Preparing for Success

There are many factors that influence the success of a Sales Cloud implementation. In this book, we will explore all the essentials of a typical Sales Cloud delivery project. At the beginning, there are a lot of hopes, dreams, and promises. Your implementation will be considered a success if these are delivered by the end. It is likely that some things will change and some unexpected things will come up during the course of your implementation. The aim is to stay true to the core reasons for the project’s inception. One of the key ways of staying on course is defining what success looks like at the start. Being able to revisit the shared vision means focus stays on what matters. This is the best way to realize success.

We start this chapter by exploring some of the common challenges commercial teams experience that lead to the purchase of Sales Cloud and how the tool addresses them. This will help you understand the challenges your sales stakeholders face and the capabilities you might focus on to solve them. We move on to learning the importance of ensuring your implementation and technology goals are aligned with your company strategy and values. Once Sales Cloud is implemented, you want to show that it adds value and to do this, you need a plan from the start. We also learn how user adoption plays an essential part in success, what prevents it, and how to avoid these issues from the start.

Finally, we explore how to define what is and isn’t included in an implementation by defining the project scope and how managing this keeps you on course to deliver the original vision.

All of these factors have an overall impact on implementation success. Understanding them and keeping them in mind throughout the implementation allows you to set yourself up for success.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Common sales challenges
• Alignment with company strategy and values
• The importance of adoption
• Defining the scope of your implementation