As a Salesforce consultant, you’ll make tons of project decisions.
Some of these decisions are easy to follow-through and complete. No one really questions the choice, and the result is a smashing success.
Other times, the decision is not optimal and course-correction is needed.… Read the rest
OK, you’ve set up your one-person shop, hung your “we’re open” sign on your website, and now sit back and wait for clients to stroll in by the hundreds.
Several weeks later, and you don’t have a single client.
This is obviously a very bad way to start, as you should already have 1-3 clients lined up before becoming an independent consultant.… Read the rest
I’ve been at a client’s location for a handful of days this week. It’s great to see so many people in-person and in 3D, rather than the 2D we see through Zoom.
Last night, once all the productive working sessions were done, and the office small-talk ended, a few of us headed out for dinner.… Read the rest
In a typical Salesforce implementation project, you’re usually asked to provide a work estimate fairly early in the sales process.
The biggest problem with this is, you’re providing a number in a moment when you know the least about the client and the project.… Read the rest
Another problem with hourly billing as a Salesforce consultant is your incentives are in the wrong direction.
Imagine you have a house and are presented with two options:
Are you an independent Salesforce consultant that still charges by the hour?
Have you noticed the market limits your maximum hourly rate?
For example, the expected hourly rate for an experienced consultant is about $150 to $200 an hour, which results in an income ceiling of about $200k to $250k a year.… Read the rest
As an independent Salesforce consultant, one of the best ways to set yourself up for success and happiness is to have good clients.
Imagine a situation in which the Salesforce project implementation isn’t going well.
We’ve all been there, even the best of us. In a recent case, I worked with a subcontractor that was.. less than ideal.
As the upcoming deadline loomed, the client started getting nervous.… Read the rest
I’m currently managing a subcontractor’s work and a client’s expectations for a Raiser’s Edge to Salesforce migration. It’s not going well, and I wanted to share some lessons learned with you.
This was mentioned before, but it’s recommended to do at least 3 rounds of data migration, which includes
With smaller clients or projects, sometimes you can merge the Dev and Test into one instance.… Read the rest
Over the weekend, I spent some of my downtime at a cottage with an old friend. I’ve noticed that spending time in the country, close to nature and to water, really relaxes and rejuvenates me.
My friend’s father is close to 83 years old, and sadly he suffers from dementia.… Read the rest
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve partnered with iATS to provide payment to receipting capabilities for Canadian nonprofits using Salesforce.
Brickwork by iATS is a free, Salesforce-native app that connects with the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) to track and manage donations.… Read the rest
As a Salesforce perfectionist, it’s sometimes really hard to stop refining and optimizing things.
Each time I open a medium or complex flow, I can find ways to make things just a little bit better. And when multiple flows have similar behavior, it’s hard to not modify them to be more consistent with each other.… Read the rest
One of the most important steps in a Salesforce implementation project is User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
This is the moment in which the client and end users can finally test the build and raise issues or concerns as needed.
Nothing is built perfectly, so there will always be some bugs or concerns.… Read the rest
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, project management was in its infancy.
The popular methodology at the time was called “waterfall”, which visually symbolized various stages: sales, discovery, design, build, test, deploy. The subsequent stage was started only once the previous stage was completed.… Read the rest
In the Salesforce nonprofit realm, there were some major changes recently. Since it’s been just over a year since NPC was released, here’s my updated view on the topic.
Background: When nonprofits want to use Salesforce, they typically install the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP).… Read the rest
This was my second World Tour in NYC, and I felt the energy to be slightly less intense than last year’s. I attended a couple of sessions about AI and nonprofits, and missed the keynote. But the main theme was basically “everyone can be an Einstein”.… Read the rest
Here was my approach to yesterday’s task challenge.
I started by creating a custom object called “Task Team”, with a lookup to the User. Using a custom objects allows me to potentially create additional fields, such as “Role” (picklist) and “Primary” (checkbox).… Read the rest
Here’s a real-world Salesforce scenario I recently had with a client.
The client needed to record meetings with their end clients. The meeting summary tracked the subject, summary, date, status, related contact(s), and related organization. It also needed to record the internal team (a collection of users) present at the meeting.… Read the rest
Every once in a while, I come across a “feature” in Salesforce that really forces me to scratch my head.
In today’s WTF moment, I was working with a client on a screen flow. We needed to add a lookup component, to allow users to select one or more contacts.… Read the rest
As long as people are typing on keyboards, errors will happen. Duplication is arguably the most common type of error in Salesforce, and of those, accounts and contacts are the most popular.
Creating a strategy to identify duplicates is a multi-phased approach.… Read the rest
Let’s say you’ve verbally proposed a monthly support engagement to your Salesforce client. What does the written proposal look like?
To help answer this, here’s an excerpt from my 5 page proposal template:
Project Options
In the following pages, I have outlined three options of increasing complexity for the project.… Read the rest
Once you move away from hourly billing, there are two main types of pricing for Salesforce consulting services: project-based or monthly.
Monthly agreements are generally a good fit when:
During the sales call, you need to determine which type of pricing would fit best for your client’s needs.… Read the rest
When you’re switching from full-time employee, should you bill hourly or jump straight to fixed prices?
The easy way is to price yourself hourly. You can take your annual salary and divide by the working hours to obtain an hourly rate.… Read the rest
Today’s email is a bit of housekeeping.
In the Salesforce ecosystem, coaching tackles specific Salesforce skills or goals, while mentoring offers career advice and general platform knowledge.
I’m definitely interested in the latter. So when I announced my new program, I called it “mentorship”.… Read the rest
In addition to the 10 UX principles, there are many other UX design considerations. Taking a closer look at one of them, when building apps on Salesforce, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind as well.
Accessibility refers to the practice of making applications usable by everyone, regardless of their abilities.… Read the rest
The 10th and last UX heuristic is called Help and Documentation. It states, “It’s best if the system doesn’t need any additional explanation. However, it may be necessary to provide documentation to help users understand how to complete their tasks.”
There are two types of help.… Read the rest
The principle of Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors states, “Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no error codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.”
To implement this principle,
In terms of Salesforce, here are some specific scenarios.… Read the rest
The 8th heuristic, Aesthetic and Minimalist Design, states, “Interfaces should not contain information that is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in an interface competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility”.
This translates to the following main points:
The Flexibility and Efficiency of Use principle states, “Shortcuts — hidden from novice users — may speed up the interaction for the expert user so that the design can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.”… Read the rest
The principle of Recognition Rather than Recall states, “Minimize the user’s memory load by making elements, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the interface to another. Information required to use the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed”.… Read the rest