5 Best Practices For Salesforce Staffing

Workforce planning with Pinkus Partners

Whether your company is just getting started with Salesforce or has recently determined that additional features need to be implemented, you will run into a variety of options for how to staff up. We’ve written previously about the different types of options you have for staffing up on Salesforce expertise, but upon picking one (or multiple) options, how do you then move forward?  Here’s what we have seen the most successful companies do over time to get Salesforce staffing done right and achieve their goals.  

1. Be open to a combination of staffing options

Staffing in general is all about maximizing for flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Salesforce staffing is no exception. At Pinkus Partners, we specialize in situations where a specific skill set is needed quickly, even if it is just an individual expert. Speed matters, so immediately bringing in Salesforce professionals on a flexible basis who are proven and certified in the skills you need can bring you a lot of value quickly.  Another common path we’ve seen is leveraging a Salesforce Consulting Partner (we staff for them too!) for a large implementation and then staffing individual contractors (or full time employees) to maintain and iterate on that implementation. Often different types of staffing fit better for different phases of the work that needs to be completed, so be sure to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each.

2. Know your all-in budget AND business goals in advance 

One of the things we will always come back to when trying to define success is that it has to help the business achieve its goals.  A customized implementation built for a scale of up to 1,000 users may not be necessary for an early stage startup, for example. When staffing Salesforce professionals, the company must keep their own goals in mind and stay realistic about their needs, otherwise the budget can get blown out of proportion very quickly and all parties involved will lose.

3. Find Salesforce experts with a history of achieving results

No matter how caught up in the details we can get as technologists and executives, we have to remember we are seeking a significant business outcome by implementing Salesforce for our teams.  With that in mind, make sure to actually check references of potential hires, contractors, or consulting firms not only for implementation success and technology expertise, but also for creating solutions that actually allowed companies to reach their business goals.

4. Begin with the end in mind

It’s not uncommon for an implementation to be done beautifully and then handed off to a person or group that are not well-versed on how to maintain it, diminishing the overall value and really hurting everyone’s reputation.  So be sure to have phases of an implementation well-defined and a training and hand-off plan to properly complete the final phase.

5. Readily communicate long-term vision

Beyond your current project, there is also a whole future that you have in mind for your company.  In many cases consulting firms or contractor teams will have a Salesforce architect on their team, but that does not mean they will know everything about your future vision for overall technology architecture.  You also can not expect a contractor, consultant, or new hire to have the same future vision for the business itself that you have, so be sure to impart that early and often to maintain alignment and create an environment for success.

Let us know if you would like to connect with Pinkus Partners to discuss the needs of your business and how we can help.

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