Why Salesforce Projects Fail Before They Start
Nobody in the room will say it out loud. So I will.
I've been part of many Salesforce implementations across global luxury, retail, and sports brands. Every single one had the same problem. And it wasn't the technology.
Everyone loves a POC. It's clean. It's controlled. Leadership sees the demo and signs off. The system integrator celebrates. The project kicks off.
Then go-live happens.
And suddenly, everything that worked in the POC starts falling apart — not because the platform is bad, but because the POC only ever showed you the tip of the iceberg.
The POC is not a proof of concept. It's a proof of best-case scenario. The real project lives in everything below the waterline.
Data is never "just data"
The number one thing executives get wrong: they think Salesforce is a destination for data. Just "put it in" and reports will follow.
But data doesn't migrate itself. Nobody documented why certain fields exist. Nobody knows who decided to structure it this way three years ago. And the person who built the original system? Long gone.
The most common question I've heard across every project: "Why doesn't this data exist?" The answer is always the same — because nobody thought to ask that question before go-live.
Nobody wants to be accountable
In Go, players do something called kifu — a full replay of the game after it ends. Not to feel bad. To remember what actually happened, not what they wished had happened.
Companies almost never do this after a Salesforce project. And the reason isn't a lack of time. It's that nobody wants to be the one who's accountable for what went wrong.
So the same mistakes get made. On the next project. And the one after that.
Has your team ever done a real retrospective after a Salesforce implementation?
Not a "lessons learned" slide buried in a deck — an actual honest breakdown of what broke and why. Drop a comment. I'd genuinely like to know.
Cover image generated with Gemini