💃 Enterprise and SMB Salesforce 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Ever wonder what it’s like to work at a $5,000,000,000 annual revenue company?

How about $300,000,000 business?

Or perhaps you’re a first-year business owner with a virtual assistant, scaling up to six-digit revenue?

What are each of these business sizes like, from a Salesforce professional’s perspective?

WHAT IS IT?

The purpose of today’s article is to provide insights into what day-to-day life looks like for a Salesforce professional in different sized companies.

Here is a look at 3 fictitious trucking companies that use Salesforce, from $5BB down to six-digits.

Each company, from a Salesforce professional’s perspective, has highlights and lowlights of working there.

Here’s what they are 👇

ENTERPRISE

Enterprise Salesforce Environment

INTERNATIONAL TRUCKING

💰💰💰 $5BB annual revenue

🧑‍💼🧑‍💼🧑‍💼 1000+ users, with 700 Sales and 300 Service licenses

🧑‍💻🧑‍💻🧑‍💻 12 person Salesforce team that folds into a 100 headcount IT team

Highlights

🙂 Redundancy. Daily data snapshots? Stored on a secure server in Virginia? This example of redundancy helps the c-suite sleep well at night 😴.

🙂 Resource backup. Another version of redundancy - it’s nice to take a few days off knowing your team is there to back you up 🙌.

🙂 Process. You may not like adhering to process. But you surely love when your users are required to submit a ticket and not email or slack you directly with requests.

Lowlights

🙁 Bureaucracy. There are multiple layers over decision-makers with policy sprinkled throughout. This friction and controls are “necessary” because there’s so much at stake ($5BB !!). And this leads to ⬇️

🙁 Slow changes. Small changes. Usually both. Adding a picklist value following the proper SDLC, release management, and documentation updates is a unique kinda pain.

🙁 Sprawl. So many apps. So much documentation. So much of everything, because you’re a $5BB company and it takes a lot to keep a ship that size sailing!

MEDIUM

SMB-Medium Salesforce Environment

AMERICAN TRUCKING

💰💰 $300MM annual revenue

🧑‍💼🧑‍💼 250 users, all Sales Cloud because the service team runs on the cheaper Zendesk!

🧑‍💻🧑‍💻 1 Salesforce Admin with 8yrs experience

Highlights

🙂 Control. That single admin has all the control over their environment. Architecture, design, naming conventions, big releases, small releases, etc.

🙂 Job Security. If you’re the solo admin of a $300MM company, losing you would be like losing a leg.

🙂 “Perfect job”. Are you high-initiative? Individual contributor? DIY-er? Then solo admin at a SMB is the perfect role for you. Just you and your org for 40hrs/week.

Lowlights

🙁 Loose processes. You may have a ticket system, but expect a bunch of direct emails and Slack messages from the sales team.

🙁 No backup. Taking off for a week to hike Half Dome? Expect to return to an avalanche of emails.

🙁 Lack of exposure. Solo admins are google-ninjas 🥷 but sometimes it’s nice to have a fellow Salesforce professional expose you to some new and cool stuff 💯. Slack, Discord, and Reddit are great but there’s no substitute to having personal access to a fellow expert to nerd out with.

SMALL

SMB-Small Salesforce Environment

WEST COAST TRUCKING

💰 $100,000 annual revenue

🧑‍💼 1 license, that is shared between the Owner and a VA who helps with communications and booking loads

🧑‍💻 1 Salesforce Admin who also ^*gulps doubles as the business owner 😳

Highlights

🙂 Leverage Technology. Who better to squeeze the most out of tech than the biz owner whose livelihood depends on it. The successful biz owner will get value out of their org 💯.

🙂 Pure objectives. When the person that’s collecting the checks is also the admin, there’s no misalignment on what the objective of the CRM is. No comms required, no business requirement gathering needed. From the source (the owner’s brain 🧠) directly to the CRM. Pure ❄️.

🙂 Growth Lever. Taking a glass-half-full perspective - you have a big ol’ lever to pull once you have the resources to pull it. Not only will a dedicated admin push their org further, it will free up the owner to do owner-y things!

Lowlights

🙁 Priorities. A business owner is required to make difficult priority decisions. They know investing time into polishing their org will pay off. But they also know they must serve their customer whose payment will keep the lights on 💡.

🙁 Expense. Salesforce is the #1 CRM in the world. It’s also the most expensive at about $200/mo for an enterprise license.

🙁 SDLC. Ain’t no time for DEV→QA→UAT→PROD when you’re the front of the house and back of the house! Overhead is for when you have predictable, recurring revenue 🙌.

POLL!

LAST WEEK’S POLL RESULTS

Last week’s poll results 👀

Do you have Daily Scrums?

• Yes, they're very effective! @ 36%

• Yes, they're a waste of time. @ 36%

• No, they're a waste of time. @ 0%

• No, but I want to! @ 27%

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes