💃 Managed Services? Projects? One Client? Multiple Clients?🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! A Salesforce consultant can be utilized against an array of opportunities.

And there’s pros 👍 and cons 👎 for each of them.

And more importantly, you will have your personal preference. See if yours aligns with ours ⬇️

Agenda for today includes

• Salesforce Consultant's Guide to the Basics

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Salesforce Consultant's Guide to the Basics

Today we will discuss-

💃 Managed Services vs Projects 🕺

💃 Fixed Bid vs Time & Material 🕺

💃 One vs Multiple Clients 🕺

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MANAGED SERVICES vs PROJECTS

MANAGED SERVICES

Pros

👍 Reduces some of the timeline stress that is common in consulting, because you have a limited count of hours to use. Built-in expectation-setter, if you will 🙂.

👍 Managed services is a good training grounds for new-hires 👨‍🍼.

Cons

👎 Being accountable to a fixed number of hours, month over month, sounds more like a sales pitch than a proper client solution, nahmean?

👎 Related to above, it’s hard to prove effectiveness to your clients when you have a fixed, arbitrary count of hours that need burn every month.

👎 If clients aren’t using up their hours, they may ask for rollovers. Annoying 😒.

PROJECT

Pros

👍 Want to develop as a professional? Projects will get you there better, faster.

👍 The nature of projects - SOW-grade scope, gates, milestones and timelines - are required for big delivery (refactors, integrations, data conversion, etc).

👍 More stakes!

Cons

👎 More stakes. Not for the faint of heart 😓.

Winner: Projects 🙌. And it’s not even close. Managed services have their place in consulting, but it’s a limiting way to serve clients. Big, tough projects are where amazing consultants are built 💪.

FIXED BID vs TIME & MATERIAL

FIXED BID

Pros

👍 If this is a cookie-cutter project for you, your actual hours can come in under the fixed bid hours. PROFIT 💰💰!

👍 Piggybacking off the above, if you’ve achieved mastery in delivering this solution, you set yourself up to have available capacity.

👍 If the one client also happens to be a primary revenue stream for your company, you are an invaluable asset. The unique relationship you’ve built with this client gives you a lot of job security…and then some….

Cons

👎 Worst case scenario can be pretty bad. You can screw up and 2-3x the estimated effort, costing your company a lot of free hours to the client 😳.

👎 Fixed bid can make the administrative backend complicated, since many consulting practices are built on an hourly platform.

👎 You still have to log your hours 😂 

TIME & MATERIAL

Pros

👍 Reduced risk of “blowing hours!” (It’s still important to set good expectations with clients on estimated effort!)

👍 Reduced project administration, compared to fixed bid. Instead of burning hours down, you’re just logging actual.

👍 It’s a safe and fair handshake all around - client and consultant. Pay as you go. Pay for what you get.

Cons

👎 The most profit you can make is what is baked into your hourly rate.

👎 If you’re not delivering perceived value to your clients, time & material becomes a bitter pill for clients to swallow 💊.

Winner: Hmmm 🤔. T&M gets the slight edge. Profiting off of fixed bid requires a veteran consultant who’s been there, done that. T&M covers risks for consultants and clients ⚖️ .

ONE vs MULTIPLE CLIENTS

ONE CLIENT

Pros

👍 Mega SME vibes! A consultant who actually has the time to focus on their client can be a powerful asset 💥.

👍 Piggybacking off the above, you can also achieve mastery, setting yourself up to have available capacity.

👍 If the one client also happens to be a primary revenue stream for your company, you are an invaluable asset. The unique relationship you’ve built with this client gives you a lot of job security…and then some….

Cons

👎 What if your one client kinda sucks?

👎 A big draw of consulting is the variety of work. One client can slim down that variety like Ozempic 😉.

👎 If your one client suddenly or unexpectedly decides to go separate ways, you may find yourself on the bench 🙁.

MULTIPLE CLIENTS

Pros

👍 Variety! Personalities. Deliverables. Business processes.

👍 You’re not banished to the bench if one of your clients bails.

👍 Double the opportunity to deliver, retain, and make a client feel warm and fuzzy 🥰.

Cons

👎 Transitioning the brain between clients feels inefficient 😬.

👎 At some point, you can have too many clients. Even if your overall utilization is reasonable, 8+ clients seems like too much 👀.

Winner: Multiple clients! Variety is the spice of life ❤️!

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes