A Step-by-Step Salesforce Implementation Checklist for Scaling Teams

We have seen Salesforce implementations go live on time and still fail six months later. Not because anything was “broken,” but because too many decisions were rushed, deferred, or never clearly owned. 

Even Salesforce has acknowledged that CRM projects often fail when teams skip planning, alignment, and ownership and expect the tool to fix process problems on its own (Salesforce on why CRM projects fail).

That’s why this checklist exists.It’s built for small and mid-market enterprises that need Salesforce to scale without rework, surfacing the decisions teams usually discover the hard way, who decides, where data breaks trust, which integrations matter, and what governance is needed before go-live.

What is the Salesforce CRM Implementation Checklist?

A Salesforce implementation checklist outlines the critical steps organizations must complete before, during, and after deploying Salesforce to ensure adoption, data integrity, and business impact.

This page is designed for leaders who need Salesforce to support forecasting, clean revenue reporting, reliable handoffs, and auditable workflows across Sales, RevOps, Finance, and IT. This checklist complements the full strategy guide.

📍Start here for the complete implementation framework: Salesforce Implementation Guide for Mid-Market and Enterprise Leaders.

Quick summary (for planning teams)

If you only have time for the essentials, focus on these 10 items:

• Executive sponsor with decision rights and success metrics
• Stage definitions and exit criteria agreed across Sales and RevOps
• Data audit completed with a remediation plan (duplicates, missing fields)
• System-of-record decisions made (accounts, products, pricing, invoices)
• Integration inventory and reconciliation plan defined
• Security model designed (roles, permission sets, least privilege)
• Core configuration built and validated end-to-end
• Testing completed (unit, integration, UAT) with pass criteria
• Adoption plan live (training, manager workflows, support model)
• Post-go-live governance active (data quality monitoring and release cadence)

Use this checklist as a working Salesforce implementation project plan, assigning owners, timelines, and success criteria to each item below.

If money depends on the field (billing, revenue reporting, commissions), lock it down, audit it, and reconcile it.

Pre-Implementation Checklist

Pre-implementation is where most mid-market and enterprise rollouts are won or lost. The goal is to lock down the decisions that prevent rework later: ownership, definitions, data readiness, integration mapping, and governance.

Executive Sponsorship

A Salesforce implementation needs a single accountable sponsor with decision rights across teams.

Checklist

• Name an executive sponsor accountable for outcomes (adoption, forecast trust, revenue reporting).
• Define decision rights: what the sponsor decides vs what the project team decides.
• Establish steering committee cadence (weekly or biweekly) with a standard agenda.
• Set non-negotiables (examples: stage discipline, discount approvals, integration controls).

This is especially important when working with a Salesforce implementation company, as executive ownership prevents key business decisions from being deferred or outsourced.

Business Objectives

Implementation should tie to measurable outcomes, not tasks.

Checklist

• Document primary objectives (forecast accuracy, cycle time, reporting trust).
• Define success metrics with baselines and targets.
• Assign metric ownership post go-live (RevOps, Sales leadership, Finance).
• Align pipeline and forecast definitions to reporting needs.

Data Readiness

Data readiness is a trust requirement.

Checklist

• Complete a data audit: duplicates, missing values, inconsistent picklists, owner accuracy.
• Define minimum clean dataset required for go-live.
• Define data ownership for core objects.
• Decide deduplication rules and hierarchy approach.
• Build a data quality scorecard and weekly review cadence.

Integration Mapping

Integrations create downstream trust (or downstream chaos). 

Salesforce’s own research shows how common this problem is. According to the 2025 MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark, 83% of organizations report that integration challenges slow digital transformation, largely because core systems remain disconnected. When Salesforce isn’t integrated cleanly with ERP, billing, and downstream systems, trust breaks after go-live, not during setup.

Checklist

• Inventory systems that touch revenue workflows (ERP, billing, CPQ, identity, data warehouse, commissions).
• Define system of record for accounts, products, pricing, invoices, entitlements, identity.
• Define sync direction and frequency (real-time vs batch).
• Define reconciliation approach (proof that systems match).
• Define error handling and monitoring ownership.

This risk is amplified in Salesforce Sales Cloud implementation efforts, where forecasting accuracy, pipeline hygiene, and downstream revenue reporting depend on reliable integrations.

Governance Model

Governance prevents customization sprawl and keeps Salesforce stable.

Checklist

• Define change request intake and prioritization.
• Define release cadence and environments (sandbox, UAT, production).
• Define naming standards for fields and automation.
• Define data governance owners and monitoring.
• Define post-go-live operating rhythm (weekly, monthly, quarterly).

The Ultimate Salesforce Implementation Checklist

This section is split into phases that match how most successful rollouts are delivered: configuration, customization, integration, testing, and security. 

Configuration

Configuration is the foundation.

Checklist

• Confirm object model and definitions (accounts, opportunities, stages, forecasting).
• Implement record types, layouts, required fields.
• Implement routing and assignment rules.
• Implement validation rules that enforce stage exits.
• Implement approvals for controlled workflows (discounting, exceptions).

Customization

Customization should solve real business problems and reduce manual work.

Checklist

• Validate every custom object and field against a requirement.
• Use naming conventions and documentation standards.
• Design structured data for reporting (avoid uncontrolled free-text).
• Document exception handling paths.
• Review customization impact on reporting and integrations.

Integration

Integration is where enterprise complexity shows up.

Checklist

• Confirm systems of record and field mapping.
• Build integrations with retries, monitoring, and reconciliation reports.
• Define integration ownership (who responds when sync breaks).
• Define versioning and regression testing for integration changes.

Testing

Testing is where trust is built.

Checklist

• Create test plan with pass criteria (unit, integration, UAT).
• Test core revenue workflows end-to-end.
• Validate reporting against expected metrics and definitions.
• Run test migrations and reconcile totals to source systems.
• Ensure defect triage process and sign-off checklist exists.

Security and Access

Security supports adoption, trust, and enterprise controls.

Checklist

• Design roles, profiles, permission sets using least privilege.
• Validate sharing rules across regions and business units.
• Validate field-level security for sensitive fields.
• Control admin and integration user access.
• Enable auditing for critical fields and approvals.

Post-Go-Live Checklist

Go-live is the transition from project mode to operating mode.

Adoption Tracking

Checklist

• Build adoption dashboards (active users, workflow usage, completeness).
• Run weekly adoption review with Sales managers.
• Set expectations that pipeline reviews happen in Salesforce.
• Create office hours and support workflow for user issues.

Reporting Validation

Checklist

• Validate executive dashboards: pipeline, forecast, conversion, slippage.
• Validate definitions match leadership expectations.
• Document reporting definitions and prevent metric drift.

Commission and Revenue checks

If commissions or revenue reporting depend on Salesforce, this is non-negotiable.

Checklist

• Validate owner history and transfer handling.
• Validate close dates vs effective dates.
• Validate product attribution and splits.
• Validate approvals and audit trails.
• Reconcile CRM values with billing or ERP where applicable.

Optimization Backlog

Checklist

• Centralize enhancement requests in a single backlog.
• Prioritize by business impact and adoption impact.
• Establish release cadence and governance approvals.
• Run monthly system health reviews and quarterly governance reviews.

Enterprise Salesforce Checklist: Additional Requirements

This Enterprise Salesforce checklist focuses on compliance, auditability, and ownership requirements that apply at scale. 

Many teams work with Salesforce implementation partners at this stage, but ownership of data, controls, and governance must remain internal to avoid compliance gaps.

Compliance

Checklist

• Document compliance requirements (data retention, privacy, access reviews, segregation of duties).
• Define periodic access review cadence and evidence storage.
• Define change management evidence requirements (release notes, testing proof).

Audit trails

Checklist

• Enable field history tracking for critical fields (stage, amount, close date, owner, discounts).
• Ensure approvals are captured with timestamps and approvers.
• Ensure integration logs exist and are retained per policy.

Role-based Access

Checklist

• Map access to job functions and review with security and business owners.
• Limit admin access and document justification.
• Create onboarding and offboarding procedures for role changes.

Data Ownership

Checklist

• Define data owners per object and field groups.
• Define data quality SLAs and escalation paths.
• Establish monthly data quality review with accountability.

Enterprise Salesforce succeeds when data ownership is explicit. When everybody owns data, nobody owns data.

👉 Want a printable version for workshops and go-live readiness reviews? Download the checklist and share it with your project team.

Conclusion

“CRM initiatives fail when organizations focus on technology instead of people, process, and strategy.”
— Salesforce, Why CRM Projects Fail

Salesforce implementation checklist isn’t about controlling every detail, it’s about reducing avoidable mistakes. When teams slow down long enough to confirm ownership, data readiness, integrations, and governance, they avoid the kind of rework that quietly drains time and trust months after go-live. The checklist exists to surface hard decisions early, when they’re still cheap to make.

Used well, this checklist becomes a shared reference point across Sales, RevOps, Finance, and IT. It helps teams stay aligned as the implementation moves from planning to execution to day-to-day operations. Not because Salesforce is fragile, but because scaling it without structure almost always is.

FAQs

What is a Salesforce implementation checklist?

A Salesforce implementation checklist is a structured set of steps and readiness criteria teams use before, during, and after deployment to ensure adoption, data integrity, integrated workflows, and measurable business outcomes.

What are the phases of a Salesforce CRM implementation?

Most successful implementations follow three phases: pre-implementation (alignment and readiness), implementation (build and testing), and post-go-live (adoption, monitoring, governance).

What should be done before a Salesforce implementation?

Before implementation, you should name an executive sponsor, define business objectives and stage definitions, complete a data audit, map integrations and systems of record, and establish a governance model.

What should be checked after Salesforce go-live?

After go-live, you should track adoption, validate dashboards and reporting definitions, reconcile revenue and commission-impacting data, and maintain an optimization backlog with a release cadence.

How long does a Salesforce implementation take?

A Salesforce implementation typically takes 8–12 weeks for mid-market teams and 3–6 months (or more) for enterprise organizations, depending on scope, integrations, data cleanup, and governance requirements. Implementations take longer when decisions, ownership, or data readiness are unclear.

How do you plan a Salesforce CRM implementation?

Plan a Salesforce CRM implementation by defining business goals and sales processes first, assigning clear ownership across Sales, RevOps, Finance, and IT, cleaning and preparing data, identifying required integrations, and deciding governance before configuration begins. Strong planning reduces rework and improves adoption after go-live.

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