Top Salesforce Consultants | 2023

Who is a Salesforce consultant? Why is it important to hire a Salesforce ecommerce consulting firm for your business?

Salesforce is a cloud-based software that provides CRM services, for marketing, support and sales teams globally. Salesforce enables businesses to capitalise on cloud technology to better connect with their customers, potential customers and partners. One of the most popular tools used worldwide by both small and big businesses, Salesforce is based on a multi-tenant architecture. This multi-tenant architecture gives the platform several benefits such as API integration, scalability, configuration, free capacity, low-cost ownership etc. With Salesforce being the most popular CRM platform on the market, the demand for experienced Salesforce consultants who can provide quality results is also on the rise.

Let us better understand what a Salesforce consultant does to understand the high demand for such consultants. Salesforce consultants implement and optimise Salesforce products in an effective and scalable way to ensure that it is in line with the client’s requirements and objectives. Salesforce consultants help businesses make the most out of their Salesforce platform. A Salesforce consultant has both strong technical knowledge of the platform and business acumen, along with excellent communication skills making them a valuable asset to any business seeking to implement the CRM platform.

What does a Salesforce consulting company do?

A Salesforce consulting company performs a variety of tasks that span across the entire lifecycle of a project. The key objectives of a Salesforce consulting company are,

• Define the objectives of the project that Salesforce is to support:
• Map and correlate the business objectives with Salesforce features:
• Choosing and recommending the right Salesforce edition for the project:
• Design appropriate sales, marketing and customer service processes in Salesforce Sales, Service and Marketing cloud
• Build a user adoption strategy

The main day to day responsibilities of a Salesforce consultant team are as follows,

• Manage client relationships
• Create and manage project plans
• Map out business processes and procedures
• Gather business requirements
• Manage the technical team
• Propose the technical requirements of the project
• Technical product configuration
• Carry out user testing and training

In a crux, an expert Salesforce Consulting company collaborates with the business to understand their operations, needs, goals and requirements and designs, develops and deploys the necessary Salesforce setup.

Difference between Salesforce consultant and Salesforce developer

A Salesforce consultant is a professional who helps an organisation implement and optimise Salesforce solutions in order to maximise the benefits a firm derives from it. They are involved for the entirety of the project right from the ideation to the user adoption stage. Their responsibilities range from defining the objectives of the project, fixing the KPIs, allocating the budget, creating the implementation plan and ensuring a seamless implementation process.

A Salesforce developer on the other hand is the programmer who builds the Salesforce applications across various SaaS platforms. The developer uses tools such as Apex and Visualforce in order to customise the platform as per the specifications and requirements of the clients.

Different Salesforce consulting services

Expert Salesforce consulting companies offer a range of consulting services for all types of Salesforce clouds such as the Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud and Analytics Cloud. The services offered by professional Salesforce consultants can be broadly classified into,

• Salesforce Implementation Consulting: The team of consultants will analyse your business, in order to identify where and how Salesforce products can be best implemented to derive the most out of it.
• Salesforce Improvement Consulting: Consultants will analyse your preexisting Salesforce solution and offer a custom plan in order to improve its functionality and performance. This will ensure that the business gets the maximum benefits from the Salesforce solution.
• Salesforce Migration Consulting: In this type of consulting, the team will ensure that your business has a smooth and seamless transition from your existing CRM platform to the Salesforce platform.  

Salesforce consultant hiring models

Top Salesforce consulting companies offer various hiring models in order to cater to varied clients with different technical and financial specifications. The most common hiring models offered by established Salesforce consulting companies are,

• Fixed Cost Project Pricing: One of the most common and preferred hiring structures is the fixed cost project pricing. In this model, the business hires the consulting company for the entirety of a project and the firm offers end to end consulting services for the same. The consulting firm will conduct a thorough discovery process and present a State of Work (SOW) which outlines the deliverables, the project timeline and the cost of the project. The cost of the project is pre-determined and bearing any changes in the requirements of the project the cost remains fixed.
• Monthly Retainer: Another popular hiring model is the monthly retainer model and is used by companies that require a consultant over a period of several months for multiple Salesforce projects. In this model, the business pays the consulting firm a fixed monthly fee for a set number of billable hours. In case the services exceed the allotted hours, the costs will increase accordingly.
• Hourly Basis: This hiring method is popular with business due to the flexibility it offers them. In this method, businesses hire consultants based on their project requirements and pay them based on the number of hours of services rendered.

The average cost of hiring a Salesforce consultant

The cost of hiring a Salesforce consultant depends on multiple factors and varies from business to business based on the project specifications. The main factors that influence the cost of hiring a Salesforce consultant are,

• Complexity of the project
• Size of the team required to handle the project
• After launch support required
• Hiring model

The average cost of hiring a Salesforce consulting firm on a project basis can range anywhere from between $ 10,000 - $ 25,000 depending on the specifications of the project. And the hourly rates of hiring a Salesforce consultant can range from $ 80 - $ 160. Factors such as the experience of the team working on the project and the location of the consultancy firm will also affect the cost.