So you’re interested in having a Salesforce Admin certificate. Maybe you’ve heard it mentioned before and are curious to know more, or your boss is requiring, or you simply want to dive into the world of Salesforce. Having the first Salesforce Admin (201) certificate is one of the best starting points for Salesforce. If your job involves the CRM in some way, then studying and taking the exam will give you a deeper understanding, and help you in your day-to-day interaction with the system. People who are Salesforce certified are also more likely to find jobs they like, and be paid a higher salary. Potentially as much as 20k a more annually after passing the exam. However, you shouldn’t do it just for the money. With the amount of investment needed for the certificate, you’ll want to have at least some interest in learning Salesforce, or else you’ll hate and suffer through the whole experience. That said, a lot Salesforce admins say they fall in love with the system and are highly satisfied with their jobs. But where do you start?
Step 1: Take a Practice Test
The first thing you should do when starting your journey to Administrator is to take a practice exam. Here’s one we like. Why should you take the exam when you don’t know anything? Because the experience will give the correct expectations for the real exam. You need to have a score over 65% in order to pass. Practice tests will tell you how you did, but Salesforce itself only tells you if you passed or failed. It’s one thing to know that the test is 90 minutes and 60 multiple choice questions. It’s another thing to realize those questions have D. Some of the Above and E. None of the Above as answers. You can’t count on narrowing questions down and guessing. You need to know your stuff. The questions are designed to be difficult, and sometimes take a few moments of careful thinking to realize exactly what it’s really asking. Taking the practice exam will also give you an idea of how much you’ll need to study if you have previous Salesforce or similar experience. You might be certified for other software, but that likely won’t help much, since Salesforce is a product unto itself.
This year, Salesforce unveiled their training Trailhead course that’s free to go through. Everyone lists it as the best way to get started. It’s well-done, adds an element of gamification, and is great no matter what your background.
The Trailhead path leads you through setting up your own test developer org and other essential activities that could be difficult to set up without guidance. Trailhead won’t teach you everything you need to know, but it’ll get you started. You’ll begin learning the vocabulary, have a strong big-view understanding of how Salesforce, and be prepared for your next course of study.
Step 3: Diving Into the Nitty-Gritty
Unfortunately, unless you already have studied or worked with Salesforce, Trailhead alone might not be enough to pass. This leaves you with two options to become fully prepared. The first option is to pay for a learning course. The official ones from Salesforce are designed to get you ready in a week for the exam (especially if you’ve already done Trailhead and studied some on your own). However, these courses (and often third-party ones as well) run around or over $4,000. If your company can pay for your training and will give you the time needed for it, then you’re all set. The courses cover everything you need in-depth and are focused on helping you pass. But if you don’t want to spend that much money, then there’s other options. If you’re a studious individual, then completing Trailhead and studying some on your own is likely enough to help you pass. There’s a wide range of resources available for you to look over. We’ll have a list at the bottom of the post for you to look over.
When studying on your own, you’ll want to pay careful attention to the Study Guide that Salesforce has. Different topics take up different sections of the test. If there’s a hard topic that’s only 10% of the exam, don’t spend weeks figuring out every aspect. Remember you only need over 65% to pass. People at our office like using the app Quizlet as well. The app has practice test questions and flash cards to help you study. Eventually, when you're doing well on the practice exams, and feel ready, you'll take and pass pass your exam.
What Comes After?
Once you’ve passed your admin test, congratulations! You are now a certified Salesforce admin. You have a lot of options now of where you want to go next. The more certifications you acquire, the higher-up the Salesforce totem pole you can go. But which direction is right for you? Admin Track: If you’ve already taken the first Admin test, then you’re halfway to having all the admin certificates. Admins work on managing Salesforce and tend to front-facing. You optimize Salesforce for your users and company, and interact with your company to know things can be improved. You’re going to be building reports, dashboards, and workflows. App Builder and Developer Tracks: Despite it’s name, the app builder track builds off of the point-and-click capabilities of the platform instead of code to design and create custom applications. As you become more advanced you will work with Apex and Visualforce to increase your company’s customization when going down the developer track. Marketing Tracks: There are actually two directions for marketing: Marketing Cloud specialization and Pardot specialization. You’ll master email and social marketing methods and best practices for marketing workflows. Implementation Tracks: Want to be able to help customer implement and set up their own Sales Cloud or Service Cloud as well as scaling them as needed? Then these certifications are what you’ll want to have. Technical Architect Track: This is the hardest track to accomplish. You’ll be working with multiple platforms and integrations. Don’t worry about this one for now.
Resources
Here’s links to resources we’ve discussed,or that you can use to help in your self-guided study: