-One of the interesting situations I witness play out all the time with Salesforce projects is understanding what sort of investment is required once you’ve gone live.
I’ve had many a conversation with customers that felt like they’ve made a significant investment
in the initial implementation expecting that to be the only one required. As a result, the desire to further invest becomes emotional versus logical. It’s not just Salesforce projects that this relates to but software projects in general.
The below chart represents the average percentage of improvements reported by Salesforce customers. I know first hand that Salesforce goes to great lengths to gather this information from a very large and random data set. However, what we don’t know is how long they’ve had Salesforce, how did they go about implementation and what sort of on-going improvement program they had.
These results are fantastic and in order to give you yourself the best chance to achieve these results, it’s about the approach. It’s often the by-product of many other decisions made well before users even get access. Consulting companies tend to do a really good job of trying to extract what the customer thinks they want. Leading to all sorts of design considerations that may or may not actually deliver what the customer needs.
I feel the first mistake that is made is asking the customer what they think they need. Or leading a project based on the design. The customer has their own businesses to run and I know that it feels good to give the customer what they think they want. But they aren’t the Salesforce Consultant, and most likely this is the first and hopefully only Salesforce project that they’ll have to go through.
At Moderno Solutions we work around the Four Dimensions of Salesforce Success. Where we look at Salesforce Vision and Strategy, Technology, Change Management and People and Culture.
Regardless of the size of your business – these four dimensions are critical in the planning, delivering and executing a CRM strategy. A level of thought and responsibility-sharing across all the dimensions improves the ROI a business can expect to see delivered.
When it comes to strategy and visions the most important things that customers need to focus on is business objectives and business pain points. When we talk about business objectives they need to be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-bound. If you have a business plan that has a clear view on what success looks like it’s then about tieing that to Salesforce. Also, having a clear view of what business pain points are stopping you from getting to that point. Salesforce is simply an enabler, however, without SMART objectives it is difficult to tie the investment that you are making in Salesforce with a tangible Return on Investment (ROI). As a result of that, it makes understanding what your level of the upfront and ongoing investment is at best becomes a guess.
If all this sounds a little scientific let me introduce you to a fictitious company called – Diane’s Computer Service. Diane’s business has been growing well – but it’s at that crucial stage where she has to invest money in hiring people to take on extra demand and service existing customers.
Diane has just completed her annual review and completed her business plan for the next financial year. Her business plan forecasts 30% growth through new customer acquisition and 10% growth through repeat business from her existing customers. Now if we pause for a second Diane has just created the Specific and Measurable element of her SMART plan.
So what about actions – in order to grow our business we can’t continue to do what we’ve always been doing.
Diane – knew that in order to de-risk her growth she needed to make sure the employees she tool on were focused on exactly what the business required. For Diane that meant winning more opportunities, being more productive with our time and being more in touch with our customers.
This is where Salesforce comes into play – if we have a solid business plan with SMART objectives Salesforce is the enabler to help you measure and manage performance.
Then it’s about quantifying what the value through these business improvements that Salesforce can measure. How many more leads are you getting? How many more are being converted? How does this impact your win rate and so on? If you can measure that improvement you can put an ongoing $$ investment against it.
The place I find a lot of customers is that they’ve seen a demonstration. They’ve most likely talked about what they are trying to achieve. They then go and get it implemented.
In between that process, the key issues of business objectives and pain points get lost. Customers start telling consultants what they want or how they want it to look or feel. Good consultants will push back, but many simply like to deliver what the customer is asking for. They become doers versus advisers.
If your struggling with all this Salesforce provides an awesome ROI calculator. It’s a free online tool that steps you through the process. It is also guided by Astro one of Salesforce animated characters that will help you decipher the terminology and give you useful examples.
In summary, as a Salesforce is a platform flexible to evolve with your business. Your business will evolve and you should expect that Salesforce will need to as well. Getting it right out of the gate focusing on how you quantify a Return on Investment will help you calculate how much you should continue to invest.
In my following blogs, I’m going to exploring more aspects of this. What is the importance of a core platform, how to deliver change, what role do I need to play in my Salesforce success.