A Day in the Life of Lane Four’s Senior Salesforce Consultant, David Chapman

What drew you to Salesforce consulting, and how did your path lead you to a senior technical role at Lane Four?

David Chapman: “My real introduction to Salesforce came when I was the CFO of another company. A new Head of Sales had brought the platform in to run his team, and because I’d worked with something similar in a previous lifetime, a good deal of it felt familiar right away. I eventually shifted and took on the admin role, learned the ins and outs, and found that I really liked it! It was a nice change from accounting.

After a few years as an admin, I decided to make the switch to consulting. I knew a couple of business partners, started doing some part-time work, and eventually joined a firm that later was acquired by Lane Four. 

It isn’t the most conventional route, but the finance background has never stopped being useful.”

Walk us through what happens between a client describing a pain point and you landing on a recommended technical solution.

David Chapman: “The first part is always truly understanding the ask. With my accounting background, I understand how organizations run and what matters most to them, and that’s what I try to get to before anything else. If a client says they need a new form, I want to understand what that form should really be doing and how it helps the organization as a whole. The request on the surface is rarely the whole story.

From there, I like to work iteratively. I’ll start with an idea, sometimes just a concept, but I prefer a demo whenever I can. When people can see something, they can relate to it. That said, you have to know your audience and how they’ll best take in the conversation.

Usually it’s a couple of meetings: I show them where I’ve started, get feedback and approval, and then build it out and finish it. Keeping the client involved as the idea takes shape is how you end up with a solution that actually fits.”

Who do you work most closely with day-to-day, whether that’s other consultants, admins, or the Dev team, and how do you structure your day around that collaboration?

David Chapman: “One of the best parts of Lane Four is the sheer diversity and range of people you work with. On one project, I might be deep in the MuleSoft world with an integration consultant or developer, building out that kind of solution. On another, it’s just me and a PM, plus a newer Salesforce admin I get to coach, walking them through my thought process and why we’re solving something a certain way. And then on another engagement, I’m the junior in the room, learning from an architect who hands me their vision for the solution to support the build. Every engagement is different and that variety is probably the most exciting part of the work here.

It also shapes how I run my day. I like to do the heavy technical builds earlier in the day, when I can get a long, uninterrupted stretch to focus. That keeps the rest of the day open for the team, so when someone needs a hand or has a question, I’m available to help them keep moving.”

Scoping and estimation are a core part of this role. What’s your process for scoping a piece of work so the estimate actually holds up once you’re in the build?

David Chapman: “Estimation is one of the trickiest parts of the job…anyone being honest would probably say the same. With new clients, the challenge is that you’re often mapping out a solution before the full scope of their operational reality is fully visible and you know all of the ins and outs of the business. As we dive into the build, it’s almost inevitable that new layers of complexity might surface that go beyond those earlier conversations.

Doing this long enough has taught me that the most reliable estimates aren’t static; they should account for these unknowns. So on larger projects, I deliberately account for the uncertainty that discovery might have not uncovered yet, because I’d rather protect the client from a surprise later than come to light and have to revisit it.

Can you think of a time you had to tell a client their proposed approach wasn’t the right way to go? How did you navigate that conversation?

David Chapman: “The key is to understand the source of the idea before proposing something different. You never want to make someone feel like their idea was silly. For the most part, I try to gently guide them toward a different solution, and I lean on the same baby-step, demo-first approach I use everywhere else.

I think it’s worth an hour to build out an alternative and show it to them. I would offer by saying something like, ‘I know we talked about doing it this way, but here’s another option, what do you think?’. It tends to be easiest with clients who are newer to Salesforce because they don’t have a fixed idea of how things should work yet, so they’re open to a different approach.

A lot of the time it isn’t one idea winning out over the other. It’s a melding of the two. Here’s your idea, here’s mine, let’s try this and see if we can evolve it into a combination that works better than either on its own. Getting to the why behind the recommendation is what makes that conversation productive.”

You mentioned that you do a lot of live solution demos and client-facing communication. How do you translate something technical into language a non-technical stakeholder can actually act on?

David Chapman: “It’s a hard thing to do. Most people know the technical stuff isn’t their area, though, and they’re usually pretty open about that, which makes it easier. That’s where I lean on the demo. I’d rather show someone what a solution can do than get too caught up in how it works behind the scenes.

Sometimes, especially early on, you do have to get into the weeds. When that happens, I flag it up front with explaining that, ‘this part is going to get technical, so please ask me as many questions as you need to get comfortable.’ That matters most with integrations, where you’re connecting multiple systems.

It’s also in everyone’s interest to be clear, because those solutions can be hard and timely to build. Pushing a button so Salesforce sends information over to another system sounds simple, and that initial push usually is. The hard part is everything around it: what happens if a field is missing, or an end user answers a question the wrong way, or an error gets thrown. Building the demo is easy. Preparing for every way it can go sideways is the real work and being honest about that upfront saves everyone grief later.”

Is there a project you’re particularly proud of, where this kind of deep technical and business thinking made a real difference for the client?

David Chapman: “A couple come to mind. Earlier in my career, I spent about a year on an engagement for a large global company. It was a great lesson in how a big organization works; a full team on our side, the client’s own developers, a PM, and end users on theirs. We replaced a spreadsheet with a product that ended up being used for sales across the entire company, globally. I learned a lot about enterprise-level deployments and the structure and procedures that come with them, the kind of rigour a smaller company often can’t justify, but a large one absolutely needs when there are that many people depending on it.

On the other end of the spectrum, one of the builds I’m working on now is a brand-new implementation for a smaller organization moving off a very old system. It’s honestly fun to show a team like that what Salesforce can do: taking three separate systems and centralizing everything into one screen, so nobody has to click around to piece together an answer. Seeing their reaction when it clicks, and watching them understand what it’ll mean for how they work, that’s the part you don’t always get to see on a brand-new build.”

Senior Consultants are expected to coach and guide peers. How do you approach mentoring newer consultants or admins on your team, or even those new to the Salesforce ecosystem?

David Chapman: “I really try to explain the why. Set the software aside for a second: what is the purpose of what we’re doing? Newer folks often weren’t in the meeting where the decision was made, so bringing them up to speed on the intent matters. I’ll even walk them through what the client asked for and how I arrived at the solution, so that when they’re eventually the one in front of the customer, they understand how that process goes.

When someone asks me how to do something, I try not to just hand over the answer. I’ll ask them where they’d start. If you had to map this out on paper, what’s the first thing you’d do? Once we agree on what needs to happen, then we get into how to actually do it in Salesforce.

And when someone hands me a piece of work to finish, I make a point of circling back: ‘I changed this and here’s why’. I’ve been on the other end of that, where something I built got changed and I had no idea why, and it sticks with you. Sometimes it’s small. But when it’s significant, closing that loop is how people actually learn.”

Which Lane Four value do you find yourself leaning on most in your day-to-day work, and why?

David Chapman: “For me, it’s own it and do good work. At the end of the day, I just want to do a really good job and I hold myself to that. ‘Under promise and over deliver’, as the old phrase goes.

The other three are never far behind. I try to be real and be human in how I work, and I’m naturally curious.

If anything, owning the work is the piece I have to keep in check. When I can see something that would really benefit a client, I want to give them that extra hour and that next little improvement. But the work never truly ends, so part of doing good work is also knowing where to draw the line.”

For someone earlier in their career hoping to grow into a Salesforce Consultant role, what advice would you give them?

David Chapman: “Two things. The first is to always be learning. Between Salesforce itself and everything happening with AI right now, nothing stands still. The ecosystem is enormous, and it keeps growing as Salesforce acquires new products and moves into new areas, so part of the challenge is simply knowing where to focus. Should you be going deep on Agentforce? Or where ARM is heading? There’s no single right answer.

The upside of all that size is that there’s room to follow what actually interests you. If you’re not a details-and-numbers person, something like ARM probably won’t be much fun. But that happens to be exactly where my finance background pulled me, and leaning into it is how I found my way into the ecosystem. Find the corner that fits you.

The second thing is communication. Work on it constantly, with your colleagues and with clients both. It doesn’t always come naturally, and that’s fine; it’s a skill you practice like any other. The goal is to say what you mean clearly and get to the point. If you can explain something in ten words, don’t take twenty-eight.

One habit I’ve landed on: lead with a thirty-second summary at the top, the headline or the ask, and then put the detail underneath. That way the people who just need the gist can grab it and go, and the people who want to get into the weeds still have everything they need.”