Choosing the Best Salesforce Implementation Partner: Tips and Traps to Avoid

At Synebo, we’ve witnessed the role a Salesforce implementation partner can have on a company’s CRM journey. It’s more than just finding a suitable company to implement a set of instruments — it’s about rewriting the company’s procedures and boosting performance across all levels, from customers to employees.

Salesforce is one of the most promising software companies due to its diverse instruments, customization of its features, and universal application of its solutions. In 2024, its revenue reached nearly $35 billion. In 2023, it was named the leading CRM vendor, taking up a 22% share in the CRM applications market worldwide. Leveraging the latest technologies, Salesforce invests in innovations that call for constant training of implementation partners and each team member.

When you finally pick a consulting partner with a rich toolkit, it should be a company that shares your objectives, understands your business needs, and has the same approach to communication and leadership. Over the years, our team has learned how multidimensional collaboration is. We’ve helped hundreds of businesses choose and work with the right partners, resulting in seamless Salesforce implementations and long-term success.

This guide will outline the key factors businesses should consider when choosing a Salesforce consulting partner, what mistakes they can avoid, and how to maximize collaboration outcomes.

“A great Salesforce partner doesn’t just deliver a solution; they become an extension of your team, ensuring your success long after implementation,” says Yana Chekan, Head of Delivery at Synebo.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Salesforce Partner

How to find a perfect vendor? Choosing the right Salesforce implementation partner can be difficult for companies that have yet to learn how to seek out Salesforce consulting services. Let’s take a peek at the critical criteria.

Expertise and Certifications

Expertise and certifications remain a focal point in choosing Salesforce consultants. Certifications prove that you won’t be working with a newbie and that they know how to build you a good toolkit.

Our team never forgets how crucial expertise is for a reliable consulting partner. A trackable record of expertise, such as Admin, Developer, and Architect credentials, shows that the professional in the chosen team undergoes regular training and can develop suitable instruments for you.

“Salesforce certifications validate a partner’s ability to deliver quality solutions tailored to your needs,” explains Yana Chekan.

Industry-Specific Experience

Any platform or tool we use is only as good as the knowledge of the people who work with it — and when it’s about the industry, you cannot be careful enough. Salesforce is a universal CRM that can be used for any industry, but investing in Salesforce app development requires knowledge of your specific market. It affects every other feature, including preferred communication channels and more.

Industry knowledge allows a partner to recommend the best Salesforce implementation practices and pre-built Salesforce solutions that simplify the routine. This also allows companies to avoid costly errors and avoid unplanned-for-customer churn. 

And since this CRM system constantly upgrades and expands its instruments, it’s another guarantee that its Salesforce implementers and consultants will be skilled.

Communication and Collaboration

Even if you’ve got a perfect system, poor communication can turn all your progress back. A suitable Salesforce consultant will identify your key needs and ask the right questions — this will ensure that your vision is turned into reality. Inquire the potential partner about their communication choices, especially how regularly they provide updates and what expectations they have for your collaboration.

If you can, ask for cases where communication mattered or where the Salesforce consulting & implementation partner was adaptable in collaboration — this will be a solid illustration of your potential work together. Transparent communication helps prevent misunderstandings and allows the partner to quickly change direction if needed. Finally, there’s the prospect of long-term cooperation when both sides understand the priorities and further steps.

Here’s how to evaluate the company’s communication skills: 

• Conduct a trial meeting. This will allow you to observe the manager’s behavior and understand if their behavior will suit your long-term collaboration. 
• Look into client references. Find the companies who were their previous clients and ask how their collaboration turned out.
• Ask for a sample plan. If the service allows it, ask for a sample project timeline and/or communication plan to check how it structures updates and information delivery. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The best way to minimize errors and save costs on uncalled-for risks is to use the experience of others who misstepped before you — and avoid them altogether. Below are two common mistakes in Salesforce partner selection that you can consider before diving right in. 

Prioritizing Cost Over Quality

Businesses are used to cutting edges on expenditures, especially for such processes as software customization and implementation. However, it can backfire: low-cost Salesforce consultants may have little experience or lack certifications, immediately making your implementation riskier.

Salesforce partners with surprisingly low pricing are likely to have untrained staff or take shortcuts in security and/or how they run their processes. On top of that, remember that every mistake you make has a more long-term disadvantage down the line, including reputational damage — this can have immense costs in customer retention, fixing bugs, and losing sensitive data.

Ignoring Post-Implementation Support

When companies hope to simply launch Salesforce solutions and forget about it, this CRM system won’t operate at the desired performance level. After the implementation, you’re just stepping into another stage: maintenance and support to keep it working.

Every tool needs tweaking occasionally, and going laissez-fire will cause bugs, disrupt its efficiency, and leave your customers frustrated. When something’s gone awry, it’s a little too late to find the right professional.

So ensure that your Salesforce CRM implementation partner has a team of skilled professionals who can quickly address technical issues and user concerns. Many businesses also forget about flexibility for future customizations, which may lead to challenges once the company grows.

Steps to Select the Right Salesforce Implementation Partner

Now that you understand the main dos and don’ts of navigating across many propositions on the Internet, we offer you to explore a step-by-step process of finding the exact fit, navigating potential alternatives, and asking the right questions to hire a Salesforce implementation partner you need.

Define Your Requirements

Since Salesforce has flexible solutions that allow its users to adjust nearly everything in its functionality, larger companies unsatisfied with pre-built decisions should have a clear understanding of what they need.

Defining your requirements for a Salesforce implementation partner will help both sides stay on track with further proceedings. Without a well-documented list of requirements, you risk choosing a partner who cannot align with your business objectives.

How do you move from a general idea to a specific set of requirements, though? Below is a list of steps to define the criteria for an ideal Salesforce partner to help you move from point A to point B. 

• Evaluate business goals. What are the exact objectives you need a Salesforce implementation company for? For example, do you need to improve your sales team efficiency, automate workflows, boost customer engagement, or do anything else?
• Identify pain points. Study your current processes and evaluate which of these can be addressed by Salesforce: does your customer support team have poor first-call resolution, or do you have slow lead response times? 
• List desired features. This one can be tricky, considering the impressive range of Salesforce’s features. To illustrate, you can need Sales Cloud for sales automation, Service Cloud for customer support, or Marketing Cloud for campaign management. Write down each instrument, and if you cannot decide, go for a higher number and narrow it down as you prioritize your possible resource allocation and processes.
• Set measurable KPIs. This step is vital—it saves time for both you and your potential implementation partner by turning ambiguous expectations into something you can actually evaluate. 
• Define integration needs. Salesforce’s integrative capacity is one of the leading advantages that makes it such a good pick. However, creating a well-aligned system requires more expenditure and effort. Whether you want to connect ERP or email marketing platforms, it’ll impact your future collaboration. 

Research and Shortlist Partners

Now that you have a clear vision and goals, it’s time to research potential Salesforce consulting partners and make a list of the best options. Don’t go for the first option, even if you see favorable reviews. Everyone’s case is different, and you need to dig deeper before choosing a specific partner. 

Explore Salesforce AppExchange and Salesforce Find Partners. What makes both of them so valuable? These are the official Salesforce platforms for Salesforce-certified experts, which guarantees you’ll find a reliable partner to work with. Analyze and compare reviews, especially study the situations where the case is relevant to your industry. Importantly, pay attention to the tier of every company because it reflects the experience and number of successful projects of the business.

Review case studies. The best indicator of how well you’ll collaborate with your Salesforce partner is the prior cases of their successes — or failures, for that matter. At best, check out solutions in your market and look for complicated cases or significant breakthroughs, as these will show how the partner performs in unpredictable environments. 

Check reviews. While official platforms of the potential Salesforce implementers are a good start, independent review platforms like Clutch, Salesforce AppExchange, G2, and Trustpilot provide unfiltered client feedback. Plus, as you look at these reviews, be cautious of companies that have reviews during one narrow timeframe (for example, all were left within one week) or overly positive reviews that look as if they aren’t rooted in reality. 

Verify certifications. As mentioned above, certifications matter because they prove that your partner’s team holds relevant Salesforce certifications. Here’s what every certification means:

• Administrator – System configuration and management
• Consultant – Strategy and implementation
• Developer – Custom code and automation
• Architect – Complex integrations and system scalability.

The more skilled teammates certified Salesforce partners have, the better they can handle all Salesforce-related responsibilities and the more reliable it grows.

Assess industry experience. If a high-rated and reliable partner has no experience in your field, you will likely encounter challenges. If you’ve found the perfect alternative and want to target a specific partner, ensure they are in a related field where functionality and procedures would be similar. 

Visit their website. Perhaps quite evidently, the partner’s website clearly represents their values, mission, and vision. A website can also include additional proof of the company’s expertise, such as white papers, blog publications, and case studies to explore. The website may provide client testimonials or offer free consultations or assessments. 

Conduct Interviews and Request Proposals

We have moved toward hiring a Salesforce implementation partner; take your shortlist and prepare for the most vital albeit time-consuming process. The interview process often affects a business owner’s perception of the potential partner and entirely changes it since direct communication fosters better understanding and transparency. 

The preparation process is relatively straightforward. We’ve compiled a list of critical steps to go through in case you need guidance: 

1. Prepare your questions. While some questions will naturally arise during your interviews, develop an overall framework of questions you will ask every Salesforce implementation consultant company. They should be relevant to the partner’s approach, technical expertise, project management style, and post-implementation support.
2. Evaluate communication. Interviews are an outstanding opportunity for you to assess the communication efficiency of your partner and see how they talk and discuss potential tasks and/or challenges in real time.
3. Request real-life examples. Ask for case studies or success stories relevant to your industry or project — we already discussed why it’s crucial above. You can inquire about positive and negative experiences to observe if they are transparent and what strengths or weaknesses the company displayed before. 
4. Understand the team structure. You’ll have an entire team collaborating with your own, so finding the right Salesforce team also means you learn about its overall structure. If a partner is outsourcing critical tasks, clarify who will be responsible for each aspect of the project. 
5. Discuss timelines and budget. This one is quite self-explanatory: all your progress depends on the terms and conditions that Salesforce implementation will take. Don’t ask for quite exact numbers since it will be nearly impossible to say within one interview. However, please inquire about the approximate timeline for the project, including the key milestones and the range of potential expenditures. 

Below are just the examples of questions you can ask. 

• How do you approach complex data migrations and ensure data accuracy?
• Can you provide case studies of projects similar to ours?
• How do you handle unforeseen challenges during implementation?
• What is your post-implementation support process?
• How do you ensure user adoption and training?
• What were your most and least successful projects? 
• If you had any problems in Salesforce implementation, have you addressed them and how?
• How are tasks assigned in your team, and how many of your team members have certifications?

Only you know your business needs. Feel free to offer specific scenarios related to your company’s experience and ask them to elaborate on how to solve them.

Why must you request a proposal from a potential Salesforce implementation partner? Simply put, it’s the most accessible and illustrative way to get a roadmap for the project with details on procedures and key progress points. You get to understand how each candidate will meet your needs and whether you should proceed with them.

Make it easier for your partner and yourself to get on the same page by following the steps below.

1. Provide detailed requirements. Be as thorough as possible, and avoid ambiguity when listing everything you need. Describe your business and needs and what you want Salesforce to do for you. 
2. Request a project plan. Ask for a detailed implementation plan with milestones, timelines, and deliverables. This will give you a proper understanding of every stage and demonstrate that the partner knows what they are doing.
3. Evaluate the proposal. After you receive the proposals and read them, you can compare the partners based on cost, timelines, and strategies. As we wrote before, don’t just go for the cheapest option — look at the balance of cost, alignment with your vision, team expertise, and plan efficiency.

Conclusion

Implementing Salesforce with a partner allows companies to boost performance, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce customer churn. Businesses that have embraced the full functionality of this CRM can minimize costly mistakes and build on their strengths.

With a partner that’s aware of their values and vision, businesses drive their success ahead. The right partner will ensure that your Salesforce meets your unique needs and is optimized for your processes.

As you continue growing, so does your Salesforce solution — and instead of worrying about its expansion, you will have the team ensuring that you and your clients have a smooth experience. This decision contributes to the long-term system efficiency, scalability, and ROI. 

If you need a flexible Salesforce solution with years in the market and end-to-end development, our team, which has more than 250 Salesforce certifications and the Salesforce Crest Consulting Partner status, can help you with that. Contact us.