Salesforce has quickly grown to become one of the world’s largest CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) systems. Suppose you are working on getting Salesforce certified or are already certified and looking to level up your abilities. In that case, they’re a few key Salesforce skills you’ll need to be successful.
Best Practices for Salesforce Administrators
While success as a Salesforce admin will undoubtedly necessitate some Salesforce knowledge, you’ll also discover that adhering to some best practices is beneficial. Salesforce best practices include: using standardization for fluidity, becoming acquainted with data relationships, automating reports and formulas, keeping a record of your work for productivity tracking, and exporting your data regularly.
Are you considering becoming a Salesforce administrator and wondering if you have the necessary skill set? The following 10 skills will put you heads and shoulders above your competition and give you the edge you need to launch a strong Salesforce career.
The Ability to Turn Ideas into Business Processes
Understanding how business processes work is a highly valuable Salesforce skill for potential employees. The platform incorporates multiple workflows to help the sales team complete their tasks more quickly.
Don’t expect your client to understand the facets of Salesforce. You’ll need to translate their objectives into a functional end product. Salesforce administrators should be able to use critical thinking skills and experience to determine the genuine need of the organization and design the best solution.
You can use different methods to create a final product for your teams. Using a process map or flow chart can assist you in communicating thoroughly. Offering a specific solution to ensure that your colleagues receive an end product that meets all of their needs is paramount.
One of the most essential Salesforce administrator skills is knowledge of the Salesforce process builder. The process builder is an in-platform tool that administrators can use to create personalized workflows and processes.
Adaptable Communication and Leadership Skills
Communication and leadership skills are necessary as a Salesforce admin, whether or not you manage a team. Working with confidentiality, solving problems creatively, and making swift and accurate decisions contribute to being a better administrator.
Salesforce is a powerful tool but is only as good as its administrator. If something goes wrong, a Salesforce admin must solve problems on their own and effectively communicate with their team.
You’ll be working with execution teams and delving into Salesforce nitty-gritty at times. Other times, you’ll be required to explain your processes or solve problems at a high level with management and leadership roles. A good administrator can effectively communicate at all levels of the organization.
Knowledge of Organizational Relationships
In your role as Salesforce admin, you will assign user profiles, set user validation rules, create user accounts, assign new users roles, and allow for varying degrees of data access.
Each organization uniquely approaches user management. However, you will need to understand an organization’s structure, how teams are organized, and whether any teams should have restricted access to certain information.
This includes an overall knowledge base of the organization you are working with (departments, business processes, interdepartmental communication).
Data Administration
As a Salesforce administrator, you’ll need to manage all of the data stored on the platform in addition to managing the users in your team. Your data management skills will determine how your team successfully moves forward with future goals.
A great Salesforce administrator should manage the platform to capture and store clean, accurate data. They should also be familiar with data importation into the Salesforce platform.
An elementary understanding of data mining and warehousing isn’t a necessity, but you’ll thank us later if you familiarize yourself with best practices.
Problem Solving
We all spend a significant amount of time, both at work and in our personal lives, attempting to solve problems. Some issues are minor, and we can quickly resolve them. Others, on the other hand, are complex problems that necessitate collaboration, creativity, and a significant amount of effort to solve.
The types of problems you’ll face as a Salesforce admin are determined by the organizations you’ll work with. A manager of a paint store may need to procure more inventory, understand color mixes, and be in charge of selling products. An independent pharmacist may be in charge of keeping up with the changing pharmaceuticals, dispensing medication, and answering patient questions. The key is understanding the information you need to be successful.
Great Salesforce admins collect all information needed to solve the problem. They then use their training and experience to come up with the best solution. Keep in mind that data collection, which includes accounting for all variables, is the key to your everyday problem-solving issues.
Knowledge of the Sales Process
As a Salesforce administrator, you will be assisting the sales team with their work. As a result, you must have a fundamental understanding of how the sales process works. Your sales team is one of your most important clients, so it’s critical to be empathetic and develop the habit of developing solutions that benefit the organization as a whole.
It is common for people to come to you and request Salesforce solutions without explaining their problem. The issue is that some of the solutions presented do not make sense. So, problem-solving skills are a must. This includes being able to come up with solutions and interpreting queries that take some critical thinking.
Finally, it is your responsibility to create the best solution. You shouldn’t rely on salespeople to create solutions to Salesforce problems. Using your unique skill-set, you can evaluate your options and take the lead in determining the best way to solve their problem.
Salesforce Inventiveness
Salesforce constantly evolves, so the solutions you used previously may no longer work. Knowing where to look for the most up-to-date information and holding yourself accountable to expand your knowledge are two abilities that will set you apart as an administrator.
As a Salesforce administrator, you will be responsible for answering Salesforce-related questions. Further, you may be asked to train other team members on how to use the software. Salesforce is filled with useful tools to assist you on your journey, so familiarize yourself with them. Customize your skills to cater to your client and give you an edge.
Maintaining an active presence in the Salesforce community aids in resourcefulness. Many administrators in the community, on both Talent Stacker and Trailhead, are willing and able to help you even with the most complex issues.
Project Administration & Organization Management
Project management is a large part of being a Salesforce admin. A great Salesforce administrator will be familiar with the following project management components:
- Interacting with key stakeholders
- Keeping in touch with other members of the execution team
- Understanding the Project Charter and Work Statement
- Planning, executing and establishing quality control levels in projects
Optimization and Strategy in Organizations
A Salesforce admin skill that is required is the ability to plan and create an attack program. After all, how can we create optimal automation and user settings without the foresight afforded by a strategic approach?
A Salesforce administrator should be able to anticipate potential issues, be inspired by solutions to team management issues, and envision a potential time frame for an upcoming project.
Instead of simply reacting to each request from a team member, skilled admins use a proactive mindset at work. Instead of waiting for “orders”, you can bring more to your team by thinking ahead and suggesting ideas.
Have the Mindset of a Developer
Salesforce administrators don’t need to know how to code; however, understanding developer logic can give you an edge. A large part of your job entails managing permissions. In other words, you must define who can do what in each section of the platform. You need to be able to write intuitively and work with tools like validation rules and process builders.
You should also be able to think logically and understand the software’s limitations. When you have the ability to make changes, you must understand the implications of all changes you make.
The Bottom Line
Salesforce is a robust customer relationship management system that assists companies of all sizes in managing and automating sales processes. The Salesforce ecosystem is where a company’s sales and marketing teams work together to track leads and drive sales.
Becoming a Salesforce administrator is ideal if you have a knack for sales and an eye for organization. Problem-solving and critical thinking skills are vital to your success and help you stand out among your peers.
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