As I said in my previous post, I’ve never met a person whose road to Salesforce wasn’t long and winding, with some strange detour that bestowed upon them the Accidental Admin title. For me, it was my role in marketing and my hobbyist tendencies with tech and code that sent me on my path.
My foray into Salesforce began with Pardot. As a marketing manager, I was the product owner of the marketing automation platform at the University I worked at. Back in 2012, I was responsible (among many things) for lead generation and some pretty challenging performance metrics. In order to achieve my goals and, in my opinion, execute my role to the best of my abilities I considered it incredibly important to understand the data model and data requirements of our constituent database. And not only that, but also the business processes and strategies of the sales teams that would take my leads forward and try to convert them down the funnel. Essentially, I knew the data and the processes like the back of my hand.
When I was hired back in 2012, we were using a non-Salesforce marketing automation platform, though due to cost and challenges with lagging functionality, we quickly began searching for a more scalable solution less than a year after the launch of this platform. I stumbled upon Pardot about a year or so before it was acquired by Salesforce, and it was a match made in heaven.
Pardot is a marketing automation tool that is best known for bridging the gap between marketing and sales teams, empowering marketers to nurture and engage prospects over a long lifecycle. What is marketing automation and why should you use it? Well, we will get into that in a future post. For now, what’s important to know is that it served as the entry point into our CRM database and it was the tool that we relied on for email nurturing, website assets, behavior tracking, and more. So, when our small but mighty unit was looking to roll out a CRM platform it only made sense that I was heavily involved.
I had been involved in marketing automation and CRM integration projects in my previous job in financial services, so launching a CRM database was not totally foreign to me. However, I was not an expert – by far. When we launched our first platform, we had help from a consulting group that really struggled to understand both our data model and our business. When things went sideways on our go-live date, I raised my hand to jump in and help correct some of the problems I was seeing with the database. And so I became – an accidental admin.
My role in CRM development snowballed from there – again, I would argue, all due to my deep understanding of my unit’s data and business processes. I was not technical, beyond knowing how to write html and a little CSS. But, as my responsibilities for our platform grew I discovered how much I enjoyed sitting right in the nexus of people and tech. I grew to love the time I spent developing platforms that helped make peoples job easier, more efficient, and less based in paper. The rest, really, is history.
I didn’t get to Architect status over night – I’ve worked over the last nine years to develop my skills in CRM and specifically Salesforce and Pardot. I’ve leveraged a number of tools, had a lot of great mentors, worked with some fantastic people who have taught me invaluable lessons, studied for many certifications, and – most of all – built, tweaked, played around, and broke a number of solutions.
Looking to get into Salesforce or Pardot, but not sure where to start? This is a career and industry with unlimited potential and job opportunity. If you are looking to jump in, here are some tips below for where to start.
Tips for blazing your own trail
- Search for and join your local Trailblazer Community Group
Community groups are local (virtual or in person) groups of like-minded Salesforce professionals who get together to learn, share, and grow. These groups may be topically focused (such as non-profit, or marketing specific) or general groups of Salesforce administrators. Either way, community groups are a great way to meet people, volunteer, and develop your skills. - Start tackling Trailhead
One of the most amazing things about Salesforce is the ample amount of resources provided to you – totally FREE. Trailhead is Salesforce’s training platform, where you can earn badges, study for certificates, tackle hands on exercises, and learn the platform. With Trailhead, you earn points in your education journey making it fun and competitive. Can you reach Ranger status? Give it a start with Admin Beginner, and then move to more complex trails as you are ready. - Sign up for a Developer Org
Salesforce allows you to sign up for an instance (called an organization, or org for short) that you can play around with an design, all for free! If you are a hands on learner, this is one of the best ways to start figuring out what is going on behind the hood of the CRM. - Find a Mentor
One of the best ways to learn in the Salesforce ecosystem is to learn from others. I have made my biggest leaps and gains on the platform when I have had a mentor to support me. Find someone (through social media, the Salesforce community, or your local Trailblazer community groups) that has already embarked on the path you are hoping to take, and see if someone will take you under their wing. (Just a note: people in the Salesforce Community and incredibly supportive and giving – someone will be happy to mentor you, I have no doubt.) - Get Salesforce Certified
One of the best ways to find a job in Salesforce and to enhance your expertise is by getting Salesforce certified. Salesforce offers MANY certifications (I have 11 currently). And in this ecosystem, certifications are taken very seriously – they speak to your experience, expertise, and your legitimacy as a Salesforce professional. Certifications cost $200 to take, with retakes costing $100. The best exam to start with is the Salesforce Administrator exam, which also happens to be one of the more difficult (in my opinion). - Follow these resources.
There are so many resources out there that are great for Salesforce learning. So, this list below is definitely not intended to be comprehensive. However, it’s a good start for a newbie looking to research and learn.
Power of Us Hub – The Power of Us Hub is an online community of Salesforce.org customers and others (like consultants and Salesforce staff themselves) who can use each other to network, learn, and share. It’s a great place to connect, ask, and answer questions.
Trailblazer Community – Similar to the Hub, the Trailblazer Community is an online community for all Salesforce professionals to communicate and share. You can often find a lot of technical help in the community, and it’s a great resource for connecting, learning, and support.
Focus On Force – Salesforce Certifications can be really challenging. With Focus on Force, you can use their courses and study guides to prepare you for exams. They even offer mock exams, which are great for dry runs and helping you see if you are really ready for a certification.
Salesforce Ben – There are many Salesforce-specific bloggers out there, but Salesforce Ben is one of the originals and one of the first sites I started to follow. Salesforce Ben keeps you up to date on platform information, releases, and more.