The Salesforce products your company is built on—and how those systems integrate with one another—has a huge impact on your bottom-line business outcomes.
Ineffective sales processes and tangled back-office services erode your efficiency. And the cost of wasted effort adds up fast.
There are a few different solutions to Salesforce inefficiency issues. You can cobble together more Salesforce products or DIY your own patches. But what typically works better (and saves you more than a few headaches along the way) is bringing in a Salesforce consulting firm to audit your processes, resolve specific friction points, and build out scalable processes that prepare your businesses for more growth.
If you’re thinking about hiring a Salesforce consulting service, read this first 👇
There are some sticking points you need to know about before you sign onto a project or set up a managed services agreement.
But before we share a few critical questions to ask—and the biggest red flags to watch for—let’s back up a beat and clarify “Salesforce consultant”, so we’re speaking the same language moving forward.
What is a Salesforce CRM consultant?
A Salesforce CRM consultant is a professional who specializes in providing guidance around the most effective implementation, customization, and optimization of the Salesforce CRM solutions your business leverages to track leads, manage relationships, and close deals.
Salesforce consultants work with organizations to understand their business processes, implementation requirements, and optimal outcomes, then leverage their deep knowledge of Salesforce products to design and activate solutions that meet these specific needs.
Salesforce experts can specialize in one or more of Salesforce’s dozens of business support products—like Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Salesforce Service Cloud, for example—or they may be trained to implement and support a variety of Salesforce and non-Salesforce offerings and services. They have a deep understanding of Salesforce’s features, capabilities, and best practices, and may also offer services like product setup, integration improvements, data migration, training, and ongoing support.
Overall, the goal of a Salesforce consultant is to help your company improve operations, strengthen customer relationships, and achieve your ideal business outcomes, no matter what processes and Salesforce products you use to get there.
Here at Arketek, several of our Salesforce consultants have completed both Salesforce certifications and non-Salesforce programs to round out their experience, and are trained to leverage Salesforce CRM solutions to their full potential—no matter what other business systems you have plugged in.
What does a Salesforce consultant do?
1. Analysis and strategy
By auditing your full stack of business solutions, including Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and more, they can find inefficiencies and optimizations, identify best practices that reduce waste, and even help you strategize smarter ways to reach future business goals.
2. Customization and configuration
Salesforce is an incredible tool. But it’s not ready to launch right out of the box, especially for niche industries or specialized businesses (think life sciences companies, real estate firms, or advanced manufacturing facilities).
Your Salesforce consultant can help you tailor the functionality of your CRM solutions to fit your exact processes, products, and team, with workflows that actually work for you.
3. Integration
A high-performance business needs multiple moving parts working together in data-driven unison. Salesforce consulting services can help you link your ERP systems, apps, marketing automations platform, financial software, and more, so your critical data flows smoothly across your company and entire Salesforce org.
4. Salesforce journey training
They can show your key leaders and implementers how to get the most out of Salesforce, so you’re able to use every tool as effectively as possible.
Is Salesforce Consulting worth it?
Nine times out of 10, yes, working with a Salesforce consulting firm is a huge benefit to your business.
Salesforce is an incredibly powerful tool that many, many businesses don’t fully understand and in turn, under-utilize. The optimizations, training, integrations, and company-wide workflows Salesforce consulting facilitates can truly propel your venture forward in a powerful way.
But Salesforce consulting isn’t a silver bullet.
At the end of the day, the value you get from Salesforce consulting services comes down to how committed your team is to following best practices and using your Salesforce CRM system in the ways it was designed for.
To really see the value of hiring Salesforce consulting services, you need to be growth-oriented, committed to continuous improvement, and run by people who genuinely care about the success and performance of your business.
Ready to move forward? Vet your potential Salesforce consulting partner with these four questions.
There are a dozen questions you can—and should—ask any potential consultant before you commit to the contract. We won’t cover the basic ones here, but there are a few questions that might be a little less than obvious, and can separate a good consultant from one that’s just not a fit.
How do you charge?
Some Salesforce consulting services charge a flat, all-in, per-project rate that includes all communication and meetings. Others charge a per-project base rate, then add on additional communications as billable hours, like lawyers or other professional services.
How you’ll be charged for questions, meetings, and back-and-forth communications is a crucial question to ask early on, so you can plan your budget and manage expectations accordingly.
Here at Arketek, we follow the billable hours model, tracking the time we spend with clients communicating over email, Slack, or phone. That allows us to keep our project rates competitive, while giving every question, comment, and concern the full attention it deserves—and helps our clients use their budget efficiently.
Who is responsible for managing my Salesforce project?
Some Salesforce consultants operate solo. But successful Salesforce implementation projects often take a whole team of professionals.
On a large project, like integrating Salesforce Marketing Cloud with your CRM, for example, you may have a project manager, administrator, developer, and a business analyst all working on the same Salesforce solution.
Freelance consultants can be great for smaller businesses and simple solutions, but enterprises and businesses with multi-cloud integrations often need wider dedicated technology support and faster solutions.
Without the broad Salesforce expertise that comes from a seasoned team, you’re missing out on solutions that could make your company even more effective. And if you don’t have a dedicated Salesforce consulting project manager in place to keep your project on schedule, on track, on budget, and within scope, you’ll often end up paying more for slower results.
How do you define the scope of my project?
One of the first things your CRM consulting partner should do is define the scope of the project required to reach the solution you’re after. Often, this scope comes after a thorough business process review, including your Salesforce features and systems, and a discovery discussion with your key decision makers.
These crucial touch points and detailed business process review help your Salesforce consultation team understand exactly what aspects and actions to include in the scope and estimate, so you’ve got a solid plan and budget you can bank on.
When it comes to following scope, any additional request, product, integration, or feature that wasn’t originally outlined in the scope may be an extra request that requires a separate estimation. That’s why we recommend asking this planning question early on in your research process, so you know what information to give your potential Salesforce consulting partner before they start your project.
Do you provide Salesforce training?
Many Salesforce consulting companies help you audit and implement systems to support your full Salesforce journey. But they fall short on offering the training required to keep those best practices in place.
Without dedicated Salesforce training to lock in new best practices and procedures, your consulting ROI is limited by your ability to keep your systems in place.
That’s why we offer advanced and in-depth training as part of our Salesforce consulting and implementation service packages. Our ‘train the trainer’ model prepares your key leaders to run your systems at maximum efficiency, long after our project is finished—protecting your Salesforce investment.
Watch for these Salesforce consulting red flags 🚩
To find a Salesforce partner who truly helps your company keep moving forward, avoid these warning signs:
Vagueness of scope or contract
This is a huge one. Without a clearly defined scope and contract that details how they’ll implement Salesforce solutions tailored to your specific problem, not only is your project doomed to derail, you’re at risk of getting seriously overcharged along the way.
Plus, vague contracts suggest the consultant hasn’t done enough of an audit and discovery to truly understand your problem—and may have missed critical factors that matter to your team.
The way we see it, the client should be able to look at the scope of work and understand absolutely everything on the page. If there’s an area you don’t understand or something you want isn’t clearly defined, chances are it’s going to get missed—and you’ll get charged extra for it later.
No one wants to wade through legal jargon. But in the case of a significant Salesforce consulting project, what’s not covered can really come back to bite your budget.
Lack of experience in your industry or business model
Another red flag to watch for when comparing Salesforce consulting services is their level of experience with other ventures in your industry.
How manufacturing companies leverage and apply the marketing processes built into Salesforce Marketing Cloud is widely different from the way a nonprofit or healthcare organization uses the same system, and the Salesforce features, friction points, and siloes experienced by each user vary by industry.
If your potential Salesforce consulting partner hasn’t worked with another enterprise at your level or business within your industry, that may be a sign they’re not the right fit for your business needs. Before you move forward, ask to see a track record or case study to make sure they have what it takes to truly help you.
Unusually low cost for a significant Salesforce solution
You know the old adage, you get what you pay for? When it comes to structuring your critical Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, business processes, and internal systems, it rings true.
In this industry, low cost often means you’ll be working with a freelance Salesforce consultant, or a small team of offshore contractors.
While that can be acceptable for some customers with minor administrative projects or small business optimizations, for enterprises, growing businesses, and midsize businesses, you need a team with the bandwidth and wide expertise to handle a range of systems, processes, tools, and problems.
No single individual can master every aspect like a robust team can. In the end, comprehensive solutions require a collaborative effort fit to meet a range of business needs.
The efficacy of your Salesforce implementation comes down to the quality of your consultant
With all the Salesforce capabilities and products available—and new benefits rolling out quarter after quarter—there are few limits to the innovation, business goals, and growth you can achieve with the right processes in place.
That’s why choosing an experienced and hands-on consultant who understands the nuances of your industry is one of the best investments you can make into your Salesforce system and your venture’s future success.
Meet Arketek, your Salesforce Consulting, Implementation, and Training experts
We’re a highly trained team of developers, strategists, and visionaries who understand how to make your systems work for you—not against you.
We’re based in Canada, but we deliver Salesforce consulting, managed services, and stronger business outcomes to companies across the US, including many in San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, and New York City.
With nearly a decade of industry expertise and over 2,000 successful implementations completed to date, there isn’t a Salesforce CRM system we can’t untangle and optimize to accelerate your success.
When you’re ready to take a next step, we have two options:
1. Book a call with our certified Salesforce consultants.
We’ll talk about your business, your systems, your people, and your processes—and how we can make the most of each.
2. Grab our CRM Data Entry Template.
Not ready to connect with our team? No sweat. DIY your way to a cleaner and leaner sales system with our CRM Data Entry Template and migration guide. In it, you’ll find the bulk import template we use when moving crucial lead data from one Salesforce platform to another, plus step-by-step instructions and pro tips to help you get your new tool up and running.
