Salesforce Consulting Rates
Everything you need to know about how much Salesforce Consultants charge
Salesforce Consultants and Contractors have 3 basic pricing models.
Fixed-Cost Project Pricing
This is the most common model when working with established Consulting Partners.The Partner will conduct a thorough discovery process and present a State of Work (SOW), which is a proposal outlining the specific deliverables, delivery timeline, and total cost of the project.Provided the scope of the project doesn’t change, a fixed-price project can give you cost certainty. However, it’s harder to change the requirements of a fixed-price project, so they can be more limiting and is generally a more rigid commitment for customers.Engaging a Salesforce Consulting Partner makes sense if you’ve identified a specific business need or new platform to implement and need several different types of Salesforce Experts to deliver the project.
Pros
For large scale projects, having a fixed cost helps create certainty around total spend since you will have the entire project scoped out from the start. This is a great strategic move for project planning. The Consulting Partner is also incentivized to work quickly (while still delivering quality). Big fixed-price projects can offer better value for money than hourly-rate projects because you’re guaranteeing the Partner income certainty.
For large scale projects, having a fixed cost helps create certainty around total spend since you will have the entire project scoped out from the start. This is a great strategic move for project planning. The Consulting Partner is also incentivized to work quickly (while still delivering quality). Big fixed-price projects can offer better value for money than hourly-rate projects because you’re guaranteeing the Partner income certainty.
Cons
You’ll need to pay a hefty deposit at kickoff- usually 50% of the total - which can be a substantial up-front payment. This is also a less flexible arrangement because if your scope of work or goals change at any point during the project, you are still tied to the Statement of Work (SOW) signed during kickoff.
For smaller companies with priorities that change quickly or strategy planning that takes place every Quarter - instead of planning for an entireYear - fixed-cost is a less flexible arrange and doesn't work as well.
Monthly Retainer
This is a common model for organizations that have ongoing Salesforce requirements. If you’re looking for someone who can support/maintain your Salesforce instance, or you have a series of projects that need to be completed over several months, a monthly retainer could be a great option.
Some companies might refer to this type of arrangement as ‘managed services’ and it’s essentially an outsourced alternative to hiring in-house Salesforce Experts. Consulting Partners and Independent Contractors both offer this type of monthly retainer structure.
The arrangement usually consists of a flat monthly fee for a set number of billable hours, which you can use for whatever tasks come up during the month. If you don’t use all your hours, you still pay the same fee but if you go over your allotted hours, you’ll be billed by the hour for the extra time.
You’ll usually be able to negotiate a discount off the service provider’s standard hourly rate because you are guaranteeing a block of hours for them to work each month, thus providing more stability. Learn more about Salesforce Managed Services
Pros
You will have have more flexibility than with a fixed-cost project but you will still have on-call access to the Salesforce Experts you need, as you need them. It also gives you some negotiating power when setting the monthly amount, so you may save money compared to paying by the hour.
Cons
You can waste quite a bit of money if you don’t use all your billable hours.
Customers want to make sure they know their work requirements before committing to a monthly retainer because many vendors have a 'use it or lose it' policy, meaning unused billable hours do not roll over to the next month.
Hourly Rates
This is the most common structure for Salesforce Contractors (i.e. Freelancers) and it offers the maximum flexibility for customers. You can start and stop work whenever you want and have the ability to increase or decrease the number of hours your Salesforce Contractor works on a weekly basis (provided your chosen Contractor has room in their schedule to increase work on your project at the exact time you want it). It can sometimes be more expensive but you also won’t pay for hours you don’t use and depending on how you communicate expectations, it may not result in a higher cost.
With hourly rate projects - also known as Time and Materials - you pay for the Contractor's time only as it's used and simply pay at the end of each month. FoundHQ provides a list of hourly rates for various types of Salesforce Consultants on this page and you can use those as a basis for estimating the costs of monthly retainers and fixed-cost projects.
Pros
This is the most flexible structure for customers. You essentially have no upfront commitments, so you aren't locked into a certain type of project or amount of work. You will pay at the end of each month and are only responsible for the hours you actually used.
Cons
It is more difficult to predict what the full project cost will be until you see the invoice at the end of each month. This can sometimes be more expensive than committing to a monthly retainer because the Contractor has less income certainly. Typically, projects aren't scoped upfront but instead Contractors are identify projects and completing tasks on an ongoing basis.
Salesforce Consultant Hourly Rates.
Cost to hire a Salesforce Administrator
85-115
Salesforce AppExchange. If you’ve never used it before, here’s an overview of what the Salesforce AppExchange is and how you can use it.
On the AppExchange, there are two places to look for Consultants: Partner Listings or Salesforce Developer Consultants. The Partner Listings is a well maintained directory of Certified Salesforce Partners, searchable by their specific cloud or industry expertise, location, practice size, ratings, and more. The listings are verified by Salesforce, so there are quality mechanisms in place to ensure the accuracy of what's listed here.Consulting Partners are best suited for larger scale projects and you should expect to pay a premium when engaging this type of vendor.The Salesforce Developer Consultant Listings are, unfortunately, more challenging to use. Those listings aren’t verified by Salesforce and many of them are outdated, so you may find a Consultant that is no longer available.
Additionally, you cannot contact listed consultants through their profile pages, so you’ll need to manually search for that individual on LinkedIn or elsewhere. The alternative is to search for the consultant you need via Google, which is a time-intensive, manual process.
Cost to hire a Salesforce Developer
90-140
Not sure if a Salesforce Developer has the skills you need for your project? Read more about the role of a Salesforce Developer.
If you're looking for a Developer just to write code, you can easily set them up in JIRA, assign tickets with deadlines, and let them work on their own schedule - this will often reduce the hourly rate they charge because it's more flexible.
Additionally, companies that need a production-focused Salesforce Developer have a lot more options, since many Developers that have a full-time job are interested in side projects to work nights/weekends.In general, expect a mid-level Salesforce Developer Contractor to cost $90/hour - $110/hour.If you have especially complex work (dealing heavily with integrations, use of custom APIs etc) or want a Senior Developer that can contribute to platform strategy alongside your stakeholders / Administrators, you'll be targeting 5+ years working on the platform and a track record in client-facing roles. These Senior Developers cost in the range of $115/hour - $140/hour.(As a comparison, most Certified Consulting Partners will charge an hourly rate of $175/hr-$200/hr for Salesforce Developers.)
Cost to hire a Salesforce Technical Architect
160-185
Technical Architects are often found in larger Salesforce orgs, where the scale and complexity of the work warrant someone that can not only spearhead platform design but also account for integration strategy, data management, proper documentation standards, and longer development cycles. You will typically engage a Technical Architect to work alongside other Salesforce professionals, setting strategy, scoping work, and directly managing Developers while contributing to some hands-on work. However, if you are working on smaller engagements, you're better off pairing a Solution Architect with a Developer.Expect a Technical Architect to cost around $160/hour - $185/hour and a Solution Architect hourly rate to be $130/hour - $160/hour.(As a comparison, most Certified Consulting Partners will charge an hourly rate of $250/hr-$350/hr for Salesforce Technical Architects. Properly evaluating the type of Salesforce Architect you need and devising the right resource allocation strategy is the single most cost effective hire you can make when determining Salesforce resource strategy.)
Cost to hire a Salesforce Solution Architect
130-160
Solution Architects understand the full capabilities of Salesforce and will strategize and architect a long-term product roadmap; however, they look at problems through the lens of a business stakeholder. While they know what can be done with configuration vs. custom development, they need to be paired with a Salesforce Developer or Technical Architect to create in-the-weeds technical specifications for how to customize the platform.Often, Solution Architects will work in tandem with Administrator & Developers, helping direct strategy and Project Manager the deliverables and project scope.
Typically, Solution Architects will be around $130/hour - $160/hour, depending on the size & complexity of customers they have worked with in the past.(As a comparison, a Consulting Partner will often bill their Solution Architects at a rate of $250/hour - $300/hour.)
Cost to hire a Pardot Consultant
90-120
While there are some individuals that can do both, you will typically find this blended skill set more in the early-stage startup context. It's best to define if your challenges are more technical / systems focused or Marketing Operations oriented - often, the best Technical Specialists will come from a background working at a Consulting Partner (therefore, implementing new Pardot instances for a living), whereas the best Marketing Operations Strategists will have worked as a Manager/Director of Demand Generation inside a company in the past.
In general, Pardot Consultants are $90/hour - $120/hour but as you start to look for more holistic Demand Generation / Marketing Operations strategy, expect the hourly to increase and fall in the range of $120/hour-$145/hour.
Cost to hire a Marketing Cloud Developer
100-145
Application Specialists / Implementers will often come from a Consulting Partner and their focus is on deploying, integrating, and setting up Salesforce Marketing Cloud in new environments - a big part of this skill set is the ability to work with Product Engineers to design and set up custom integrations and work with APIs. A Campaign Specialist is partnering with the Marketing team to build and deploy campaigns - they mostly live in HTML, CSS, and AmpScript.
Regardless of which type of Marketing Cloud Specialist you need, the platform has grown in complexity, so individuals with exposure to the full set of feature will often command a premium rate - this includes Mobile Studio, Interaction Studio, Datorama, and others.
Depending on seniority, expect a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engineer to fall somewhere in the range of $100/hour-$145/hour with the lower end of that range being more on the Campaign side.
(As a comparison, most Certified Consulting Partners will charge an hourly rate of $175/hr-$225/hr for Marketing Cloud Engineers.)
Where to find
Salesforce Consultants.
Find Salesforce Consultant Partners on the Salesforce AppExchange
Salesforce AppExchange. If you’ve never used it before, here’s an overview of what the Salesforce AppExchange is and how you can use it.
On the AppExchange, there are two places to look for Consultants: Partner Listings or Salesforce Developer Consultants. The Partner Listings is a well maintained directory of Certified Salesforce Partners, searchable by their specific cloud or industry expertise, location, practice size, ratings, and more. The listings are verified by Salesforce, so there are quality mechanisms in place to ensure the accuracy of what's listed here. Consulting Partners are best suited for larger scale projects and you should expect to pay a premium when engaging this type of vendor.
The Salesforce Developer Consultant Listings are, unfortunately, more challenging to use. Those listings aren’t verified by Salesforce and many of them are outdated, so you may find a Consultant that is no longer available.
Additionally, you cannot contact listed consultants through their profile pages, so you’ll need to manually search for that individual on LinkedIn or elsewhere.The alternative is to search for the consultant you need via Google, which is a time-intensive, manual process.
Using FoundHQ to hire Salesforce Consultants
FoundHQ, which is the number one Salesforce Freelancer Platform, lists over 3,000 pre-vetted, independent Salesforce Consultants. These consultants range from Salesforce Administrators to Salesforce Architects and can lend their expertise in everything from CPQ Cloud to Marketing Cloud and more.
Every Consultant Profile details their full work history, Salesforce Certifications, Salesforce Cloud expertise, location, and hourly rate while enabling you to schedule interviews directly through the platform. The FoundHQ pre-vetting process verifies their technical skills through detailed assessments and their past performance through reference checks.
Hire in-house Salesforce Consultants through recruitment agencies
Most recruitment agencies focus on full-time, permanent staffing for companies looking to hire employees. However, some also provide access to temporary, contract or part-time staff.
Hiring through a recruitment agency can be a good option if you want someone else to help find and pre-vet experts according to your own bespoke requirements, but that service isn’t free. TwentyPine is a reputable recruitment agency that’s been in the business since 2014 and has helped companies like ESPN, Workday, General Motors, and Yelp build their Salesforce teams.
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