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When Salesforce Doesn’t Fit: Customizing Salesforce Around Your Workflow

Salesforce is one of the most capable CRM platforms on the planet—but let’s be real: out of the box, it doesn’t always work for your business.

No matter if you’re in manufacturing, professional services, real estate, or a specialized industry, your business processes are one-of-a-kind. And when Salesforce isn’t working with how your teams really work, it can cause frustration, inefficiency, and wasting potential from a great tool.

So, what do you do when Salesforce doesn’t fit? You tailor it to fit your workflow—your workflow, not vice versa.

Why Salesforce Might Not Fit “Out of the Box”

Salesforce is flexible by design, but it begins in a generic form. That’s on purpose—it’s meant to be able to fit lots of industries and applications. But that also means:

The jargon may not align with your business terminology
The default objects (such as Leads, Opportunities, or Cases) may not map to your real-world process
There may be too many empty fields, or not enough of the appropriate ones
Your users might think the user interface is clumsy or not intuitive

It’s not broken. It’s just not yours yet.

The Solution: Customizing Salesforce Around Your Workflow

Customizing Salesforce isn’t tweaking a few settings—it’s getting deeply in line with the way your business runs.

Here’s how you can do it:

Chart Your Business Processes First

Before you even touch Salesforce, map out your real workflow. Begin with:

How leads flow in
How deals get qualified and followed up on
How handoffs and tasks are handled
What you need to report on

A Salesforce consultant (like us!) can assist in mapping this out in visual tools such as Lucid chart or directly in Salesforce Flow.

Standard Features to Fit Your Workflow

You don’t always require code. Salesforce’s low-code capabilities allow you to customize the system with:

Custom objects and fields
Page layouts
Validation rules
Automation (Flows & Process Builder)

Extend with Custom Development When Necessary

For activities beyond Salesforce’ out-of-the-box functionality, custom development may be required. Examples include:

Custom portals for partners or customers
Complex integrations with other systems
Quote, invoice, or approval workflows specific to particular industry

Engage Users Early and Often

A common mistake? Designing Salesforce without consulting the folks who actually use it.

Ask your sales representatives, support agents, or operations team:

“What’s frustrating in our current process?”
“What would make your day-to-day life easier?”

User adoption goes through the roof when users feel the system was designed for them.

Real Results: A Quick Example

One of our professional services clients approached us with a poorly aligned Salesforce implementation. Sales reps were cutting corners, data was erratic, and reports didn’t match what was happening on the ground.

We helped them:

Realign their sales stages
Add handoff automations
Streamline the user interface

The outcome? 40% greater pipeline visibility and a system the team loved using.

Final Thoughts

If Salesforce isn’t right for your business, don’t settle—or make your team get used to a system that doesn’t serve them.

Rather, shape Salesforce to fit your workflow. With the proper strategy and a trusted Salesforce partner, you can transform a frustrating tool into your business’s greatest asset.

Need Help Customizing Salesforce?

At Blue Engine Solutions, we excel at getting Salesforce to work for the way you work.

👉 Contact us to arrange a discovery call — we’re here to help!

What’s Included in a Salesforce Health Check — And Why You Need One

You’re already making a major investment by using Salesforce. But is your system really delivering the way you need it to? Is it well-positioned for long-term success, or are inefficiencies and dangers lurking beneath the surface?

That’s where a Salesforce Health Check can help — and the good news? Blue Engine Solutions provides it for free on the industry-leader diagnostic platform Hubbl (https://www.hubbl.com/).

What Is a Salesforce Health Check?

Think of it as an annual physical — for your Salesforce org. A health check provides a clear, comprehensive view of your system’s current state and performance. It identifies issues, uncovers hidden opportunities, and outlines ways to optimize your Salesforce environment.

What’s Included in the Health Check?

Using Hubbl, our health check dives deep into key areas like:

🔍Org Complexity & Technical Debt

We examine the depth of complexity in your Salesforce configuration — from custom code and fields to unused objects and automation. Hubbl provides visual insight into where your org might be over-engineered or weighed down.

⚙️Configuration & Metadata Review

We examine field usage, validation rules, record types, automation tools (such as Flows, Process Builders, and Apex), and more — all presented through easy-to-understand dashboards.

🧹Data Hygiene & Usage

Is your data clean? Are your users doing what you think they should with Salesforce? We review:

Duplicate data
Unused fields or objects
User adoption
Inactive users and licenses

🔐Security & Access

We review permission sets, sharing rules, and profiles to help make sure your data is secure and only accessible to the right people.

📈System Performance & Scalability

We review governor limits, automation load, and other factors that affect performance, especially for growing businesses.

📊Executive Dashboards & Insights

Hubbl provides instant, visual reporting you can share with stakeholders. These reports help executives and admins quickly understand where improvements are needed — and where you’re doing great.

Why Do You Need a Salesforce Health Check?

✅It’s Totally Free: No strings attached. We’re providing the check free of cost so that you can make wise, informed decisions without paying anything in advance.

💡You’ll Learn So Much: Clients are always amazed at how much they didn’t understand about their org. You’ll leave with a comprehensive diagnostic report, practical advice, and insight into what’s going well and what requires repair.

🔧It Helps You Plan Smarter Projects: You might be planning a Salesforce upgrade, integration, or simply clean house. A health check puts you in a position of understanding — rather than speculation.

🧭You Get a Strategic Plan of Action: Our team won’t just point out problems — we help you prioritize them, so you know what to fix now and what can wait.

Your Salesforce org should be serving you, not filling you with frustration and technical debt. Free health check with Blue Engine Solutions provides you with the visibility and strategy you need to take control of your CRM future.

Click here to schedule your free Health Check today → https://blueenginesolutions.com/contact/

5 Common Salesforce Challenges (and How Blue Engine Solutions Solves Them)

Conclusion
Salesforce is a powerful platform—but only if it’s set up right. At Blue Engine Solutions, we specialize in turning CRM frustrations into streamlined systems that boost productivity, improve data confidence, and drive growth.

👉 Ready to get more value out of Salesforce? Let’s talk.

Team Retreat in DC!

Salesforce highlights our Consultant Steven Trumble!

It’s said in business all the time — that you’re nothing but the quality of your people.

And we couldn’t be more proud of our very own Steven Trumble being highlighted by Salesforce on their official Salesforce Linkedin page.

Steven gives back to the Salesforce community by answering questions from other users. One of his explanations was apparently so helpful, productive, and concise, that Salesforce has now canonized it into the official Salesforce Documentation!

Incredible! Steven explains Salesforce better than Salesforce explains Salesforce!

Salesforce vs. Hubspot — What’s the best CRM for me?

HubSpot and Salesforce are both popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms that offer a range of tools and features for managing customer relationships and driving business growth. There are pros and cons to both platforms, and which one is the best choice for your business will depend on your specific needs and priorities.

Some potential pros of HubSpot include:

It offers a wide set of marketing, sales, and customer service tools in a single platform.
It has a user-friendly interface and offers a range of educational resources to help you get started and make the most of the platform.
It offers a free, basic version of its CRM platform, which can be a good option for small businesses or startups on a tight budget. Salesforce does offer 10 free licenses to non-profits with a 501c3 certificate. But not for businesses.

Some potential cons of HubSpot include:

It’s not nearly as robust or flexible as Salesforce in terms of its functionality and customization options.
It may not be as well-suited to larger, more complex organizations that don’t have a standard type of business model.
It may ultimately become a more expensive option as your business grows and you need more advanced features.

Some potential pros of Salesforce include:

It is a powerful and scalable platform that can support the needs of organizations of all sizes and industries. It truly is an investment towards an automated, modernized way of work that will save you incredible time and money when done right.
It offers a wide range of customization and integration options, so you can tailor the platform to your specific business needs and processes.
It has a large and active user community, which can provide valuable support and resources for users.
There’s a reason it’s the world’s #1 CRM every single year. It’s a solid system that works.

Some potential cons of Salesforce include:

It can be more complex and harder to learn than other CRM platforms, especially for users without a lot of technical experience.
It can be more expensive than other CRM options, especially for smaller businesses that may not need all of its advanced features.
For some of the marketing tools you may want you’ll install them from the Salesforce appexchange…It’s easy to add them but they are not automatically built-in.

Ultimately, the best CRM platform for your business will depend on your specific needs, priorities, and budget. It’s important to carefully evaluate the pros and cons of both HubSpot and Salesforce, as well as other CRM options, to determine which one is the best fit for your business.

We have deep experience with both Salesforce and Hubspot and would love to help you make an informed choice. Let’s set up a time to chat!

Love What You Do

boy in yellow t shirt and blue denim jeans playing with plastic toys

New research on the Salesforce ecosystem: The promise of “Interesting Projects” is the #1 most important factor to Salesforce consultants picking their next role. Surprised? I’m not.

With such a major shortage of talent right now, of course employees want to work on fun and challenging business problems. Most would probably say it doesn’t even feel like work when they’re in a Flow state, using their full selves (both intellectual and creative) to think out of the box and solve complex problems.

I just love this data because it confirms what I personally love about using Salesforce. It’s like a big box of lego and you can build anything at all.

Have Salesforce issues you want to solve?
Let’s Talk!

#salesforceconsultant #salesforcepartner #makeworkfun

The Best and Worst Salesforce Consultants in Washington DC

Salesforce is a powerful CRM software that many businesses use to manage their sales and customer data. If you are looking for a Salesforce consultant in Washington DC, it can be difficult to know who to trust. There are many consultants out there, but there’s a huge variation out there. Some are amazing and some should probably stick to their day jobs! In this blog post, we will discuss the best and worst Salesforce consultants in Washington DC.

Salesforce Consultants in Washington DC: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

First, let’s start with why someone would want to hire a consultant for Salesforce: There are many reasons why companies choose to outsource their IT needs instead of handling them in-house. Hiring a consultant for Salesforce is a great way to get help from someone who knows the system inside and out and can help your business grow. It’s a robust program with tons of functionality. The genius of a good Salesforce implementation is in leveraging ONLY the features that actually fit the situation and HIDING everything else!

A good Salesforce consultant should be able to do the following:

Seek to understand your business and its unique processes
Help you set up and customize Salesforce to fit your needs
Train you and your team on how to use Salesforce effectively
Provide ongoing support and advice as needed

Now that we know what to look for in a good consultant, let’s take a look at some of the bad ones. A bad Salesforce consultant can do more harm than good and can end up costing your business money instead of saving it.

A bad Salesforce consultant may:

Not listen to your needs or understand what you want from the software
Take a long time to get back with answers and advice, leaving you waiting for months on end without any help at all!
If this is happening then maybe they aren’t interested in helping you grow your business.
They could also be working on another project that takes precedence over yours and you’re getting ignored!
A bad consultant will not give personalized service or advice. They will deliver the same generic advice and “solutions” to everyone and all situations.

You deserve better than that!

If you’re frustrated with a “bad” Salesforce consultant, it’s time to consider moving on. Let’s start with a conversation and see if we can help you. We’re nice people and at the very least will give you some ideas to help think through your situation.

Seeing Duplicates? Fix it Before Everyone Goes Cross-Eyed

A core tenet of Salesforce is to have “a single source of truth.” We want all our key touchpoints with a customer to be in one system — so that employees across different departments can all see the same information. We don’t want key notes getting lost!

If that’s the case — then what effect do duplicates have in a system?

Duplicates undermine the entire premise of “single source of truth.”

Because on one record for a contact we see her phone number and email. But then on a duplicate record we see a note that says “She loves our product but NEVER CALL HER BEFORE LUNCH TIME!”

Well, clearly that warning is ineffective if it’s not on the same page as her phone number!

Duplicates aren’t just problematic because you can miss key data — but they also propagate bad data. Any reporting, formulas, etc. that summarize your data will produce bad results when duplicates are in the mix.

And your team will quickly abandon using fields like “last touchpoint” because they will yield deceptive information.

Users need to trust their data. Like any relationship–Trust is at the foundation. As duplicates erode trust, the entire structure becomes more shaky. But this is avoidable!

So how do we fix it?

Salesforce has a “free” built-in duplicate detection tool. It’s better than nothing but it’s primitive. It’s very black and white and that’s not the real world. The real nature of potential duplicates is that they’re shades of grey. We need to be more nuanced.

My favorite duplicate tool is “Duplicate Check” and what I love is that different rules can yield varying levels of confidence in a pair being a true duplicate.

And so you could have a rule that 100% confidence level pairs are auto-merged. But 75% confident pairs go to a report for manual review.

Users tell me they absolutely love the Real Time potential duplicates show up when they’re creating a new contact. The section in the blue bubble pops up as a friendly option and prevents trouble before it starts!

For the annual investment most firms are spending on Salesforce, the Duplicate check tools are such an absolute no-brainer for ROI.

Why is the Mailchimp Salesforce Integration Not Working?

Reviews of the Mailchimp Salesforce Integration

This honestly boggles my mind! Salesforce is clearly the market leader in CRM. And Mailchimp is an awesome email marketing platform, generally speaking. They do what they do really, really well. They must have smart engineers on their team to solve problems. Why isn’t each company important enough to the other to fix this problem!?

Why is the Mailchimp Salesforce integration so bad?!

I’ve seen way too many examples where data just gets STUCK and it doesn’t flow back and forth smoothly as it should. You’ll go crazy (and waste too many hours of your life) trying to troubleshoot this. You can’t solve the problem as the user because the problem is rooted in the integration tool itself!

Mailchimp Integration with Salesforce JUST DOESN”T WORK!

My advice is that you need to choose between your systems: One to keep and one has to go. They’re not your children and don’t have feelings 🙂

There are good alternatives to Mailchimp that do indeed integrate nicely with Salesforce! For the most common needs clients have, I really like: Mass Mailer.

It’s a really solid tool and while they don’t have a logo as cute as that lil’ chimp, they’ll send your emails and cause you less headaches. But it depends on what you need from a mass email tool and we always suggest whatever is the best fit for your specific situation.

And if you decide you want to stick with Mailchimp, we are happy to help you do that too and fix the bugs.

1. Low User Adoption

2. Inefficient or Incomplete Workflows

3. Messy, Unreliable Data

4. Lack of Integration with Other Tools

5. Unclear or Underwhelming Dashboards