💃 Ways of the Salesforce Stakeholder - Want, Need, and Expect 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Words matter….except when they don’t.

One scenario where they kinda don’t matter is the words your stakeholder uses to convey a request -

“I want a 4th phone field.”

“I need a 4th phone field.”

“I expect a 4th phone field.”

You would intake these all the same way, and then align or set expectations back to your stakeholder. Make sense?

You know what, let’s get right into the takeaways ⬇️

LAST WEEK’S POLL RESULTS

The winner of the PMP poll was 🥁🥁🥁

Everyone! Or no one?

The results were split down the middle - half of you said you wanted to be a PMP, and half voted nahhh.

One of you left this comment about not wanting to be a PMP 😆, fair enough…

TAKEAWAYS

Ways of the Salesforce Stakeholder

Want

This is where a majority of your stakeholder requests land, despite how they convey it.

And that’s great. Servicing wants is gonna get you more high-fives than servicing needs!

Need

Actual needs are rare, and you know that doesn’t necessarily make the request less important to the stakeholder. Rather, it helps to prioritize requests.

But if your stakeholder has a need for better security or something policy related like HIPAA or CASL (for you Canadien marketers 🇨🇦), that is a legit need!

Expect

This is the toughest of the 3 to manage. But it’s the most important.

And it’s overarching - understand that every stakeholder request is wrapped in an expectation that is to be managed 🫡.

If you lined up 100 Salesforce professionals who had successful projects and asked them how they did it, 95 of them would say they effectively managed expectations 💯.

WHAT A STAKEHOLDER WANTS

Stakeholder Wants

“OK, first thing’s first - we need our company logo added to the org.”

No, actually you don’t need that.

But it makes the perfect point - your role is to add value to the stakeholders.

Some value is objective and quantifiable, like reducing clicks via automation.

And some value is just good vibes 😎, like having the company logo uploaded loud and proud. (And if you’re paying $300/license, of course you wanna slap your logo all over it 💯)

The gist is that 95% of requests are wants and very few are needs.

This is amazing because it makes your job much easier.

You are not having to require your stakeholders prioritize a bunch of needs, which would take up precious capacity that can be used on wants.

Stakeholders get to fully customize their priorities (with one huge exception - dependencies 😕. For example, a report may not be operational until a field is added, data converted, and dataload completed).

Importantly, you will often need to save stakeholders from themselves. Sometimes requests are ill-advised at best, or ridiculous at worst 😬.

Your role is to provide the stakeholder the pros, cons, and impacts of their request.

This is effective because a dumb request will have minimal pros, lots of cons, and negative impacts to revenue, productivity, and morale. For example - having 40 required fields on the Lead ☠️.

WHAT A STAKEHOLDER NEEDS

Stakeholder Needs

Good salespeople don’t need a CRM 😲.

In fact, good salespeople don’t need much at all to make the sale.

But selling at scale is a different game. A CRM becomes a necessity in these scenarios-

👥 Hundreds or thousands of salespeople who have millions of leads, thousands of opportunities and thousands of contracts to write, send, and sign. It’s a big, digital rolodex!

🔄 High turnover rates, a common trait of sales teams. The ability to plug-in and unplug people into seats is made a lot easier by having a humming CRM.

📊 Reporting, a sales manager’s best (only?!) friend. Every sales manager worth their salt is an enthusiast of quality reports and dashboards (if only their users would enter data accurately and in real-time 😅, but that’s not the CRM’s fault!).

But, unlike a truck driver whose truck breaks down cannot make any money, a salesperson can still make a sale with out a CRM. Their gift of gab and a paper contract are all they need.

Ironically, what is truly needed in a CRM is not on your business stakeholder’s radar (it’s on IT’s plate!). Here’s what we mean-

👮‍♀️ Security - MFA, Profiles, Permissions. Individually licensed users, audit trails, SOX compliance. Don’t be the next Enron.

🌪️ Disaster Recovery - data backup, code repository, snapshots. Even if there were world peace ☮️ and infinite clean energy ⚡️, Mother Nature gonna do her thing.

But when it comes to polishing the CRM for the users, the actual needs are minimal.

Which is great for you - one less really big thing to worry about. You are unbound to strategize with your stakeholders on building the best possible solution 🤗!

WHAT A STAKEHOLDER EXPECTS

Stakeholder Expectations

Managing wants and needs is child’s play.

Managing expectations is a tiny step below rocket science. Here’s what we mean-

🏏 Managing expectations is a cricket match

Why cricket? Because cricket games take forever, and you need to be in a long-term mindset when playing the expectation setting game.

Enterprise projects can last years, and you can never stop setting expectations with your stakeholders, from day-0 to post-go-live.

Even in short projects, expectations need to be crystal clear - what will be delivered (and what won’t be delivered), when it will be delivered, by whom it will be delivered, where it will be delivered (DEV? PROD?!), etc.

You need to be constantly reminding your stakeholders, refreshing their busy memories with the copious notes, validations, and decisions you’ve been tirelessly documenting ✍️.

🫂 Alignment is your bestest friend

Alignment can feel like sandpaper at first, with you as a Salesforce professional, and your stakeholders as sales and marketing leaders - worlds collide 💥.

But that friction will create something that is this smooth and totally worth it.

We highly recommend you peep our Understanding Your Audience series to set a foundation for aligning with your stakeholders.

🔮 Stakeholders DON’T expect you to read their mind

Most stakeholders are happy to walk you through what they want. You need to ask.

And you need to setup the discovery session for success. You need to have your big BA hat on, and be ready to break down business process and overlay Salesforce functionality on top.

And if you come across a stakeholder that is not enthused about sitting down with you to define their requirements, then you can set the expectation of how that impacts your ability to design and build them a high-integrity, value-add solution 😎.

SOUL FOOD

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