As a Salesforce consultant, you sometimes need to deliver not-so-positive news. The recipient of this news can be a fellow colleague or a client, and the topic can be related to their performance or the project, or anything in-between.
The most popular method to deliver bad news is to use the sandwich model.… Read the rest
One common scenario you need to solve as a Salesforce consultant is populating data in a new pre-production sandbox. After all, there’s not much use in developing something without testing it with some data.
You can always use a full copy sandbox each time, but prices for those are comically high.… Read the rest
Today was dreamOle in Sevilla, Spain. It was awesome to be around kindred spirits again. It’s been so long since my last Salesforce conference (*cough* COVID *cough*).
There were quite a few interesting sessions to attend. Here are my personal favorites, in no particular order.… Read the rest
Salesforce has come a long way since its debut in 1999, and its four employees.
As of March 14, 2023, Salesforce is the fifth largest SAAS company in the world, ranked by market capitalization. That’s awesome!
Plotted on a chart, this data looks like this:
It’s interesting to note that aside from MS and Google, who are leading the pack by a huge margin, the remaining companies line up nearly perfectly.… Read the rest
Last week, I wrote about a power question to use when your client no longer responds to your emails. The goal is to encourage a response so you can move the project forward.
There’s another one-liner you can write, when you’re in the same scenario.… Read the rest
Salesforce has numerous conferences around the world. The most famous and largest of which is Dreamforce in San Francisco.
Not everyone has a chance to attend this event, so there are many local events around the world. Depending on your profession, there are also many industry-specific conferences and those tailored for developers, consultants, partners, etc.… Read the rest
When making technology decisions for your client, how should you consider the short-term payoff versus the long-term strategy?
In this week’s podcast, I have a wonderful conversation with Kevin Christopher-George about short vs long-term approaches, the RFP process, and avoiding the “shiny new tech” syndrome.… Read the rest
Several months ago, there was a wave of articles talking about “stealth workers”. These are individuals who pretend to be working from home, when in fact they are remote.
Tactics they employ include:
Recently, a colleague of mine was sharing a story about a Salesforce Field Service (SFS) project he’s currently working on.
As anyone who has worked with SFS knows, these projects can be tricky. It always feels like the client needs to follow a strict structure and process to benefit from it.… Read the rest
The subject of this email is an extremely powerful negotiation tactic.
To give it more context, imagine a scenario in which you are communicating with a potential client. They are a warm lead and you believe your services would be an excellent fit for their needs.… Read the rest
Let’s pickup from last week’s email about the New Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC).
Here are some of the reasons why Salesforce decided to bring the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) to the core platform:
I’ve been recently helping a client interview for a MuleSoft developer position. The client is using a recruiting agency, and we receive numerous candidates each week. Unfortunately so far, all of them have a common issue.
Once all the technical questions have been asked, I switch gears and ask soft-skill questions.… Read the rest
One of the reasons why I love being a digital nomad is the opportunity to embrace minimalism.
Several years ago, I trekked around the world for 1.5 years with just two backpacks; a 65L for clothing and a 25L for tech.… Read the rest
Complex validation rules in Salesforce can be a real pain in the butt.
When it’s a single IF statement with perhaps one OR or AND statement, there’s usually no issue. But when it’s a nested statement if ORs followed by ANDs, things can escalate quickly.… Read the rest
Salesforce made a huge announcement yesterday regarding the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud.
Until now, if a nonprofit organization used Salesforce, they typically installed a managed package called Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). This is a mature product, evolving for more than a decade.… Read the rest
Yesterday I published a podcast episode with Julia Devine of Devine Parker.
Julia and her colleague Catalina help nonprofits determine a technology strategy. This means assessing a client’s current state and building a plan to get to the target state.
They also help determine which CRM is the best fit for their clientele.… Read the rest
Last Friday, my colleague told me about a head-scratcher moment that he had with his Salesforce client.
The client had an old Salesforce instance, and there were too many “cooks in the kitchen” over the years. Sometimes these were internal people, other times it was external Salesforce agencies.… Read the rest
Let’s pickup from yesterday’s challenge. The conceptual answer is to create a state machine.
What is a state machine?
According to Wikipedia, “A finite-state machine (FSM) … or simply a state machine, is a mathematical model of computation. It is an abstract machine that can be in exactly one of a finite number of states at any given time.… Read the rest
Recently, a client approached me with a more complicated requirement than usual. I love a challenge, so I listened with great enthusiasm. The scenario below is a simplified version of the issue.
In Salesforce, the contact object had a field called “Status”.… Read the rest
By now, most of you are aware that TrailblazerDX 2023 is currently underway. This three day conference focuses on Salesforce technical developments. The target audience are developers and architects, although all disciplines can benefit from learning what the “shiny new tools” look like.… Read the rest
Yesterday, I was a guest speaker on The Nonprofit Show. It’s a daily live broadcast where the national’s nonprofit community comes together for problem solving, innovations, and reflections to foster greater social impacts.
The subject of the episode was about whether nonprofits are using the tech right, and included topics such as
When I’m doing my podcast, I’m the one asking the questions, and it’s not live, so it’s easily editable.… Read the rest
A handful of years ago, I was hired as a Salesforce consultant to help a very large organization with their Salesforce implementation. They were overhauling their partner web portal and wanted to have tighter integration with their Salesforce instance.
The project was impressive because it’s not often when an enterprise has the foresight and drive to overhaul a system.… Read the rest
One common objection I hear about trying to be a digital nomad is kids.
Kids make things messier when traveling. They require significant time and attention, their basic needs must be met, and then there’s school.
Obviously the best time to be a digital nomad with kids is when they are young enough to not go to school.… Read the rest
No, I’m not talking about using your face as a type of authentication to your device.
We all know that watching your client’s face for micro expressions is an important method to provide hints. These hints tell us whether the client is happy or sad or frustrated or anything in between.… Read the rest
Another way to build strong connections and gain insight into your client’s perspective is with empathy.
Let’s say you’re discussing a deadline with a client. Their position is that a certain Salesforce feature needs to be in production by the end of the week, and it’s just not feasible to do this.… Read the rest
One way to build trust quickly with a client is to repeat their words.
This simple yet surprisingly effective tool can not only help build trust, but also help with project negotiations. It’s a type of verbal mirroring (as opposed to physical mirroring).… Read the rest
A couple of years ago, I noticed a need in one of my clients. There was a gap in functionality between the Salesforce platform and all available packages. This includes all official apps on the AppExchange and unlisted apps, which only Google knows about.… Read the rest
In the 50th episode of my podcast, the appointed host asked me, “What are the rules for being a digital nomad?”
My response was, there aren’t any rules.
Whether you spend time in a “van down by the river” (a reference to a skit by the late Chris Farley on SNL), or half the year in the south of Spain, makes no difference.… Read the rest
There’s a perception in the general public that consultants don’t stick around to see the client’s end results. Instead, they come into an organization, give direction and advice, and then leave before seeing the true impacts of those decisions.
While this may be true for management consultants, I don’t believe this is true for Salesforce consultants.… Read the rest
Several years ago, I was working with a client on a new web feature. It wasn’t in Salesforce, but Siebel CRM. For those of you who are unaware, Siebel was *the* CRM before Salesforce, perhaps 10-15 years ago.
The new feature was a tree-like hierarchical folder structure, like you see in Windows Explorer.… Read the rest