Salesforce Implementation Checklist: Complete Guide [2026]

You can complete every item on a Salesforce implementation checklist and still end up with a system nobody uses.

The issue isn’t the checklist—it’s that most checklists start in the wrong place. They assume your business processes are defined, your data is clean, and your team knows what they need. Usually, none of that is true.

The implementations that succeed don’t just configure Salesforce correctly. They get the pre-work right: aligning stakeholders, mapping processes, and making hard decisions about what the system should actually do. This salesforce implementation checklist covers both the technical milestones and the organizational decisions that determine whether your CRM ships on time and actually gets used.

What Does a Salesforce Implementation Actually Involve?

A Salesforce implementation is the process of configuring, customizing, and deploying Salesforce to match your business operations—then getting your team to actually use it. That last part is where most projects stumble.

A typical implementation includes six phases:

1. Discovery and planning
2. Process mapping and requirements gathering
3. Configuration and customization
4. Data migration
5. Testing and training
6. Go-live and optimization

For a mid-market company implementing Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, expect 8-16 weeks for a right-sized deployment. Complex multi-cloud implementations with heavy integrations can run 6+ months. The timeline depends less on Salesforce’s complexity and more on your organization’s readiness—how clean your data is, how defined your processes are, and how aligned your stakeholders are before configuration begins.

Here’s the part most checklists skip: roughly 70% of CRM implementations fail to meet expectations, according to industry analyses. The failures rarely stem from technical issues. They stem from unclear requirements, poor data quality, and lack of user adoption planning. A good checklist addresses all three.

Pre-Implementation Checklist: Before Configuration Starts

This phase determines 80% of your implementation’s success. Rush it, and you’ll pay for it later in rework, scope creep, and a system that doesn’t match how your team actually works.

Stakeholder Alignment

☐ Identify your executive sponsor. You need someone with authority to make decisions, resolve conflicts, and hold teams accountable. Without one, every disagreement escalates into delays.

☐ Define your project team. At minimum: project owner, sales/service leader, operations lead, IT representative, and end-user champions. The people configuring Salesforce should not be the only voices in the room.

☐ Align on success metrics. “Better visibility” isn’t a metric. “Reduce sales cycle by 15%” or “Increase case resolution rate to 85%” gives you something to measure against. Define 3-5 specific, measurable outcomes before you start.

☐ Set realistic timeline expectations. If leadership expects “quick wins in 30 days” but you’re migrating 500,000 records from three legacy systems, that tension will surface eventually. Surface it now.

Process Documentation

☐ Map your current-state processes. How do leads flow today? What happens when a support ticket comes in? Document the real workflow, not the idealized version in your process docs. Discovery workshops can accelerate this if your team needs facilitation.

☐ Identify what’s broken. Salesforce won’t fix bad processes—it’ll automate them. If your lead handoff is a mess, automating it makes a faster mess.

☐ Define your future-state processes. Decide how you want things to work before configuring. This is the blueprint your implementation partner needs.

☐ Prioritize ruthlessly. You can’t implement everything at once. Identify your Phase 1 must-haves versus Phase 2 nice-to-haves. The implementations that fail try to boil the ocean.

Data Readiness

☐ Audit your existing data sources. Where does your data live today? Spreadsheets, legacy CRM, ERP, marketing automation? List every source.

☐ Assess data quality. Duplicates, missing fields, outdated records—know what you’re working with. A data migration doesn’t clean your data; it moves your mess into a new system.

☐ Define your data model. What objects do you need? What fields? What relationships? This is architectural work that shapes everything downstream.

☐ Assign data ownership. Who’s responsible for cleaning each data set? Who approves the final migration? Ambiguity here causes delays.

Implementation Phase Checklist: Build and Configure

With discovery complete and requirements documented, the build phase turns decisions into a working system.

Configuration Fundamentals

☐ Set up your Salesforce org structure. Profiles, roles, permission sets, sharing rules. Get the security model right early—retrofitting permissions later is painful.

☐ Configure standard objects. Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities (for Sales Cloud) or Cases (for Service Cloud). Match field configurations to your documented requirements.

☐ Build custom objects and fields. Only what you need. Every custom field adds complexity. Ask: “Will someone use this field? Will it be reported on?”

☐ Create page layouts and record types. Different teams need different views. Sales reps don’t need the same layout as sales managers.

☐ Set up automation. Flows, assignment rules, validation rules. Automate the repetitive work, but start simple. Complex automation built on unclear requirements becomes technical debt.

Integrations

☐ Document integration requirements. What systems need to talk to Salesforce? In which direction? Real-time or batch?

☐ Evaluate integration methods. Native connectors, middleware (MuleSoft, Zapier), custom API development. The right choice depends on volume, complexity, and budget.

☐ Build and test integrations in sandbox. Never test integrations in production. Ever.

☐ Plan for integration failures. What happens when the integration breaks at 2 AM? Error handling and monitoring aren’t optional.

Customization Decisions

☐ Default to configuration over customization. Every line of custom code is code you’ll maintain forever. If Salesforce can do it natively, do it natively.

☐ Document all customizations. Future admins need to understand what you built and why. The tribal knowledge problem starts here.

☐ Review against Salesforce limits. API call limits, storage limits, governor limits. Hit these in production and you’ll have a bad day.

Data Migration Checklist: The Step That Derails Projects

Data migration is where timelines die. It looks simple on paper—export from the old system, import to the new one. In practice, it’s the most common source of implementation delays and post-launch issues.

Preparation

☐ Create a data mapping document. Old field → new field, for every field you’re migrating. Include transformation rules for fields that don’t map cleanly.

☐ Establish data quality standards. What constitutes a “valid” record? Define your minimum requirements before migration.

☐ Clean your data before migration. Deduplicate, standardize formats, fill in missing required fields. Migrating dirty data wastes everyone’s time.

☐ Define your migration sequence. Objects have dependencies. Accounts before Contacts. Contacts before Opportunities. Get the order wrong and your import fails.

Execution

☐ Run a test migration. Migrate a subset to sandbox first. Find the issues before they’re in production.

☐ Validate migrated data. Record counts, field values, relationships. Spot-check specific records. Automated validation scripts are your friend.

☐ Plan for rollback. If the migration fails catastrophically, can you restore the previous state? Know the answer before you start.

☐ Schedule migration for low-impact windows. Weekends exist for a reason. Don’t migrate production data during business hours.

Post-Migration

☐ Verify data integrity. Reports that worked in sandbox should work in production. If numbers don’t match, stop and investigate.

☐ Document known issues. Every migration has edge cases that didn’t migrate cleanly. Document them so users know what to expect.

User Adoption Checklist: Training and Change Management

A perfectly configured Salesforce org that nobody uses is a very expensive database. User adoption isn’t a post-launch activity—it’s built into every phase.

Training Program

☐ Identify training audiences. Sales reps, managers, admins, and executives have different needs. One-size-fits-all training fits no one.

☐ Build role-based training materials. Quick reference guides, video walkthroughs, hands-on exercises. Multiple formats for multiple learning styles.

☐ Schedule training close to go-live. Train too early and people forget. Train the week before launch.

☐ Establish a sandbox for practice. Let users make mistakes in a safe environment before go-live.

Change Management

☐ Recruit user champions. Identify 2-3 people per team who are excited about the change. They’re your front-line support and feedback channel.

☐ Communicate the “why.” People resist change when they don’t understand it. Explain what’s in it for them, not just what’s changing.

☐ Plan for resistance. Some users will push back. Anticipate objections and have responses ready.

☐ Create feedback channels. A shared Slack channel, a form, office hours—give users a way to report issues that doesn’t require submitting an IT ticket.

Adoption Metrics

☐ Define adoption KPIs. Login frequency, record creation rates, report usage. What does “adoption” look like in numbers?

☐ Set up adoption dashboards. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Build visibility from day one.

☐ Plan for ongoing reinforcement. Adoption doesn’t end at go-live. Monthly check-ins, refresher training, and continuous improvement cycles keep usage high.

Go-Live and Post-Launch Checklist

Launch day is a milestone, not the finish line. The first 30-90 days post-launch determine whether your implementation becomes a success story or a cautionary tale.

Launch Readiness

☐ Complete user acceptance testing (UAT). Real users testing real scenarios. Sign-off from stakeholders before you flip the switch.

☐ Confirm integrations are production-ready. All connections tested, monitoring in place, error handling confirmed.

☐ Validate data migration is complete. Final record counts verified, spot checks passed, stakeholder sign-off obtained.

☐ Communicate go-live plan. Everyone should know the date, time, and what to expect. No surprises.

☐ Prepare your support plan. Who handles questions on day one? Increased support availability during the first two weeks prevents small issues from becoming big complaints.

Hypercare Period (Weeks 1-4)

☐ Monitor system performance. Page load times, error rates, integration failures. Catch issues before users report them.

☐ Track user adoption daily. Login rates dropping? Investigate immediately.

☐ Hold daily standups (Week 1). Quick check-ins to surface issues and resolve them fast.

☐ Document and fix bugs promptly. Responsiveness in the first week builds user trust.

Optimization Cycle (Months 2-3)

☐ Gather user feedback systematically. Surveys, interviews, usage data. What’s working? What’s friction?

☐ Prioritize Phase 2 enhancements. Remember those “nice-to-haves” from pre-implementation? Revisit them with real usage data.

☐ Review against success metrics. Are you hitting the KPIs you defined? If not, diagnose why.

☐ Plan for ongoing administration. Who maintains the system long-term? Internal admin, managed services, or hybrid? The implementation ends, but the system lives on.

A Salesforce implementation checklist is only as good as the decisions behind it. The technical steps matter, but the organizational work—stakeholder alignment, process clarity, data quality, adoption planning—determines whether your implementation succeeds or becomes another statistic.

Start with your business. Configure Salesforce to fit. Train your team to extend it without you. That’s the difference between a system your team tolerates and one they actually use.

Planning a Salesforce implementation? Let’s talk about your project.