Hat Stacking in the Customer’s Shoes

The Customer’s Shoes

When I moved from a developer role to become a sales engineer, a manager advised me, “Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.” This may sound familiar to those in customer-facing roles, but what does it really mean?

Putting oneself in the customer’s shoes starts with curiosity about the customer, understanding their business needs, and appreciating what it takes to meet those needs. This is how it feels to fit into the customer’s shoes, looking forward to reaching a solution destination with them.

I always want to know a customer’s goals, at least within the scope of my company’s solution. Immersing myself with the customer, I adapt the solution to help them reach those goals. Often expecting to adapt the solution themselves, customers appreciate the extra effort putting them on a trajectory to success.

Stacking Hats

Many Salesforce customers have hat stackers - people working in multiple Salesforce roles. In some cases, a system administrator wears business analysis or even architect hats. Some small organizations have “the Salesforce person” - one technical expert stacking any hat that fits to customize their org.

A hat stacker often faces growing demands in their myriad roles. Their organization grows, adds users, and demands powerful customizations to deliver more value. The organization eventually realizes it needs to bring in a business analyst or architect to help their hat stacker.

Dress for Success

Let’s say a Salesforce administrator has done an excellent job with low-code customizations while keeping her Salesforce org running. She starts to struggle with growing demands, balancing her admin, business analyst, and low-code developer hats. The company notices her hats tipping over. In addition, they need customizations that go beyond low-code.

The organization hires a development team to meet their customization demands. You wear the architect and business analyst hats on the team.

Where do you begin? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes! Learn the organization’s mission and goals. Understand what they need to reach those goals. Develop an appreciation for what they want to accomplish.

Resist the temptation or pressure to “just” build whatever is in the Salesforce customization backlog. You have a unique opportunity to assess it with a fresh view and understanding of the business. You could find the backlog contains redundant implementations to relieve overlapping pain points. The team could consolidate pain point relief in the initial solution release. 

The Complete Look

You want to build a solution right the first time, avoiding the time and cost of future reworks. Start by helping organization stakeholders define what “right” means in terms of business value.  Not only do you put yourself in the customer’s shoes, you also need to know where to go in them.

Form alliances with the key stakeholder manager(s). Persuade them to defy solution gravity, the force pulling everyone into solution implementation, no matter what corners get cut. If the organization has a product owner, maintain close collaboration with him or her, ensuring the team develops the highest value solution.

When donning your architect hat, keep your business analyst hat on to pick up any new requirements or opportunities that could come along. If a requirement pops up for a solution that the developers are already working on, they may squeeze in the change with little or no impact on the schedule. The organization may pivot, changing the requirements. Keeping your business analyst hat on guides you through the changes.

A hat stacker can better manage their roles by understanding and appreciating business needs.