Is Salesforce the modern day Hot Potato?

Now some of you that have been involved in the Salesforce ecosystem will truly get the analogy here as to why Salesforce may be the modern-day hot potato and some of you may not. Let's begin...

Time and time again I receive calls from business leaders, recruiters, and HR folks telling me the same story over and over. We have Salesforce running in our organization and we need help. Our response is, OK, which business area owns your Salesforce platform? Some say IT, some say Marketing, and some Sales or Distribution. When we hear IT, we take serious pause, when we hear Marketing we are also concerned but when we hear Sales that's intriguing. Unfortunately, sometimes we hear no one does right now. Is that your situation? Because that's when you're in crisis mode to save Salesforce. Usually, someone brought in Salesforce was not able to convey a true vision and get the buy-in from the executive staff. They may also not realized the specialized team and talent that's needed to be brought in and lastly the total ongoing costs as well.

Let's be honest folks, Salesforce is not cheap. It's the #1 selling CRM system in the world and it comes with a price. Sticker shock for some and others, they don't care because they know how to grind out ROI with any system they bring into their firm or company.

So back to the Hot Potato... Everyone wants to eat but, no one seems to want to touch it (or own it). Depending upon who you speak with there are many views of why Salesforce is not meeting a company's expectations. First, let me state this, it's not the Salesforce platform/s problem it's usually your dirty data. It's not a Salesforce problem you have never captured or updated your business processes and surely it's not because you were not advised of what new talent you would need to make this successful.

My first offer of advice here is that it's a business growth and management system and?Sales or Distribution in truth should OWN Salesforce. I'm not saying IT and Marketing don't have a seat at the table. When all is said and done, we are not designing this system for IT or even Marketing needs.

I have owned Salesforce Platforms while in IT and Marketing and this situation problematic. The sales operations area is where Salesforce will truly flourish by designing new processes and ongoing (dare I say) agile growth of your Salesforce platform. The coined term "speed kills" may be true with cars and motorcycles but, when it comes to getting Salesforce implemented and ramped up, it's the only strategy that will have your user community lean into its success. For example, I once did some consulting with this small business of 3 people and they were using a different CRM platform and sought to convert to Salesforce. Working hand in hand with the owner and his 2 other employees by gathering all of their business needs, learning their business processes, and ensuring all of their data was in the exact format as needed. We designed, loaded all data, and built out a new Salesforce instance in 3 months. The kicker here is that once the system was live the owner then went and hired an off-shore call center and then onboarded 30 BDR's who day after day then made outbound calls with Broadview softphone connector creating an incredible new business lead funnel. This story here is a true example of how Salesforce could "10X a business" ONLY when you truly lean into its capabilities.

So the question here before you get the butter to enjoy your hot potato is do you have all of your business and sales procedures documented? Do you have a collective buy-in from the Executive level triad; Sales, IT, and Marketing? Do you have or are looking for the best talent you can find to make your Salesforce investment a story of success for years to come?

If not get a move on folks, because wisely these folks successfully did.