Of course, your CRM consultant needs to understand the technology. Duh.

They should be comfortable working with the tools and functionality your business needs, whether that’s automation, integrations, reporting, custom development, data management, or configuring platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot. But technical knowledge alone doesn’t necessarily mean someone will build the right solution for your business.

A consultant can build something that technically works perfectly and still create a process that is unnecessarily complicated, difficult for your employees to understand, or doesn’t actually address the underlying problem.

That’s the difference between simply completing a CRM project and providing meaningful consulting.

One of the biggest advantages we bring to our CRM projects is our business background.

When we look at a project, we don’t only look at the requirements in front of us. We look at the bigger picture.

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• Who is this going to help?
• How will this change the way employees work?
• Will it make someone’s job easier or create an extra step for them?
• How will this benefit the business?
• Are we solving the actual problem or are we simply putting a technical solution around a broken process?

These questions can completely change the solution we recommend.

Sometimes the answer is a complex automation. Sometimes it’s a simple change to an existing process. Sometimes another system needs to be involved. And sometimes, the best solution is to not build something at all.

A good CRM consultant should be willing to challenge an idea when there may be a better way to accomplish the goal.

CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot are incredibly powerful, but that doesn’t mean every solution needs to be complicated.

We’ve seen businesses end up with systems that are difficult for their own employees to understand because too many layers of automation, customizations, and processes have been added over time.

Our goal is to build solutions that are user-friendly and understandable.

If an automation is doing something important, the people responsible for maintaining the system should be able to understand what it’s doing and why. The same goes for the overall user experience. Your employees shouldn’t need a CRM expert sitting next to them just to understand how to complete a basic process.

Technology should make a process easier not make people work harder to use the technology. Trust us, we know.

CRM projects rarely go exactly as planned and that’s very normal. Questions come up. Priorities change. A process that looked one way during discovery may look completely different once users start interacting with it. That’s why communication and responsiveness are so important.

One reason our clients choose to continue working with us is that we’re responsive and available during their business hours. We don’t want our clients waiting days for an answer to a question or wondering where something stands.

Being technically capable is important, but being accessible and dependable is part of being a good consultant, too.

You should feel like your consultant is actually part of the project not someone you have to repeatedly track down.

Efficiency matters.

A consultant who understands how to work efficiently can often accomplish more without unnecessarily increasing the scope, timeline or cost of a project.

That doesn’t mean rushing through a project. It means understanding the objective, creating an appropriate solution, and avoiding unnecessary work.

We believe our clients should get value from the time they’re paying for.

That means being prepared, staying focused, communicating clearly, and looking for ways to solve problems efficiently.

It also means not overengineering something just because you can.

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution.

Your CRM doesn’t exist by itself.

It’s connected to your employees, your customers, your sales process, your operations, your marketing, your other technology and ultimately your business goals.

That’s why we believe a CRM consultant should understand what’s happening outside of the CRM, too.

At VYE, we work with both Salesforce and HubSpot, along with a variety of third-party platforms and integrations. Having experience across different systems helps us look at the entire technology ecosystem rather than treating the CRM as an isolated piece of software.

Sometimes the answer is Salesforce. Sometimes it’s HubSpot. Sometimes it involves connecting your CRM with another platform. And sometimes it means changing the business process itself.

The technology is the tool. The business outcome is the goal.

Not every business problem has an obvious solution.

A good consultant shouldn’t simply take your list of requirements and check them off one by one. They should be willing to ask questions, investigate the underlying problem, and think creatively about possible solutions.

If you tell your consultant, “We need this automation,” they should be asking why.

• Maybe you do need the automation. But maybe there’s a simpler way to accomplish the same thing.
• Maybe the existing process is the real problem.
• Maybe another system should be involved.
• Maybe your CRM isn’t configured to support the way your business actually operates.
• Maybe the requirement made sense six months ago but no longer makes sense today.

The best consultants aren’t afraid to look beyond the initial request.