The Struggle Is Real: A Look At The Top 5 Salesforce Partner Challenges

Here at bloomly, we spend a lot of time thinking about the Salesforce ecosystem. It’s amazingly complex and fascinating and there’s always something new to learn, but it’s also a tough place to survive, let alone thrive.

When most of our clients first come to us, “fascinating” isn’t the “f” word they have in mind. “Frustrating” (and sometimes something much stronger) is often more in line with their experience — which is why we decided to build an entire agency dedicated to navigating the ecosystem and helping partners like you figure out how to grow and thrive.

In this post, we’ll share what we’ve learned about the most common challenges partners like you face when trying to establish and expand your Salesforce ecosystem footprint. We won’t be able to solve all your problems in one article, but we will briefly talk about some of the strategies we use to help our clients overcome their challenges and carve out a successful niche in the ecosystem.

Straight from the source — The five toughest challenges facing partners in today’s Salesforce ecosystem

We start every client engagement with a discovery call to talk through pain points, discuss core strengths, and identify the most pressing problems and promising opportunities facing the partner firms we work with. We encourage participants not to hold anything back, and by the end of each session, we have a sea of colorful virtual post-it notes describing the biggest concerns and toughest challenges facing their organizations.

Every partner is unique and does things in their own way, but we started to notice that all the firms we talked to described very similar problems. In fact, the hundreds of post-it notes we’ve seen can all be condensed to a list of five major issues. So here it is — straight from the mouths of partners just like you — the five toughest challenges in today’s Salesforce ecosystem. Take a look and see if you can relate.

Defining niche & focus areas

You must have a niche to succeed in the ecosystem — especially in the beginning when you’re trying to stand out from the crowd and establish a footprint. Everyone knows this, but everyone still struggles to do it.

Many of the partners we work with can’t clearly articulate their core strengths, ideal clients, or unique value propositions. They know they should focus on an industry, vertical, or cloud, but aren’t sure where to start or how to find a niche they can win.