Imagine this: you have just completed a Salesforce Marketing Cloud implementation. The hard work is done, the champagne glasses have been raised, and you cannot wait to start making the most of your new set-up. But, something is just not quite right. Things are moving slowly, not many of the marketing goals are being met. Turns out that the implementation, no matter how picture-perfect, simply was not aligned with the operational team you have at hand.
This is a situation you for sure want to avoid – after all, budget pressures have never been higher. But the process of optimizing your Salesforce team is not a simple one. What is the best way to utilize your resources? When to seek external help?
LeverUP is here to help. As a Salesforce consulting firm, we have helped many of our clients with improvements and team optimization, sometimes even jumping into ongoing projects – so now we have quite a few pieces of advice up our sleeve. In this blog post, we will discuss some anti-patterns that may prevent you from making the most of your Salesforce team, how to choose the people with the right skills and the right team model to help you make it through the transition phase, and, finally, when to look for help from a Salesforce support partner.
Anti-patterns in a Salesforce Team
There are a few common anti-patterns that Salesforce teams may fall into. Although perfectly normal, they are important to know and to recognize, as they can hinder your team from reaching its full potential.
Campaign as Project
Your team launches perfect, complex campaigns, but the efficiency is questionable. The launch cycle is quite lengthy, and despite the many interactions between the content and data teams, there are no reusable content blocks. All campaigns are started from scratch, and there are no reusable solutions.
MarTech as IT’s Job
Salesforce Marketing Cloud operations are often thought of as something that belongs to the IT team exclusively, with marketing teams finding themselves incapable of launching campaigns on their own. As a result of this, the efficiency of the team is reduced.
Data Trading
The teams that own the data in a company are often positioned as external to marketing, leading to the data accumulating without a purpose as its activation becomes more challenging.
The Hero Trap
Even when multiple team members are helping out with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, it is often just one person that is thought of as the expert, the unicorn of the team. This person is responsible for everything – launching and stopping journeys, making changes, dealing with any customer-facing issues – so when they call in sick or go on vacation, the entire process must be put on hold. Even if a replacement is found, it may still take them a while to learn all the details of the campaign they are now responsible for.
Outsourced Memory
Salesforce teams tend to over-rely on the help of external teams such as Salesforce consultancies due to a lack of knowledge on how to manage campaigns. The continuity of the campaigns may thus be impacted by a change of consultancies, or by insufficiently long consultation appointments. Outsourced memory can easily become expensive, too, as consultancies raise their rates. With the right team structure and skillset, these anti-patterns can be overcome. Keep reading to find out how to utilize the skills of your team to their full potential.
Skills over Headcount
A common mistake we notice in businesses adopting Salesforce Marketing Cloud is burning through their LinkedIn budgets trying to recruit individuals with unicorn skillsets to fill their Salesforce teams: those who know how everything works, from marketing strategy to AMP script. The truth is that it is very difficult to find even one such unicorn, let alone five. That is why, when assembling your Salesforce team, you must think in skills rather than headcount. Start by listing all skills necessary for a project to be completed, and evaluate which of your existing team members already have these skills, and which need to be compensated by training, new hires, or external help.
To know what skills to look for, you must first understand what the responsibilities of your internal Salesforce team are.
Bridging Marketing Strategy and the Tool
Your team’s job must not turn into checking off technical boxes. They must be aware that every journey they launch is part of a bigger picture, and know what the KPIs and the important metrics are. In short, they must be educated on the intended business results behind the project.
Aligning Marketing and SFMC Teams
Similarly, if your Salesforce team is separate from the digital marketing one, it is important that the two teams are able to collaborate from the get-go. The digital marketing team must understand at least the basics of Salesforce Marketing Cloud in order to make it an integral part of their strategy. It is normal that the digital marketing team may need to be educated on Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but this education must happen in the very beginning of the project.
Closing the Gap between Revenue Operations, Customer Support and Data
Your Salesforce Marketing Cloud will receive a lot of input from customers, such as survey responses or outcomes of support tickets. Your team must make sure that this data does not exist in a separate stream, but is instead integrated into the customer engagement strategy. Listing the skills needed to bridge all these gaps may be a confusing and long process.
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that a Salesforce team needs an even split of professionals with business and technical skills. That way, the team will have a solid grasp of how Salesforce Marketing Cloud functions, and how it relates to wider business objectives. Once you have a Salesforce team whose members balance out each other’s skills, you will be ready to tackle the trickiest phase of every implementation: the transition.
Preparing for the Transition Phase
Although the go-live may seem like the happy end of every implementation, it is actually only the beginning. In fact, the phase of transition from the go-live to business-as-usual may be the most challenging one, which is why it is important to strategically prepare for it in advance. First of all, be a true partner to your Salesforce support partner, not just a recipient. Discuss and plan the handover process proactively and in detail – its structure, timeline, the further migration. Assess your capacities realistically, and bring up any doubts to your partner.
Make sure to choose the lead of your team carefully, as they will play a key role in the adoption process, becoming a go-to person for the rest of the team once your collaboration with your external partner comes to an end. Finally – and, perhaps, most importantly – shape the idea of your internal team as early as the solution design phase. This is incredibly important as each Salesforce Marketing Cloud setup and every organization requires a team of different size and structure.
These are some common models that work for Salesforce teams:
Embedded
This is a leaner set-up, suitable for smaller organizations with up to two brands and business units. The Salesforce team comprises one or two professionals that are part of the marketing team, and is therefore embedded into marketing operations. Although these professionals will mostly be taking care of technical tasks, they need to have solid business knowledge in order to understand the bigger picture.
Centralized
Seen in medium-sized organizations with three to five brands, this Salesforce team is independent from marketing, and is often referred to as the “CRM team”. It is bigger than the embedded model, allowing for a larger diversity of products and brands. We recommend splitting this team into two tracks – one focused on the technical side, and the other on business.
Center of Excellence
This structure works best for large multi-region, multi-brand businesses, and it is characterized by a smaller team – usually called the “center of excellence” – guiding the Salesforce and marketing teams across regions. It does little to no hands-on work with SFMC; instead, it is responsible for setting and enforcing standards, building assets, introducing novelties and auditing operations of satellite teams.
It is important to note that, even with these team structures, it is important to keep track of the team members’ skills and encourage them to collaborate and improve in order to avoid falling into one of the anti-patterns.
When to Seek a Salesforce Support Partner
After carefully assessing your team’s skills and capabilities and picking the right team model, you may notice that there is a gap that needs to be filled, or that your Salesforce team could use a little bit of advice. In that case, it is reasonable to augment your team with help from a Salesforce consulting firm. There are three main types of external support, and which one you choose depends on the needs and size of your team.
Advisory support: For advice on particular issues or training of new, less experienced team members, you can arrange how-to sessions with a Salesforce consultancy. Search for offers at a flat price, such as LeverUP’s CXM Compass.
Temporary backup: An external employee can temporarily act as a full-time member of your Salesforce team, for instance in the case of parental leaves, sudden employment terminations, or at any other time when an extra pair of hands is needed.
Cooperation with the center of excellence: Your external partner can support the center of excellence with building and maintaining level one support for local teams, solving urgent or complex problems, or simply offering an outside perspective on their standards.
Summary
Optimizing your Salesforce team may seem like a daunting task, but it is an incredibly important one, as the success of your Salesforce Marketing Cloud projects depends on it entirely. A strong team ensures that all business objectives are met in a cost-effective way while withstanding challenging phases such as the transition, and is less likely to fall into harmful anti-patterns.
Start with planning your team early on. Focus on the skills you already have in your organization, and assemble your team in a way that allows its members to fill in the gaps in each others’ skills and knowledge, rather than searching for professionals with unrealistically perfect skillsets. Ensure that there is an even blend of people with technical and business skills. Then, choose a team model that best fits the size of your organization – embedded, centralized, or center of excellence. If you notice that some skills or knowledge are still missing, or that you need a little bit of extra advice or support, don’t hesitate to look for external help.
Are you still unsure where to start, or do you have any further questions? Get in touch with us.
