Don't Go to Salesforce First!

If you're thinking of purchasing/adopting/implementing Salesforce [the platform], don't start by talking to Salesforce [the company]!

[Timingwise the true target audience for this blog isn't likely to read it in time. But I have to try to get the message out any way I can. Please share widely!]

As a platform that your organization might use, Salesforce is a competitive choice. It might not be the only one, or necessarily the best for your situation, so do your due diligence. But if you have considered the options and are ready to actually adopt the system, this is a perilous time: You know you want Salesforce, but you probably don't have the background or expertise to know what you actually need. Salesforce is a big platform with all sorts of related products, not to mention complicated pricing just for the base licensing. So make sure you get appropriate unbiased advice.

Incentives Are Against You

You know who won't give you unbiased advice? The company that will benefit most if you over-buy. There is no way around this, the incentives are clear (and companies and people respond to incentives). Salesforce is incentivized to sell you more than you need because that is free money for the company. Salespeople (account executives, or "AEs") work on commission, so they have a clear incentive to sell you more sooner . And they know all the tricks.

• They'll give you a discount if you sign a longer-term contract. (Which locks you in to an over-buy for longer.)

• They'll cut a better deal if you sign before the end of a fiscal quarter. (Which often means you're buying products before you're ready to use them.)

• They'll throw in "extras" like Premier Support. (When the contract renews, you might not consider the feature worth the cost. But will you remember to take it off before the renewal is signed?)

Don't Let This Happen to You

There's one really clear example that I've heard many times. (As in: Multiple consultants have told me that they've seen this situation happen personally. I've heard it from enough people working for different partners to be proof that it happens rather often.)

A medium-sized nonprofit contacts Salesforce because they're thinking of adopting the platform. Perhaps an executive thought, based on Salesforce's aggressive marketing of the Power of Us program, that by virtue of being a nonprofit they would get the best, most honest deal by talking directly to the company. Sales contacts them, hears that it's a good-sized potential contract, and immediately sees dollar signs.

The pre-Sales team does an impressive song and dance with lots of people on the calls, including employees that talk about how they used to work at a nonprofit, highly technical solution engineers, and maybe even a solution architect. Of course Salesforce shows one or more whiz-bang demos. They scope out a great "digital transformation" that's going to yank this nonrprofit straight into the 23rd Century. And they even manage to put a price estimate on it that sounds reasonable (and is, coincidentally, just within the stated budget of the nonprofit). Then they get the nonprofit to sign on the dotted line. Based on the discussions, Salesforce has estimated that implementation will take six to twelve months. And the project calls for all—let's say: 75—of the organization's employees to be on Salesforce once the digital transformation is complete. With the contract signed and payment in hand, Salesforce suggests one or more "SI Partners," system implementers, that the nonprofit should work with. The organization does some negotiating over hours, contract language, etc and eventually picks a consultancy (a "partner" or "an SI"). By the time the contract with the consultant is actually signed, it's probably been a month since the contract closed with Salesforce. Then the real work of the implementation begins. Let's assume it goes incredibly smoothly and is actully complete in six months.

Sounds great, right? But what I hear from partners that are involved in that deal is that their client has already been ripped off.

• Salesforce started charging for 65 licenses on the day the Salesforce contract was signed.

  • The first ten were free, under the Power of Us.

  • The digital transformation plan called for 75 employees that will eventually use the system.

• Salesforce put the full license count in the original contract, even though they knew most would sit idle for months or even a full year.

The implementation is going to take at least six months. During that period of time only a handful of licenses are needed: those for the implementation consultants and the few employees liaising with the consultant. The organization doesn't need all 75 licenses until they actually get all 75 employees onto the system and train them how to use it. Building and testing can happen within the ten free licenses.

So in my rosy scenario, where implementation started after just one month to select a partner and then completed at the bottom end of the estimated time (6 months), the nonprofit has effectively wasted at least [65 licenses X $41.25/month x 7 months =] $18,768.75. If their contract includes any other products (Marketing Cloud, Premier Support, a Full Copy Sandbox, ...) the waste just grows.

And the partner knew this from the moment they started bidding on the project. But it was already too late. The contract with Salesforce was already signed. If that partner didn't take the deal, another would. And what partners tell me all the time is that they're not sure what kind of messaging is even useful in this case. If they point out to the nonprofit (AKA: their brand new client) that they were taken advantage of, it's not going to claw back the money. And if Salesforce finds out that they mentioned it, they [rightly] fear they'll be punished. So sometimes they just don't mention it. Sometimes, if there's a quiet off-the-record moment, they let the organization know. Hopefully they coach their client before renewal rolls around to make sure that they're only renewing for licenses and products they're actually going to use. But even that service to their client isn't guaranteed. It depends if they're still working together when renewal rolls around. And they still face the fear that Salesforce will find out they tipped off the organization.

So talk to an implementation partner early!

Actually, talk to more than one. And don't give much credence to one that Salesforce has matched you up with. Besides the clear risk I just detailed, the incentives get skewed in all sorts of ways when Salesforce makes the referral to the partner. I've heard from multiple people at multiple consultancies that if they're talking to an organization that was sent to them by Salesforce, they feel like they can't speak honestly about which products the client might use, for fear that Salesforce won't give them the next deal.

To be clear, the consultants taht are telling me this do try to find a time to let their client or potential client know the score, but only on a non-recorded phone call, when there are no Salesforce employees around, and otherwise with a, "You didn't hear this from me, but...." kind of framing. In other words, to give honest advice, they have to be circumspect about it at best. That tells you all you probably need to know.

Implementation partners can have wrong incentives too, of course: to sell you more time and a bigger project. But you have a way to mitigate that: you can get multiple quotes. Plus a partner has a longer term incentive to keep you happy so you will refer them and come back to them for future projects. For the platform company, Salesforce, there really is no comparable mitigating factor. Sure, if you get really pissed, you might migrate off Salesforce and cease being a customer. But there are barriers to that. (Migration and re-implementation are never fun, always costly, and usually stressful.) So in most cases, if you over buy, you're just going to eventually fix the contract but not leave the system. Thus Salesforce doesn't even face consequences.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

The bottom line: you need to find an implementation partner that you can trust. If you have already let Salesforce know that you're considering the platform (or additional products of theirs), they're going to start the sales pitch and connect you with a partner they think you should work with. I have no problem with most of the partners they might recommend—they're mostly the same people you would find on your own. But there's a pretty huge difference in incentives if you've come to the partner on your own than if Salesforce made the referral.

Find a partner (or two, or three) on your own. Have a few conversations. Get the vibe. Find a main contact that you can trust and an organization whose work style is going to be a good fit. Salesforce need not know anything about your plans until well into your conversations with partners. In fact, I think you should go pretty far down the path—probably all the way to signing a scope of work with a partner—before you ever contact Salesforce to start getting your org and your licenses. That way the partner can advise you on how to save money for the long term. They can help you avoid overbuying. They can advise you on how and when to negotiate with Salesforce for the things you do need, and when to choose products that come from other vendors.