Belmar Bytes Episode 9

August 14, 2025

Episode 9 Transcript:

Scott Billows (00:02.41)
Okay Matt, here we go. We are on episode nine. We're making, no, episode eight. And maybe episode nine. We've got an interesting topic to cover here today, which is.

Matt Hui (00:04.814)
Good afternoon, Scott.

Scott Billows (00:19.23)
the Salesforce partner ecosystem and how does a nonprofit organization go about selecting a Salesforce partner that they can lean on and trust and expect to deliver? So why don't we kick this one off? And why don't you kick us off with just, I guess, introducing

Matt Hui (00:42.83)
Let's do it.

Scott Billows (00:48.448)
the concept of what a Salesforce partner is and where we fit in the ecosystem.

Matt Hui (00:56.514)
Yeah, so I think it's helpful to start with definitions because partner can mean a lot of different things to lot of different people. So we'll start with this. In the Salesforce land, in the partner land, there's something called an SI, systems integrator. There's something called an ISV, which is like a third party vendor. And then there's Salesforce. So there's three parties, if you will. Salesforce partner is typically tasked with customizing.

Salesforce implementation. They're responsible for taking an out of the box solution, which is what Salesforce sells. They're the product company and they would customize it. So the best analogy I like to give is house building. So the house builder is the person who's going to be customizing to meet the requirements of whoever's going to be living inside there. Let's say it could be four rooms, six rooms, eight rooms, silver handles, 10 toilets, whatever that may be.

that is like the systems integrator. They're customizing to meet the needs of whoever's gonna be using and living inside that house there versus an out of the box solution. So that's what a Salesforce partner is. They run alongside Salesforce working hand in hand to customize, configure, tailor, really to be able to get it day one ready for an organization to be using Salesforce or their technology investment there. How did I do on that definition, Scott?

Scott Billows (02:17.985)
Yeah, I know, think that's a good summary. So you've, maybe just to recap, you've identified Salesforce as the product side of the equation. And I guess when it comes to nonprofit, we've covered this on previous podcasts and in blog posts in terms of what options exist around products. We're not gonna dive into that. On the other side of the house, you've got

partners and those are comprised of consulting and ISV. So we fall under the umbrella of consulting. ISV, another way to think about that is if you were to go to the Salesforce app exchange and you were to pick a product that would plug into your Salesforce instance, that would have been delivered by what Salesforce considered to be an ISV. So for the purpose of

Matt Hui (02:54.456)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (03:14.983)
this conversation, we're going to be focused more on the consulting partner relationship. And you've summed it up in terms of the house analogy. It's one of my favorites as well. It's it's a good metaphor for describing what happens within a Salesforce environment or Salesforce org when a customer is hiring or contracting a partner to

augment and implement that. So it's interesting over the years, we've we're actually coming up in September, we're coming up on our 15 year anniversary as a Salesforce partner. And through those, I guess, what is currently 14 years, almost 15 years, we've worked on, you know, 1000s of projects, hundreds of customers. And there's different ways that we've been put in contact with those organizations. But

Matt Hui (03:43.832)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (04:13.95)
Maybe we can start with focusing on organizations that are not currently using Salesforce and they're considering, they're somewhere between identifying a problem within their organization and the other end of the spectrum is they're signing a Salesforce licensing contract. So at some point through that journey, they are going to most likely get introduced to

one or more partners and maybe we can talk about just sort of ways that these organizations, these customers actually can find a partner. are, I guess maybe in the universe of options, what are the different paths that a customer can take to find a partner?

Matt Hui (05:04.171)
Yeah, so I'll speak about the nonprofit side of how would a nonprofit organization, let's go through scenario, nonprofit organization looking to make an investment in Salesforce, where do they start? Well, there's a couple channels. One, there's Salesforce's AppExchange, which is Salesforce's, think of it like the app store for iPhones. It's a AppExchange that allows you to search for a partner based off of experience.

customer satisfaction rating, how many projects somebody has done. It's effectively like a marketplace. You can search. That's one way. There's the direct way where you can just Google or today, maybe that's chat GPT, find me a partner that meets this specific criteria. So there's independent research. There's another channel, which is in working with Salesforce, oftentimes they'll make recommendations as well based off of who they know and they trust as well. Sorry, Scott, totally distracted by the cat.

Scott Billows (06:01.748)
Yeah, no, no, I think you're doing good. There's maybe to recap, so they can go online to a directory, be that the AppExchange, be that Google, Chat, GPT, Gemini, any of the AI tools, which sort of hold that thought for a second and come back to that. They can also go through an introduction through an account executive, which I would say over our 14 year history, the majority of

Matt Hui (06:02.455)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (06:30.151)
new customers that we have been introduced to and then done projects for have actually come through the Salesforce channel. We would call it the Salesforce channel that's being introduced from an account executive. And so maybe just touching on, I guess, the evolution of how customers are finding us, it's interesting. We've been, Matt, you're aware this, we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and just sort

bolstering our content, creating new content. One format is this podcast. We're writing blog posts, we're hosting customer events, doing customer dinners, all kinds of different things, really as a way to engage and interact with the market in hopes that we can provide some value to them through those various channels. ultimately, if they're looking for a partner to go deeper with, we hit their radar across one of these various platforms.

It was interesting, just maybe as an aside, I was in the last couple of days just thinking about just the whole SEO game that has been played over the years of trying to optimize for keywords and trying to push your ranking up on Google, because most people start there. And I've been reading about just with the AI tools, not so much the move away from SEO, but what's going to happen.

Matt Hui (07:40.269)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (07:57.85)
time. So just as a point of interest, I opened up XAI or Grok and I typed in, need a Salesforce partner in Vancouver and I chose Vancouver because at the time I was sitting in Vancouver and I then repeated that with Gemini and I also repeated with ChatGBT. Interestingly enough, our name came up on all three and the other partners that came up

Matt Hui (08:23.415)
Interesting.

Scott Billows (08:25.552)
were somewhat mixed. weren't consistent across all three. I have no idea why that is. they've indexed off of what Google has recommended. I have no idea. I don't really understand that world well enough yet to make a comment on that. it was interesting that you brought that up in this conversation because it certainly is more and more people are going in the direction of the AI tools.

We're going to have to figure out how to get our name propagated well across those, not only in Vancouver, but every other market that we hope to work. maybe just coming back to the different avenues or paths that a prospective customer could take to find us. And I'd love to just go a little deeper here on a prospective customer. I'm to put myself in the shoes of a, you

a nonprofit organization. They are not using Salesforce. They start doing their own research. Maybe somebody's joined their organization that once used Salesforce and they're making an internal recommendation. Maybe they've heard about it and they're now at the point where they want to start a conversation. The typical starting point is they would go to the Salesforce website. They may fill out a form.

regardless of how they interact with Salesforce, an account executive or a sales rep from Salesforce will end up reaching out. And Salesforce has a very sophisticated way of sort of connecting a prospective customer to the right account executive who can then start a conversation. those conversations, and I mean, I've been in a sales role in that. know you've been involved in selling here at Bellemare and helping our

customers to get to a point of decision. one of the things I find quite interesting is many customers put their, well, I'd say most customers, they put their trust in Salesforce because they are going to ultimately be buying Salesforce. But what many of them don't understand when they start down that path is they're also going to need a partner. that individual prospect or prospective customer in that moment is, you

Matt Hui (10:39.405)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (10:53.341)
puts a lot of trust in the account executive that they talk to at Salesforce. And that account executive typically has a roster of partners that they've used in the past. And the ones that have been successful, they often will recommend to their future prospective customers. so I guess I'd love to get your input on putting yourself in the shoes of that prospective customer and equipping them with some knowledge before they start down that path with Salesforce, what they may

Matt Hui (11:13.165)
sure.

Scott Billows (11:22.672)
want to consider as they're thinking about this, who might my future partner be? How do I best evaluate? How do I even advocate for myself as an organization when I'm talking to an account executive to say, I'm coming to the table having already done some of my own research. Here's what I'm thinking. So give me your thoughts in terms of how they best navigate that.

Matt Hui (11:46.22)
Yeah, so I mean it's helpful to understand the I'm gonna call them evaluation criteria if you will just like what are the things you're looking for It's very similar and the one word I'll always use when thinking about this is relationship because if you are looking for something quick You're looking for something fast. You're looking for something cheap I mean, it's very different than looking for a longer-term partnership and relationship So I think understanding first off if you're at that point, are you looking for something quick?

really quick turnaround, are looking for something, a longer term relationship? Not that the two can't mutually exist, but it is a bit different conversation. So let's assume that you're looking for that longer term partner here. A couple things you should really consider. One, does somebody have experience in this space? I'll give you an example in nonprofit organizations. There's a lot of similarity, but there's some very distinct nuances to an organization that's perhaps the cons.

a conservation organization versus an arts museum. Two very different terminologies, standard operating procedures, just how they interact with their constituents. It's very different. So understanding one, does this partner have experience in this space? Specific experience in this space. If yes, do they have references? Do they do a good job in this space? That's key, I think is number one. Number two is just understanding their historic success.

Are they a new partner? Are they an old partner? How big is their team? Just understanding the demographic and the makeup of that organization as well. To understand is it a fit for our organization? If I'm a nonprofit and I put on my executive director hat, I have a five person nonprofit, we're doing $5 million in revenue. Do I want to be working with an organization that is 100 times the size of my organization? Maybe I would be one of their 1,000 projects.

On the flip side, if I'm a thousand person organization and this organization only has three people there, well, I mean, you just want to try to find some mutual fit there to understand that if I need to scale, I can accommodate that scale. If I need to be able to solve complex needs, I have an organization or partner that understands that as well. Another really important element that, I mean, I'll come right out and say it is understanding how pricing works.

Matt Hui (14:14.689)
That is a pretty big component oftentimes, especially in the nonprofit landscape is how do they price? How does it make sense for organization in working with them as well? So I'd say those are three pretty big ones. calling it out from a baseline perspective, there's of course the credibility and competency standpoint and Salesforce does a fantastic job with something called the certification.

that you can look on this app exchange, which I referred to earlier and take a look at what are the certifications of this partner. That's kind of a baseline. I'm kind of speaking about, what are the other pieces that overall blend this to making the right decision? But having that baseline is also important. Has this partner done projects in this space before? Are they certified? That's another consideration. those are a couple. mean, you've been doing this a long time, Scott, to what advice do you give to

clients or prospective organizations when they're looking for a partner.

Scott Billows (15:15.429)
Yeah, well, think you've covered some really important aspects. I think some advice that I would offer to, in this particular case, an organization that is looking at Salesforce for the first time and maybe more specific, they haven't gone through a technology transformation or an implementation, a larger implementation that's required a third party.

if they've brought in a tool into their organization that they were able to purchase online and self-implement, that's very different from bringing in a third party that is going to work with you for some number of months. In larger projects, it could be up to a year. That's a very different experience or relationship than just...

self-implementing a solution. And so you want to really be sure that the partner that you're selecting is the one that, as Matt has shared, has the technical capabilities, has the referenceable accounts, like the specific experience that is similar to the organization that you're in. But I think there's some other maybe more intangible.

you know, what is the, you know, what's the composition of the team that you're going to be working with? Because it's one thing to say, Hey, I'm, represent, you know, ABC Salesforce partner organization, and we've done, you know, 500 projects just like yours. But the people that delivered those projects may not be with that organization anymore. And the team that you're getting is, is not the team that has gone off and, you know, created that success for these other organizations. So.

It's one thing for an organization to talk about their experience. It's another thing for them to allow you to have an opportunity to meet the people that you're going to be working with because it's those soft skills, more the intangibles of, know, a brand has a reputation. A brand can, you know, has, you know, oftentimes a deep bench of people, but

Scott Billows (17:39.012)
How do you get connected with the right team within that organization that's going to gel with your team, is going to understand the uniqueness of your organization, and is going to be there for the duration of the project? And so that's, I think, one piece. And I think a way to think about this further is, when you come into these conversations with Salesforce, when you come into these conversations with the partners that you're introduced to,

Matt Hui (17:58.253)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (18:09.485)
you know, it is good to explore options. you know, if you're only talking to a single partner, may sound great. It sound like, yeah, these folks can, can do what we need, but, just the ability to compare and contrast and to hear different perspectives, is, an important, thing to do. So we would strongly endorse that, that you consider that, for an existing customer, somebody who is already on Salesforce.

We'll assume they've gone through an implementation before. How do they evaluate? Is it the same criteria? in response, I would argue that it is. People work with people that they like, that they trust, that they feel comfortable with. The assumption, the table stakes, if you will, that you should expect is that they've got the certifications, they have the experience, they've delivered successfully.

some number of projects that they've got a well-rounded set of skills, not just, you they've only worked on three projects in the past. So, you know, I would say it's the same kind of criteria that you should think about if you're an existing customer and you're, you know, exploring the next phase and, you know, for whatever reason, the need for a new partner. So those are important things to think about.

Matt Hui (19:38.338)
Yeah, I want to extra highlight that fit piece because I think that's often a piece that people underestimate. You are sometimes working on multi-year projects. You want to work with a partner that you enjoy working with, but you have that trust baseline as well. Because the reality is projects don't always go in a linear fashion. So being able to have somebody that you can have a conversation with have that good

trust baseline is very important. yeah, I appreciate you drilling into that Scott. And I think that's helpful for organizations. I think that's a good place to wrap on this one. And perhaps the next episode we chat about what happens if you don't choose the right partner. And certainly we've got some, I know we both have some stories about some of those nightmares. So we'll wrap on that one and we'll chat more about that next time. Thanks Scott.

Scott Billows (20:33.634)
Okay. Thanks, man.