Sales Cloud consultant certification

Salesforce Sales Cloud is one of the leading CRM systems on the market which keeps growing in its popularity and customer base. Subsequently, there is a need for certified Salesforce Sales Cloud consultants who can easily address the business issues of customers that come with CRM functionality.

In this blog, we will see a step-by-step guide on the Salesforce Sales Cloud certification in order to get a detailed understanding of how the Salesforce administrators and developers can get certified as Sales Cloud professionals. However, first, we will understand what Salesforce Sales Cloud is.

What is Salesforce Sales Cloud?

The Salesforce Sales Cloud is a Salesforce product designed for the management, analysis, and management of sales processes. Many times, both the sales representatives and sales managers use the functionality of Salesforce Sales Cloud for completing the tasks scheduled for different priorities and better efficiency.

As for the sales representatives, the Salesforce Sales Cloud offers efficient and rather comfortable customer communication with numerous channels right within the Sales Cloud UI. With an advanced integration on a customer’s website and social media sync, you can collect precise information about contacts, accounts, and targets. There are extensive automation capabilities that help the sales representatives with numerous routine tasks while freeing up their time for nurturing leads and closing multiple deals.

With the sales cloud implementation, you can construct a sales strategy and manage it within a single system only. Sales Cloud helps sales managers control and assess sales representatives. By using the performance data, the sales manager can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses needed to improve skills which then allow increasing the overall performance of the sales department.

By using the Sales Cloud, sales managers can also deal with challenges such as disjointed sales processes and the process alignment needed with marketing.

What is a Salesforce Certified Sales Consultant?

A Salesforce Certified Sales Consultant designs and deploys solutions that support the customer business processes and requirements using the Salesforce applications. The consultant has relevant experience in designing solutions that can optimize the Sales Cloud functionality and can lead the implementation of these solutions within an organization.

A Salesforce Sales Cloud consultant has both the industry knowledge and expertise in operating Salesforce applications including the knowledge needed to implement in multiple applications in the common customer scenarios. Most sales cloud consultants are interested in demonstrating their expertise as cloud computing implementation consultants. Ideally, the consultant should have one or more years of experience in using Salesforce and working with sales processes while developing business solutions.

The experience of Salesforce Sales Cloud consultant should include:

• A good understanding of all consulting processes.
• Having a good experience of full project life cycles of Sales Cloud implementations.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Detailed knowledge of sales cloud features and functions.
• Solid understanding of data management and database concepts.
• A detailed experience of scoping projects.
• Having a good understanding of the discovery process including the gathering and documenting requirements.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities of a Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant

 

Knowledge

 

A successful candidate of the Salesforce Sales Cloud certification should have detailed knowledge about all the sales processes and roles. The candidate should be familiar with the solution and the deployment lifecycle. The applicant should also be knowledgeable in sales cloud features and functions such as opportunities, leads, activities, campaigns, forecasting, territory management, telephony, reports and dashboards, email integration, einstein activity capture, high-velocity sales, salesforce meetings, sales console, and experience cloud sites.

The application should also be well versed in best practices for leveraging standard functionality, configuration, and customization of the Salesforce platform for meeting customer requirements. The person should know all about data migration tools, how and when to use AppExchange products in sales processes, changer management, end-user training, rollout strategies, proficiency with core Salesforce features and functions such as AppBuilder Flow and Process Builder.

Skills

The Salesforce Sales Cloud consultant must be skilled in project management principles and methodologies so that it is easy to create Statements of Work and scope projects accurately. The consultant should translate business requirements into effective solutions considering efficiency, productivity, and working from anywhere to help the sales team. The consultant should regularly work on the project lifecycle. He/She should have remarkable presentation skills for addressing all levels of the organization.

Abilities

Finally, it is the responsibility of the Salesforce Sales consultant to guide a consulting project from inception to completion. He/She should be able to manage the development and delivery process while also defining and interpreting the key performance indicators so that the clients can be instilled with confidence. Any unexpected system behaviour and technical issues should be raised timely so that the risks can be anticipated and mitigated.

In addition, the customer issues should be prioritized and escalated for identifying viable use cases to configure the system. The consultant must build scalable and maintainable solutions so that they can be implemented for delivering effective business value. The consultant should set up change management practices for making sure that there is long-term solution success. Documenting project milestones for knowledge transfer is also important.

What is a Salesforce Sales Cloud Certification?

The Salesforce Sales Cloud certification is basically an examination that is designed for consultants who have experience in implementing the Sales Cloud solutions in a customer-facing role. A certified Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant is able to successfully design and implement effective solutions that can meet the customer business requirements.

This is a credential that allows the consultant to introduce solutions that are maintainable, scalable, and the ones that contribute to long-term customer success. Some examples of these solutions can be design sales and marketing solutions for meeting business requirements, design applications and integrations that can maximize user productivity, and data and design analytics solutions that can help in tracking key Sales Cloud metrics.

This is a certification that is primarily designed for customer-facing consultants who have experience in implementing Salesforce solutions from the beginning. That said, it is still applicable to Salesforce Admins who want to prove their advanced knowledge on the platform and are dealing with complex Salesforce plans. It is recommended to take this certification in case you are looking for a promotion, a move over from administration to consulting, or a change in jobs.

Outline of Exam For Salesforce Sales Cloud Certification

The Salesforce Certified Sales Consultant examination is taken to see the knowledge of a candidate and his/her skills related to all the objectives mentioned below. The candidate must have hands-on experience in implementing the Sales Cloud solutions and should also be able to demonstrate the applications of all the features mentioned below.

• Sales Practice – 11%
• Implementation Strategies – 13%
• Application of Product Knowledge – 18%
• Lead Management – 7%
• Account and Contact Management – 11%
• Opportunity Management – 10%
• Sales Productivity and Integration – 8%
• Consulting Practices – 7%
• Sales Metrics, Reports, and Dashboards – 7%
• Data Management – 8%

Exam Preparation Guide

Below, we will introduce an overview of exam preparation that will keep you in the right direction. Keep in mind that the below-mentioned steps are streamlined to offer you just what you need to qualify for the Salesforce Sales Cloud certification. The tips are to help you evaluate your readiness so that you can successfully complete the Salesforce Certified Sales Consultant exam.

These steps will present information about all the recommended training and documentation processes. It will help you in gaining hands-on experience, completing the examination properly, and self-study with the intent to take the examination successfully. The steps to keep in mind while preparing for this exam are mentioned below.

1. Download the outline of the exam to create a review schedule. It is important to ensure that you are updated with the exam information. Hence, you must review all the exam objectives and download the PDF file for the exam outline. Remember that this is the first part and you must not skip it.
2. Trailhead is like the one-stop destination while you prepare for the Salesforce Certified Sales Consultant examination. You can review the online documentation on Trailhead, see the Tip Sheets, and user guides so that it becomes easy to search for the topics listed in the Exam Outline section of the guide while studying the information related to the topics.
3. The next step is to get started with the training courses and getting hands-on experience is an important requisite for it. The training courses are highly recommended because they enable a person to view the problems from all angles.
4. Join the trailblazer community which is a one-stop destination for all your questions. It is the easiest way to get an answer to your problems. After joining this community, you can exchange ideas, ask and answer questions, and join featured groups.
5. You can also attempt solving some practice tests which can be easily found on the internet. It is recommended to go through as many practice tests as possible for the best result.

The Benefit of Salesforce Sales Cloud Certification

For all the companies that offer IT services, becoming a certified Sales Cloud consultant means serving the needs of customers in a better way. After getting the certification, the consultants can deliver the services following the business and industry specifics taken into account.

A certified Salesforce Sales Cloud consultant is a person who brings exceptional value to the customers, ensures efficient CRM use, and also provides timely guidance on CRM’s ongoing evolution. In today’s time, becoming a certified consultant in the Salesforce Sales Cloud is important for gaining a Partnership Value Score and being assigned one of the partner tiers.

For instance, an organization must have at least two certified consultant-level employees for getting a Registered Salesforce Partner tier. The benefits that an IT company gets from the Registered partner tier include free online training from Salesforce, a discount on instructor-led training, a certification exam voucher, and much more. As for the employees, the Sales Cloud consultant brings many more job offers, accelerates career growth, and also guarantees a substantial pay rise.

The Process to Get Salesforce Sales Cloud Credential

If someone is interested in getting certified as a Sales Cloud consultant then the first step is to file an application for completing the Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant practice exam. This is a test that consists of 60 multiple choice questions and five unscored exam questions for answering in over 105 minutes. You can choose whether you want to take the exam in a testing center or in an online protected environment.

The passing score needed to become a consultant is 65%. Basically, the exam is taken to verify the applicant’s ability to plan a Salesforce Sales Cloud implementation set up with a view of KPIs. Other tested skills commonly included in this are a suitable solution design according to a customer’s requirements and identifying key features for better sales productivity, etc.

The registration fee for this exam is USD 200 plus applicable taxes as required by the local law and the retake fee for this exam is USD 100 plus applicable taxes required by the local law. No hard copy or even online materials can be used for reference during the examination.

Validity of Salesforce Sales Cloud Certification

Since the Salesforce release system gets updates three times a year, the Salesforce Sales Cloud consultant certification is valid up to the next release. For keeping the certification valid, the owner should update it by passing the Trailhead maintenance modules. According to Salesforce, the release module corresponding to the Sales Cloud consultant’s job role is the Administrator Certification Maintenance module.

The Sales Cloud consultant certification can get outdated in case the owner has not completed maintenance modules on Trailhead by the required date. Mostly, the certification owners have some months after the release date for completing the maintenance modules. In case the certification owner fails to complete the maintenance modules at the right time, they are likely to lose their Sales Cloud consultant credentials while having to retake all the necessary exams again.

Conclusion

Getting the Salesforce certification is one of the best options if you are looking for a more advanced CRM qualification. The best part is that Salesforce is not just creating jobs for the products but the professionals with Salesforce are in high demand.