A fellow reader recently shared a story and asked for help. Here’s a summary of the situation:
Imagine you’re an in-house consultant. You were hired to onboard the sales team to Salesforce, but the stakeholder who hired you isn’t dedicating time to define requirements or approve the project launch.… Read the rest
As a Salesforce consultant, you probably don’t spend much time in in-person meetings with clients. This applies to independent consultants and those working with agencies.
Apps like Zoom have become so prolific, that it’s unnecessary to meet your client face-to-face. And yet, when we do, it’s magical.… 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
We now have definite evidence that says traditional work, defined as Monday-to-Friday, and from 9-to-5, is over for remote-capable employees. This includes Salesforce consultants.
The new “hot” models are:
Hybrid
This means you’re in the office perhaps 2 or 3 times a week, and you decide which are those days.… 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
Josh Matthews’ recently invited me to his show, JoshForce. Josh is also the co-host of “The Salesforce Career Show”, a popular show available on all podcasting apps.
The topic of our discussion was, “How to Become a Digital Nomad”.
We discuss the ups and downs of being nomadic while working in the Salesforce ecosystem.… 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
As a Salesforce consultant working with a delivery team, you’re bound to have different opinions.
The solution architect will try to push their opinion because they understand the end goal.
The technical architect will say that’s not technically possible and offer alternatives.… Read the rest
Filler words are when you add words such as, “umm”, “err”, “humm”, “like”, “you know” in the middle of sentences. Most people often don’t realize how often they use them until they hear a recording of themselves.
In a casual conversation, these words are normal and accepted.… Read the rest
As an independent Salesforce consultant, have you ever eaten time to keep a client happy? Do you dream of taking a vacation but are concerned about lost revenue? Have you hit an income ceiling because there are only so many hours during the week?… 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
AI has become a daily part of our lives. It’s hard not to hear about it everyday. From next generation text responses to new video capabilities.
People also keep talking about the jobs it’ll take from us. When we initially thought about advances in technology, we imagined the blue-collared jobs would fall first.… Read the rest
As of April 4, 2024, Italy is the latest European country to offer a digital nomad visa
To bring you up to speed, a digital nomad visa generally allows you and your family to stay in a country for a year, and possibly longer.… 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