People You Need for a Successful Salesforce Deployment
Landing the promise of new technology is hard. It’s one thing to buy into the promise when it’s been packaged into a proposal, but it’s a whole other thing to deal with when you’re finally rolling it out to your company.
Salesforce happens to be one of the leading technologies in CRM and Marketing Automation – making it a brand that carries a significant promise in itself. You need to have an understanding of who you need onboard to be able to deliver that promise. Whether you’re a seasoned CTO or a promising Project Manager, you should look out for these three roles to secure a successful Salesforce implementation.
Finally, when you’re implementing new technology, you also need someone who knows the software like the back of their hand. Salesforce Implementation Specialists may go by other names such as “technical consultants” or “delivery specialists”, however, they all have one thing in common: being responsible for making sure the technology works best for the organization.
Forbes describes this as being a “safe pair of hands” for the client. For example, with Salesforce, in particular, great consultants would understand the gaps more traditional organizations might have when it comes to doing marketing automation. They deal well with objections and understand how to translate the needs of the stakeholders to the solution that’s being rolled out.
These specialists will genuinely be your translators for Salesforce technology and are incredibly crucial for delivering the product. While these aren’t all the players at work in a typical Salesforce implementation project, these are already some of the key roles you need that will help you secure success for your project and hopefully also secure more projects for your organization.
1. An Opinion Leader
Every successful IT implementation must get approval and buy-in from its end-users. Therefore, you need someone that’s rallying behind the success of your project – believing it can deliver on the needs of the organization. However, don’t be misled by the title. Your “leader” might not always be in the organization’s higher ranks. In a recently published article by the Harvard Business Review, they describe how the Opinion Leader is someone who is both technically credible and also possesses “safety credibility”, a perception that “this person is similar enough to me for his opinions to be trusted”. Involving opinion leaders early in the process often eases the implementation process greatly.2. An Efficient Specialist
This is the person on your team that must have a vast understanding of how businesses work and subsequently, how Salesforce could help them. Ideally, this is someone who understands with processes in Marketing, Sales and Service Automation to really scope and validate the needs of your end-users properly for Salesforce. An excellent functional specialist will also have an in-depth understanding of the dependencies of an organization’s processes, or would at least be able to navigate through it once the project is defined correctly. This is a pivotal role as functional specialists are involved in every interaction point with the end-users.3. Salesforce Implementation Specialists
Finally, when you’re implementing new technology, you also need someone who knows the software like the back of their hand. Salesforce Implementation Specialists may go by other names such as “technical consultants” or “delivery specialists”, however, they all have one thing in common: being responsible for making sure the technology works best for the organization.
Forbes describes this as being a “safe pair of hands” for the client. For example, with Salesforce, in particular, great consultants would understand the gaps more traditional organizations might have when it comes to doing marketing automation. They deal well with objections and understand how to translate the needs of the stakeholders to the solution that’s being rolled out.
These specialists will genuinely be your translators for Salesforce technology and are incredibly crucial for delivering the product. While these aren’t all the players at work in a typical Salesforce implementation project, these are already some of the key roles you need that will help you secure success for your project and hopefully also secure more projects for your organization.