Cotswolds Salesforce Community: Salesforce success strategies

It was an absolute pleasure to host the Cotswolds Salesforce Community Group in September for the Salesforce Ohana. Located at The Workplace in Cheltenham, it was excellent to welcome so many members in person and not forgetting those who joined online.

This week we’re revisiting the final session delivered by Penny Townsend which focused on how and why Salesforce builds sometimes go wrong and what to look out for to predict how this might happen and what actions to take to prevent it.

Positive Partner & Global Lead at IBM

We were thrilled to have Penny Townsend join us in person all the way from London. With 12 Salesforce certifications and superior leadership skills to share, it was interesting to learn more about essential soft skills to use in the Salesforce environment for project success.

When Salesforce goes wrong

Sometimes a project can go like a dream and other times not. Penny explained common Salesforce project faux-pas – particularly the “I hate Salesforce gap” when there has been a separation of process from system. Penny shared some useful tips on how to manage projects effectively and prevent things going wrong with implementations.

Salesforce success strategies

It was insightful to discover how and why Salesforce builds sometimes go wrong and there were some great pointers as to what to look out for to predict any ‘I hate Salesforce gaps’ and the potential solutions to take. These included three useful steps:

• Prevent: Provide governance, communication and direction.
• Predict: Understand the root causes, and be task oriented.
• Resolve: Engage decision makers with clear options.

Another great tip from Penny suggested to keep the focus on good business processes rather than technology. Particularly not on business outputs and avoid trying to use Salesforce to push users into different behaviours.

Salesforce slumps can be further warded off by utilising effective questioning skills to really delve into the depths of the challenges faced to provide a positive solution. Questioning is a system or methodology rather than a tool and it can provide a state of mind rather than a use of language. To avoid any project mishaps, the questions stage should be a state of exploration, truth seeking rather than a definition of now or never absolutes.

Penny also described how important it is to not only question but listen to the actual responses. So although as tempting as it may be to hear the “yes”, ignoring the looks, body language and other hints that go with it can lead to big misunderstandings.

Instead, Penny suggested using dialogue such as “That’s great, but I sense some hesitation. Are there some issues we still need to work through?” or “Thanks for your support, please can you validate that by taking responsibility for a, b and c?”

A key takeaway from Penny’s session is that a successful Salesforce implementation needs to follow human psychology. After all, organisations are a collection of people and each person will have their own thoughts and feelings on what can be considered a huge transition in the company’s life.

See you in December 2022!

We hope to see you all again for the final Cotswolds Community Group of 2022. Taking place on Thursday 1st December, the event will once again be a hybrid occasion at The Workplace in Cheltenham. 

We’ve already sealed the deal with some inspiring speakers in the Salesforce ecosystem, plus we’ve scored a wonderful sponsor! ProvenWorks are a team of award-winning app developers specialising in Salesforce CRM functionalities. They will be sponsoring the delicious eastern style feast we have planned from a local cafe too.

Stay updated on the Trailblazer platform for regular updates and please join our Chatter Group too!