Publish date:

• 25th June, 2025

Salesforce CRM is a significant investment, and customizing it requires extra spending on hiring Salesforce developers. According to recent data from Indeed and Glassdoor, Salesforce developers earn an average annual salary ranging from $80,000 to $160,000.

For smaller companies with limited budgets, hiring and managing a full-time in-house specialist can be financially challenging.

Our blog post explains how hiring a dedicated Salesforce developer can enhance your business and reduce costs by optimizing resource utilization. We also show how you can boost these benefits with our fractional Salesforce team model.

Top Challenges of Hiring a Full-time Salesforce Developer

Building a full-time, in-house Salesforce development team can feel like a complicated puzzle.

Small and medium-sized businesses often struggle to hire and train full-time Salesforce experts. It usually takes about six months for new hires to become fully productive. With a high turnover rate of 40% for these positions, these businesses often find themselves hiring every 18 months.

One challenge is the high cost of running smaller projects. In addition to salaries, there are hidden expenses, including benefits, payroll taxes, and specific overhead costs. 

When you hire full-time experts, you also need to invest in software, tools, and possibly more workspace. As projects grow, adding more team members can be difficult. Additionally, regular Salesforce updates necessitate ongoing training for your team.

It's essential to have a range of skills for your projects, but an in-house team may not be able to cover everything. Relying too much on one employee can cause problems if they leave suddenly. Additionally, full-time developers may become bored with repetitive tasks and require opportunities for career growth to stay motivated.

Many companies face challenges and opt for a hybrid approach or outsource Salesforce development to achieve the best results. Here are three standard models for hiring Salesforce developers.

Popular Hiring Models for Dedicated Salesforce Developers in Today’s Market

After more than 20 years in the CRM and custom development industry, we have worked with clients using various partnership models, including On-Demand, Time & Material, Dedicated, and Blended.

From our experience, we’ve learned about the three most popular ways to hire a Salesforce developer:

Time & Material

Clients are billed for the actual time and resources a Salesforce developer uses. This setup works well for medium-sized projects with changing or unclear scopes.

The main benefits are the flexibility to adjust project scope and paying only for the work done, which can lower initial cost estimates. However, challenges include potentially unpredictable final costs and the need for careful project management.

Dedicated Team Model

The Dedicated Team model is an agreement between a client and a service provider. The provider supplies long-term software development experts who meet the client’s specific needs based on their skills and experience.

You can hire a remote Salesforce developer or a complete team to work on your project. This team will work alongside your in-house staff and is ideal for long-term projects that may need changes over time.

Hiring a dedicated Salesforce developer or a development team provides several benefits. First, you can expect consistent monthly costs. As time passes, the team becomes familiar with your product. This familiarity reduces the need for changes, speeds up your market entry, and leads to better decisions.

Hiring a dedicated Salesforce developer gives you the flexibility to set priorities and manage your work closely. It allows for better teamwork. With a dedicated team working onshore or offshore, you can plan resources more efficiently, leading to improved productivity.

The dedicated development team will support your company’s values and take responsibility for solving problems. However, their services come with regular monthly fees. Changing the team size, whether increasing or decreasing it, can be a complicated process. Additionally, when there is less work, some members of the dedicated team might not be fully utilized.

To fully leverage the dedicated team model and mitigate its challenges, consider our Fractional Salesforce Team offering.

Introducing the Fractional Salesforce Team: A Cost-Effective Alternative to Traditional Dedicated Teams.

Managing Salesforce can be complex for businesses that don’t need a full-time expert. To make it easier, we’ve created a solution called the Fractional Team model.

We offer a new approach that combines multiple methods. This approach provides a cost-effective alternative to hiring full-time staff, which incurs additional expenses such as retirement plans, payroll taxes, and bonuses, or hiring separate specialists.

Our fractional Salesforce team model provides excellent flexibility, enabling companies to tailor services to their specific needs and budgets. Instead of hiring a full-time team of Salesforce consultants, developers, and project managers, our clients can create a fractional team. They can utilize 20% of a lead consultant’s time, 50% of a Salesforce consultant's time, 25% of a project manager's time, and a dedicated Salesforce developer.

Enterprises can also leverage larger teams, including:

• Salesforce Admin or Consultant,

• Salesforce Solution Architect,

• UI/ UX Designer,

• Project Manager,

• Data Analyst,

• QA Engineer,

• Salesforce Business Analyst,

• Salesforce Developer.

With the fractional Salesforce team at Codleo, you pay only for the hours worked. This approach helps improve your Salesforce operations while keeping your project budget-friendly.

You can quickly meet your Salesforce needs by adding part-time help, such as fractional administrators, consultants, or developers. This support can be provided through Managed Services or focused on specific projects.

Our Fractional Salesforce team excels in projects with changing requirements or those that are not clearly defined. For example, in the early planning stages, you may only need a Salesforce consultant and a business analyst.

The implementation phase may require a larger team, including a Salesforce consultant, a developer, a project manager, and a QA engineer. After launch, a part-time virtual admin may be enough. As the business grows, we can adjust our team to ensure that Salesforce support meets the company's needs.

Besides that, our innovative approach has other benefits:

Access to Diverse Salesforce Expertise

A dedicated in-house Salesforce team knows your organization well, but they might have a limited view. Managing Salesforce effectively requires a wide range of skills, particularly when utilizing platforms such as Sales Cloud, Experience Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot). However, it’s often not practical to keep these specialized skills full-time.

Our Fractional Salesforce Team includes many members with diverse experiences. This variety helps improve practices and creates a more flexible Salesforce environment.

Transparency and Efficiency

Hiring full-time staff costs more money. Freelance workers may seem like a good option, but it can be challenging to determine the amount of work they do.

With our fractional Salesforce developers and consultants, you only pay for the hours they work. It provides clear insights into their contributions, even for brief periods, such as five minutes.

Seamless Extension for Internal Teams

Our Salesforce team will assess your needs and work closely with your existing team to optimize your Salesforce setup. It enables your internal team to focus on areas they have neglected, allowing them to manage the company’s priorities while maintaining both speed and quality.

If your dedicated professional has just left your project or you have an urgent need, a new consultant or developer can quickly join your team. Our standardized processes help reduce turnover risks.

Adherence to Best Practices

Salesforce teams often handle numerous tasks, which can lead to burnout and make it challenging to adhere to best practices. Our Fractional Salesforce Team focuses on your ongoing Salesforce training, helping your organization stay updated and ready for future needs.

Comprehensive Salesforce Services and Support

Organizations need to ensure that every hour and dollar spent on Salesforce yields significant revenue.

Rushed project deadlines can cause in-house teams to miss important details and user training. A Fractional Salesforce Team provides careful implementation, design flexibility, thorough user training, and complete documentation. This approach helps ensure smooth integration and long-term success.

Salesforce fractional teams offer specialized skills for Salesforce projects at a lower cost than hiring full-time employees.

Why Choose Codleo’s Fractional Salesforce Teams

If your Salesforce team requires additional support or lacks the necessary technical expertise, we can assist. With Codleo's Fractional Salesforce Team, you only pay for the services you need, which saves you the cost of hiring a full-time employee. We offer access to our Salesforce experts from the US and Europe, including architects and data migration specialists. You can also easily adjust our services to match your changing business needs.

Our flexible Salesforce services provide the benefits of a dedicated team while being cost-effective and adaptable. We adjust team size and engagement to meet your specific needs. Our services will help you:

Implement your Salesforce solution or fix your Salesforce project at any stage, especially if your technical staff has left and you are unhappy with the quality of the services provided.

• Enhance your Salesforce features with custom CRM workflows and solutions, including customer or partner portals.

• Safely move your old data to the Salesforce platform, with experts handling field mapping and reducing duplicates.

• Handle complex systems and data integration projects.

• Design and create a custom Salesforce application for both the AppExchange platform and internal use.

We are a top Salesforce consulting and AppExchange partner, ranking among the top 15% of consultancies. We possess gold competencies and offer a comprehensive range of services through our global delivery model.

Since 2001, we have served over 300 clients from around the world. Our Salesforce experts create a seamless system that keeps your business running smoothly without interruptions.

We are a Salesforce Expert Managed Service Provider. For over twenty years, we have built our Salesforce skills gradually, working with each client and project.

With our fractional approach, you can access over 70 certified Salesforce experts, including admins, consultants, developers, and architects. They can help meet your temporary, permanent, and direct staffing needs. This service supports our global clients while keeping costs down.

We focus on Sales, Service, Experience, and Marketing Clouds, as well as Pardot. We serve over 20 industries, including Commercial, Residential, land real estate, Capital Markets, Investment Management, and mortgage and lending.

Do you want to improve your Salesforce operations while keeping costs low? Schedule a free consulting call to learn about our Fractional Salesforce Team offering.