Are you currently working in the sales, marketing, or customer service team of any company? If yes, then you must have surely heard of Salesforce. The current sales and marketing landscape has become more data-driven, campaigns focus more on personalization, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being adopted in many services like product recommendations, email personalization, and more.
As these trends continue to be more dominant, companies need a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that can help their sales and marketing department to launch successful campaigns and remain ahead in the competition. CRM is basically a tool that helps businesses provide better services to their customers by organizing customer data, activities, and metrics. The most popular CRM tool preferred by companies these days is Salesforce.
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM tool, and as per the company website, its an integrated platform that gives a shared view of every customer to all teams like marketing, sales, commerce, as well as customer service. Since its inception in 1999, Salesforce has come a long way; the company retaining the number #1 position in IDC’s survey of best CRM explains its popularity.
This article talks about how you can start a career in Salesforce, top job roles in this domain, and how Salesforce training, preferably Salesforce developer training, help you achieve Salesforce certifications.
Salesforce Certifications – The Perfect Way to Start a Career in Salesforce
The above description regarding Salesforce may give you an idea that Salesforce is only a CRM tool, but it much more than that. Apart from the Sales, Marketing, and Support areas, Salesforce offers major services like Community Cloud, App Cloud, IoT Cloud, and Pardot. Simply put, Salesforce can be used to develop custom applications, analyze data to generate custom reports and dashboards, store IoT type data, integrate with other platforms to exchange data, and more.
For learners, the best thing about Salesforce is that it offers certifications for people working in different job roles like administrator, consultant, developer, architect, business analyst, and sales manager. Salesforce offers the Trailhead platform where one can learn the in-demand Salesforce skills, earn globally-recognized credentials, and join a community where people with the same interests share their ideas and experiences.
Salesforce Certifications are a great way to benchmark your skills in any domain. Salesforce offers different certifications based on skills required for each job function. You can choose any of the following eight types of Salesforce certifications based on your interests:
- Administrator – Administrator, Advanced Administrator
- Salesforce Certification for Marketers
- Developer – Commerce Cloud, Platform Developer I, Platform Developer II
- App Builder
- Technical Architect
- CPQ Specialist Certification
- Certifications for Implementation Experts or Consultants
- Pardot Expert – Consultant, Specialist
Based on your interests and experience, you can go for your preferred Salesforce certification. Next, we discuss some of the top Salesforce job roles and how to prepare for achieving them.
Top Job Roles in Salesforce
Salesforce has become a rapidly expanding career opportunity for professionals to earn lucrative salary packages. Here is the description of top job roles in Salesforce that one can pursue.
Salesforce Administrator
A Salesforce Administrator is an individual who has a clear understanding of the core Salesforce platform inside out. They have a sound knowledge of how their company operates, and guide Salesforce users regarding any difficulty. They collaborate with all the departments of a company to come up with creative business solutions to avoid any hindrance to an ongoing project.
To become a Salesforce Administrator, aspirants need to pass the Salesforce Administrator ADM 201 exam.
The average annual salary of a Salesforce administrator in the US is $77,503.
Salesforce Developer
As the name suggests, a Salesforce developer is a coder who builds Salesforce applications, come up with architecture ideas, code and deploy new features in a test environment. Some of the technical skills that recruiters look for in a Salesforce developer are a sound knowledge of Javascript, lightning web components, object-oriented programming, system integration, and web services.
To become a Salesforce developer, aspirants need to achieve Platform Developer I or Platform App Builder certification. They can then go for advanced certification like Platform Developer II. All these certifications have an exam associated with them.
Salesforce developers earn an average annual pay of $125,000 in the US.
Salesforce Consultant
Salesforce Consultants are responsible for driving innovative solutions using Salesforce. Working as an advisor, these individuals tackle complicated business problems and ensure customer success.
To become a successful consultant, you need to have good communication, problem-solving nature, collaboration skills, and presentation skills. On the technical front, salesforce consultants are expected to be well-versed in sales, project management, business development, and customer service.
Regarding certifications, aspirants have many options to choose from; like Community Cloud Consultant, Education Cloud Consultant, Field Service Lightning Consultant, Marketing Cloud Consultant, and more.
Salesforce consultants have an annual salary package of $95,000 in the US and have an annual growth rate of 9 percent.
Salesforce Architect
Salesforce Architect is a senior-level job role and requires a high level of domain expertise. Professionals at this level are capable of building highly technical products. They possess a wide array of skills including object-oriented development, system architecture, API integration, web applications, databases, application design, and data management.
Salesforce architects can pursue certifications like Salesforce Technical Architect, Application Architect, System Architect, Heroku Architecture Designer, etc.
Salesforce Technical Architects are the highest paid professionals among all other Salesforce job roles. On average, they earn as high as $150,000 in the US and have seen a 41 percent annual growth rate.
Wait No More? Take up Salesforce Training
You guessed it right! Having global recognition, Salesforce certifications must not be easy to achieve. You need to have an in-depth knowledge of the Salesforce platform and how to use its various services to meet business goals. Whatever job role you are interested in, you can take up a Salesforce training course that best prepares you for the related exam. In addition to the mentoring sessions from industry experts, you will get access to the Salesforce platform where you can use the tools and gain practical knowledge. It will also save your time researching for the best study material and preparing on your own.
How Do I Start a Career in Salesforce?
Workshops for Professional Development
