💃 5 Signs You're Failing your Salesforce Implementation 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Now that you’ve confirmed you’re winning 🏆, are you curious what the other side of the coin looks like?

Perhaps you’ve watched your fellow consultant die a slow implementation death full of scope creep, overruns, and write-downs.

Maybe you’ve even experienced it yourself 😳.

And let’s be clear, calling out a failing implementation needn’t be a cruel exercise or kicking someone while they’re done. There is immense value in failure - Lessons Learned.

So here’s a few lessons 👇

WHAT NEXT?

5 Signs You’re Slaying Your Salesforce Implementation

1) Your Meetings Consistently End Early

Enterprise Salesforce implementations are sooo big and complex. You have to hold your client’s hand 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 through the lifetime of the project.

There’s too much to consider for meetings to end early. Too much for you to discover, update, and validate. And way too much for you to teach your client.

If your meetings are ending early, then you aren’t discovering, updating, or validating enough. Or your clients understanding and learning cups aren’t getting topped off. Or both 💀.

So if you’re in your fifth meeting of the project, and you’re ending the meeting 45 minutes into a 60 minute block, then you’re flirting with failure 🫣.

2) Your Client is Constantly Asking for Documentation

This one is interesting. Here’s 3 reasons why-

👉 Documentation requires effort. In consulting, effort is just another word for money. If the client didn’t pay for documentation, then there will be no documentation. Ensure that expectation is set.

👉 What good is solution documentation before the solution is live? Solution documentation is an organic doc that will evolve as it and the business manages change. Design documentation is another story - it’s purpose is to validate what will be built. It will be less robust than solution documentation. Don’t hesitate to educate your client on documentation types and dependencies.

👉 Audience. Who is the audience for the documentation? Documentation for a user is going to look very different than documentation for an integration architect. And there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all document for a client’s Salesforce solution, don’t let them tell you otherwise 🙅. Get focused when talking documentation audience with your client.

3) You Tell Yourself You’ll “Fix It Later…”

🙂

This. Is. All of us.

But here’s the thing - implementations are long. A Salesforce + Mulesoft implementation with integration to a legacy ERP will be a couple years.

“Fix it laters” add up. One becomes 10 becomes 50.

And that’s not the worse part.

A multi-year project brings the power of time and compounding. Technical debt early in the build will balloon into un-overcome-able obstacles. A certain death ☠️.

4) No One is Talking About Data

The ChaCha has stepped on the data soapbox more than your local firebrand politician has cut a cringe commercial (🗣️ I approve this message!).

Here, here, and here.

Why so much data talk?

Because it’s high-effort. It’s complex. It requires a ton of client decisions. Oh, and the killer prerequisite - it requires the client to understand their data 😬.

If you’re not planting the data seed early and often, and nurturing it into a big, blossoming beauty, then death by data is a real risk for you 💀.

5) You’re Choosing, Instead of the Client

You’re paid for your expertise. Your client pays a premium for your expertise and service.

With all these stakes (ie 💰💰💰) it seems natural you’re expected to make decisions.

Ah, not so. Behold, the consultant’s fallacy.

Use your experience, knowledge, and skills to setup your client for success so they can make the best decisions possible, but don’t make choices for the client.  

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

The opposite of losing is winning.

So don’t you think it’s valuable to know what losing looks like so that you can do the opposite? Reverse goals?

And what did we miss? What are the different ways you’ve seen implementations go south?

Click the below to share your thoughts!

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes