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1. Selecting the Right
Salesforce.com Consulting Partner
Finding the right Salesforce.com consulting partner can be a daunting task. The suc-
cess of your Salesforce.com implementation largely relies on your partner’s understand-
ing of your organizational needs and their ability to seamlessly integrate Salesforce within
your enterprise IT infrastructure. There are umpteen service providers in this area who
come from diverse backgrounds, have novel focus areas and offer robust frameworks,
which can enable them to approach and address your business challenges in a unique
manner. This whitepaper recommends a structured methodology to catalogue and evalu-
ate Salesforce consulting partners based on proven methods that have benefited a lot of
your industry peers.
US Tel: (408) 954.8700 | US Toll Free Number: (844) 409.0510
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© Bodhtree Consulting Ltd. All rights reserved

2. US Tel: (408) 954.8700 | US Toll Free Number: (844) 409.0510 | India Tel: +91.40.6622.2333
Business@Bodhtree.com | www.Bodhtree.com © Bodhtree Consulting Ltd. All rights reserved
Homework and ground work
Be an intelligent and knowledgeable buyer. You would be witnessing a
structure with stupendous proficiencies, competencies, which might already be
gift wrapped and tailored exactly for your business needs. While this can be an
overwhelming process, the demos and whitepapers published on the provider’s
website can easily help you evaluate the experience and competencies of the
service provider. Technology cognizance is a must and if you are sort of not up to
date, feel free to work with industry analysts and intermediaries who could help
you connect the dotted lines and can expedite the turnaround time in terms of
finding the right partner.
More than just the world’s #1 CRM tool, Salesforce is an operational platform that
could potentially transform the way you run your business. But more often than
not, the dividends it offers are not reaped to the fullest possible extent. When
you’ve decided that Salesforce is the right CRM for your organization, the next
step is to find the best consulting partner who has the potential to address your
business needs with an impeccable, unwavering, rock solid and best in class
solution. The upcoming sections illustrate a few best practices to be considered
that can simplify the process and ensure that you select the best partner.
1. Shortlist the partners
Schedule conversations with 1or2 part-
ners based on the feasibility study done
backed by your ground work as suggested
in the prelude. Block your calendar to meet
them in person do discuss your business
needs in person. If you are working with a
Salesforce Account Executive, he or she can
provide you with some recommendations.
If not, the AppExchange is a great means
for finding consulting partners.
Last but not least, don’t forget about the
partner’s own website! You can find a lot of
information there, such as services offered,
awards, clients and testimonials. You can
also know if the partner has a regularly up-
dated blog, provide trainings and webinars
and publish whitepapers. This is a great
way to gauge the partner’s expertise in the
field.
Engaging your COE professionals to assess
the technical dimension of the partner
capability would give you a holistic picture
into their capabilities and the extent to
which they would be able to serve your
business needs.
2. Get to know each other
Once you’ve selected a few partners to
speak with, your personal engagement with
them would be the perfect opportunity
to know about each other. The partner’s
mission and values and most importantly
the concurrence on the business principles
should align with yours, they should have
professional, ethical and moral practices.
The conversation could be spun along the
following lines:
1. Their work experience in Sales force
2. Kind of engagements they have been in
and their details
3. Different types of organizations they
have worked with
4. Different types of methodologies the
firm has followed in remediating the
complex business problems
5. Similar implementations that they had
worked upon earlier
6. Accelerators, ready to use plug ins
which would help reduce project
timelines & cost
7. Their appetite to understand and im-
plement new trends
8. Their post implementation support
policies
9. The level of interest shown in trying to
cater to your needs
10. Emphasizing on the partnering,
technical nuances without ignoring the
relationship part of the deal
Bearing all these things in mind would help
you identifying a partner perfectly suited for
your business needs.
3. Evaluate the proposal
Sometime after your call, you should re-
ceive a project estimate. If the partner you
contacted listened and understood your
case well, the estimate should reflect your
project objectives. It should also detail your
stated budget, timeline, and functionality
requirements. If something is not possible
because of these constraints, the part-
ner should be able to communicate that,
set of realistic expectations, and suggest
alternative solutions or should be think-
ing in terms of moving certain pieces to a
later phase. You can very well assess the
partner based on the types of questions
he asks, generally they would inquire into
the business needs as they must have
witnessed similar engagements and must
have sailed through the problems with
flying colors. You can feel their experience.
On the flip side of the coin there would be
some service providers who just listen to
what you tell them and send out a quote
without asking any extra questions. With
hundreds of implementation partners out
there, finding one that is right for you can
be a daunting task. Don’t lose sight of your
organization’s goals and constraints, follow
these guidelines, and you’ll be on your way
to find THE one!

3. US Tel: (408) 954.8700 | US Toll Free Number: (844) 409.0510 | India Tel: +91.40.6622.2333
Business@Bodhtree.com | www.Bodhtree.com © Bodhtree Consulting Ltd. All rights reserved
4. Client reviews
The best way to foresee how your project
will turn out is by looking at a consultant’s
track record. Your consultant should give
you a feel that he is a specialist in this
particular technical arena; he should have
innumerable positive reviews with minimal
negative reviews and the best case being
no negative reviews at all.
The reviews should be analyzed from a
qualitative and quantitative aspect. A trend
analysis out of the reviews provided would
give you an absolute gut feel about the
strengths and possible weaknesses of the
partner. The track record should be
progressive and the partner should
preferably be a firm which is currently at the
peak. Partner with a strong history and a
weak recent past would not help.
5. Diversity of clients dealt with
After analyzing on the client reviews it’s
important to look at the diversified
experience of Salesforce consultants with
varied clients. The more experience a
Salesforce consultant has with diverse
clients in different fields, the more expertise
they will have in addressing your needs.
Because every organization is different,
each project will bring new experiences and
learnings. This expertise enables your
consulting partner to develop effective,
customized solution for your organization.
If you’re a small business you need a
consulting partner who not only
understands your needs and requirements
but also has the required resources who
gained knowledge by working with larger
organizations. The same applies to profit /
non-profit and consulting businesses too.
6. Certifications
Once you are assured about the diversified
experience of the Salesforce consultants an-
other important aspect to look for is about
the number of certifications your consulting
partner has. Considering for a partner with
a multiple range of client types, you should
also look for a partner whose employees
hold multiple certifications.
7. Longevity
Projects don’t always complete in a precise
way after launch and training. Post imple-
mentation issues can pop up at any time.
You may also have new projects coming up.
A good consultant should be accessible to
you even after the project is completed. It
is recommended that you should have an
element of support or follow-up mentioned
in the proposal or contact. It is important to
set the expectation that you need to create
the right Salesforce support team in order
to see long term value. An AMC/AMS could
also be considered to overcome this issue
in the long term.
Conclusion
The essential ingredients of choosing a good Salesforce partner are pretty simple as long as they are religiously followed. While
the technical expertise, diversity of the projects handled, excellent track record, the demos on the website, contractual terms,
post production support, quality of the staff engaged, organizational hierarchy (on the partner side), escalation mechanisms
and the respect given to the customer irrespective of the size and scale of the engagement are pretty important. The basic
engagement ethics, willingness to nurture the relationship, flexibility and the inclination to serve the customer during tough
times are the building blocks for engaging the right Salesforce partner.
Bodhtree having performed more than 150 successful Salesforce.com implementations, knows how to quickly align the system
with the unique goals and processes of your organization. Additionally, Bodhtree’s expertise in Force.com development ena-
bles you to customize the platform to suit your organization’s changing business needs.