What to Expect From a Salesforce Consultation: Process, Deliverables & Next Steps

Publish date:

• 24th September, 2026

Booking a Salesforce consultation is often the first step when you know your CRM needs improvement, but you are not yet sure what the right solution is.

Maybe your Salesforce implementation is not delivering the expected results. Your team may be struggling with manual processes, poor user adoption, disconnected systems, reporting gaps, growing technical debt, or a backlog of improvements.

Or perhaps you are planning a new Salesforce implementation, integration, migration, automation initiative, or expansion into another Salesforce product.

A Salesforce consultation helps turn these requirements and challenges into a clearer plan.

During a Salesforce consultation, a consultant typically reviews your business goals, current CRM environment, user challenges, technical requirements, integrations, and future priorities. Based on the assessment, you can receive recommendations on the Salesforce solution, required improvements, project scope, resources, priorities, and next steps.

The purpose is not simply to discuss Salesforce features.

It is to answer practical questions such as:

• What is currently working and what needs improvement?

• Are we using the right Salesforce capabilities?

• Which business processes should be optimized?

• Do we need configuration, development, integration, or a larger transformation?

• What should we prioritize first?

• What Salesforce expertise will the project require?

• What should happen after the consultation?

This guide explains what happens before, during, and after a Salesforce consultation—and what your business should expect to receive from the process.

What Is a Salesforce Consultation?

A Salesforce consultation is a structured discussion and assessment designed to understand a business problem and determine how Salesforce can address it.

Depending on the situation, the consultation may focus on an existing Salesforce environment or a new Salesforce initiative.

For an existing Salesforce customer, this could involve reviewing:

Current Salesforce Setup → Business Processes → User Challenges → Data & Integrations → Technical Gaps → Improvement Opportunities

For a company considering a new Salesforce project, the process may look more like:

Business Goals → Requirements → Salesforce Products → Solution Approach → Project Scope → Resources → Roadmap

The depth of the consultation depends on the complexity of the requirement.

A relatively straightforward requirement may be addressed through an initial discovery session, while an enterprise environment involving multiple Salesforce products, integrations, custom development, or data migration may require a more detailed assessment.

When Should You Consider a Salesforce Consultation?

You do not need to wait until something goes wrong with Salesforce.

A consultation can be useful when you are:

Business Situation	What the Consultation Can Explore
Planning a new Salesforce implementation	Requirements, products, scope, and implementation approach
Salesforce is already implemented but underperforming	Adoption, configuration, automation and process gaps
Planning an integration	Systems, APIs, data flows and technical dependencies
Experiencing a growing Salesforce backlog	Priorities, capacity and technical requirements
Considering a new Salesforce product	Business fit, dependencies and implementation requirements
Facing data quality problems	Data structure, governance and migration requirements
Managing excessive customization	Technical debt and simplification opportunities
Planning AI or automation initiatives	Use cases, data readiness and technical requirements
Preparing for Salesforce expansion	Architecture, scalability, governance and resource needs

The objective should be to leave the consultation with greater clarity about the problem, the possible solution, and the next action your organization should take.

A productive Salesforce consultation should therefore create direction—not simply another sales conversation.

What Happens During a Salesforce Consultation?

A Salesforce consultation usually begins with discovery and gradually moves toward recommendations.

The consultant needs to understand where your business is today, what is preventing Salesforce from delivering the expected value, and what needs to change.

A typical consultation may follow this process:

Business Goals → Current-State Review → Requirements → Technical Assessment → Gap Analysis → Recommendations → Next Steps

The exact process will vary depending on whether you are planning a new implementation, improving an existing Salesforce environment, or solving a specific technical challenge.

1. Business Goals and Discovery

Start the consultation with the business problem, not Salesforce features.

A consultant may ask:

• What are you trying to achieve with Salesforce?

• Which teams currently use the platform?

• What problems are users experiencing?

• Which processes are still manual?

• What improvements are most urgent?

• Do you have upcoming projects or expansion plans?

• What would a successful outcome look like?

For example, a sales organization may want better pipeline visibility, while a service team may be trying to reduce case resolution time.

Understanding the desired outcome helps prevent the conversation from becoming a list of disconnected Salesforce features.

2. Review of Your Current Salesforce Environment

If Salesforce is already in use, the next step is understanding the current environment.

Depending on the scope, the review may consider:

Configuration | Automation | Customization | Data | Integrations | Reports | Security | User Adoption | Technical Debt

The objective is to identify what is working, what is creating friction, and where improvements may be required.

Not every consultation requires a complete technical audit. A deeper assessment may be recommended when the Salesforce environment is complex, or the initial discussion identifies significant technical issues.

3. Business Process and Requirements Review

Salesforce should support the way your business needs to operate.

The consultant may therefore review processes such as lead management, opportunity management, customer service, approvals, reporting, marketing journeys, or other workflows relevant to your organization.

This helps separate the business requirement from the requested technical solution.

For example, instead of immediately accepting:

“We need another Salesforce customization.”

the consultation should first establish:

What problem is the customization expected to solve?

In some situations, an existing Salesforce capability, configuration change, automation, or process improvement may address the requirement without additional custom development.

4. Data and Integration Assessment

Data and connected systems can significantly influence a Salesforce project.

If your requirements involve integrations or migration, the consultation may explore:

• Existing business systems

• Data sources

• API requirements

• Middleware

• Data quality

• Duplicate records

• Data ownership

• Migration requirements

• Integration dependencies

This becomes particularly important when Salesforce needs to connect with ERP, marketing, finance, customer portals, data platforms, or other enterprise systems.

5. Identify Salesforce Gaps and Opportunities

Once the current environment and requirements are understood, the consultant can identify gaps between:

Current State → Desired Business Outcome

These gaps may relate to platform configuration, automation, development, architecture, integrations, data, adoption, support, or governance.

The consultation should also help distinguish between:

Critical issues that need immediate attention,

High-value improvements that should be prioritized,

and

Lower-priority enhancements that can be addressed later.

This prevents every Salesforce request from being treated as equally urgent.

6. Discuss the Recommended Solution Approach

After identifying the gaps, the consultant can discuss potential ways forward.

Depending on the requirement, recommendations may involve:

• Salesforce configuration

• Process optimization

• Automation

• Custom development

• System integration

• Data migration or cleanup

• Architecture improvements

• User adoption initiatives

• Ongoing support

• A new Salesforce implementation or cloud

At this stage, the focus should be on the solution approach, not simply selling additional Salesforce services.

7. Agree on Priorities and Next Steps

The consultation should finish with clarity around what happens next.

For a straightforward requirement, the next step may be defining scope and moving toward implementation.

For a more complex environment, the recommendation may be a deeper Salesforce assessment, technical discovery, solution design workshop, or phased roadmap.

By the end of the process, stakeholders should have a clearer understanding of:

What needs to change → Why it matters → What should happen first → What expertise is required → What the next step should be

That is what turns a Salesforce consultation from a conversation into an actionable starting point.

What Should You Get From a Salesforce Consultation?

A useful Salesforce consultation should leave you with more than general advice.

The exact deliverables depend on the depth and scope of the engagement, but you should come away with a clearer understanding of your current situation, the gaps that need attention, recommended priorities, and what should happen next.

Here is what you may receive from a Salesforce consultation:

Consultation Output	What It Helps You Understand
Current-State Assessment	How your existing Salesforce environment or CRM processes are performing
Requirements Summary	What your teams actually need from Salesforce
Gap Analysis	Difference between your current setup and desired outcome
Recommended Solution	Configuration, development, integration, optimization, or other changes to consider
Priority List	Which issues or improvements should be addressed first
Project Scope	What may need to be included in the Salesforce initiative
Resource Requirements	Which Salesforce skills or roles may be required
Roadmap	How the recommended work could be approached in phases
Next-Step Plan	What your organization should do after the consultation

Not every initial consultation will include a complete technical roadmap or detailed project estimate. More complex requirements may need additional discovery before you can define them accurately.

1. A Clearer View of Your Current Salesforce Situation

One of the first outcomes should be clarity.

You should understand whether the primary challenge relates to Salesforce configuration, business processes, custom development, integrations, data, adoption, architecture, support, or a combination of these areas.

This matters because the problem you identify first may not be the root cause.

For example, what looks like a reporting problem may actually stem from inconsistent data or poorly designed business processes.

2. Gap Analysis and Improvement Opportunities

A Salesforce consultant can help identify the gap between your current environment and the outcome you want.

This may uncover opportunities to simplify processes, improve automation, address technical debt, consolidate functionality, improve data quality, or redesign parts of the Salesforce environment.

A useful gap analysis should help answer:

Where are we now? → Where do we want to be? → What is preventing us from getting there?

3. Prioritized Salesforce Recommendations

Not every Salesforce issue needs to be addressed at the same time.

Your consultation should help distinguish between immediate requirements and longer-term improvements.

Recommendations can be organized as:

• Priority 1 – Critical: Issues affecting business operations, security, data, or essential workflows.

• Priority 2 – High Value: Improvements that can materially improve productivity, automation, adoption, or customer processes.

• Priority 3 – Strategic: Larger initiatives that support the future Salesforce roadmap.

• Priority 4 – Optional: Enhancements that may add value but are not currently essential.

This makes it easier to align Salesforce investment with available budget and business priorities.

4. Recommended Solution Approach

A consultation should provide direction on the type of Salesforce work required.

For example, the recommendation may be to optimize the existing Salesforce environment rather than implement something new.

In other situations, the organization may need an integration, custom development, data cleanup, an architecture redesign, or an additional Salesforce product.

The important outcome is understanding why a particular approach is being recommended.

5. Resource and Expertise Requirements

Once the scope becomes clearer, you can also determine which Salesforce skills are required.

Depending on the project, this could include a:

Salesforce Administrator | Developer | Consultant | Business Analyst | Architect | QA Specialist | Integration Expert | Cloud Specialist

You may already have some of these capabilities internally.

The consultation can therefore help identify whether you need additional internal resources, specialized external expertise, or support from a Salesforce consulting partner.

6. A Practical Salesforce Roadmap

For larger requirements, recommendations may need to be divided into phases.

For example:

Phase 1: Critical Fixes & Data Issues

↓

Phase 2: Process & Automation Improvements

↓

Phase 3: Integrations & Development

↓

Phase 4: Advanced Capabilities & Optimization

A phased roadmap can make a complex Salesforce initiative easier to prioritize, budget, and manage.

7. Clear Next Steps

The most important deliverable is clarity about what happens after the consultation.

Depending on the findings, the next step could be:

Detailed Assessment → Solution Design → Scope & Estimate → Implementation → Optimization → Ongoing Support

Or the consultation may show that your current Salesforce environment needs only a smaller configuration or process improvement.

Either outcome is useful.

A good Salesforce consultation should help you make a more informed decision about your Salesforce investment—not create pressure to start a project before the requirements are properly understood.

How to Prepare for a Salesforce Consultation

You do not need to prepare a complete technical document before speaking with a Salesforce consultant.

However, providing the right business and platform context can make the consultation more productive and help the consultant understand your requirements faster.

Before the meeting, try to gather the following information.

1. Define Your Main Business Goals

Start with what you want Salesforce to help your business achieve.

For example:

• Improve sales pipeline visibility

• Automate manual processes

• Improve customer service operations

• Connect Salesforce with other business systems

• Improve reporting and dashboards

• Increase Salesforce user adoption

• Clean or migrate CRM data

• Introduce a new Salesforce product

• Reduce an existing Salesforce backlog

You do not need to know the technical solution. Clearly explaining the business outcome matters more.

2. List Your Current Salesforce Challenges

Prepare a short list of the problems your teams experience today.

These could include slow processes, duplicate data, manual work, reporting gaps, integration failures, excessive customization, low adoption, or difficulty making platform changes.

Prioritize the issues that have the greatest business impact.

3. Share Your Current Salesforce Environment

If Salesforce is already implemented, be prepared to explain which products and major capabilities you currently use.

Relevant information may include:

Salesforce Products → Users → Major Customizations → Integrations → Automation → Data Sources → Support Model

This gives the consultant useful context before recommending changes.

4. Identify the Systems Connected to Salesforce

If your organization uses Salesforce alongside ERP, marketing, finance, customer service, eCommerce, data, or other business platforms, identify the important connections.

Understanding the broader technology environment can prevent recommendations that overlook integration dependencies.

5. Bring Your Salesforce Backlog

If you already have a list of requested enhancements, bugs, integrations, or new features, bring it to the discussion.

A consultant can help separate the backlog into:

Critical → High Value → Strategic → Lower Priority

This is especially useful when your internal team has more Salesforce requests than delivery capacity.

6. Include the Right Stakeholders

The consultation becomes more useful when the people who understand the business problem are involved.

Depending on the requirement, this may include representatives from sales, service, marketing, operations, IT, or CRM leadership.

For larger initiatives, both business and technical stakeholders may need to participate.

7. Be Clear About Timeline and Budget Expectations

If you already have a target launch date or budget range, share it early.

This helps the Salesforce consultant determine whether the proposed scope is realistic and whether the project should be delivered in phases.

You do not necessarily need a fixed budget before the first conversation. However, discussing commercial constraints can help prevent recommendations that are unrealistic for your organization.

Salesforce Consultation Preparation Checklist

Before the meeting, try to have:

✓ Business objectives

✓ Top Salesforce challenges

✓ Current Salesforce products

✓ Major integrations and systems

✓ Important customizations

✓ Existing project or enhancement backlog

✓ Key stakeholders

✓ Desired timeline

✓ Budget expectations, if available

✓ Definition of a successful outcome

The better the consultant understands your current situation, the easier it becomes to move from a general discussion toward practical recommendations and next steps.

Questions to Ask a Salesforce Consultant During the Consultation

A Salesforce consultation is also an opportunity to evaluate whether the consultant or Salesforce consulting partner is suitable for your project.

Do not focus only on certifications or hourly rates. Ask questions that help you understand their experience, recommended approach, delivery model, and ability to solve your specific business problem.

1. Have You Solved Similar Salesforce Challenges?

Ask about experience with requirements similar to yours.

If you need a complex integration, Marketing Cloud implementation, Data Cloud initiative, Salesforce optimization, or custom development, relevant project experience can be more useful than general Salesforce knowledge.

2. What Would You Prioritize First?

A consultant should be able to explain which problems deserve immediate attention and which can wait.

Ask:

“Based on what you know so far, what would you address first and why?”

The reasoning behind the recommendation is as important as the recommendation itself.

3. Do We Need Custom Development?

More customization is not always the right answer.

Ask whether your requirement can be solved through standard Salesforce capabilities, configuration, automation, process changes, or whether custom development is genuinely required.

This can influence project complexity and long-term maintenance.

4. What Salesforce Expertise Will Our Project Require?

Ask which roles would likely be involved.

Depending on the project, this may include:

Consultant → Business Analyst → Architect → Administrator → Developer → Integration Specialist → QA

You should understand who will actually work on your project and why those skills are required.

5. What Could Affect the Timeline or Budget?

Salesforce projects can have dependencies that aren't obvious in the first conversation.

Ask about potential factors such as:

• Data quality

• Integration complexity

• Existing technical debt

• Customizations

• Stakeholder availability

• Testing requirements

• Third-party systems

• Changing project scope

Identifying these early can make project planning more realistic.

6. How Will the Project Be Delivered?

If the consultation is likely to lead to a larger engagement, understand the proposed delivery model.

Ask how requirements will be managed, how progress will be communicated, who owns decisions, how testing will work, and how changes to scope will be handled.

This is particularly important when working with an external Salesforce consulting services provider.

7. What Happens After Implementation?

Think beyond project launch.

Ask who will manage ongoing administration, enhancements, releases, user issues, integrations, and future Salesforce requirements.

Depending on your internal capabilities, you may need knowledge transfer, ongoing support, or a longer-term optimization plan.

8. How Will We Measure Success?

Before moving forward, establish what a successful Salesforce project should achieve.

Success measures might relate to:

User Adoption | Process Efficiency | Data Quality | Automation | Sales Visibility | Customer Service | System Reliability | Delivery of Business Requirements

The appropriate measures will depend on why your organization is investing in Salesforce.

What Should You Know Before Ending the Consultation?

By the end of the discussion, you should ideally be able to answer five questions:

1.  What is the main Salesforce problem we need to solve?

2.  What solution approach should we consider?

3.  What should we prioritize first?

4.  What expertise, time, and investment may be required?

5.  What is the next practical step?

If these points remain unclear, we may need additional discovery before committing to a larger Salesforce project.

A useful consultation should reduce uncertainty and give your team enough information to make a better-informed decision about what to do next.

Free Salesforce Consultation vs. Detailed Salesforce Assessment

Not every Salesforce consultation provides the same level of analysis.

An initial consultation often focuses on understanding your business challenge, discussing your Salesforce requirements, and determining the most appropriate next step. A detailed Salesforce assessment goes deeper into the platform and may require additional discovery, technical access, workshops, and documentation.

Understanding the difference can help you know what to expect.

Area	Initial Salesforce Consultation	Detailed Salesforce Assessment
Primary Goal	Understand the business requirement	Analyze the Salesforce environment in depth
Business Challenges	Discussed	Analyzed in detail
Current Salesforce Setup	High-level review	Deeper technical review
Integrations & Data	Initial discussion	Detailed assessment of what is in scope
Technical Debt	Potential issues identified	Specific areas investigated
Recommendations	High-level direction	More detailed recommendations
Project Scope	Preliminary	More clearly defined
Roadmap	Possible next steps	Prioritized action plan
Estimate	Indicative, where possible	More accurate after requirements are validated

What Can You Expect From an Initial Consultation?

An initial consultation should help both sides determine whether there is a clear Salesforce problem to solve and what type of expertise may be required.

For example, you may discover that your requirement needs:

Salesforce Optimization → Integration → Custom Development → Data Migration → New Implementation → Ongoing Support

For straightforward requirements, there may be enough information to discuss scope and next steps relatively quickly.

For complex projects, providing a precise solution, timeline, or cost during the first conversation may not be realistic.

When Is a Detailed Salesforce Assessment Useful?

A deeper assessment may be appropriate when your Salesforce environment includes multiple clouds, extensive customizations, several integrations, significant technical debt, complex data requirements, or unclear legacy configurations.

It may also be useful when your organization is planning a major Salesforce transformation and needs a more reliable roadmap before committing budget.

The assessment can help convert:

Business Challenges → Validated Requirements → Technical Findings → Priorities → Solution Roadmap

Should a Salesforce Consultant Give You a Cost Estimate During the First Call?

For well-defined requirements, an indicative estimate may be possible.

For a complex Salesforce project, however, the consultant may need additional discovery before providing a reliable scope, timeline, and commercial estimate.

A very early fixed estimate based on incomplete requirements can create problems later through scope changes, missed dependencies, or unrealistic timelines.

Instead, ask what information the consultant still needs before providing a more dependable estimate.

The first consultation should focus on clarity before commitment.

You should understand the problem, possible direction, required level of discovery, and next step before making a larger Salesforce investment.

Talk to Codleo About Your Salesforce Requirements

A Salesforce consultation is most valuable when it clarifies what needs to change, why it matters, and what should happen next.

At Codleo Consulting, the conversation starts with your business requirements and existing Salesforce environment, not a predefined solution.

Depending on your situation, the consultation may cover Salesforce implementation, optimization, custom development, integrations, data, automation, ongoing support, or specialized Salesforce initiatives.

The objective is to understand:

Your Business Goals → Current Challenges → Salesforce Gaps → Priorities → Recommended Approach → Next Steps

For organizations with an existing Salesforce environment, this can help identify whether the immediate requirement is a smaller platform improvement or part of a broader transformation.

For businesses planning a new Salesforce initiative, the discussion can help clarify requirements, required expertise, project scope, dependencies, and the appropriate delivery approach.

What Can Codleo Help You Explore?

Depending on your requirements, a consultation with our Salesforce team can help you explore:

• Salesforce implementation and optimization

• Business process improvement

• Salesforce development and customization

• CRM and third-party integrations

• Data migration and data quality

• Automation opportunities

• Salesforce architecture

• Ongoing support and enhancements

• Specialized Salesforce products and initiatives

The recommended approach depends on your Salesforce environment, priorities, internal capabilities, and business goals.

Final Thoughts: Get Clarity Before Your Next Salesforce Investment

A Salesforce consultation should give you more than a conversation about platform features.

It should help you understand your current situation, identify important gaps, prioritize improvements, evaluate possible solutions, and determine the next practical step.

Before committing resources to another implementation, customization, integration, or transformation initiative, make sure the underlying business requirement is clear.

Understand the problem → Validate the requirement → Prioritize the opportunity → Define the solution → Plan the next step.

That clarity can help your organization make more informed decisions about where to invest time, budget, and Salesforce expertise.

Have a Salesforce challenge or project you want to discuss?

Talk to Codleo Consulting about your current Salesforce environment and business requirements.

Book a Salesforce Consultation →