💃 When the Tail Wags the Dog🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerd! Picture a Great Dane whose tail has opinions.

The tail wants to go left. The dog, being a hundred and forty pounds of questionable coordination, goes left.

You and everyone at the dog park agrees this is insane.

It’s the same in business, and in your Salesforce org 💁.

The tail wagging the dog, aka the less important piece steering the larger, more powerful one.

It is the most expensive pattern in business, mostly because nobody notices a decision got made.

KNOW YOUR DOG

How To Tell the Dog From the Tail

The dog is the thing with weight, permanence, and dependents. The tail is whatever is loudest (most common), newest, or easiest to replace.

In technology, longevity is another good indicator of which is dog, which is tail.

🔄 You’ll replace the marketing app 3 times for every one CRM replacement.

🔄 You’ll replace the CRM 3 times for every one ERP replacement.

Of course there’s exceptions- Zapier will be around, with the cockroaches, after the A-bombs go off 💣.

WHO’S IN CHARGE?

Should the CRM conform to the ERP or vice versa?

The CRM should conform to the ERP. The ERP is the dog, the CRM is the tail.

Looking at another scenario, and working our way up the tech stack - the Marketing app should conform to the CRM. Sales Cloud is the dog, Account Enagement is the tail.

Let’s get even more specific on that scenario 😃

A marketing specialist wants dialed in attribution, to the tune of 30 unique tracking data points. They ask the CRM team to create the 30 fields that they’ll be pushing from the Marketing app.

90 days later, that marketing specialist has exited, and their replacement has a different marketing strategy utilizing the Lead Source field. They would like to overhaul the existing lead source list - add 5 values, deactivate 3. And add a sub-lead source picklist field.

Let’s pause here…

To recap- in just 100 days, the once clean Lead object now has 30+ new fields, and new lead source values and a sub-lead source field.

What’s it gonna look like in 200 days? 2000 days?

And these fields get converted to the Opportunity, too?!

Now with that familiar example, let’s go back to the ERP.

Run this same play with your Salesforce-ERP integration and the bill gets serious-

💰 Integration architects are not cheap.

💰 ERP devs are not cheap and they don’t grow on trees.

💰 Stakes with ERP are much higher. Mistakes can lead to fines, lawsuits, and worse.

No tails, including Salesforce, should wag the ERP dog 🙅.

THE ORG CHART HAS A TAIL TOO

Personal Preference Becomes Architecture

Rome’s coliseum is still standing. The architect of that landmark is long gone. But the design decisions remain, for better or worse.

A VP of Sales arrives with eleven opportunity stages from their last company and strong feelings about all eleven. And with the influence an executive wields, the stages are implemented.

The VP leaves in eighteen months. The stages outlive them by six years, and every forecast model, comp plan, and board slide sits on top of a stranger's preference.

That preference now has more tenure than anyone who can explain it, including the Salesforce team responsible for supporting and maintaining it.

A good executive balances their preference with the current state. “Move fast and break things” is sexy when it’s followed up with “and expect to fix the broken things!” (yes, that needs to be said out loud 🗣️)

An executive’s, or any worker’s preference, is just the tail. The integrity of the solution and the ability to support and maintain it, is the dog.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

Nobody sets out to let a lead source design their CRM. It happens in meetings, emails, slack messages, quick fixes, bad decisions, well-meaning decisions, loops that weren’t quite closed, requirements for reports that no one used…you get the idea.

By the numbers, 44% of companies end up losing more than a tenth of annual revenue to low-quality CRM data. 10% of revenue is crazy 🤯 but you’re probably nodding your head in agreement, thinking about all the tails in your CRM that cost you deals.

As an executive, can you answer these questions-

❓ If both are an option, will you modify the marketing app to accommodate the CRM, or the CRM to accommodate the marketing app?

❓ If this solution was implemented tomorrow, and then had to be undone in 90 days, what is the effort to undo it?

❓ The change that your smallest customer requested also impacts your largest customer, who you’re not sure how they’ll feel about the change. Do you proceed?

Don’t let the tail wag the dog!

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes