How to progress from a Salesforce Administrator to a Salesforce Consultant 

How do you progress from a Salesforce Administrator to a Salesforce Consultant? 

When you start as a Salesforce Administrator it’s great to have a progression plan with your employer that outlines your learning plan with roles and responsibilities that sets out how a promotion and salary increase can take place. As a Salesforce professional, you should always be learning, acquiring new skills, and developing your potential. There are different career tracts you could take and over the next four weeks, we are going to be sharing these pathways with you to help you plan out your journey to learning and earning more. 

Join as we look at how a Salesforce Administrator can progress to become:

• Part 1 – Salesforce CRM System Manager 
• Part 2 – Salesforce Consultant 
• Part 3 – Salesforce Developer 
• Part 4 – Marketing Cloud Consultant

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This week we look at how a Salesforce Administrator can progress as a Salesforce Consultant within a Salesforce Consultancy. 

Salesforce Administrator within a Salesforce Consultancy

Role: Building Requirements for Projects or Dealing with Salesforce Admin Requests on a Support Desk 
Salary: £35k – £45k / USD $87k – $137k
Responsibilities: At this stage you are actively showing you can deliver on Salesforce administrative technical tasks on new or existing Salesforce instances of customers, under the management of a Salesforce consultant. 

• Building out features and requirements required for new implementations according to requirements documentation.
• Diagnosing requirements submitted via a support desk and implementing solutions 
• Managing cases with logging, prioritizing, and tracking of time and deliverables.
• Receiving 4/5 star feedback from users on Salesforce Use Cases and Onboarding.
• Advising clients on the Four Roles of an Awesome Admin tasks to meet system, data, and security requirements. https://supermums.org/resources/four-roles-of-an-awesome-admin-and-40-step-checklist/
• Management and implementation of integrated apps and systems. 

Learning Pathway

• Training and Application of Business Analysis, Change Management, and Agile Project Management Skills. Check out the Supermums Consultancy Skills Course
• Upskilling in DevOps – Check out https://devopslaunchpad.com/
• Completion of Salesforce Certs App Builder and Advanced Admin.

Progression to Junior Salesforce Consultant

Role: Ability to gather requirements, propose and implement solutions to meet client needs 
Salary: £48k – £59k / USD $112k – £134k
Responsibilities: At this stage, you are starting to shadow senior consultants and taking the steps to facilitate business analysis with clients independently, proposing and building out solutions.

• Able to undertake an health check on a Salesforce system for clients. Check out our template here: https://supermums.org/resources/salesforce-org-health-check-template/
• Able to elicit and document business analysis requirements with clients independently. 
• Working towards leading a Salesforce project from A to Z. Check out Heather’s Book – Become a Super Salesforce Consultant.
• Creating comprehensive documentation for the system, training resources, and processes are fully mapped out and maintained.
• Managing junior admins delegated admins to build out solutions.

Learning Pathway

• Relevant Certifications for Products to be used eg. Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Pardot, CRM Analytics.
• Coaching and Management Skills. 
• Training and Application of Business Analysis, Change Management, and Agile Project Management Skills if not acquired already. Check out the Supermums Consultancy Skills Course

Progression to Senior Salesforce Consultant 

Role: Leading the Salesforce Project with a Client from Start to Finish 
Salary: £60k – £79k / USD $136k – 154k 
Responsibilities: At this stage, you can confidently lead a Salesforce project from A to Z with positive results and outcomes for the client. 

• Own the client relationship and confidently lead a Salesforce project from A to Z. Check out Heather’s Book – Become a Super Salesforce Consultant.
• Conduct Business Analysis with c-suite to frontline staff to aid decision-making and technology priorities for the business with senior management. 
• Inform the CRM strategy and ROI deliverables with the client.
• Execute agile project management to help the client deliver on an organizational-wide CRM Strategy and Roadmap where Business Performance is being maximized through system improvements – tangible increase in income, profit, and reduced expenses.
• Advise on change management practices to engage, enthuse and empower people to adopt Salesforce.
• Auditing and advising on technology systems and processes across the business reporting to the COO. 
• Managing a wider Salesforce and Tech Team – Interns, Junior Admins, Business Analysts, Developers etc.

Learning Pathway

• Upskill in your areas of weakness – undertake our Consultancy Skills quiz to discover where these might be: https://supermums.org/resources/salesforce-consultancy-skills-quiz/
• Coaching and Management Skills.
• Relevant Certifications for Products to be used eg. Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Pardot, CRM Analytics.

What should YOU do next?