Insights for employers
Partners
Attraction and retention
As more businesses look to digitally transform their sales and marketing operations by adopting Salesforce, demand for partner services is on the up. Over half (53%) of our Salesforce partner respondents said that that they’d seen increased demand from customers in the past 12 months.
For many partner organizations, being able to meet that demand is going to mean adding more resource to their bench. But in a competitive market, hiring experienced Salesforce professionals can be a challenge, especially when you consider the additional caveats around certification and industry experience that often come with partner roles.
The good news for partners is that there’s a lot of interest among Salesforce professionals in working for a partner. In this section, we’ll look at what exactly attracts talent to careers with partners, and find out what partner organizations can do to lean into that appeal and source candidates from an industry-wide talent pool.
Motivation to work for a Salesforce partner
Over half (56%) of end user employees that responded to the survey would consider working for a Salesforce partner. Factors cited as most likely to attract end user employees to a role with a partner include:
Higher earning potential
Opportunity to expand on skills, knowledge, and experience with Salesforce products
Professional development
| Working on a diverse range of projects | 60% |
| The chance to work with a variety of organizations | 49% |
| Flexibility in lifestyle | 46% |
| To tackle different challenges | 43% |
| The scope to make better use of my skills | 42% |
| Other | 2% |
We also asked the 26% of respondents who would not work for a partner why they wouldn’t make the move, with reasons including:
| I'm happy in my current role | 84% |
| I enjoy solving problems from within the business | 52% |
| I consider working for a partner to be stressful | 29% |
| I've worked for a partner previously, but I prefer the end user environment | 24% |
| I don’t want to travel for work | 23% |
| I'm not interested in working for a partner | 20% |
| I don’t enjoy the increased interaction with clients | 10% |
| I prefer working on one big project | 9% |
Based on our survey data, slightly more than half of the Salesforce professionals currently working for an end user would be open to accepting a position with a partner, which is great news for Salesforce partners entering the hiring market.
Once more, greater earning potential, the opportunity to expand Salesforce skills and knowledge, and better professional development opportunities rank at the forefront of motivating factors for making the switch. This emphasizes just how much Salesforce professionals value their development, ranking it up there with a higher earning potential.
Partners should pay close attention to these factors when recruiting new staff and emphasize the opportunity to upskill in their organization. The best tech professionals always strive to learn and enhance their skills, so showcasing your L&D opportunities will better position you to attract top talent from both inside and outside of the partner ecosystem.
End user organizations should also ask themselves what lessons can be learned from this data when looking to retain existing teams. Although higher earning power was a primary motivator, this might be an element out of your control, so instead, look at improving your staff’s development and progression opportunities, reducing turnover by helping to pay for employees’ certifications and giving them time and scope to learn new ways of working or develop new solutions within the platform.
How satisfied are partner employees?
Largely, professionals working for Salesforce partners and ISVs are happy in their roles—71% say they're satisfied with their job overall, but this is down from 75% in our previous survey.
Similarly, 64% (down from 67%) are satisfied with their salary. However, the proportion of professionals unhappy with their salary has increased from 11% to 15%.
Demand for partner services
How has demand for Salesforce changed in the last 12 months?
- Increased
53%
- Stayed the same
31%
- Reduced
13%
- Not sure
3%
Top 10 Salesforce products, apps, and connectors that have been most in-demand with partners’ clients in the last year
Salesforce
Sales Cloud
Salesforce
Service Cloud
Salesforce Experience Cloud1
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
MuleSoft
Salesforce Platform2
Salesforce Einstein
Salesforce Industries3
Tableau CRM/Salesforce Analytics4
1 formerly Salesforce Community Cloud
2 formerly Force.com
3 formerly Vlocity
4 formerly Salesforce Einstein Analytics
How has demand for Salesforce migrations changed in the last year?
- Increased
34%
- Stayed the same
31%
- Reduced
7%
- Not sure
28%
Implementation of third-party integrations
Partner employees believe their clients are more likely to implement both an additional Salesforce product and a third-party integration (40%) than they are to implement an additional Salesforce product (29%) or a third-party integration (19%) alone.
What are the potential project pitfalls when working with end user clients?
| Scope creep (changes in a project's scope) | 56% |
| Lack of communication from/between stakeholders | 45% |
| Resistance from some employees to adopt the new technology | 37% |
| No clear objective from the customer on what they want from their Salesforce product | 34% |
| Data migration issues | 33% |
| Issues managing expectations on what is possible with Salesforce | 31% |
| Lack of training given to frontline staff using the product | 30% |
| Lack of appropriate skills in the end user organization to manage the product | 28% |
| Difficulties migrating data from legacy system to Salesforce | 24% |
| Funding ran out/budgetary constraints | 22% |
| The end user organization isn't ready for the business change | 20% |
| Shortage of resource in the end user organization available to manage the product | 20% |
| Lack of project goals and benchmarks | 15% |
| Lack of stakeholder buy-in | 14% |
| Price negation | 13% |
| None | 7% |
| Other | 2% |
Our key findings report contains highlights from this year’s Careers and Hiring Guide, plus our salary tables allow you to compare your salary or benchmark your teams’ salaries no matter their role in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Our key findings report contains highlights from this year’s Careers and Hiring Guide, plus our salary tables allow you to compare your salary or benchmark your teams’ salaries no matter their role in the Salesforce ecosystem.
