Does Salesforce Have an Issue With Bad Consultancy Partners?

Salesforce’s growth – particularly over the last decade – has been monumental. Marc Benioff’s insatiable appetite for innovation and change has seen the cloud company accelerate into truly unchartered territory, lifting the ecosystem up right along with it. 

However, with growth comes both benefits and unfortunate pitfalls. Perhaps the biggest and most brushed-aside pitfall of all? The rise of broken, mismanaged, and downright wrong Salesforce implementations.

The Power Is In the Implementation

It’s no secret that implementations are one of the most important things to get right in the world of Salesforce. If we were to think about implementations as the root in the tree of Salesforce pipelines and processes, it would quickly become evident that the project would suffer if these roots weren’t established.

Not only that, but Salesforce implementations are expensive. Despite often being seen as a valuable investment, potentially boosting revenue by up to 37%, implementation costs can range from $10,000 for basic projects to upwards of $200,000, and occasionally all the way into the millions for more comprehensive projects.

In order for a Salesforce implementation to be successful, a number of factors need to be considered, including a client’s budget, needs, timeline, and expectations. On the partner side, they need to be clear with realistic deliverables, regular check-ins, and pushing back when something is likely to negatively impact the final result. 

With all of this in mind, it could be assumed that out of the thousands of partners on Salesforce’s Partner Community and the AppExchange Consultant database, high-quality, realistic, and functioning implementations would be delivered all the time. However, this unfortunately is not the case.

What Is Going Wrong?

It’s impossible to understand just how many Salesforce implementations are successful with the sheer number of implementations being completed every day. Also, the uncertainty that hangs around this topic is apparent, to say the least; failed implementations are not something anyone is quick to shout about. 

However, after chatting with different members of the ecosystem – partners, end-users, and some CEOs – it quickly became clear that the scale of failed or unfinished implementations was only one side of this issue. The other critical side of this is why this is happening.

Joey Chan, a Principal Consultant and founder of Cloud Jedi Solutions, said that he estimated he had an 80-90% success rate on the implementations he has worked on, but that it was important to consider that a lot of the projects weren’t classified as greenfield.

Note: A greenfield Salesforce implementation starts from scratch with no prior system in place, while a brownfield implementation involves upgrading or integrating with an existing system.

In fact, the vast majority of people I spoke to continuously repeated the same sentiment: they were often tasked with “cleaning up” implementations that were unfinished, broken, lacking documentation, or wrong in some other way.

“Clients would come to us if they weren’t satisfied with the work from the recommended partner,” Joey admitted.

It’s something that Chris Smith, an independent Salesforce Consultant, also echoed. “I work with a couple of smaller consultancies, and ones who that is their entire business – following up after these and cleaning up after them.” 

Something is evidently going wrong with implementations, so let’s dig deeper. What’s going on, and why?

Quality vs. Profit

Big growth means big profit-earning opportunities, which must be highlighted. With the huge growth of Salesforce, combined with the consultancy boom of 2020/21, it’s no surprise that partners have latched on to these new opportunities. However, it has regrettably impacted both customers and other consultancies in place to pick up the pieces of notable mistakes.

Opinions on just how big of an issue this is range within the ecosystem, but Gaurav Kheterpal, the Founder and CEO of Vanshiv Technologies, said that he’s definitely observed it.

“Sometimes I have seen it happen. People would deploy sub-optimal teams that are not really suited for projects and haven’t done thorough due diligence on processes, skills, and their overall alignment to Salesforce.”

Going back to the strong desire to latch onto the growth opportunities in any possible way, Gaurav admitted that this is likely why the decline in quality is so apparent. “I think the problem is sometimes [consultancies] get into a mentality that they need to sell and they need to fulfill their targets no matter what, and that causes a lot of problems on certain occasions. It’s unfortunate, but it is a reality – it happens.”

It’s evident that this stems from reasons other than consultancies fighting to gain competitive advantage. Although every consultancy – and at a more granular level, every consultant – will have their own approach to customer/business management, it is always important for those key business analysis skills to be utilized as consultants and business analysts share a lot of their skills. Specifically, communication, collaboration, and documentation.

Mike Martin, the Chief Customer Officer at 10k, says that he thinks an underutilization of these skills and practices is one of the things contributing to the gravitation to growth and profit over quality. 

He says that many implementations suffer from a “tour guide vs. taxi driver” problem, where consultants simply follow orders instead of providing strategic guidance.

“A lot of these consultancies will just come in and take orders. [They] Do exactly what the client asks, and that’s not the right approach to consulting. It comes down to being able to say no in the right way. There is so much young talent that doesn’t have the experience, they don’t know what to recommend, so they’re just going to do whatever the client wants, even though it may not necessarily be the right thing.”

One person I spoke to referred to it as “jumping on the bandwagon”:

“I love the saying ‘success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan’. With Salesforce, there’s a huge amount of new consultancies that have popped up or diversified into the ecosystem to make the most of that success and that growth.”

Andre Van Kampen, a freelance Salesforce Consultant and Owner of the ISV Forum, shared that over half of the implementation projects he’s observed seem to prioritize speed and cost over quality, which he believes leads to poor user adoption.

The implications on the consultancy side aren’t any better, with Barney Haywood, the Co-Founder of Futureform, saying that consultancies okay with this approach are “naive”.

“As soon as you start doing that [prioritizing speed and cost], your clients only aren’t going to get the value they want from you, so you won’t get repeat business. You can spend a huge amount of time building up your reputation and relationships, and all it takes is just a few small issues or concerns, and then your relationships and reputation start to fade away.”

Not only that, but this marring of reputations doesn’t just apply to Salesforce customers, but the partner’s relationship with Salesforce themselves.

Common Complaints

I would like to think that if you asked a consultant what lies at the heart of every implementation, they would say the customer. While putting this article together, my belief occasionally faltered, but I do still believe that there are more good consultancies out there than bad; I’ll come back to that later.

When I asked experts in the industry what the most common complaints they had heard from clients were, four things stood out: not adhering to best practices, unclear, incomplete, or nonexistent documentation, a lack of value realization, and implementations just not working.

Best Practices – They’re Important!

Joey mentioned that a complaint he would often receive from clients who came to him to fix a dodgy implementation was that it was just not well-architected and didn’t follow best practices. Quite understandably, he was quick to tell me that this complaint was not only common but well-grounded too.

This comes at a time when Salesforce have been spending the last few years putting in a lot of effort to define best practices as part of their Well Architected initiative. 

“Look at it this way: Salesforce recommends a partner. They [the client] automatically trust that a partner would know what they’re doing and would have their best interests at the core right?” Joey Chan, Principal Consultant, Cloud Jedi Solutions

Value Realization

It was Gaurav who really explained to me how key value realization is to customers and clients. 

“I think the most common phrase I have heard is ‘we bought Salesforce; I don’t think we are using it properly or I don’t think we’re getting value from it,” he said. He explained that two things primarily cause this: poor implementation, or reluctant adoption – both damaging results for a consultancy. 

To avoid this, Gaurav’s recommendation reflected Mike’s, going back to the tour guide metaphor.

“A mature partner will not just implement the solution – they will be like a guide in terms of ‘I’ve built this for you, and this is the efficiency you get from this.”

Documentation and Broken Implementations

Chris covered the last two complaints on the list when I interviewed him, laying out the facts very plainly: “The biggest one, firstly, is documentation being completely incomplete. And the second one is literally that [the implementation] is just not working or what they asked for.”

Chris, who is part of the ecosystem in the UK, says that he’s definitely seen his fair share of precarious implementations. But as an independent consultant, he does have benefits that help him deal with this issue.

“I’ve seen some quite shady things,” he said. “[But], if I think something is broken or done the wrong way, I can say it.”

As observed by other experts, sometimes there is a real pushback from higher authorities within bigger consultancies to keep implementations on track, no matter what. 

This approach might sound useful at first glance, but it can quickly take a turn for the worse if glaring issues are swept under the rug.

The Certification Hiring Dilemma 

If you’ve read any of my previous posts concerning the Salesforce job market, then you’ll know that I’m no stranger to talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Last year, I reported that the Salesforce job market was saturated mainly due to supply heavily outweighing demand, and a driving force behind this is the sheer number of certified professionals.

2023 saw over a 100% increase in certified professionals across partners, from just over 82,000 to nearly 173,000, and 2024’s numbers are predicted to look not too dissimilar. The effects of this have been felt across the Salesforce consulting industry, and opinions are mixed.

When I asked Mike whether he thought consultancies taking on certified professionals who perhaps lacked the experience had negatively impacted the market, he was quick to agree but just as quick to offer insights too.

“I think it has, [but] I don’t necessarily blame young talent. Most consultancies don’t have the infrastructure that they need to expand their learning beyond just the technology.”

He admitted that it would be great to get senior staff to step in and mentor, but that this process was expensive, in both time and money.

Zaid Usmani, a Senior Salesforce Developer and Architect, said that a company he worked with even made certifications a big part of their hiring strategy. “At my previous firm, at one point, we were hiring a lot of people based on certifications,” he said. 

Tal Frankfurt, the Founder and CEO of Cloud for Good, highlighted the issues with this practice, emphasizing that consulting is all about the experience, and what you can do rather than what you know.

“Consulting is about the battle scars. It’s about the experience; where have you done this before? That’s part of the reason why we’re seeing this kind of decline in value creation for customers who come to us looking to fix it.”

I feel as though Mike was able to sum up the issue with an admirable air of succinctness: “It’s easy to learn Salesforce with Trailhead, but it’s hard to learn consulting.”

Support From Salesforce 

When it comes down to the conversation of Salesforce and the support it offers consultancies and partners, I was surprised to find that opinions seem very split. There is no unanimous appreciation of Salesforce and the support they offer, but there’s no complete damnation either.

For example, Gaurav was quick to praise Salesforce for their offerings, stating that “no other cloud platform” provides the kind of support that Salesforce does.

“I think that’s one area where I think Salesforce has done really well and I think we should give credit to them,” he said. Barney and Zaid’s sentiments also echo this, citing Salesforce’s support of their past projects as “superb” and “all they need”.

For others, thoughts leaned more towards the idea that Salesforce was indeed trying, but it feels as if they’re missing the mark. “Salesforce does provide us with resources – like, there’s training materials, but it feels like it stops there,” one person admitted. 

The Resource Reality

One of the most notable stats from this year’s 10k Salesforce Talent Ecosystem Report is that the number of consulting partners grew by 20% last year, but Salesforce reduced the team supporting partners too.

This reduction in support has been felt, with some consultants feeling like they’ve been left in the dark.

One person I spoke to filled me in on an underbelly of politicism that they felt runs through the consulting industry, stating that Salesforce appeared eager to push certain bigger partners over smaller partners, despite their reputations of the biggest issues.

This, in turn, meant that these smaller consultancies were left feeling pressured to sell more than the customer might want in order to improve selling rates and appeal more to Salesforce.

Another person I spoke to admitted that it went as far as making them feel like partners are “not really wanted” and that the days of winning Salesforce deals based on achievements and personality are gone.

It’s something that made one spokesperson reflect on the ‘partner first’ model that they said Salesforce used to focus on, but no longer seems to.

A ‘partner first’ model refers to a business model that prioritizes collaboration with external partners, leveraging their expertise and solutions to drive mutual growth, customer success, and market expansion. 

“Partners are brought into deals at many different stages of an opportunity, whereas ten years ago, Salesforce had little resources in the delivery and success space, so they relied a lot more on partners from day one. This is why they coined this ‘partner first’ model, and I think that’s where some of the challenges have arisen from.” Anonymous

Where Does the Blame Lie? 

With a situation as complicated as this, it can be very easy to start pointing fingers in an attempt to direct the blame somewhere. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, there is not a single perpetrator here; the faults lie with more than one party.

“The customer, the partner, and Salesforce all need to be aligned for implementations to work,” Gaurav told me. It makes sense – how is implementation going to get off the ground successfully if there’s a disconnect between the sides?

If one thing is true, then it seems to be the agreement on the importance of establishing scopes, expectations, and timelines from the beginning. It’s something that if done wrong, could lead to the blame of the sales team for underselling or overselling.

“Expectation setting needs to happen on day one, with absolutely everybody involved in a project – from the partner/s and Salesforce to the customer, and then from any other third-party organizations involved in that project too.” Anonymous

That leaves us with one question: where does Salesforce stand in all of this?

Well, it’s clear that Salesforce’s support is not being felt everywhere within the consulting industry, and this has undoubtedly impacted the way that implementations are delivered. It’s something that Andre said was not made any better, as quick and easy implementations have always been an integral part of Salesforce’s sales pitch and customer expectations.

When that kind of message is portrayed, we quickly begin to notice something has to be sacrificed, as can be observed through something like the Unattainable Triangle.

Even when the support is there, it’s still sometimes difficult to know who to get advice from. Much change is needed across the board to solve this issue – that we can be sure of.

How Do We Fix This?

There is no denying that we are dealing with a problem bigger than many of us realize; how do we fix it?

The path to recovery here is long, and there will be a lot of roadblocks. For example, it would be easy to say to a partner, ‘make sure you prioritize the quality of the implementation over anything, even if it takes longer’ because internal pressures could currently be preventing that.

Or something like ‘hire professionals with experience over certifications’, which sounds easy enough, but becomes trickier when you have stakeholders and customers that want to see heavily certified professionals working for them. It’s also, of course, very expensive, which in a market as competitive as the one we’re witnessing, is something that businesses will consider.

However, one key takeaway that can be worked on almost immediately is project transparency and getting all teams involved from the beginning to establish expectations. There is a clear need for a more comprehensive and detailed approach to implementations, with a focus on improving the user experience. This will play a big role in keeping customers satisfied and increasing the chances of repeat business.

It’s also going to be important for consultants to help customers “understand what a healthy solution looks like” in Joey’s words. Something that he is focusing on for the future is helping companies in terms of auditing, by playing with the idea of third-party involvement in implementations.

“Say you’re [building] a 10-20 story building – would you just fully trust your contractor and do everything they’ve told you they’d do? Or would it be wise to hire someone independent to help you evaluate if they’re doing the right job? I feel like that’s one of the things that’s missing in many implementations.”

Mike believes that the key lies with more mentorship opportunities where top talent could train new talent, much like Deloitte’s Pathfinder program.

“[Salesforce] have a pretty big services team – how do you potentially provide some of that talent available to mentored new talent? Maybe an investment in a consultancy training program?”

Although Salesforce’s unit dedicated to partners has been reduced, hope is still not lost. One person recounted that their consultancy had been having dedicated SE sessions with a specialist from Salesforce dedicated to partner education, indicating a brighter future.

“I think that the more Salesforce employees have KPIs focused on partner success, the better the partner ecosystem will become,” they said. “We’re going to thrive if that’s the case.”

Final Thoughts

Problems in the Salesforce ecosystem surrounding dodgy implementations and partner politicism can’t be put down to just one cause, but Salesforce does not have an issue with bad consultancy partners as a whole. 

Salesforce does not have an issue with bad consultancy partners, but it does have an issue with the way implementations are delivered, and the steps to improve this lie with Salesforce, the partners, and even the customers to a certain extent.

It would be naive to assume that most consulting partners are bad, and you could argue that it could also be naive to assume that most consulting partners are good. However, where the intention is good is more than clear to see, and it is within these partners and communities that the spotlight should be, highlighting the good that could very easily be shadowed by the bad.

Where the faults happen and the bad lies within the consulting ecosystem are where change is most needed, and change starts by talking about the problem and navigating some solutions, which I hope this post will be a springboard for.