6 Common Mistakes Made During A Salesforce Implementation

Salesforce is an effective tool that can revamp and clarify your business processes, but it’s not magic. Just purchasing the software won’t solve your problems if it’s not implemented correctly. Bringing Salesforce into your business for the first time is not an easy task. It’s made even harder by not knowing what to look out for, or the right steps to take. Avoiding these 6 common Salesforce implementation mistakes will save you time, money, and your sanity.

Thinking You Can Do It Alone -

Implementing Salesforce with the attention, quickness, and understanding needed to make it a productivity-enhancing business tool often comes with a good amount of experience with the tool. The last thing you want is for your purchase to go unused or underused because the right questions weren’t asked, and your experience as a Salesforce user/admin was limited. When doing anything for your business, you want things done to the highest standard the first time around, and sometimes that means getting outside help.

Not Choosing The Right Partner -

Considering that a good implementation is best done by investing in an experienced partner, plan to hire a professional to help with implementation and make sure you do your research. Being able to use Salesforce does not make someone the right partner for your Salesforce project. The partner you choose should have a deep understanding of business processes and be able to implement the tool to meet your business needs. They should be able to understand what your concerns and pain points are, and what solutions Salesforce can offer for you. You want them to ask the right questions upfront, so you’re sure they understand your business requirements. Starting an implementation project before your partner understands your processes and develops a strategy to solve your specific problems is a good way to waste time and spend money on a tool that ends up being underutilized.

Not Having Support From Your Executive Team -

Trying to start a project without executive support is essentially a waste of time. This is most likely where your budget comes from. Getting your Executives involved and onboard will set the tone for the rest of your company. If they are excited and unified in their support, then all of your day to day users eventually will be too.

Lack Of Focus And Vision -

You need to know WHY you want to implement Salesforce. This calls back to all the previous mistakes. If you are unclear on your “why”, your ability to pick the perfect implementation partner will be clouded. You won’t have precise answers to their questions about your pain points or what you want out of your CRM in the future. You also will have a very hard time convincing your executive team to give you the budget for a tool if you are unsure why you want to use it. The more clear-cut and explicit on why you need Salesforce implemented and what you want out of it, the better suited to your specific needs it can be built.

Dirty Data -

‘Do not bring your junk drawer to the cloud’...You need to be sure you select the right information and do a little clean up of the data before you migrate it all into your new Salesforce Org. You may want to hold on to old documents but now is the time to keep only useful and up to date data. Salesforce apps can help you store, manage, and analyze very large amounts of customer data. But if you have data that’s “dirty”(incomplete or inaccurate) it’s not useful for anyone.

No Training -

One of the most important steps in a successful implementation is user training. It also happens to be the most overlooked. Salesforce is one of the most used CRM tools, but the solutions provided are no help to someone who doesn’t know how to use them. You need to make sure your employees are familiar with Salesforce’s features and functionalities, connected 3rd party applications, and how everything relates to their particular day-to-day tasks. Salesforce provides trailheads to help train your users, but if you’ve chosen the right implementation partner, they can provide more tailored and one on one training to your users, and leave you with training materials so you can make sure any new hires have proper onboarding.

Investing in Salesforce is a huge step for your business! You need to make sure you have the proper knowledge, partner, reasons why, support, data, and training all in line to benefit from the usage of the tool. If you’d like a stellar partner, who will understand your process and asks the right questions, we’re here when you’re ready!