How Much Should a Marketing Cloud Implementation Cost?
Questions you should ask, types of implementations you should be offered, and hidden costs you need to look out for.
Get the guide2 Factors When Selecting a Salesforce Partner
There are many great Salesforce Partners out there but picking a quality Partner for the wrong type of project is where you are guaranteed to run into issues.
It's a matter of finding a Partner that will prioritize you.
And this is why we don't believe any Salesforce Customer should use just one Partner. Identifying different vendors for specific scopes of work will guarantee alignment in priorities and lead to more successful outcomes.
At the most basic level, you want to start with these pieces of criteria when vetting new Salesforce Partners.
Capabilities
This probably seems obvious but is worth highlighting nonetheless.
The first box to check when selecting a Partner is around capabilities.
Where do they have expertise?
In other words, do their Consultants know the specific Salesforce Products (CPQ, Marketing Cloud etc) you’re working on and can they show previous success in these areas?
Project Type
The second area is more commonly overlooked but just as important!
What is their ideal engagement?
👉 Consulting Partner A might work primarily on new implementations and only take on a fractional managed services projects periodically - but that’s not the type of work they ideally want to scale the business on.
👉 Alternatively, Consulting Partner B might do some implementation work here and there but the real focus and priority is long-term managed services engagements.
Even though Consulting Partner A is more than capable of delivering managed services, selecting them for this type of work will lead to misaligned priorities. When a flashy new implementation comes up, they will re-allocate their top Consultants to work on that project because it's a priority - and you'll be left with a team of new Consultants dropped in to pick up where they left off.
On the other hand, Consulting Partner B has built an entire business around these ongoing relationships. Their IDEAL scenario is to assign a Consultant to you and have that very same person work with you ... forever.
It comes down to how they prioritize projects and customers.
Will you be their biggest account or are you a small fish for them and potentially lower priority?
Ultimately, what matters is finding the type of Partner where you (and the work you need to get done) and their core focus, competency, and desired project.
