Clients will usually ask for more. And a perfectly acceptable response is, “no”. This may seem obvious to some, but it’s worth underlining.
It doesn’t really matter how much you are already proposing to deliver. The scope of your Salesforce project could be small or large. It could be one release or dozens. You may already be giving them everything they could actually benefit from. Clients will often want more.
It’s OK for them to ask. One mindset is, “if you don’t ask, you won’t receive”. That’s fair and it’s true.
It’s also OK for you to say, “no”.
This can be softened by saying, “not now”, “let’s focus on higher priority issues first while building a backlog”, or “if we include this now, we’ll need to descope something else”.
Once you’ve built trust with the client, these responses should be received without too much complaining. After all, you have their best interests at heart and want the overall project to succeed.
The takeaway
As a Salesforce consultant, you cannot be a “yes” person. Saying “no” gracefully is an art worth practicing.