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Advice for Salesforce Career Progression

23-Sep-2016 by Jodie Miners

I am currently looking after the Melbourne Nonprofit Salesforce User Group and one of the attendees asked me for some advice on how to get ahead in their Salesforce career. Yes, I do have to understand that I’m a that point in my career where I need to guide and help new people coming into the industry – it’s part of my job.

So here’s my advice…

My advice to you is to become indispensable in your organisation. Make Salesforce the centre of your organisation’s existence – if it’s not in Salesforce or the Accounting System, or on the Website it doesn’t exist.
 
Pick a project, and do it – seek forgiveness not permission. Even if you have to do it in your own time, and in a sandbox to prove the concept. Get an executive level champion who will encourage you.
 
Spend a lunchtime with staff members you don’t normally deal with – ask them what spreadsheets they are using, what things are difficult for them, and how you can make things easier for them – this is where you will find your projects.
 
Document everything. Write down your learnings. Write case studies as to how what you implemented helped the staff in your organisation. Present the case study to the management – they love feel good stories like that.
 
Run a brown-bag lunch session where you invite any staff member to come and learn something new about Salesforce (eg using Chatter) and even if two people come, it’s worthwhile because you and they would have learnt something new. Document, and share the success with your management.
 
Blog, get on twitter and pester #askforce for questions you have, and follow all the other NFP people on there. eg @bethbrains, @snugsfbay, @mpusto, @tracykronzak @andrew_sf and see who they tweet and start following them.
 
Make yourself known on The Hub. Take a question that someone asks that you don’t know the answer to and make time for yourself to go and research and document the answer and then get back to them. Get on the main Salesforce Success Community also and delve into areas you don’t know about.
 
Continue doing Trailhead. Do trails that you don’t think you would never do in your day to day job.
 
Install apps from the Appexchange in your Dev org and try and work out how they work. Document your findings – publicly.
 
Read blogs, listen to podcasts. Pick a few people that inspire you and read everything they do – for me it’s someone like Jennifer Lee @jenwlee – the enthusiasm and energy she has for learning and teaching Salesforce is amazing – she lives and breathes Salesforce. Read the blogs of the people that they retweet.
 
At some point you need to get to Dreamforce. Or at least a Salesforce Community event in London or Paris or the US somewhere. If you are thinking of travelling, try and do it when there are events like this on. Meet the people in the community. Talk to them. Connect with them.
 
Set up a group of like-minded people on The Hub, talk to other people. Come to the regular Melbourne Salesforce User Group and even the Developer Group. Get yourself to a point that you don’t understand what they are saying then ask questions, and keep asking until they can explain it in a way you understand – it will help them and help you.
 
It’s not all about Salesforce though – you need to think outside of Salesforce – think about the Website and the Accounting System, and all the other systems that you use – how can they be streamlined, eliminated or made much more enjoyable for the staff to do. Most staff get bogged down into this is the way things have to be done, and it’s just all too difficult to even think about changing. Have a look at my blog post So You Want To Learn Salesforce, for more info.
 
Understand the legislative framework in which your organisation exists. Learn about things like the Privacy Act, the Spam Act etc. How do they impact your organisation. Your organisation doesn’t exist in a bubble. Are there things that you can do to streamline your legislative reporting for example.
 
Question everything, question everyone. Be a pain in the butt, in a good way. (Eg I saw a donation form today that has a Date of Birth field on it and Gender is required – why, why are you keeping Personal Identifying Information that you now have to go to great lengths to maintain security on? What benefit does it help your organisation to have that information – well if it’s because you want to know the age of your constituents then ask for Age Range, not Date of Birth).
 
Become certified – yes, it’s a pain, and it’s expensive, and it’s hard to learn the breadth of what you need to know to pass when you work in a small NFP organisation, but there are good groups on Success to help guide you along the way.
 
When you get a bit further on see if there is an area you want to specialise in – do you want to be a consultant, a developer? If you want to be a developer, you first have to be a good Admin (and that’s a whole other topic, but there are great resources when you want to go that route).
 
Contact someone when you get stuck. Write up the problem first though. I get stuck ALL the time. Thankfully I have a great bunch of other MVPs I can ask. But for me, writing the problem out sometimes helps me understand what I need to do next to test it or work it out.
 
Some other blog posts that are a similar topic:
  • Not a post but a great tweet.
  • Admin Hero – Admin Career Path
  • Admin Hero – So You Want My Job
  • Admin Hero – Your First 90 Days
  • Salesforce’s take on this topic.
  • This one may not be entirely relevant but it is one of the best career advice articles I have ever read.
  • This post is from a developers perspective and starting to talk about the Admin / Dev work split that is changing – again a topic for another post.
  • It’s interesting that this post says to go and volunteer at a NFP org, so I hope my post has countered that with what you can do if you are already inside a NFP organisation.

Filed Under: Salesforce

So, you want to learn Salesforce?

15-Oct-2015 by Jodie Miners

I had an enquiry from a client this week; one of their staff members wants to learn more about how to use Salesforce. “Cool, let me come up with some project ideas that can help your business and we can make a start.”

I start to work on some ideas… As this client is doing really amazing stuff with the Salesforce platform, none of which is straight “CRM”, there are many interesting projects to work on. But none of these projects are going to help this staff member “learn Salesforce” because at this stage of their systems journey it becomes more about how does everything work together, with Salesforce at the heart of the business processes, and how we can leverage many apps working together to make their business systems work for them.

So, do I strip out all the cool stuff and devise a program for this staff member to learn just about the Salesforce side of things, or do I push them to become more involved in the whole business systems – I think it has to be the latter. Salesforce does not work in isolation – it only works when it is part of a bigger system. Yet, I don’t think learning about everything is what this staff member thinks he is signing up for. This will be a journey.

The first project is moving to the Service Cloud to get the goodness of the service cloud console, integration with Knowledge, Omni-Channel and Chat services, but we have a whole project to rationalise how and where support cases come in and are dealt with.

We have websites, apps, e-commerce platforms, a Public Knowledge Base, and email. Plus we are expanding to a second language and chat support channels. Each one of those currently has a “Contact Us” function at the moment.

Setting up the new support process requires a lot of process and service design, thinking through each channel… How will people interact with that channel? What sort of support are we offering? Should that channel have a support process that has a higher priority than the other channels? How do we ensure that the support questions are answered in a timely manner by the fewer support staff on the second language? What sort of support questions do we expect? What are our SLA’s? Who is entitled to support? How long should support take? How are we going to track our Support cases to ensure nothing slips through the cracks? What is the language that should be used in answering our support cases?
What templates should we have to make support more streamlined and consistent?, etc etc.

Then we get down to the setup. Apart from learning about Salesforce Service Cloud Console, the Chat functionality, the Knowledge integration, Support Processes, Queues, the Macros, the Quick Text and Case Feeds, there is:

  • Website Web to Case forms – setting up the web forms and some level of integration to Salesforce.
  • Simple Web to Lead does not allow for file uploads for example, so this integration will need to use the API. So do we use Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms on the website, or use Form Assembly.
  • If a person asks for support from the App, we already know who they are, so can we pre-fill the forms in Form Assembly so they don’t have to fill in their info again.
  • And moving to the Premier version of Form Assembly to do pre-fills then opens up lots of other avenues with other forms, including e-signatures and payment integration.
  • Plus when we are opening up our data from Salesforce by querying data to simply pre-fill a form, we have to then think about major security implications – which account is accessing Salesforce, what data is visible through the API, ensuring that someone else’s data can not be exposed accidentally. Thankfully Form Assembly has some great tutorials around securing data through the forms. But even just using the API for form submissions, we need to know about Profiles, API access, and general cloud security concepts.

A simple request to learn Salesforce and help out with a small project has turned into a journey through the world of multiple apps, security considerations, development topics, website setup, service design, and process design. Plus we then have to ensure it is all documented and staff are trained.

My next project for this client is the Marketing and Lead handling process which will delve into not only the web forms but then Mailchimp, the Mailchimp to Salesforce connector, Salesforce Campaigns, Salesforce Leads, Lead conversion and Opportunities, Mailchimp campaign tracking, website tracking, Google Analytics – the list goes on.

The next project after that is the E-Commerce setup which involves almost all of the above plus Websites, Shopping Cart systems, Payment Gateways, Merchant Facilities, Stripe, Paypal, Form Assembly payment integrations, Visualforce Emails, Chatter, Process Builder, Visual Flows, custom Apex REST APIs, External Data Objects and integrations with legacy business systems… before we think about the whole accounting process, Xero Integration and how it flows onto the rest of the business.

Now to put this to my client, and see if they run away in fear or they are ready to delve into the whole world of how their business systems works – because you can not separate out Salesforce from the rest of the business. Salesforce is the platform at the core of the business systems.

So, what about you? Are you ready for your journey into learning about how Salesforce works? Want to be a solution designer, consultant, developer, web developer, service designer, trainer, counsellor and master of office politics? Yes? Great, because I need some help, so please get in touch so we can start this journey together.

Filed Under: Business Systems, Salesforce

Your Business Needs More Than Just a Website

17-Mar-2014 by Jodie Miners

After spending thousands of dollars creating a beautiful website with targeted content that looks great on every device imaginable, it’s easy to think that that’s all that needs to be done. That’s what some website providers would have you believe anyway.

After the customer hits SUBMIT on the Contact Us form or BUY NOW on the Shopping cart, what happens next? If the website is a silo that is not integrated with the rest of the business, the answer will most likely be that this critical information will be delivered by email. Email is great for personal communication, but for business critical functions it fails. What happens when the email system goes down, or Mary is sick and all the emails are stuck in her inbox?

Read more about Business Systems Integration

Filed Under: Business Systems

Q and A: Apps for Service Delivery

18-Nov-2013 by Jodie Miners

Question

I’m setting up a new business that is very focused on service delivery. Which cloud-based apps should I use to get started with my business?

Answer

Wow, this is a big question, and the answer, of course, is – “it depends”; and no answer I give here is a substitute for fully investigating and understanding your business requirements fully, to more adequately recommend something.

Read more about Apps for Service Delivery

Filed Under: api, Salesforce Tagged With: connect2field, geoop, infusionsoft, jobber, nimble, podio, rapportive, salesforce

Using Wufoo Forms with Salesforce

27-Oct-2013 by Jodie Miners

You need to get information from your website into Salesforce, especially for Leads for new clients.

If you are on full WordPress you can use Gravity Forms for Salesforce plugin – it is a free plugin to Gravity Forms, and it can be used on all versions of Salesforce – with Web to Lead for the lower end versions of Salesforce, and Web to Anything, via the API with higher end versions of Salesforce.

If you are not using Gravity Forms, you can use the WordPress-to-lead plugin.

You can also use Integration services like Zapier, as detailed in my previous post on Integrations, however Salesforce is a premium pricing level in Zapier.

Wufoo Forms is another app that does Salesforce Integration, but not really very well. About the only time you would use Wufoo integration with Salesforce is if you were a NFP with a WordPress.com site. Wufoo is a great option for nice forms for a WordPress.com site (see my previous post on using Wufoo with WordPress.com), but as there are so many other options for full WordPress, I would not use Wufoo except for on WordPress.com.

Read more using Wufoo Forms with Salesforce

Filed Under: Salesforce, Wordpress Tagged With: forms, web-to-lead, wufoo

Integrations are The New Black

15-Sep-2013 by Jodie Miners

Just about every app you, and your business uses now has an API. An API is an Application Programming Interface which is just some fancy words for one App to tell another app how they should communicate in an automated way.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: api, Featured, saas

We need to talk about Documentation

18-Aug-2013 by Jodie Miners

Last week, myself and Kelsey van Haaster presented a talk at the Agile Business Analysts Meetup in Melbourne. The Agile BA’s meetup is my favourite Melbourne meetup group (it ranks second only to the Sydney Business Technology User Group that I used to help run in Sydney).

The talk was in two parts – Kelsey talking about Requirements documentation and me talking about Help documentation. The theme of our talk was using Confluence as a tool to help make documentation more a part of the agile software development process, rather than an afterthought or a tedious chore.

Having all the documentation in one place that everyone in the team is responsible to update, is, in my opinion, the only way to do documentation.

Read more about Documentation

Filed Under: confluence, events

Tools to help write help documents

18-Aug-2013 by Jodie Miners

If you are going to be writing help documentation, having some good tools will help make the process a bit easier. Here is a list of tools that I have used or would like to try.

Writing Help Documents

  • Screensteps or Clarify-it
    • (they are from the same company, and I really can’t see what the difference is, however Clarify-it comes with a skitch-like tool for sharing screen shots).
    • Really helps you to think about the problem in a step by step way.
    • Desktop and Network versions are Cheap. Just get it!
    • Inbuilt screen shot and markup tools.
    • There is an online version (Screensteps Live) to host your help pages, but it is expensive. Just export the HTML to your preferred help system.

Read more about Help Systems

Filed Under: confluence, Documentation, Featured

Moving away from Command and Control

2-Aug-2013 by Jodie Miners

Tasks are bad! Well, sometimes they may be useful, but most of the time they are abused and are used by management to try to command and control their staff. There are other ways other than using tasks.

This is the post for a presentation presented at LAST Conference. The idea for the presentation, and this post came from a client that asked me to ensure that all the tasks in their system, that had not been completed within 2 days of the due date by subordinates, were to be escalated to their manager, and then if they were not completed within 2 days by the manager, escalate to the GM. I said no, I would not be building a system that does that, there are other ways we can deal with things getting done.

Read more about Command and Control

Filed Under: events, Productivity

My ultimate guide to getting started with Gmail

29-May-2013 by Jodie Miners

So, you have your shiney new Google accounts set up. Now what? Here is some tips and tricks to get you started with Gmail.

Update:

Now, the day after this was published, Gmail went and changed the way you use Gmail. It has taken me a while, but I think I quite like the new Categories feature in Gmail. Thankfully, Lifehacker has a great post – Everything you need to know about Gmail’s new super-confusing layout. Quite aptly titled. Go there first to try and get a handle on Categories before you delve into Labels.

Read more about Getting Started with Gmail

Filed Under: Gmail

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Latest Posts

Advice for Salesforce Career Progression

So, you want to learn Salesforce?

Your Business Needs More Than Just a Website

Q and A: Apps for Service Delivery

Using Wufoo Forms with Salesforce

Integrations are The New Black

We need to talk about Documentation

Tools to help write help documents

Moving away from Command and Control

My ultimate guide to getting started with Gmail