💃 Salesforce Project Red Flags - Kickoff Edition 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! The Kickoff for a new project, theoretically, should be one of the smoothest phases of the project - fresh off SOW signature.

But real-world stuff happens.

Kicking off with the SOW review is a good way to align, but when it’s time to get into the weeds, many of the sponsors and stakeholders responsible for the SOW creation are off on their next big adventure 🌋.

You are tasked with the making of lemonade out of lemons 🍋.

During your juicing sessions, keep your earballs👂 👁 open for these potential landmines 💥!

Agenda for today includes

• Salesforce Project Presale and Discovery Red Flags 🚩 

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Salesforce Project Presale and Discovery Red Flags 🚩 

Today we will discuss-

💃 Wait…How Does This Happen?🕺

💃 Intro to New Apps and Data Sources 🕺

💃 Client Warns You About “That Stakeholder”🕺

💃 No Clear Owner For Data Conversion/Migration 🕺

WAIT…HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

How can you have a bunch of red flags pop up right after the SOW has been signed 🤔?

Sad news, y’all - this is all too common. A majority of SOWs are not gonna cover all the red flags.

3 reasons the SOW doesn’t reign it in-

1. Over-promise - You know this is reality, but it doesn’t make it suck any less. Your salespeople do it with your clients. It is what it is 🤷?

2. Nuance - SOWs vary in their detail. The lighter the detail, the more nuance and gray-area that you’ll need to work with the client to “interpret.”

3.  Incompetency - Let’s not leave out the obvious. There are people who shouldn’t be within 50 miles of a contract, but are responsible for creating a 12mo, $500k scope and Statement of Work document 🙁.

There are other reasons red flags emerge right after they should’ve been eliminated but most will roll up to one of the above.

🚩 INTRO TO NEW APPS AND DATA SOURCES

You’re on the kickoff call with the new client.

You and your team, along with the client’s Sales team.

The client keeps mentioning excel files that the team manages. That the data in those files needs to be included in the Salesforce project.

🚩This is the first you’ve heard of this 🚩.

Then they mention their webforms, and that you’ll need to get in touch with their 3rd party web developer to have the lead forms feed Salesforce.

This is the first you’ve heard of a 3rd party web dev 🤦.

When you ask how the webforms are integrating with their legacy solution, the client opens up a bigger box of surprises - they use Zapier for a webforms and 9 other CRM-related solutions.

🫠 

Takeaway: Not all newly discovered apps and data sources will torpedo a project, but some will…

A significant Zapier build that will need to be converted from current state to desired state is a good Change Order candidate 💯. A legitimate threat to the project success and a big ol red flag 🚩!

But a few spreadsheets that need to be one-time dataloaded can actually be an opportunity. Validate they are one-time only, and offer to take care of them for the client 🙂. Of course, manage freebies carefully and do not get stuck in a slippery slope of providing free services ❌ .

Bottom line - if you haven’t heard of the apps or data sources the client is discussing after the SOW has been signed, that’s a red flag….

🚩 CLIENT WARNS YOU ABOUT “THAT STAKEHOLDER”

You know what people hate?

Change.

Some people really really really hate it.

If a client’s legacy solution is SAP CRM, and they are moving to Salesforce, how do you think that SAP CRM Admin is gonna feel?

The project team needs that Admin because they know where all the bodies are buried. But that admin is feeling a bit threatened by this shiny new solution that is endorsed by Matthew McConaughey.

This makes for an awkward situation. An admin who knows their time is limited, and also knows they have important tribal knowledge 😈.

The client’s leadership has to walk on eggshells, and the consultants…the poor, toothless consultants…will be having some aggressive interactions 🥵.

Takeaway: This is a tough situation that ultimately the client is responsible for. However, the reason clients pay consultants big bucks is to facilitate difficult situations like this.

A frontline consultant should leverage their manager or senior resource on the project to have manager-to-manager conversations with the client counterpart. In the meantime, the consultant will need to practice a lot of this. Good luck 🙏!

🚩NO CLEAR OWNER FOR DATA CONVERSION/MIGRATION

Keeping this one short and simple - there needs to be a data conversion/migration owner.

The discussion needs to happen as soon as possible because this could be a significant effort, 100+ hours 😅.

And even if the consulting partner is the owner, the client will need to have an understanding and make good-for-their-business decisions.

Takeaway: Data work can make or break a project. Getting it off the red flag list asap needs to be high priority for the project team 🫡.

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes