“The Delegate resource has been critical, allowing us to maintain our abilities and capabilities. That’s why they’ve been a trusted partner for over three years now.” – Justin Rogers
One of Delegate’s long-term clients is the risk intelligence leader Flashpoint. Since August 2019, Delegate admins have been providing services that allow the RevOps teams to advance and the managers to gain promotions multiple times.
Justin Rogers, Flashpoint’s VP of Revenue Operations, recalls that in 2019 his company was growing rapidly, yet the team was understaffed for marketing, sales, and customer success. With a need for Salesforce expertise but no budget for additional headcount, the company brought on a contractor who filled in that gap for a while.
However, after a break with the contractor, they decided not to bring her back on because of two concerns. One was bringing her in after she had done work for competitors. The other was that a single person may not have the range of skills that Flashpoint would need as it grows.
Why Flashpoint turned to Delegate
Rogers realized they needed a longer term solution to meet their needs. He learned about the Delegate model and realized it would provide the deep bench level he sought that could be brought on quickly at an affordable price point.
“We didn’t know when we started the Delegate relationship if it would take three, four, or six months. But we didn’t need to know that and were able to get started really quickly.”
Not having the burden of establishing the scope of the work and determining hours – the standard headaches for setting up the budget for a consulting project – made it much easier to proceed. The flexibility built into the Delegate model allowed Rogers to meet the changing needs of the departments within Revenue Operations, changing direction, scaling up, or scaling down, as needed.
Beyond implementation: tackling CPQ
Flashpoint’s first Delegate was Asha Grayson. She came on board when there was a lot of work to do on the martech stack and was able to handle the complexity involved. Specifically, she was in charge of CPQ implementation that had been given to a vendor who failed to deliver what was needed.
The implementation partner merely offered a one-size-fits-all general guide that didn’t address Flashpoint’s specific requirements. That doesn’t work for a tool like CPQ, Grayson explained, because it “is super complex and can’t be reduced to a template step by step guide.”
By leveraging Grayson’s skills and experience, the Flashpoint team was able to achieve what it had set out to do with the partner for a fraction of the cost. Plus, it gained long-term usability.
An implementation partner’s success is measured only in getting a system up and running. Consequently, it is solely concerned with the initial implementation and not with the issues that may arise down the road.
In contrast, when Delegates approach an implementation job, they plan for the longevity of the solution. They’re aware that someone – likely also a Delegate – will have to maintain it after implementation and don’t want that person to have difficulties that could be averted.
“The stake in how well the system is set to work after the implementation is done puts the onus on us to do a good job to keep up the maintenance,” Grayson explained.
Scoring business goals
Understanding the particular business’s aims and executing accordingly is key to the success of Delegate implementations. The strength of a Delegate admin is the ability to understand the desired outcomes for the business and then work backwards to find the best Salesforce tool to achieve it.
For the CPQ implementation at Flashpoint, Grayson zeroed in on the key capabilities by paying attention to which tools the solution was replacing. She made sure that it would be able to carry all those functionalities without causing problems down the road.
“She was a big help for us, coming up with better ways of doing things that we could do out-of-the-box in Salesforce,” Rogers observed about Grayson.
He appreciates that Delegates take the time to understand the business goals and then think about the right way to approach problems unhindered by the “blinders” that people within the organization often have.
“They were able to support the complexity of the business with transformational projects, like the CPQ implementation, and scaling up to enable us to hit our timeline by adapting very quickly to complicated requirements.”
Like the Delegates who came after her, Grayson had a range of technical asks from the different departments that fall under the RevOps umbrella to manage. In addition to managing Salesforce and Pardot integrations, they had to work with a range of marketing and sales automation tools, including Marketo and Hubspot among others.
While most full-time Salesforce admins work solely with Salesforce tools, Delegates gain experience with a more extensive tech stack. That range of skills creates greater value for clients.
Yes to promotions, no to disruptions
The collaborative relationship between Flashpoint and Delegate accelerated careers, as well as processes, thanks to making the best use of resources. The employees working in-house were empowered to capitalize on their own Salesforce strengths and advance the company goals while moving up the ranks.
Grayson worked closely with Nick Zorellao who held the title of Senior Revenue Operations Analyst at Flashpoint when she came on board. In March 2020, he was promoted to Revenue Operations Analyst. Subsequently, he was promoted to Revenue Operations Lead and then to Senior Operations Lead.
Grayson also earned a promotion at Delegate while she was at Flashpoint, becoming a Team Lead in March 2021. Before she left, another Delegate, Brandon Weaver, joined for a new project. He overlapped with Grayson for a few months and then stepped into the role she held after her departure.
When Weaver was promoted to Team Lead the next year, Flashpoint already had Jay Herrera lined up as an admin to keep everything running smoothly. Thanks to Delegate’s flexible client load, Flashpoint never had to deal with a disruption in its workflow.
The fact that he could bring in someone with the skills they needed and “go ahead on projects without having to get a new vendor and a new package to support” made Rogers’ life much easier.
“I’m able to bring in Delegates who bring in skill sets that we don’t necessarily have.”
A valued part of the team
Rogers conceded that before his experience with Delegate, he thought only full-time people can be counted on to be collaborative and loyal. But the Delegates brought those traits to work with them and became integral to the Flashpoint team.
Grayson and Weaver reported that they built a strong working relationship that extended beyond work and certainly beyond consulting. They participated in the team building offsite and continued to keep in touch with Flashpoint employees and meet in person with them even after they moved on from that account.
“The Delegate resource has been critical, allowing us to maintain our abilities and capabilities. That’s why they’ve been a trusted partner for over three years now.”