The Question
I noticed in a lot of your content that you aren’t necessarily towing the company line like a lot of other partners.
Did something happen?
Are you still co-selling with Salesforce?
The Short Answer
Nothing happened.
We simply had to realize that what we want and what Salesforce is structured for are fundamentally different.
Cloud Trailz is a small, efficient consulting firm that will likely never be a massive organization. If I had to guess, we’ll probably cap out around twenty people.
That isn’t an accident. We prefer being an independent Salesforce consultant.
The company was intentionally designed around helping small and midsize businesses get ongoing value from their Salesforce investment. To us, that means helping customers make the best possible use of what they already own.
Very few companies actually do that.
Salesforce, on the other hand, is a massive Fortune 500 company designed to continuously expand products and services across its customer base. It reports to Wall Street every quarter. It has growth expectations. It has shareholders. It has revenue targets.
Ultimately, those realities drive behavior.
As a partner, that leaves you with a choice.
You can spend your time trying to continuously ride the Salesforce wave, which often means chasing an ever-expanding catalog of products, programs, priorities, and internal initiatives.
Or you can build something durable.
You can find a niche, a problem, and a group of customers you genuinely enjoy helping and focus your energy there.
For me, that was the better choice.
It was better for my sanity, better for our employees, and better for our customers.
Ultimately, it’s better for the long-term health of Cloud Trailz.
What We Mean By Co-Selling
Before we go any further, it’s worth defining what co-selling actually means.
In a typical Salesforce co-sell motion, Salesforce identifies opportunities, introduces consulting partners, and both organizations work together to move a deal forward.
Salesforce sells software. The partner typically delivers implementation, support, training, or consulting services.
On paper, it’s a great arrangement.
And to be clear, it can work very well. It has worked very well for us.
We met great people, we helped a lot of customers, and completed hundreds of projects.
There are partners who have built extremely successful businesses around that motion.
This article isn’t meant to criticize them.
It’s simply an explanation of why we chose a different path.
Why This Happened
Salesforce built one of the most successful software ecosystems in the world.
As the company grew, it relied heavily on third-party consulting firms to absorb implementation work, deliver projects, train customers, and provide expertise.
That arrangement allowed Salesforce to focus on what it does best:
- Building products
- Acquiring products
- Expanding products
- Growing revenue
It’s a huge part of why the company became what it is today.
The reality, however, is that most small consulting firms are not rocket ships.
They aren’t billion-dollar public companies.
They’re small businesses that need customers, trust, and repeat business.
They need employees who enjoy coming to work and they need operating models that can survive for decades rather than quarters.
Admittedly, many partners won’t discuss this openly because they view it as some kind of offense to Salesforce.
I think that’s a dangerous way to think.
Salesforce is optimizing for Salesforce (that’s exactly what they should do).
But after years of watching changes in territories, partner programs, priorities, leadership structures, product mandates, and selling motions, I eventually realized something important:
The long-term health of Cloud Trailz is not Salesforce’s responsibility.
It’s mine.
The same way the long-term health of Salesforce isn’t my responsibility.
Once I accepted that, the decision to become an independent Salesforce consultant became much easier.
1. Incentive Misalignment
What It Is
Our goal is simple. Help companies get value from the products they already own.
Most of our customers are small and midsize businesses.
Salesforce isn’t cheap. External consulting isn’t cheap.
Most companies don’t have unlimited budgets.
So before recommending another product, another module, or another initiative, I want to know that they’re actually using what they already bought.
Salesforce’s incentives are different.
Account Executives are measured on selling products.
That isn’t a criticism. It’s literally their job.
I’ve seen at least three major rebrands of the same fundamental motion over the years.
The branding changes.
The incentives don’t and quite frankly they won’t.
What’s Actually Happening
After more than 200 projects, patterns become difficult to ignore.
One of the clearest examples involved an agricultural company with roughly one hundred employees.
At the time, they were struggling to get basic Sales Cloud adoption.
Their sales team wasn’t consistently using the platform.
Processes weren’t stable.
Reporting wasn’t reliable.
They were realistically five to six months away from getting the fundamentals working consistently.
Meanwhile, there was significant pressure to discuss Field Service Lightning.
I remember looking at the situation and thinking: “Why are we talking about expansion when the foundation isn’t even being used yet?”
The customer didn’t need another product. They needed adoption, discipline, and consistency.
Unfortunately, refusing to participate in that push ultimately cost us the relationship.
That’s fine. I can live with that.
What I couldn’t live with was building a company where helping customers use what they already owned became secondary to helping them buy something new.
Why It Matters
Long-term customer relationships require things like:
- Honest recommendations
- Realistic expectaitons
- Sustainable adoption
- Practical implementation plans
- A willingness to say “not yet”
Salesforce’s model requires things like:
- Product expansion
- Pipeline growth
- Quarterly performance
- Revenue acceleration
- New product adoption
Neither goal is wrong.
But over time I watched the overlap between those goals get smaller and smaller.
That’s when I realized we were headed in different directions.
2. Reps Change Frequently
What It Is
One of the realities of operating in the SMB, Growth, and Commercial segments is turnover.
At minimum there is usually a major reshuffling every February.
Then throughout the year there are promotions, departures, reorganizations, new hires, leadership changes, territory changes, and strategic realignments.
Again, I recognize that’s the nature of a large enterprise.
But it’s also constant deck reshuffling for everyone connected to it.
Partners. Customers. Sales Engineers. Managers.
Everyone.
Over a five-year period we had more than 200 Salesforce Account Executives attached to opportunities in our CRM.
Today we have exactly zero of them.
Not because anything bad happened.
Because that’s how the system works.
What’s Actually Happening
One of the best relationships we ever had was with an AE who genuinely understood our model.
They understood:
- Flat pricing
- Fast delivery
- Helping customers get value quickly
- Fixing mistakes without needing a federal injunction
In a single year we completed twenty-three deals together.
The relationship was easy and the customers benefited.
There wasn’t unnecessary pressure.
There wasn’t unnecessary drama.
There was just mutual understanding.
That person got tired of the machine and left.
Good for him He needed to do what was best for their career.
The problem for us was that we were suddenly back at square one.
The relationship was gone.
The trust was gone.
The shared understanding was gone.
And now we had to start over.
Again.
The third time we went through this cycle I realized that this was the trade off.
We weren’t experiencing an exception. We were experiencing the rule.
Why It Matters
This isn’t a complaint.
It’s a structural observation.
At some point I had to ask myself: Why are we investing so much energy into relationships that have to be rebuilt every year?
The answer wasn’t good enough to justify the effort.
Eventually we decided to stop building our business around relationships we didn’t control.
3. AE’s Genuinely Can’t Know The Products and Customers
AE’s structurally can’t be your CRM Strategist.
What It Is
This isn’t a dig at Salesforce Account Executives.
Mathematically they cannot possess deep expertise across all the products and customers they manage.
People often expect Account Executives to:
- Sell products
- Undestand products
- Explain products
- Coordinate technical resources
- Handle renewals
- Act as strategists
- Answer support questions
All while managing hundreds of accounts. It’s very unrealistic.
What’s Actually Happening
A typical Salesforce AE is expected to do 7 jobs.
All while carrying a large territory and meeting aggressive performance targets.
Most of the time they don’t have enough technical support either.
A Sales Engineer is the technical resource responsible for explaining how products actually work.
Over the years I heard countless versions of the same complaint: “We can’t get enough SE support.”
As a result, partners get pulled into the process.
The “best partner” often becomes the partner who can jump in and help save deals, explain products, provide technical expertise, and fill gaps that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
This creates a lot of stress. Especially when product mandates arrive.
Agentforce was a great example. When Agentforce launched there was tremendous pressure to find use cases and opportunities.
The challenge was that many SMB customers simply weren’t ready for it.
The Atlanta office, like many others, found itself trying to identify legitimate opportunities where there often weren’t any yet.
Nobody was being malicious. People were just trying to do their jobs.
The problem is that this creates an environment where everyone is moving fast and very few people have the luxury of slowing down and thinking long term (or thinking at all).
Why It Matters
Most AE’s are optimizing for the next quarter.
I understand why. Their compensation, career progression, and job security depend on it.
But the people helping customers succeed over five years, ten years, or longer need a different perspective.
They need time, continuity, and context.
Those are things the structure of the role simply doesn’t provide.
4. No Margin For Error
What It Is
One thing I learned very quickly is that there is almost no margin for error inside a co-sell relationship.
Software implementations are expectation games.
Customers have expectations.
Consultants have expectations.
Salespeople have expectations.
Those expectations rarely line up perfectly.
There will always be misunderstandings, surprises, and mistakes.
That’s reality.
The challenge is who absorbs the consequences.
What’s Actually Happening
Mistakes happen because we’re implementing software, not making t-shirts.
Requirements change.
Businesses evolve.
New information appears.
The challenge is that when Salesforce owns the relationship, the partner carriesthe risk.
One of our most memorable examples involved a flooring company.
Our mistake was not digging deeply enough into their data structure before the project began.
I’d honestly give our performance a six out of ten there.
We should have understood their data model better.
At the same time, the customer’s requirements continued to expand.
What began as 3 years of history needed quickly turned into 10.
Those are very different projects.
I was completely willing to own our mistake.
What I wasn’t willing to do was pretend seven additional years of migration work magically appeared for free.
At one point the message became pretty clear: Absorb the additional work or future opportunities with her department would disappear.
We weren’t willing to simply roll over so true to her word the opportunities disappeared.
Why It Matters
There are absolutely people who will use this leverage against partners.
That’s reality.
They’ll say things like: “If you don’t do this, I’ll stop sending business your way.”
I don’t enjoy that (I don’t know who does).
Not because I expected perfection.
The opposite.
I expected mistakes and everyone should.
What bothered me was the idea that another organization could make a few decisions and materially impact our business overnight.
That isn’t a durable foundation.
So we stopped building on it.
5. Volatility Reduction
What It Is
This is probably the deepest reason on the list.
I’ve never fooled myself into believing business should be easy.
But I do believe effort should compound.
Over time, customers and employees should benefit from a stronger business.
What I discovered is that the more intertwined we became with Salesforce’s sales organization, the more volatility we introduced into Cloud Trailz.
What’s Actually Happening
Years ago Salesforce distributed opportunities heavily through territory structures.
Certain territories simply had more activity.
New York.
California.
Chicago.
Large metropolitan areas naturally produced more opportunities.
We took advantage of that and built strong relationships in productive territories.
We worked hard. The results followed.
Then in 2024 Salesforce changed the model.
The company moved toward a more round-robin style distribution approach.
A few keystrokes, an organizational announcement, and years of accumulated advantage vanished.
To be clear: Salesforce had every right to do it.
I couldn’t even conceptually be mad.
What they did made complete sense for Salesforce.
What shocked me was how disruptive it was to Cloud Trailz.
What This Looks Like In Real Life
That was the first time I felt truly naked as the owner of the business.
I remember sitting there realizing that a decision made entirely outside of our company had materially impacted our future pipeline.
Again, nobody did anything wrong. Salesforce optimized for Salesforce.
That’s exactly what a large public company should do.
But it forced me to confront a difficult realization.
We were building on sand.
Why It Matters
I genuinely don’t think Salesforce is a toy. I think businesses should treat it like infrastructure.
A well-maintained Salesforce environment should operate like a garden.
It should grow with the business, become more valuable over time, and create stability.
The problem is that stability is difficult to provide when your own company is operating inside a highly volatile ecosystem.
Why Write This?
I’ve also received feedback that some of our content isn’t “Salesforce friendly.”
Whatever that means.
The truth is I’m not trying to be Salesforce friendly. I’m trying to be buyer friendly.
I’m trying to help people make good decisions.
There are partners who have very strong negative feelings toward Salesforce.
Honestly, there was a period where I did too. Eventually I had to step back and realize something important.
Salesforce is not responsible for the long-term health of Cloud Trailz.
I am.
Business owners are responsible for their customers, their employees, their culture, and their future.
Salesforce does a very good job of setting Salesforce up for success.
That’s exactly what they should do.
I wanted people considering Cloud Trailz to understand why our company feels different outside of just saying “we are different”.
Closing Thought
I’ve always been a person who gets agitated by unnecessary volatility.
I understand that uncertainty is part of life.
I also understand that a lot of it is completely unnecessary.
There’s enough trouble in the world already.
There’s enough anxiety.
I don’t want to voluntarily plug our company into a system that continuously introduces more of it.
When we stopped co-selling with Salesforce, I didn’t walk away thinking Salesforce was evil.
I walked away realizing that tightly tying Cloud Trailz to Salesforce’s sales organization wasn’t the best thing for our company or the customers we serve.
Becoming an independent Salesforce consultant wasn’t a rejection of Salesforce.
It was a commitment to building something more durable.
If you’re looking for a partner focused on helping you get value from the products you already own instead of constantly pushing you toward the next thing, we’d be happy to talk.
We’ll give you an honest assessment of where you are, what’s working, what’s not, and what makes the most sense for your business moving forward.