The $100k Salesforce hiring mistake

#012

Read Time: 4 Minutes

“We Just Need An Admin”

One of the most common mistakes I see tech companies make is this:

They hire a Salesforce admin expecting them to fix all of Salesforce.

Strategy.
Architecture.
Forecasting.
Process design.
Automation.

Literally everything.

6 months later they’re mad.

Not because the admin is bad…

But because they hired the wrong role.

Most teams miss this part:

Admins maintain Salesforce
Consultants design Salesforce

If you mix those up, you waste months and a lot of money.

Let me break down how to avoid that.

The Simple Way to Think About It

Use this rule:

Admins maintain the machine
Consultants design the machine

Different tools. Different jobs.

Salesforce Admin

Admins are great at running the system once it’s built.

Typical responsibilities:

• Managing users and permissions
• Creating reports and dashboards
• Building fields and page layouts
• Cleaning duplicate data
• Supporting internal teams
• Maintaining automation

Think of them like a mechanic.

If the engine is already built, they keep it running smoothly.

Salesforce Consultant

Consultants help you figure out what should exist in the first place.

Typical work includes:

• Designing revenue processes
• Fixing forecasting
• Restructuring lead flow
• Improving marketing → sales handoffs
• Reducing churn
• Planning Salesforce architecture

Think of them like an architect.

They design the blueprint before anything gets built.

Why Companies Get This Wrong

Most companies only know one term:

“Salesforce admin”

So when problems start piling up they say:

“We need to hire a Salesforce admin”

Makes sense.

But their problem usually isn’t clicking buttons…

It’s business design.

Examples I see all the time:

• Sales leads never get followed up
• Forecasting is inaccurate
• Marketing → sales handoff is poor
• Customer churn is hard to track
• Reporting isn’t trusted

None of those are technical problems.

They’re process problems.

And that requires strategy first.

A Quick Rule for Hiring

Use this decision framework.

Hire a Salesforce Admin if:

• You already know what needs to be built
• Your system mostly works
• You just need technical execution
• You want someone maintaining day-to-day operations

Admins are perfect here.

Hire a Salesforce Consultant if:

• Your data is hard to trust
• Forecasting is messy
• Sales and marketing aren’t aligned
• You’re scaling quickly
• You don’t know what to fix first

In that case you need strategy before maintenance.

The Tool Analogy

I explain this to founders like this:

A hammer and a saw are both tools.

But they solve different problems.

You wouldn’t try to cut wood with a hammer.

Hiring the wrong Salesforce role works the same way.

1 More Thing Most People Miss

The best companies eventually use both.

A common setup looks like:

Consultant

Designs systems and strategy.

Admin

Maintains and supports those systems daily.

That combination works extremely well once you’re rolling.

The Big Takeaway

If Salesforce isn’t working well in your company, the issue usually isn’t the tool.

It’s that the wrong role was hired to fix it.

Remember this:

Admin → maintains the machine
Consultant → designs the machine

Once that clicks, Salesforce gets a lot easier to manage.

Talk next Friday 👋

2 Ways We Can Help This Week:

1. We recorded a much more detailed video on youtube for you here
2. If you want to work with us, check us out here