Making the Most of Your First Salesforce Implementation

Summary

This blog shares practical advice for businesses starting their first Salesforce implementation. It covers what to expect, how to prepare your team, and the key steps that lead to long-term success, beyond just launching the platform.

Key Takeaways

• Your first Salesforce implementation should focus on solving real business problems, not just configuring software.

• Engage your team early and define what success looks like before kicking off.

• Long-term success depends on ownership, adoption, and continuous improvement after go-live."

Introduction

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to guide many organisations through their first Salesforce implementation. Every business is different, but some lessons tend to show up again and again, regardless of sector, size, or goals.

What follows is a collection of those lessons. If you’re about to start your Salesforce journey, this is the advice I give every client to help them maximise value, stay within budget, and build something that people will actually want to use.

Start With Your “Why”

It sounds simple, but it’s not always easy: Why do you want Salesforce in the first place? If you can’t explain this clearly, chances are the project will become expensive, unfocused, or both.

Understanding your “why” gives you direction. It helps you decide what’s essential, what’s nice to have, and what can wait. More importantly, it ensures everyone, your internal team, your Salesforce Account Executive, and any potential implementation partners, is working toward the same goal.

If you’ve got multiple teams who want in on the action (sales, service, marketing, etc.), sit down early and prioritise. Not everything needs to happen at once, and getting that clarity upfront helps everyone plan—licences, timelines, rollouts—more accurately.

Talk to More Than One Implementation Partner

Your implementation partner will shape your Salesforce experience as much—if not more—than the technology itself. So choose carefully.

Salesforce Account Executives are a great place to start. They usually have a shortlist of trusted partners who’ve proven themselves. You can also look on the Salesforce AppExchange, where you’ll find all certified partners listed with their areas of expertise and client reviews.

But don’t stop there.

Ask for case studies and references. Look for partners who’ve worked in your sector, or at least with organisations of a similar structure or scale. And when you meet them, pay attention not just to what they say, but how they listen. The best partners will be more interested in understanding your business than pitching theirs.

If possible, ask for a short demo of a generic use case that resembles your needs. It won’t be polished, and it shouldn’t be. But it’ll give you a feel for how they think and how they work.

Be Thoughtful About What You Actually Need From Salesforce (and What You Don’t)

Salesforce is incredibly powerful, and it’s easy to get swept up in everything it could do. But more features don’t always mean more value. Sometimes they just mean more complexity, more cost, and more confusion.

This is where a good implementation partner can be your best friend. Before you agree to anything, especially when it comes to licences, features, and extras, talk through your actual requirements with them.

A few things I often see over-sold

• Premium Support: This gives you access to quicker, more technical help from Salesforce’s own team. It can be worth it in certain cases. But if you’re planning to have an implementation partner support you post-launch (which many do), they’ll often be your first line of support anyway. Paying for both can be redundant.

• Industry-Specific Clouds: These packages are excellent for the right use case. I’m a huge advocate for solutions like Nonprofit Cloud, and I’ve built a large part of my career around it. But sometimes, a more standard license like Sales Cloud or Service Cloud will do the job just as well, especially early on. Don’t assume the “sector match” makes it the right fit, talk it through.

• Sandboxes: These are testing environments your implementation partner will need to build and trial features before anything goes live. But not all sandboxes are created equal, and not all are needed for a first-phase rollout. Check with your partner what kind (and how many) they require so you’re not buying more than you’ll use.

  
  

In short: aim for what you need today, not what you might need in 18 months. You can always scale later, Salesforce is designed for that. But scaling back is harder, both logistically and contractually.

Take a “Crawl, Walk, Run” Approach

When you first open Salesforce, it’s a bit like getting the keys to a new house with ten rooms you didn’t know you had. The temptation is to renovate everything at once. Don’t. Start with the basics. Get them working properly. Let your team build confidence. Then move to the next layer.

This phased approach, crawl, walk, run, works because it respects how people adapt to change. You wouldn’t expect a toddler to leap from crawling to sprinting, and your users shouldn’t be asked to either.

Another analogy I often share: when you move into a new home, you don’t immediately knock down walls or build an extension. You live in the space, see how it functions, then make decisions. Salesforce works the same way.

By rolling out in stages, you reduce risk, increase user adoption, and keep things flexible. It’s not the fastest way on paper, but it’s almost always the fastest way in practice.

Align Internally Before the First Discovery Workshop

Here’s a common scenario: a partner shows up to run a discovery session, and the client team spends the first hour debating how their own processes actually work. It happens more than you’d think, and it’s avoidable.

Before your first workshop, get aligned internally on how you operate today and where you’d like to improve. Document your processes (even if roughly), agree on the core flows, like lead-to-sale or case resolution, and make decisions in advance wherever possible. This saves time and money, and gives your partner the clarity they need to design the right solution from day one.

Assign Clear Roles—and Empower Internal Champions

Every implementation project needs a few clear roles:

• Someone to own the vision (usually an executive sponsor)

• Someone to manage the day-to-day (project lead)

• Someone to speak for the users (process owner)

• And someone to keep the energy up (your internal Salesforce champion)

That last one is often overlooked—but it can make all the difference.

Champions are your in-house advocates. They get excited about the new system, encourage others, and help bring people along the journey. They’re the ones answering quick questions, sharing tips, and showing what’s possible. They create momentum. For what it’s worth, that’s how I started in Salesforce myself. I was the internal champion at my organisation. So trust me: this role can be more powerful than it first appears.

Final Thoughts

Implementing Salesforce for the first time is a big step. It’s exciting, but it can also feel overwhelming. The good news? You don’t need to do everything at once, and you don’t have to do it alone.

If you can be clear on your goals, find a partner who understands your business, and roll out with care, you’ll set yourself up for long-term success, not just a short-term launch.

And if you’re looking for someone to help guide the process, I’d be happy to chat. I’ve helped many teams navigate their first implementation, calmly, confidently, and with a focus on what matters most.