💃 Salesforce Consultants Are You Maximizing Your Shots? 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! The 3 Bosses Effect can be an unwelcome surprise to the world of consulting.

Today, we bring another challenge that can be unique to consultants. A gift 🎁 and a curse ☠️ , if you will…

Let’s kick🦵this one off with an analogy…⬇️

Agenda for today includes

• A Salesforce Consultant's Gift...And Curse

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

A Salesforce Consultant's Gift...And Curse

Today we will discuss-

💃 Strike Count🕺

💃 Consultant Expectations🕺

💃 The Gift…And The Curse🕺

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STRIKE COUNT

As the saying goes - 3 strikes and you’re out ⚾️!

A batter gets 3 strikes to strike out. So you can whiff 2x and still be in the game. This can play out a couple ways-

You have the buffer to observe at least 2 pitches, without ever making an attempt to swing the bat, and still be in the game.

Or, you can make embarrassingly awful swings, and still be in the game as long as you haven’t gotten that third strike.

Room for error. Space to make mistakes. 😎 

Enter- Consulting.

Where you have one chance to deliver to the client 😳.

One strike and you’re (figuratively) out 😢.

A client pays hundreds of dollars per hour, with the expectation that you deliver equivalent value.

If you get on a project meeting with your client, for which you’ve billed thousands of dollars up to this point, and your deliverable does not meet the expected status?!

That client is gonna be feeling cold 🥶 and prickly 🌵.

CONSULTANT EXPECTATIONS

A Salesforce consultant is expected to be professional, to provide expert advisement, and to deliver quality solutions. A consultant is paid an exceptional fee to provide this professional service 🤑.

In-house resources are not held to the same standards. If an admin deploys a bug into Prod vs a Consultant deploying a bug into Prod? Consultant is gonna eat way more poo 💩.

As salaried workers, an in-house admin has a built-in layer of grace, due to (but not limited to) 3 things-

1) Cost 💰

Salesforce consultant rates are in the $200/hr range. Significantly more expensive than an in-house resource’s compensation, ie an Admin making $100k.

2) Expertise 🧑‍🔬

With such a high billable rate, consultant’s are expected to be “experts.”

This is an interesting conundrum because a consultant will need time to ramp up on their client’s industry and business process, where an in-house admin is already an expert.

As well, it would not be abnormal for an in-house admin to have more Salesforce knowledge than their consulting counterpart.

Regardless, there is an expectation that a consultant exceeds what is available in-house. And not just Salesforce abilities, but project management, business analysis, communications, etc.

3) Accountability 🫡 

A consultant is accountable for their delivery. If a consultant screws up, the consultant gets skewered.

An in-house admin…is part of a more complex accountability structure.

If an admin delivers a poor solution to users, it is often the admin’s manager that bears much of the responsibility.

Or, looking at it another way- a client has the ability to have a consultant removed from their project. A consultant rarely has the ability to remove a client’s resource from the project.

The consultant serves the client, not vice-versa 💯.

THE GIFT…AND THE CURSE

The Gift 🎁 

Consultants have deep tool boxes, full of frameworks and methodologies.

Consultants are always 👀 a step ahead of their clients, to guide them through challenges.

And consultants must use all of these things to be successful in their difficult roles. And therein lies….

…The Curse ☠️

Consultants are held to high standards by their paying clients. This often translates to very small margin for error.

But here’s the thing-

Consultants have significant working time outside of their client’s view.

Time to strategize, design, build, test, and iterate.

Time to prepare for client meetings and for demos, so that the client gets a polished presentation of their project.

So these 2 things are true-

✅ YES, consultants are held to very high standards and expectations to deliver!

✅ YES, consultants have resources to set themselves up for success and to deliver to their client’s expectations. It takes significant effort, but no one took a consulting job because it was easy 😉.

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes