Planning to Hire a Salesforce Nonprofit Consultant? Here’s What you Need to Know

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Planning to Hire a Salesforce Nonprofit
Consultant? Heres What you Need to Know
Why would you need a strategy to hire a
consultant, right? Like go on an XYZ review
website and hire the best one? Simple? No? Of
course, not.
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Hiring a consultant, especially a consultant for
Salesforce NPSP can be tricky. Finding is easy,
choosing is hard. Well, choosing the right one
is. So, you definitely need some heads up as to
how to hire a salesforce nonprofit
consultant. In this article, we are going to talk
about 8 things that might seem obvious but are
definitely difficult to execute as well as
remember while actually conducting the process of
hiring a salesforce nonprofit consultant. Lets
start. Create a budget Salesforce consultants
come at a heavy price. Before hiring you have to
ask a few questions to yourself. How much does
your company need one and how much of the budget
can you spend on it to get optimal ROI. Things
that this budget will need to cover Salesforce
NPSP deployment costs, third party software for
integration as well as consultation charges. You
cannot go into such an expense lightly. Think it
through and plan it out.
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What will your Salesforce consultant do for your
organization? Now that we have a clear idea about
the budget, lets talk vision and impact. You
are an NGO and you definitely have your ethics
and morals with which you operate. So, you need
to be upfront about that while talking to
potential consultants. Tell them about your
vision, your operations, and what you are trying
to accomplish with your NGO. And more
importantly, ask questions. About their
operations, ethics, morals, and how they work in
general. Try and understand what kind of
skillset and people will they be bringing to this
deal What can they do for your organization that
a random consultant or a consultancy firm
cant? Try and analyze their uniqueness,
understand their technology stack, their
expertise in the said task, their execution
excellence. Check the portfolios of the
Salesforce consultants With any kind of hiring
comes a background check. Whether you hire
freelancers or a Salesforce consulting company,
look into their portfolios. How many companies
have they
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worked with? What was the scale of these
projects? This is especially important since you
are a non profit. If your consultant is used to
working only with for-profit companies, their
work might not align with yours. So, find a
consultant that has experience and expertise
working with nonprofits. Create a shortlist with
pros and cons
By this step, you would have already made a
mental list of the consultants with the most
impressive work and people. So, why not make it
official?
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Simply create a Google Sheet and add the names of
the consultants or consultancy firms that stood
out to you, add their work, their contact
details, work experience, pros, cons, skills,
recommendations, etc. This will give you an
overview of the potential consultants you are
rapping. Moreover, you can also create a grading
system for the same so as to keep all the
stakeholders on the same page which makes the
future communication smoother. Pro Tip Add a
remarks column to add your views about them from
when youll get in touch with them. You can also
add a column mentioning the time and date of
meeting with a particular consultant. Fix a
consultation timeline The thing about
consultation is that its not a forever kind of
partnership. You dont want them to overstay
their welcome and make you an invoice you didnt
plan for. However, this does not mean you wont
need them after the initial level. So, fix a
timeline for the project. And plan for
contingencies. Once that is done, let them work
their magic. Over the years, as you scale, you
will need them again, or you might even need
regular guidelines. Establish your preferences
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and plan for the long term with them. This way,
neither of you will be caught off guard. What
process will they follow to on-board your
organization? Best of the consultants always have
a process in-tact to onboard their customers, no
matter their size. They are very particular
about the team they have for you, the tools they
use to manage their projects, the platforms they
use to communicate with clients, and the coding
and QA practices they follow for the best
outcome. Their proposal will be a reflection of
their onboarding process and how they themselves
work internally. You dont want a cluttered team
thats still trying to figure out how to work
the works. So, keep an eye out for the details
they provide about technology stack, platforms,
tools, team, skillset, etc. and ask them if
theyll be flexible in terms of collaboration
platform. And if not, how are they going to
educate you about their current set of
tools? This will give you a pretty good idea of
the kind of experience you are going to have
working with them during the timeline you agreed
on for consultation work.
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Find your match
While yes you have to find a consultant that can
get the job done, thats not all. You also need
them to play well with your team. Only then will
the process be frictionless and can be taken
forward easily. Thats a big checklist to
follow ?Portfolio ?Non profit expertise ?Team
chemistry If any of these three are missing, it
will not work out for you.
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Integrate their work into your long term goal and
with your in house team Your work relationships
need to help you get better at your work, sure.
But they also need to help you stay there once
their job is done. Just like that, your
salesforce consultants should also integrate
with your team and train them to a certain
extent. They should be able to help you
strategize for a longer term, keeping in mind
your bigger goals and get your in house
development team to be self-reliant regarding
updates and changes from Salesforce. All these
points will help you find the perfect tech
partner you need as your Salesforce Nonprofit
consultant. Two more things that you might like
to consider ? See if they are philanthropic
themselves. Their contribution to the community
and society will tell you a lot about them. ?
Salesforce Nonprofit Consultant certification.
Salesforce is very particular that way. So, make
sure the consultant you are choosing has that
certification and is also up to the date with
all the updates so as to provide you with the
proper consultation you require to bring change
in the community.
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About us CRMJetty is a hub of innovative
customer relationship solutions. Our tools
ensure that you can render enhanced interactions
at each stage of your customer lifecycle. So, if
you are searching for the right technology
partner to help you deploy your Salesforce NPSP,
then you are in the right space. We have served
in this industry for a decade and have helped
many NGOs deploy NPSP along with a good portal
solution. Get in touch with us and well help you
kick start your journey towards making this
world a better place. Source h
ttps//www.crmjetty.com/blog/hire-a-salesforce-non
profit-con s ultant/
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