there are situations when selecting a low-priced alternative with limited resources results in cost overruns, and engaging that consultant may actually lead to operating expenses that are greater than initially anticipated, timetable delays, or in the worst-case scenario, project failure.

You could ultimately opt to solely fund Salesforce developers. It could appear to be financially feasible at first. However, if your developers lack comprehensive domain and product experience, you risk having an implementation that is either undeveloped or well-developed but not widely used by your end customers.

To avoid unpleasant surprises down the road, Salesforce advises working with Salesforce Certified partners. Compared to other options, it is more expensive, but the likelihood of success is substantially higher.

4. Underestimating the power of reviews 

All businesses create beautiful websites. Why else would they not? They want you to believe that they are the finest in their field. But that’s not the whole tale. But what do their customers think of them? Customer satisfaction ratings are highly correlated with AppExchange user evaluations. To learn what’s excellent and what’s bad about a product or software, read reviews. Additionally, independent websites that review products and services are available.

5. Hiring a Salesforce consultant with inadequate relevant experience 

On the AppExchange platform, there is no shortage of highly qualified technical specialists, as you will discover. But would having these credentials be sufficient to guarantee the success of your project?

Without a doubt, having the necessary technical know-how is essential for a successful Salesforce deployment, thus you should always place a high priority on your partner’s team’s consultants’ qualifications. Domain knowledge is yet as crucial.

What if Salesforce doesn’t provide ready-made solutions for your industry? The next step is to find specialists that can adapt Salesforce to your particular company’s requirements.

A lack of proper and pertinent industry knowledge might result in an implementation that has flaws, which would affect team acceptance and ROI.

Along with partners with subject expertise, you should seek collaborators who have experience on projects like yours and who have the capacity to work with a firm your size.

In the long run, it will be beneficial if you did your homework on the technical and marketing experience of your potential partner. Take your time and conduct a thorough search to find the partner that is the perfect fit for your project.

6. Not Choosing an Expert

Why is a collaboration with a partner required for implementation? Because your company doesn’t employ someone with that level of education, skill, and experience, isn’t that right? You also don’t want a partner that readily accepts your advice.

An industry and technological expert who can completely examine and investigate your company, take the initiative, and make recommendations for the future is what you actually need.

Even if it doesn’t feel right to you, certified Salesforce consultants will recommend the best course of action since they’ve learned the hard way how to avoid common mistakes. In other words, they won’t be scared to debate you.

7. Looking for a short-term partnership 

One of the biggest misunderstandings is that working with Salesforce experts must culminate in a CRM setup.

Instead, your project will transition into a new post-implementation phase where you will require new levels of expert support to, among other things, ensure user adoption of the solution, ensure that your platform is configured and updated properly following each Salesforce release (Winter, Spring, Summer), troubleshoot all system-related issues, etc.

Additionally, your company will continue to expand throughout the years, and your CRM solution should too.

Dealing with seasoned Salesforce partners that are familiar with your project from the beginning is considerably more efficient and comfortable when new additions or adaptations are required.

Instead of vacillating between options, today’s smart firm focuses on building meaningful, long-term connections that will enhance its core offerings with innovations.

Final Thoughts! 

Investing in Salesforce is a big step that has to be done with careful consideration if you want to reap the rewards of a successful deployment and long-term usage.

Additionally, since a Salesforce collaboration is a two-way street with mutually agreed-upon objectives and duties, your partner consultant deserves to be regarded as one of your valued advisors. The Salesforce consultant will only then be in a position to add long-term value.

With the aid of our Salesforce support and Concierge Services, we at DianApps offer knowledgeable direction and assistance for our clients during all phases of installation. Because we respect your time, we provide assistance with repetitive chores like data input and data loading into CRM, scheduling support, various setups, and report preparation.