Your Executives Are Killing Your Salesforce.com

There are few variables in any successful Salesforce.com implementation and adoption more important than your Executive sponsor. There use to be a saying--"As General Motors goes, so does the country." In a corporate setting, "As your Executives go, so does the company." I can tell you that I have implemented for and worked in dozens of Salesforce orgs for different companies and with every one, I could predict the long term system's health by the attitudes of the companies executives towards Salesforce.com.

I have seen Executives interviewed about multi-thousand user Salesforce orgs at Dreamforce and I know for a fact that they have never logged in to the system once. And don't give me the Executives are too busy crap--a properly built Salesforce.com system should be the heartbeat of your company's past success, present opportunity and future business growth. And the Executive who believes they are above logging into the system to put their finger on the pulse of progress in their own company should be removed with metaphorical torches, tar and feathers.

No one is above logging in to Salesforce and Executives, above all, have a moral and fiscal responsibility to shepherd their investment in the cloud, to understand the processes built in, the KPI metrics that come out, and the future direction the system must take in order to meet those challenges that will drive new business into the corporate coffers.

Photo by girlwithtrowel