In previous articles, we shared with you how the Salesforce machine operates. We shared with you how it structures its organization and the tactics it uses to maximize its revenue from your company.In this article, we are going to dive into your single most important weapon against Salesforce in your negotiation . . . Your Salesforce Roadmap.

​What is a Salesforce Roadmap?

Simply put, a Salesforce Roadmap is nothing more than a table outlining:

• What you are going to buy
• When you are going to buy it

This sounds simple, yet most companies don’t go into a negotiation with Salesforce clear on these two points. As a result, Salesforce hijacks the conversation and creates a roadmap for them.

What you are going to buy

This question isn’t always as simple as it sounds.

Do you need Enterprise or Unlimited?

Do you even need premium support? Or would that money be better spent on a 3rd party consulting firm?

Have you run a utilization report to see how many of your licenses are actually being used?

​Is marketing actually using that instance of Pardot you purchased three years ago?

The “what you are going to buy” conversation isn’t always easy. One company we worked with ran a utilization report to find that only 63% of their licenses had even been logged into in the past year. This means they were paying for 37% more licenses than they actually needed!

Another customer realized that a large portion of his organization could get by through downgrading to a lower license level. They were only using basic features that didn’t require them to be at the Unlimited License.

It’s easy to think you know exactly what you need going into a negotiation, but sometimes you need to do a bit more digging into understanding how each department actually utilizes the tool.

When you are going to buy it

Another common tactic Salesforce uses is to tell you that you cannot roll out licenses over the course of a three-year contract. Your rep will tell you that you need to buy them all up front now if you want to get a discount.

This ironically always works out in Salesforce’s favor as the added revenue from those dormant licenses makes up for the discount one rates. The truth is you can negotiate to roll out licenses at set periods of time throughout your negotiation.

​In order to do this though, you need a clear roadmap and to create confidence with Salesforce that this is what you actually need and when you need it.

Why Is Building a Salesforce Roadmap So Important?

Before we dive into how to create this roadmap, let’s first dive into explaining why this roadmap is so important.

A roadmap is your best defense against divide and conquer

Remember the divide and conquer tactics we described in our guide on negotiating with Salesforce? We shared with you how Salesforce will make contact with multiple individuals and decision-makers throughout your organization.

Its goal with divide and conquer is to create conflicting stories which develop chaos in terms of what you actually need.

Creating your own Salesforce Roadmap helps you prevent against that.

When you create a roadmap and get buy-in from all your key stakeholders on that same roadmap, you create alignment within your organization. In addition to the roadmap, we are also going to give your internal stakeholders key talking points on what to say if Salesforce approaches them. It’s also important to know that timing is everything with regards to these key messages.

As a result of being aligned on talking points and what your organization actually needs, your organization begins to speak from one voice. Instead of having Salesforce gather conflicting stories from each department, they suddenly are left dumbfounded when they receive the same story from all contacts within the organization.

Flip-flopping your wants in the negotiation focuses the discussion on the wrong things

Whenever you don’t have your roadmap aligned, you spend your time in the negotiation with your rep going back and forth on how many licenses you need or what add-ons you do or don’t want.

Every time you go to your rep with a revision on your renewal because you and your team changed your mind, you are wasting a valuable chance to negotiate a key term or reduce your rates.

Without a roadmap, you will end up flip-flopping on what you want during the negotiation and spend your time focused on what licenses you are even going to buy instead of the price point or the terms. The entire negotiation gets focused on just figuring out what you need instead of getting you the best rates.

Your roadmap creates that clarity and alignment and lets you spend your time focused on getting you the best deal.

A lack of alignment undermines the key contact of the negotiation

Imagine for a moment that you are a Salesforce rep. You go into conversation with the Salesforce Admin who is your main point of contact in the negotiation. The Salesforce Admin request a 20% license count increase but is not interested in adding any new products or expanding their Salesforce footprint into any new departments.

Then two days later, your sales management team comes back from a basketball game with the CEO of your client organization. They tell you “we just met with the CEO, he wants to roll Salesforce out to his entire marketing department as well.”

As a Sales rep, you immediately jump to the conclusion that your Salesforce Admin is not the authority or decision-maker on this account. All respect you had for this Salesforce Admin’s decision-making ability has gone out the window.

As a result, that Sales rep treats the Salesforce Admin differently in the negotiation. He starts going around them and maximizing his divide and conquer tactics because he knows the Salesforce Admin is not in charge.

This is what happens when your organization is not aligned.

It undermines the individual who is the face of the negotiation. It doesn’t matter if it is a Salesforce Admin, CIO, or CFO.

Alignment and a roadmap gives power to the negotiator

Let us imagine another scenario for a moment here. Imagine that you are a Salesforce rep. You go into a conversation with your Salesforce Admin who is your main point of contact. The Salesforce Admin tells you they want to increase sales cloud licenses by 20% and consider a demo of Pardot in their marketing department.

Then two days later, your sales management team comes back from a basketball game with the client CEO. They tell you “we just met with the CEO, he wants to grow his licenses by 20% and is considering expanding Pardot into their marketing department.”

As a Sales Rep, you just heard consistency.
You heard that your Salesforce Admin is aligned with the CEO.
You heard that your Salesforce Admin is actually in charge of this negotiation.

When you have organizational alignment on your roadmap, it gives power to whoever is running your Salesforce Negotiation. It doesn’t matter of it is the Director of IT, CIO, or CFO. Whenever you have that alignment of stories, it gives that person in the negotiating seat power to drive the negotiation on their own.  

When to Create your Salesforce Roadmap

We typically recommend companies start building their roadmap six to nine months prior to their negotiation. You are going to want at least three months to handle the actual negotiation with Salesforce so a six month runway gives you an additional three months to get that internal alignment.

Each organization is different, but that internal alignment won’t happen overnight. Give yourself some time to meet with all key stakeholders and achieve that internal alignment.

Three Steps to Creating your Salesforce Roadmap

A Salesforce Roadmap is not complicated. It is a simple table of “what you need” and “when you need it” over the next three to five years.

Even though most Salesforce renewals are only three years, it is helpful to plan five years in advance so you can think of a bigger picture of what may be coming down the line. This helps you in creating an aligned story for Salesforce at your renewal.

Step 1) Create a rough draft alone

If you are reading this, chances are you are the one who is driving the Salesforce negotiation. You have extensive knowledge of Salesforce and can probably fill out 80% of the roadmap on your own.

The key in this step is to document all of your ideas for the roadmap on paper.

You don’t want to go to your key stakeholders with a blank slate and build the roadmap from scratch together. That is not a good use of their time, and it is going to create too much debate.

By crystallizing your thoughts about Salesforce into a rough draft of the roadmap, you can share that document with others. It becomes a starting point for the entire roadmap discussion.

Step 2) Take the rough draft to key stakeholders for feedback

This rough draft of the roadmap is purely for internal use. Once you have this rough draft complete you are going to present this document, typically in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, to your key stakeholders within the organization.

This may be your CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, VP of Sales, Director of IT, Salesforce Admin, Sales Management Team, etc.

You are going to take this roadmap to them and say “This is what I believe our 3-5 year Salesforce roadmap looks like...what feedback do you have?”

As you go into these meetings you may find yourself saying, “I have an idea here but I don’t know exactly what X department needs.” This roadmap and these conversations are meant to help you refine the roadmap and clarify those needs with each department in the organization.

What is great about this step of the process is that this allows your team to have internal dialogues about what you need with Salesforce. Without doing this internal roadmap, these contacts would not be brought into the conversation until a contact from Salesforce had reached out to them.

Instead of letting Salesforce guide these conversations, you are getting in front of them and taking charge. This helps you own and drive the conversation.

Step 3) Gather all feedback and refine your roadmap

Once you have gathered alignment from each of your key stakeholders on the roadmap, you are going to want to take some time to sit down and refine that roadmap into a final polished version.

At this point, you are almost ready for entering the negotiation. But before that we need to build a communication strategy and negotiation plan.

For those of you wondering why we keep all of our clients confidential, our Founder and Senior Partner Dan Kelly provided a few key insights as part of a recent interview. We hope you appreciate learning why this is such an important guiding principle for TNG.

Moderator: Keeping your clients confidential is a pretty bold and respectable move… Why does TNG do it?

Dan: It’s a great question and one that comes up often during initial conversations with our prospective customers. We find that customers are more curious as to the reasoning versus questioning the legitimacy.

We treat each engagement with a customer as if it were a legal proceeding. We find that our ideal customers really appreciate how sensitive we treat our collaboration with their company and their most senior stakeholders/leaders.

From a logistical standpoint, some customers reach out to us when they are trying to commercially mediate what appears to be a potential legal situation with an external vendor. 95% of the time, we can handle the situation via commercial negotiation. If the situation does require any sort of legal support or litigation, our team is ready to quickly support and collaborate with our customer’s legal team based on our strict confidentiality and document handling standards.

Moderator: Did your background in the FBI contribute to your decision on this approach?

Dan: {Laughing} Yes, I think it probably did. There were two things that I was taught immediately upon entering my FBI career: 1) Before you make any questionable decision, think about how the outcome of your decision would look on CNN the next morning and 2) Classified information is best protected on a compartmented, need-to-know basis.

While our entire team doesn’t come from an Intelligence Community background, everyone is provided training on the importance of confidentiality and the proper procedures for protecting client confidential materials. I can confidently say, without a doubt, that our customer data and processes are more secure than most multinational law firms.

Moderator: When you have prospective clients looking to speak with references, aren’t you afraid of losing potential business if you’re not willing to share your client portfolio?

Dan: You know the business owner in me honestly thinks about this a lot. From an actual data standpoint, we know that if a prospective customer chooses not to work with us, it’s primarily due to cost and not caused from the lack of reference calls.

Another fact that we’ve proven over the years is that 3 out of 4 clients request repeat or ongoing support, so any lost opportunity from this topic is naturally superseded with our repeat customer business. That’s how I would prefer it anyway, as taking on a new customer brings its own inherent risks… it’s a two-way street.

Moderator: How do you make clients feel comfortable working with you if they aren’t able to speak with references?

Dan: My answer on this is simple: Everyone has friends. Do you honestly think any salesperson, no matter what industry, is going to refer you to a client that has had a sub-optimal experience? I am a Strategic Sourcing Expert, and so is the rest of the Service Delivery Team. When we worked for large companies, we often were told to ask for references. However, whenever we received reference contact information, we rarely called them to validate. This reference gathering process is an old school purchasing process for process sake, and we find our best customers find more trust in the fact that we were ranked as the 2nd fastest growing company in Minnesota by Inc Magazine.

Moderator: What are some other benefits that might not be apparently obvious of keeping clients confidential?

Dan: Excellent question... This is a passionate topic of mine of which I could honestly discuss for an hour. In the interest of brevity, a few of the top benefits include:

Ease of Contracting – No Publication

Most of our clients are very large multinational organizations. The Marketing and Legal departments inside of these companies are naturally very protective and risk adverse (for good reason) of their name brand, logo, etc. Since our customer contracts don’t include any language regarding “publication,” it eliminates unnecessary administrative burden, and legal review cycles, on both sides of the transaction.

TNG Client Protection

Most of our clients request that TNG be a covert silent advisor in the background (instead of an overt legal agent of the company). This means that the supplier in which our customer is negotiating with should never have knowledge of our involvement. By keeping all clients confidential, we eliminate any risk of the supplier later discovering our involvement.

Deter Sales Snooping

Without going into too much detail here, just know that large software companies have an incredible amount of financial resources. They employ individuals to be assigned, or even sit in, your organization to learn everything there is to know about your company in the interest of upselling their products and services. This also includes learning as much as they can about what companies are using external advisors to benchmark rates, processes, etc.

​We commonly get the question: “What are the most common mistakes and/or things to avoid when negotiating a Salesforce Agreement?” So much actually that we thought it made sense to write a short article for all to consume.

​A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is commonly within the top 5 expenses within every CIO’s annual budget. The day-to-day operations of business serve as a natural distraction for all of us and, if you don’t negotiate contracts all day long, it’s near impossible to know all the information you need in order to successful prepare and execute a negotiation strategy. Negotiating a Salesforce contract is tricky and can be extremely complex. Don’t underestimate the time, effort, or expertise you’ll need, or you’ll quickly lose control of the entire deal.

Here are the 7 most common mistakes we find CIOs and IT Management Teams make when negotiating their Salesforce agreement:

1. Failing to prepare

‍While this may not come as a surprise, the single most common mistake is failing to allocate enough time, resources, and expertise to properly prepare for the negotiation.

Ask yourself this: Would you ever go to a car dealership and take the first car they offer without first doing your research on price, warranty, etc.?

As a CIO or IT management team, you should not make assumptions or rush through the process of finding and/or negotiating your CRM platform. No matter whether you are searching for a new CRM platform or simply renewing your existing agreement, make sure you take time to understand the business and digital capabilities you are looking to acquire and/or augment. Take time to conduct interviews across the organization and create a business canvas of those needs to create a simple viewpoint of the wants and needs of the entire organization.

We advise our clients to start 6 months prior to any anticipated contract execution date.

2. Failure to look at the bigger picture

We find CIOs, IT Management Teams, and Salesforce administrators are great at thinking about the relatively short-term needs of their organization but commonly forget to keep the big picture in mind. As with any strategic supplier relationship, you need to think about how the pricing, requirements, and relationship with Salesforce will look over the next 3-5 years. Instead of looking at the short term, think strategically about your organization's goals and the relationship you want to build. You need to approach your CRM vendor with a long term mindset. Look at how their services will be beneficial to your organizations in terms of growth and transformation. Make sure you prepare a compelling forward-looking strategy that is deliberate in identifying how the Salesforce relationship will benefit your business. It’s equally as important to understand how Salesforce views its relationship with you. Only after both sides understand the current state of each organization can it build a plan forward.

3. Focusing too much on price

Our clients are almost always surprised when we say this statement. While price is ultimately very important in any commercial agreement, it’s equally as important to validate that you have the proper products and services for your organization.

“Right Size for the Right Price” – Dan Kelly, The Negotiator Guru

If you’re a new customer, make sure you’re not overbuying at the start…remember, adoption always proves to be slower than you will anticipate when introducing a new CRM platform.

Subsequently, it’s all too common for the sales team to overweight your 1st year agreement as they are solely focused on capturing as much revenue as possible from your account.

If you’re an existing customer, conduct an internal audit of your products and services that are currently part of your Salesforce ecosystem. Make sure not only these products and services are being used (the easy part) but also that they’re being used appropriately. Very often we’ll find opportunities for our clients to downgrade while still achieving the same business functionality required.

4. Not considering all your options

It’s important to keep a pulse on the marketplace…there are multiple CRM platforms out there and while Salesforce is the industry leader they may not be the best fit for you.

Subsequently, if you are a current Salesforce user then it’s equally as important to conduct a deep dive assessment on how other peers in your industry are using Salesforce. A properly run CRM platform should not only optimize the sales process but also drive efficiencies in back office operations, etc. If you identify (and you most likely will) new areas where Salesforce can assist your business, carefully bring this up as an opportunity during the negotiation process. Again, we urge the word “carefully.”

5. Not developing Executive Level relationships

As written in previous articles, Salesforce has set-up its very own incredibly effective sales machine. While we won’t reiterate the previously written articles it’s important to call out that most Salesforce customers underestimate the importance of developing and engaging VP level and higher relationships at Salesforce. Only these levels have decision making authority on your account. If these individuals are on your side, and understand your story, you’ll be far more successful in your negotiation.

6. Failure to create a strategic internal communication plan (as part of your negotiation strategy)

Almost everyone fails at developing a bulletproof internal communication plan. While the saying “speak from one voice” is widely used and understood in negotiations, it’s not enough to simply rely on human beings to say exactly the same thing at the same time. Instead, we advise our clients to develop a communication plan that provides key talking points for different levels of the organization. These talking points all align to the same objective but are developing in a way that reinforce message authenticity for that specific stakeholder.

7. Neglecting to include your C-Level Executives in the negotiation

Related to the previous point, we find that the majority of organizations we advise have historically tried to limit and/or eliminate any C-Level interaction with Salesforce. This is naturally understandable (based on common thinking) but actually a serious mistake.

Salesforce takes great pride in, and places great importance on, developing relationships directly with their customer’s executive team.

We advise clients not to fight this point but leverage it. We admit that we used to get this point wrong ourselves. We used to ensure the C-Suite knew not to say anything and only redirect messages to a single point of contact. The big problem with this is that the c-suite really likes to talk! Instead of fighting this natural instinct (and skillset) we advise our clients to leverage it by creating a C-Suite communication and engagement plan that empowers the negotiation plan.