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The best protection against a poor implementation is a good conversation before the contract is signed. Specialists and resellers can look similar on a website, but their answers to practical questions differ sharply. A specialist describes how they will deliver; a reseller mostly describes what the product can do. The questions below help you hear that difference.
Questions About Approach and Scope
| Question to Ask | What a Good Answer Sounds Like |
|---|---|
| How do you run discovery? | Describes workshops, stakeholder interviews and documented outputs before any build begins |
| What exactly is included in the scope, and what is not? | Lists deliverables, assumptions and exclusions clearly, and explains how changes are handled |
| How will you keep the design simple enough for us to maintain? | Talks about standard features first, with custom work only where it earns its place |
| How do you prioritise what goes live first? | Proposes phases based on business value and risk |
| What do you need from our team, and how much time? | Names roles, expected hours and decision points honestly |
Questions About the Team
- Who will actually work on our project, and what are their certifications?
- Who is the single accountable lead, and how often will we speak with them?
- How much of the work is done by your own staff rather than subcontractors?
- What happens if a key person leaves mid-project?
Good answers name people and roles. If the reply is general and the team is described only as “our experts”, ask for profiles before moving forward.
Questions About Delivery Quality
- How do you handle data migration, cleansing and validation?
- What testing do you perform before go-live, and who signs it off?
- How do you manage integrations with our other systems?
- How do you document the system so that we are not dependent on you?
- What does your release and deployment process look like?
Questions About Adoption and Change Management
A system that is built well but not used is still a failed project. Ask how the partner plans for training, communication and user feedback, and how it measures adoption after launch. Strong partners talk about role-based training, internal champions and early usage reviews. Weak ones describe a single training session at the end of the project.
Questions About Proof and References
- Can we speak with clients who had a comparable project?
- Can you share a sample project plan, status report and handover document?
- What went wrong on a past project, and what did you change afterwards?
That last question is revealing. Specialists are comfortable discussing problems and lessons learned. Resellers tend to describe only successes.
Questions About Pricing and Support
- How is the price built, and what are the main cost drivers?
- How do change requests work, and how are they priced?
- Are licences, environments and third-party tools included or separate?
- What support is included after go-live, and for how long?
- How do we move into ongoing administration or development if we need it?
Using the Answers
Record each answer and score it for specificity. The more a partner can show through examples, documents and named people, the more likely they are to deliver. Pricing pressure is easier to manage once you understand scope, so you may also want to read about what drives Salesforce implementation cost. Folio3’s Salesforce implementation team welcomes these questions, and ongoing help is available through managed services after launch.
People Also Ask
- How do you vet a Salesforce consulting partner?
- How can you tell a Salesforce specialist from a reseller?
- What should a Salesforce implementation proposal include?
- What references should you ask a Salesforce partner for?
- What questions should I ask a Salesforce implementation partner before signing, so I can tell the real specialists from the resellers?
Take this list into your next vendor call, then see how Folio3 answers them in its Salesforce implementation approach.
