💃 Avoid Costly Salesforce Partner Traps🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerd Executive! Choosing a Salesforce implementation partner feels a little like buying a house.

Everything looks great during the walkthrough. Fresh paint. Big promises. Smiling faces.

Then six months later you discover the plumbing is held together with duct tape, the foundation is cracked, and somehow you’re the one paying to fix it.

In my years bouncing between industry roles and consulting firms, I’ve seen the same traps spring on smart executives over and over again. None of them are obvious. All of them are avoidable.

Let’s walk through the big ones so you don’t end up as another cautionary tale.

DEMOS TELL YOU NOTHING ABOUT IMPLEMENTATION

The Salesforce Demo Mirage

Looking right at you, Salesforce 😠.

When I served mid-market businesses, co-selling with Salesforce, prospect demo calls had 14 mothership employees - AEs, AVPs, RVPs, SEs, PMs, POs, Architects and Developers. And the implementation partner’s own squad of sharks 🦈. Power in numbers.

A polished sales engineer clicks through a beautiful Experience Cloud instance. Lightning pages sparkle. Picture carousels whirl. Automations hum.

You think, “Wow, these people really get us.” 🤩

Here’s the problem…that demo had a supermodel’s face, but my tubby body underneath. It was a mirage.

And, more importantly, it does not show you how that partner will implement it inside your messy, political, legacy-software-filled organization.

A newly converted customer may quickly discover 👇

👎 The senior person who demoed never touches the project.

👎 The demo had nothing to do with their actual methodology.

👎 What looked simple required massive customization.

👎 None of their business edge cases were considered. Happy path for the win!

Here’s your defense tactic for the shiny demo - judge partners on process and proof, not powerpoint and polish.

Ask to see 👇

👍 Real project plans

👍 Sample requirements docs

👍 Governance frameworks

👍 Examples of how they handled projects that went sideways

BEWARE THE LOWEST BIDDER

❌ The Cheapest Bid

Nothing makes a CFO happier than a low estimate 😃.

Nothing creates bigger disasters than selecting a partner based solely on price 😵.

Salesforce implementations are not commodities like printer paper. They are complex transformation projects involving people, process, data, and technology.

When a bid is dramatically cheaper than the others, it usually means one of three things ⬇️

😬 They don’t understand your scope.

😬 They’re gonna staff it with enough junior resources to fill a daycare.

😬 Their engagement lead is a change order merchant.

Cheap partners often become very expensive partners once the real work begins.

I’ve seen “budget-friendly” projects turn into infinite rework, surprise invoices, and project team burnout 🥵.

Defense tactic - don’t ask “Who is cheapest?” Ask “Who is most likely to succeed on the first attempt?”

Value beats price every single time.

YOU’RE A S-S-S-SUPERSTAR ⭐️

The Lone Salesforce Superstar Model

Some consultancies sell you on a single rockstar.

“Our architect has 23 certifications and built Salesforce for NASA while blindfolded.”

Amazing!

Then the project starts, and you realize that one hero is juggling seven clients, three proposals, and three kids at home.

Meanwhile your project is being handled by:

🙁 A brand-new admin.

🙁 An offshore team you’ve never met.

🙁 A business analyst learning your industry on the fly.

The bait-and-switch staffing model is one of the oldest tricks in the consulting playbook.

Defense tactic - evaluate the team, not the salesperson.

Get in writing ⬇️

✅ Who will be staffed.

✅ Their experience level.

✅ Time allocation.

A partner is only as good as the people actually doing the work.

KISS 😘

Keep it Simple, Stupid

Some partners love complexity.

Custom code. Fancy integrations. Elaborate data models. Intricate automations.

It looks impressive. It sounds sophisticated.

Is all that complexity necessary?!

It can create a monster you’ll be paying to feed for years 😩.

Salesforce thrives on simplicity. The best implementations solve 80% of the problem elegantly, not 100% of the problem heroically. That’s not to say big fancy solutions aren’t the only path to success in some rare cases, but it is to be minimized.

Watch out for partners who ⬇️

❌ Jump to custom development too quickly

❌ Propose big builds for small problems

❌ Dismiss admin-friendly solutions

Salesforce projects rarely fail because Salesforce can’t do the thing, they fail because people like to build cool stuff 😃…sometimes at the expense of keeping it simple.

If a partner talks endlessly about architecture and barely about people, training, and adoption, be wary.

A beautiful system nobody uses is just very expensive shelfware.

Great partners obsess over ⬇️

❤️‍🔥 User adoption

❤️‍🔥 Training plans

❤️‍🔥 Executive alignment

❤️‍🔥 Communication strategies

❤️‍🔥 Post Go-Live support

❤️‍🔥 Long-term supportability and maintainability

Defense tactic - ask your partner “How will you ensure our team actually uses this and can support it?”

If the answer is weak, so will your results be.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

Every one of these traps has something in common- they feel good in the short term and hurt badly in the long term.

Avoiding them requires discipline, patience, and a little healthy skepticism.

The cheapest, flashiest, or smoothest partner is rarely the best choice. The safest bet is the one obsessed with process, people, and practical outcomes.

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes