Preparing for a Successful User Story Session : A Guide for Small Businesses

When implementing Salesforce for your small business, success hinges on how well the system matches your operations and supports your goals. A User Story Session is your roadmap. It’s where you and your consultant define exactly how Salesforce will support your sales, service, and reporting workflows.

Follow these six steps to prepare and set your project up for success:

1. Know Your Business Goals

Start by answering: Why are you investing in Salesforce? What do you hope to achieve?

Common goals for small businesses include:

• Streamlining sales and lead management
• Enhancing customer support
• Improving visibility into your pipeline
• Automating repetitive tasks

Ask yourself:

• Which processes are currently inefficient?
• What are my biggest customer or sales bottlenecks?
• How could Salesforce help increase revenue or satisfaction?

2. Identify Key Roles in Your Business

Who’s using Salesforce, and what do they need from it?

Some typical small business roles include:

• Sales Reps – managing leads and closing deals
• Customer Support – logging and resolving issues
• Operations Managers – ensuring workflows run smoothly
• Owners/Executives – tracking performance and making decisions

Mapping roles to needs helps us build Salesforce for the people actually using it.

3. Create Clear User Stories

User stories describe what your team needs Salesforce to do in simple, role-based terms:

As a [role], I want to [action], so that [outcome].

Examples:

• As a Sales Rep, I want to view all leads in a pipeline so I can track follow-ups.
• As a Support Manager, I want to log customer issues so I can monitor resolution time and improve service.

These stories shape how Salesforce is tailored to your business.

4. Call Out Pain Points

Think about what’s not working in your current system. These issues help us guide the build.

Ask:

• Where do we waste time with manual steps?
• What info is hard to find?
• Where do deals or issues get stuck?

We’ll turn those frustrations into smart Salesforce solutions.

5. Prioritize Features

We won’t build everything on Day 1 — and that’s okay. We'll focus on what moves the needle first.

We’ll use the MoSCoW Method:

• Must Have – critical to launch
• Should Have – important, but not urgent
• Could Have – nice-to-haves
• Won’t Have (for now) – out of scope

Ask yourself:

• What do I need now to fix my top problems?
• What can wait until later?

6. Plan for Growth

Salesforce can scale with you — if we plan ahead.

Think about:

• Where do you want to be in 3–5 years?
• What additional services, products, or teams might you add?

We’ll build a foundation that grows with your business.

Final Thought

Coming into your User Story Session prepared makes all the difference. When you show up with clarity about your goals, team roles, and pain points, we can build a Salesforce system that’s not just functional — but transformational.

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