How to Pass Sales Cloud Consultant Certification Exam

Last Updated on November 20, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta

As a newly minted Certified Sales Cloud Consultant, I am sharing my study experiences with you and want you to be the next one to ace it! So, get ready and dive in!

👉 As you are here, you may want to check out the How to Pass Salesforce Field Service Consultant Certification Exam article.

So, Who is an Ideal Candidate for the Exam?

A Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant designs and deploys solutions that support customer business processes and requirements using Salesforce applications. The consultant has experience designing solutions that optimize Sales Cloud functionality and can lead the implementation of these solutions within a customer organization. The consultant has both industry experience and expertise in Salesforce applications, including the knowledge needed to implement multiple applications in common customer scenarios.

The Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant is interested in demonstrating their expertise as a cloud computing implementation consultant. The Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant has one or more years of experience using Salesforce, working with sales processes, and developing business solutions. The candidate’s expertise should include:

Solid understanding of consulting process
Experience with the full project lifecycle of Sales Cloud implementations
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Deep knowledge of Sales Cloud features and functions
Solid understanding of data management and database concepts
Experience scoping projects
Understanding the discovery process, including gathering and documenting requirements

How to prepare for the exam?

Learning styles differ widely – so there is no magic formula that one can follow to clear an exam. The best practice is to study for a few hours daily – rain or shine! Below are some details about the exam and study materials:

Prerequisite: Salesforce Administrator credential
60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions and 5 non-scored questions* – 105 mins
68% is the passing score
Exam Sections and Weighting
- Sales Practices: 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 & Dashboards: 7%
- Data Management: 8%
The exam Fee is $200 plus applicable taxes
Retake fee: $100
Schedule your certification exam here

The following list is not exhaustive; so check it out and use it as a starting point:

What you Need to Know to Smoothen your Journey

On a very high level, you have to understand the following topics to clear the exam. All credit goes to the Salesforce Trailhead team and their respective owners.

A few tips for the successfully crack the exam:
1. Read the question carefully. This is one of the wordier exams that I can remember, and if you skim read it’s easy to misunderstand the scenario. More than once over the years I’ve caught myself choosing the option that was 100% wrong and only picking this up during a review of the questions.
2. Some of the potential answers are flat out wrong, so even if you aren’t sure of the correct answer, it may be possible to eliminate the impossible. And as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
3. I find it useful to note down questions that I’m not sure about with a percentage confidence. This allows me to work out how I’m doing against the pass mark and not feel bad if I’ve got a couple of total guesses in there!

Sales Practices: 11%

9 Sales KPIs Every Sales Team Should Be Tracking
No matter how thorough you are in planning, something is bound to come up that you didn’t anticipate—a change in technology, a shift in industry best practices, a change in the company itself. This is OK. Even the best sales and sales operations teams need to make adjustments. Here are some things to consider beyond annual planning.
1. Make steady adjustments
2. It’s never too late to get smarter
3. Understand seasonality
4. Not all metrics are measures of success

Territory Models and How They Work

Depending on what model you go with, there is effort needed in finding a balance.

Territory Model	Description
Geography	Using existing geographic boundaries such as states or zip codes
Vertical	Creating industry-based territories
Revenue	Grouping prospect companies by revenue ranges
Named Accounts	Accounts are directly assigned to each rep by name (subsidiaries fall under their parent company)
Size	Grouping prospect companies by their headcount ranges
Round Robin	Randomly assigning territories

Reporting makes all kinds of business data available. Here is a table of common reporting, the part of the sales process they support, and where you can find the data.

Reporting	Description
Sales Activities	Data captured in a sales force automation (SFA) or customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This typically includes account, opportunity, leads, and activity/task information like calls and emails made. You can also use this data to create leaderboards.
Territory Mapping	Data visualization focused on geography. This is usually used to identify where customers are, who on the sales team is responsible for selling to these customers, and so on.
Compensation	Compensation systems usually calculate how much team members make based on their performance, the performance of the company, and any other policies that are set up during the annual planning process.
Recognition	Recognition tools allow your colleagues to publicly thank one another and help businesses identify their high-impact contributors.
General Reporting and Data Visualization	Some tools are available to integrate with the systems mentioned above. They visualize and interact with data in an aggregated way. For example, you can integrate sales data with territory mapping data so you can easily see how each region is performing.

There are six key components of a Comp Plan

Plan Component	Description
Terms	General definitions of the technical words used in the comp plan, what happens in the event of termination, and so on
Variable	The amount of commission paid out when a sales rep meets their on target earning (OTE), or the target amount they earn if they meet 100% in their metrics
Payout Rates	The percentage of a deal paid to a rep as commission
Tiers	Different payout rates for products, services, different term lengths (selling a 24-month contract can earn more commission than selling a 12-month contract, for example), and so on
Accelerators	An increase in payout rates once 100% of a results metric is achieved
Spiffs	Lump sum commission payments tied to specific activities or products

Here are a few questions that help you understand your company’s go-to-market strategy and orient the territory-management process.
1. Are you trying to expand into a new market this year?
2. Has your product changed to suit customers in a new industry?
3. Have you found that the total addressable market (TAM) is larger in a certain industry than what you first anticipated?
4. Are you targeting a certain size of company this year?
5. There are a few readymade ways to divide territories, but relying on just one can create problems. For example:
  1. You can give each rep a zip code. Great! But what if Seema has 59007 in a sparsely populated area of Montana, and Marisol has 94105 in the heart of San Francisco? Seema won’t have nearly as many accounts as Marisol.
  2. You can give each rep the same number of accounts. Easy peasy! But what if Mark has 45 that are dead leads and only 5 viable prospects, and Ramon has 50 viable prospects? Mark is going to have a much harder time making quota.
6. You get the picture—using a single factor alone may not result in the equal territories you want. So, what do you do? Introduce more factors into your formula. Some you can consider are:
  1. Number of companies
  2. Geography
  3. Size of companies (This can be number of employees or annual revenue)
  4. Propensity to buy
  5. Industry
A quota is an important way of measuring success, but it doesn’t need to be exactly the same for every rep. You have different sales reps at various levels of experience and skill. So take the larger territories, give them a higher quota, and assign them to your seasoned reps who are sure to relish the opportunity. Repeat for the smaller territories, with smaller quotas and newer reps who still need to cut their teeth.
When planning your territories, it’s always best to start early. If territory planning isn’t already part of your culture, make sure you take the time to get buy-in from your salespeople and leadership before rolling out new plans.
1. Plan for Growth
2. Avoid Disruption
3. Lessen ramp time
4. Lead with Data
5. Be Fair
6. Always Adjust
As you’d expect, pipeline closely follows as the second-most-important metric. If you don’t have a pipeline, you can’t close business. But it’s important to make sure your pipeline is viable and that you understand what it consists of by asking questions like:
1. What kind of transactions are in the pipeline? You should see a healthy balance of large deals, smaller transactions, and up-sell opportunities.
2. Does the timing look right? Look for compelling events or budget to tell you if the deal can close on schedule.
3. How much experience does the salesperson have? You can expect more pipeline and more closed deals from a seasoned veteran versus a novice rep.
Managing Territories in Salesforce
1. Model your territories: Play with different territory models, and see their effects without touching your real data. And when you do choose to deploy a model, it automatically assigns your accounts.
2. Create a territory hierarchy: Just like you need an org chart in business, territories need hierarchy. For example, you can create a master territory for the US, broken into smaller territories for East and West, and those can be broken into smaller territories: California, Texas, New York. You can run rules directly from that hierarchy, even if they’re different for each territory.
3. Define assignment rules: Input your rules so you know which accounts belong in which territories. For example, accounts in x zip code, with y revenue, and in z industry belong in Territory A. That way, you don’t have to do it manually. If you’re using a territory hierarchy, you can assign those same rules to every territory in the hierarchy, without having to manually add and re-add them.
4. Promote team selling: A great way to help reps find the right person to close deals is to assign collaborative roles in a territory. This is an effective way to activate team selling.
The difference between pipeline and forecast
1. Pipeline is a comprehensive view of a rep’s open opportunities, no matter what stage they’re in. It includes everything from the newest prospect to that opportunity with a pen in hand, ready to sign.
2. Forecast is a subset of the pipeline and includes just those deals expected to close in a certain period, like this quarter, for example.
Salesforce Order Management
Get the Most Out of Forecasting in Sales Cloud
Administer Account Teams
Sales cadences bring together all their pending activities in one view and automatically log activities as reps complete them. After reps start using cadences, managers can report on which cadences result in the best sales outcomes.
1. Sales Engagement Basic
2. Have You Traversed the Yellow Brick Road of Sales Cadence, Yet?
Salesforce Maps is built on the Salesforce platform, so you can do much more than just visualize your data; you can interact with and change data as needed. Let’s say you have a business requirement to visit all of your opportunities projected to close this month. Visualize the locations of your opportunities by stage to prioritize which accounts to visit first, log your calls, enter notes after each visit, and change required fields. This can all be achieved from the Salesforce Maps interface.
1. Salesforce Maps Beginner Series
2. Salesforce Maps Fast Start
What Is Sales Enablement? A Complete Guide
1. Accelerate Your Sales Team with Sales Engagement
Sales Cloud Pricing

Implementation Strategies: 13%

Customer-centric discovery has four steps.

Customer-Centric Discovery Step	What You Do in This Step
Know your customer.	Get to know your customer’s industry and business.
Be your customer.	Take a walk in your customer’s shoes.
Connect with your customer.	Share your insights with your customer.
Create with your customer.	Develop a strategy with your customer.

Each step of the customer-centric discovery process brings you closer to your customers so you can:
1. Co-create strategies based on confirmed challenges. This lets you know you’re working toward what matters most to your customer.
2. Focus on solutions that are the right size for your customer’s needs. This lets them deliver on time and within budget.
Look closer and start to analyze your customer’s business directly so you can understand more about their:
1. Goals: What they want to achieve.
2. Values: What their guiding principles are internally and with their consumers.
3. Initiatives: What they do now to achieve their goals.
4. Strategies: What they plan to do to achieve their goals.
5. Obstacles: What problems they face as they work to achieve their goals.
When you meet with your customer, deliver your insights with these tips in mind.
1. Be sincere. Share your experiences with their business in an authentic and optimistic way. Describe positive points and the areas for improvement.
2. Follow your insights with an empathetic statement. Try something like, “We’ve seen this before…” or “Other customers I’ve worked with deal with this same challenge by…” These kinds of statements show you have experience.
3. Get your customer’s opinion by asking open-ended questions. If you find something challenging about your customer’s mobile app experience, ask, “What is your current strategy for mobile development? How well do you think it’s working?”
4. Share a notable quote that your customer has said before. It can be very powerful for the customer to hear their own words, especially when they’re about something that needs improvement.
Analyze each challenge with your customer by asking:
1. Who—Who’s most affected by this issue?
2. What—What’s the result of this issue?
3. Where—Where does this issue happen?
4. When—When does this issue happen?
5. Why—Why does this issue happen?
6. How—What conditions cause this issue?
As you explore your customer’s business challenges, document what you learn.
1. Write down your ideas on a whiteboard.
2. Brainstorm and write more ideas on sticky notes, then move them around.
3. Draw diagrams.
4. Organize ideas by level of importance.
In addition to whiteboarding, feel free to get creative with how you brainstorm.
1. Use brainstorming and mind mapping tools—this is especially helpful in conversations where you don’t meet in person.
2. Role play—this helps bring the challenges to life.
In this last step of customer-centric discovery, Create with your customer, you:
1. Review the challenges you confirmed with your customer.
2. Storyboard your customer’s vision for the future.
3. Draft a plan with detailed recommendations for next steps.

Storyboarding—a process for mapping out the connection between your customer’s current challenges and goals for the future with realistic next steps. Here are some storyboard approaches you and your customer can do together, and how you can do each one.

Storyboard Approach	How You Do This
Persona-based or day-in-the-life	Focus on a character who is an employee or customer. Show the problem and map out a solution that is unique to either the employee or the customer.
Process-based	Compare a current, inefficient process to a new, improved process you recommend.
Role-playing or skits	Demonstrate life before and after your recommendation through skits and role-playing, especially if you want to get a good laugh.
Wild card	Use props, videos, or play a numbers game to show your customer what they can achieve with your recommendation.

Working closely with a group of your stakeholders is important because it helps you drive success from planning to implementation and adoption. Your success team ensures that work gets prioritized, is meaningful to the business, and offers positive change for your sales team.

Key Player	Role
Executive sponsor(s)	The person who prioritizes and approves how your team’s time is spent on Sales Cloud.
Operations manager (or equivalent)	The person who knows the most about the day-to-day sales process.
End user(s)	A team member who has time to test out Sales Cloud and give feedback.
Admin	The person who makes changes in Sales Cloud and manages the implementation. This might be you!

As you finalize your success metrics, make sure they’re SMART.
1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time-bound
Understand the value of Governance
So, what’s a best practice SOW?
1. It’s a legal document. It’s the legal agreement between you and your customer.
2. It establishes a baseline. Changes from the SOW require a formal change request.
3. It defines what is going to be done, when, and who is going to do the work.
4. It’s done together. It requires multiple conversations throughout the sales process.

The SOW is the final phase of the implementation sales process. In this process, the consultant and the customer work together to identify the specific tasks needed to accomplish the project. It includes several phases. Let’s take a look at each one.

Phase	The consultant	In order to
1. Discovery	Talks with their customer stakeholders to identify what they want to do and why they want to do it.	Learn the customer’s business, products, and the business value of the project to prepare a rough order of magnitude.
2. Rough order of magnitude	Identifies the services, the personnel required to provide the services, and a range of costs to make it all happen.	Set the customer’s expectations and determine the project’s next steps.
3. Proposal	Creates a more detailed overview of what they want to do for the customer, with a more precise estimate of the costs.	Demonstrate their understanding, build their customer’s confidence, and confirm they’re on the right track.
4. SOW	Maps out project-specific activities, timelines, costs, and deliverables.*	Define the responsibilities and work agreements between all parties, including what work will be done, by whom, how, when, and for how much.

What a best practice SOW does?
1. Raises difficult conversations before the project starts. This sets a precedent of honest and up-front communication.
2. Builds a common understanding between the partner and customer. This explains to all parties what they’re responsible for and when.
3. Demonstrates the partner’s expertise in understanding the amount of effort required for each deliverable, so the customer trusts the partner.
4. Avoids ambiguity by clearly outlining the outcomes and the ways to achieve them.
Understand Process Mapping
1. Process mapping creates visual representations of business processes. It includes any activity that defines what a business does, who is responsible for what, how standard business processes are completed, and how success is measured.
Benefits of Process Mapping
1. Process mapping spotlights waste, streamlines work processes, and builds understanding. Process mapping allows you to visually communicate the important details of a process rather than writing extensive directions.
  1. Flowcharts and process maps are used to:
    1. Increase understanding of a process
    2. Analyze how a process could be improved
    3. Show others how a process is done
    4. Improve communication between individuals engaged in the same process
    5. Provide process documentation
    6. Plan project
  2. Process maps can save time and simplify projects because they:
    1. Create and speed up the project design
    2. Provide effective visual communication of ideas, information, and data
    3. Help with problem-solving and decision making
    4. Identify problems and possible solutions
    5. Can be built quickly and economically
    6. Show processes are broken down into steps and use symbols that are easy to follow
    7. Show detailed connections and sequences
    8. Show an entire process from the beginning to the end
UPN stands for Universal Process Notation and is the simplest way of visually mapping business processes. By creating simple flows and diagrams, everyone in the company can understand how different aspects of the business works.
Why Business Analysis skills are important
1. The business analysis increases Salesforce adoption
2. Business analysis reduces rework
3. Business analysis impacts architecture
4. The business analysis increases agility and drives digital transformation
Principles of UPN
1. No more than 8-10 activity boxes on a screen
2. Drill down from an activity box to a lower level to describe the detail
3. Attach supporting information to an activity box
4. View and edit controlled by access rights
5. Version control and history of changes at a diagram level
Other process diagrams
1. Capability Model – Capability models or industry blueprints list high-level process areas. These are useful for scoping out the specific area you are mapping and showing the context within the overall business.
2. Detailed Process Map – A detailed process map is a flowchart that shows a drill-down version of a process that contains all the details of each step of the process and any subsequent steps along the way.
3. SIPOC – SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers. SIPOC is a process mapping and improvement method that summarizes the inputs and outputs of one or more processes using a SIPOC diagram.
4. Value Stream Map – A value stream map is used to visualize the flow of material and information needed to bring a product to the customer.
Which success metrics you use depends on what user behaviors you expect to see, but here are a few suggestions.
1. How many opportunities have users created in the last 30 days?
2. How many activities did users complete in the last 30 days?
3. What data have users created or updated in the last 30 days?
4. What is the login rate over the last 7 days?
5. Who is logging in, and more importantly, who is not logging in and why?
Good data quality is another valuable way to measure adoption. Remember, “If it isn’t in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” Data quality, which includes data accuracy and completeness, is the key to ensuring that your organization utilizes Salesforce to its full potential.
After you set up your usage and data quality analysis, the next step is assessing user satisfaction. The most common way to do this is through a survey or formal business process review.

Some sample questions and associated success metrics.

Key Questions	Success Metrics
How is my team tracking with sales?	Year-to-date (YTD) sales Quarter-to-date (QTD) sales Opportunity win/loss ratio for current and previous year
Do I have a sufficient pipeline?	New business pipeline Pipeline by owner
What is the quality of my leads?	Lead conversion rates Lead conversion rates by source
Are we remaining engaged with our customers?	Accounts with no activities for the last 90 days

Application of Product Knowledge: 18%

The company settings consist of:

		Key details	For example
Company Information	Name and Address	Used for billing and support	Mom & Pop’s Spy Shop 7 Wink Nudge Drive Frisco, CA 94101
	Primary Contact	Also for billing and support	Mother Intrigue
	Default Locale	Updating this one setting determines the way a ton of information is displayed within Salesforce (We cover this separately later)	English (United States)
	Default Currency	Currency applied to records	English (United States) USD
	Currencies	List of all currencies used in the org	USD only
	Storage Used	Those cat pics pile up fast!	27.3 GB (11%)
	Licenses Available	Includes Salesforce and feature licenses	Salesforce Platform: 14 of 15 used
Fiscal Year Information	Fiscal Year	Used in reporting and forecasting	Standard, starting January
Support Information	Business Hours	These are used when escalation rules do their escalating	Mon to Fri, 8AM to 8PM
Support Information	Holidays	Days that cases skip escalation	June 27 (International Day of Mystery)

Let’s first take a look at what is affected by updating the default or personal locale

Locale Settings include		For example
Locale	Date and Time Format	mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy
	Number Format	1,000 or 1.000 for one thousand
	Name Order	Last, First or First Last
	Address Format	Country, Zip Code, State, then Street
	Phone Number Format	(123) 456-7890 or +12 2345 67-0
Language	All Text	Standard tabs and fields
Language	Online Help	Text language in Help
Time Zone	Event Start/End Time	Calendar entries and events
Time Zone	Date or Time Fields

By default, Salesforce organizations use a single currency. Once you set the required currency locale in your company settings, all currency values on records display in that currency.
Products, Quotes, & Contracts
Manage Products, Prices, Quotes, and Orders
Buy vs. Build: Understanding the Right Solution
Salesforce provides various development tools and processes to meet the needs of customers.
1. Change set development
2. Org development
3. Package development
At a high level, all three development models follow the same ALM process. But the models differ in the way that they let you manage changes to your org. Controlling change is a big deal in software development, and you can choose the development model that best suits your situation if you understand your options.
You can safely develop some kinds of new functionality in a production org. Customizations that don’t affect data are safe to create in a production org, such as developing new dashboards, reports, and email templates.
ALM provides process and policies that help them build apps smoothly and therefore faster, without breaking things. Apps and tools can vary, but the steps in the ALM cycle apply to any Salesforce development project.
1. Step 1: Plan Release – Start your customization or development project with a plan. Gather requirements and analyze them. Have your product manager (or equivalent) create design specifications and share them with the development team for implementation. Determine the various development and testing environments the team needs as the project progresses through the ALM cycle.
2. Step 2: Develop – Complete the work, following the design specifications. Perform the work in an environment containing a copy of the production org’s metadata, but with no production data. Develop on Lightning Platform using an appropriate combination of declarative tools (Process Builder, the Custom Object wizard, and others in the UI) and programmatic tools (Developer Console, Source Code Editor, or Visual Studio Code).
3. Step 3: Test -Exercise the changes you’re making to check that they work as intended before you integrate them with other people’s work. Do your testing in the same type of environment as you used in the develop step, but keep your development and integrated testing environments separate. At this point, focus on testing your changes themselves, not on understanding how your changes affect other parts of the release or the app as a whole.
4. Step 4: Build Release -Aggregate all the assets you created or modified during the develop stage into a single release artifact: a logical bundle of customizations that you deploy to production. From this point on, focus on what you’re going to release, not on the contributions of individuals.
5. Step 5: Test Release – Test what you’re actually going to deploy, but test safely in a staging environment that mimics production as much as possible. Use a realistic amount of representative production data. Connect your test environments with all the external systems they need to mimic your production system’s integration points. Run full regression and final performance tests in this step. Test the release with a small set of experienced people who provide feedback (a technique called user-acceptance testing).
6. Step 6: Release – When you’ve completed your testing and met your quality benchmarks, you can deploy the customization to production. Train your employees and partners so they understand the changes. If a release has significant user impact, create a separate environment with realistic data for training users.
Releases typically fall into one of three categories
1. Patch Bug fixes and simple changes – Simple changes include reports, dashboards, list views, and email templates.
2. Minor Changes with limited impact, such as a new workflow rule or trigger impacting a single business process.
  1. These releases typically require testing, but only limited training and change management. Typically, a team delivers the changes for a minor release within a few weeks.
3. Major Changes with significant impact, including changes with one or more dependencies. Because these releases can greatly affect the user experience and data quality, they require thorough testing, training, and careful change management. Major releases are typically delivered once a quarter (Salesforce does it three times a year).
  1. Release on a consistent schedule.
In package development, you manage different customizations as separate packages, not as one big release of changes to the org. Remember how in change set development you manage a set of changes from multiple projects as though they’re going into one container? When releases become so complex that it makes sense to manage the org as multiple containers, it’s time to move to the package development model. If your team is already building modular release artifacts on other platforms, they’ll find some similarities working in package development.

Lead Management: 7%
1. A campaign is a little bit like a folder or a container for related marketing efforts. A campaign record helps you group marketing assets and interested customers together, so that you can organize your plans, or look back at what you’ve accomplished.
  1. Select the Marketing User checkbox in your user profile and make sure you have permission to create campaigns.
2. By using the Parent Campaign field on campaigns, Marketing manager can relate their campaigns to each other in a hierarchy. With a hierarchy, they can group their campaigns into categories that suit her business.
  1. There are a few different ways hierarchies can be applied to a business’s marketing practices. A common approach is to use the hierarchy to group campaigns by marketing strategy. The hierarchy can have as many as five levels, but three levels works well for many companies. The top level can represent an overall strategic focus, such as selling a new product in a company’s lineup, or building brand awareness.
  2. The second level can be for the different aspects of that focus, like the product launch, getting feedback from purchasers, or upselling previous customers. Finally, the third level can represent individual marketing efforts, like an email, an online ad, invitations to demos, or the demo itself.
  3. Another way of using hierarchies is to group campaigns by time period. In this approach, the top level can be for the marketing efforts for the entire year, the second level can be for each fiscal quarter, and the third level for individual campaigns in each quarter.
  4. A third way of using hierarchies is to use the first level for a large event, such as an annual conference. The second level can then be for supporting marketing efforts like the registration and emails, and the third level can be for individual sessions at the conference.
3. Campaign Influence
4. Lead Management Implementation Guide
5. Prospecting Contact Strategy
6. Sales Cloud Einstein Rollout Strategies
Account and Contact Management: 11%
1. Setting Up Person Accounts
  1. Considerations for Using Person Accounts
  2. Business Contact Sharing for Orgs That Use Person Accounts
2. Enterprise Territory Management Implementation Guide
Opportunity Management: 10%
1. Opportunity Teams and Opportunity Splits
2. Boost productivity and help reps gather complete data. Create paths to guide your users through steps of a business process, such as working an opportunity from a fresh lead to a successfully closed deal. At each step of a path, you can highlight key fields and include customized guidance for success.
  1. Path is available for the following objects:
    1. Accounts (business accounts and person accounts)
    2. Assets
    3. Campaigns
    4. Cases
    5. Contacts
    6. Contracts
    7. Fulfillment order
    8. Leads
    9. Opportunities
    10. Orders
    11. Product service campaigns
    12. Product service campaign items
    13. Quotes
    14. Service appointments
    15. Service contracts
    16. Work orders
    17. Work order line items
    18. Custom objects
  2. Path & Workspaces
  3. Customize a Sales Path for Your Team
  4. Considerations and Guidelines for Creating Paths
3. Pipeline Inspection gives sales teams a consolidated view of pipeline metrics, opportunities, week-to-week changes, AI-driven insights, close date predictions, and activity information. With this intelligence, sales teams can focus on the most important opportunities and forecast revenue more accurately.
Sales Productivity and Integration: 8%

Consulting Practices: 7%

Salesforce business analyst is a project-based, business-improvement role. Business analysts help guide businesses to improve business processes and efficiency in Salesforce. They elicit, document, and analyze requirements around business challenges, and then produce data-driven solutions. Think of the Salesforce business analyst like an interpreter. They’re the go-to person when it comes to communication between IT and business stakeholders to ensure all involved work together to attain the best results.
Familiarize yourself with the business analyst role, required skills, and key activities.
1. For example, soft skills a Business Analyst should have – YouTube Video
  1. Needs analysis
  2. Eliciting requirements
  3. Business case definition
  4. Requirements Writing
  5. Requirements review
  6. Flow and process diagramming
  7. Wire-framing
  8. Business data analytics
  9. Problem-solving
A BA should also have at least a basic understanding of these Salesforce technical skills:
1. AppExchange
2. Automation
3. Collaboration
4. Data management
5. Reports and dashboards
6. CRM
7. Platform
8. Sales and marketing
What are the key activities a Business Analyst performs – YouTube Video
1. Communication
2. Elicitation
3. Documenting requirements
4. Analyzing information
5. Facilitating solutions
6. Implementing solutions
7. Testing

There are many misconceptions about what a Salesforce business analyst does. You may be thinking they need to be super technical, that they’re only needed after a project kicks off, or that they are only focused on project requirements. Let’s address the most common misconceptions about Salesforce BAs to add more clarity around the role.

Misconception	Explanation
Salesforce business analysts need to be super technical.	Nope. As long as they have a basic understanding of the Salesforce platform, keep up with platform changes, and have enough knowledge to understand platform capabilities and limitations, the “technical” Salesforce stuff is done by the Salesforce admin.
Salesforce business analysts shouldn’t do configuration on the platform.	It’s commonly thought that a BA shouldn’t do configuration on the platform. This is up to each individual. If they have the skills, knowledge, and bandwidth to do so while overseeing implementation of a project solution, great! The more helping hands, the better.
Salesforce business analysts are only needed after a project kicks off.	BAs are brought into Salesforce projects from the get-go. Many think that they’re needed only after a project kicks off. But getting that initial understanding of needs and scope of a project is one of the most important pieces.
Salesforce business analysts are only focused on requirements.	BAs aren’t solely focused on requirements. Yes, that’s a big part of what they do, but as we highlighted in the previous section, they do much more!

Salesforce Administrator vs Business Analyst role
1. Salesforce administration is an operational role. Salesforce admins work with stakeholders to define optimal processes and customize the Salesforce Platform. They help their company’s users get the most out of Salesforce by making the platform work for the business’s unique needs. They bring innovation to life—automating business processes, creating reports and dashboards, training users, and staying on top of platform updates.
2. Salesforce business analysis is a project-based, business-improvement role. Business analysts help businesses improve processes and efficiency in Salesforce by eliciting, documenting, and analyzing requirements around business challenges. Then they produce data-driven solutions. Think of the business analyst like an interpreter. They’re the go-to person when it comes to communication between IT and business stakeholders. Business analysts make sure everyone involved works together to achieve the best results.

Required Skills

Salesforce admin	Salesforce business analyst
Communication skills to work with people across the organization, from leadership to the actual users themselves. Time management skills to help with case management and constant user requests. Leadership skills to lead the way in everything Salesforce. Problem solving skills to solve for the best solution for the organization.	Leadership skills to guide the business throughout a project and have confidence in the right solutions. Communication skills to work with stakeholders at all levels of the business, gather requirements, and oversee projects from beginning to end. Project management skills to keep Salesforce projects on track and moving toward the end business goal.

Key Qualities

Salesforce admin	Salesforce business analyst
Empathetic. Listens to and understands customer needs, requests, and issues. Confident. Draws on knowledge about the Salesforce Platform to argue against requests that aren’t in the best interest of the business. Encouraging. Drives user adoption.	Data-driven. Tracks and evaluates data to provide insights back to the business. Action-oriented. Makes quick, actionable recommendations based on data findings. Solution-oriented. Takes project requirements and creates the best solution for the organization.

some of the most important skills that BAs use to work effectively with both people and information to facilitate a solution to a problem.
1. Information Discovery
2. Analysis and Synthesis
3. Communication, Collaboration, and Documentation
Essential Business Analyst Skills
There are three components of every user story
1. Who: From whose perspective (aka user persona) will this user story be written within Salesforce?
2. What goal will be accomplished or implemented within the Salesforce org as a result of the user story?
3. Why does the user need the Salesforce functionality or feature outlined in the user story?
The who, what, and why are arranged in a sentence like this:
1. As a < who >
2. I want < what >
3. So that < why >
  1. Example – As a customer care representative, I want to take ownership of new cases and communicate with customers so that I can provide high-touch customer experiences.
A good user story should be:
1. Independent
2. Negotiable
3. Valuable
4. Estimable
5. Small
6. Testable
Customer-centric conversations (CCC) are conversations where you place your customer at the center of the conversation and use the information you learn during discovery to uncover new opportunities. Why is this important? Because the more you understand your customers, the greater the value of your opportunity.
1. The customer-centric conversation (CCC) framework consists of the following.
  1. Risk
  2. Outcome
  3. Challenge
  4. Ask
Once the framework has been established, think about which piece is the most important. If you get 30 seconds to have a customer-centric conversation, which of the framework components is the most important to highlight? One recommendation is the bottom line up front (or BLUF) method.
1. The BLUF method has four key steps.
  1. Always keep your ask and the desired outcome of the conversation in mind.
  2. Lead with outcome where possible.
  3. Be brief and concise.
  4. Go big!
When you meet with an executive, follow these best practices.
1. Be concise.
2. Be transparent and clear.
3. Provide sentiment if applicable.
4. Frame for your audience.
5. Focus on your ask, solution, or recommendation.
The UPN (universal process notation) is a simple way to document processes and it is easily understood by everyone in the meeting, and the drill down approach keeps the diagrams compact so they can be viewed online. This is important because increasingly workshops are remote to be able to include all the stakeholders, no matter where they are located.
Business Analyst Best Practices

Sales Metrics, Reports & Dashboards: 7%

Reports & Dashboards for Lightning Experience
The foundation of a strong sales team is made up of clearly defined key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are the “what” and “how much” which guide salespeople’s behavior. For example, quota is how much money a sales rep is expected to bring into a company in a given year.
This is where activity and outcome measures come in.
1. Activity measures are KPIs that focus on the actions sales people do daily, weekly, monthly, that help drive relationship building and connecting with new customers. Activity measures are designed to lead sales people to achieve outcome measures.
2. Outcome measures focus on the end result of these actions, and are usually tied closer to money.

So what are the typical activity and outcome measures?

Activity Measure	Description
Calls Made	The number of outbound calls made per rep, over a set period of time
Emails Sent	The number of emails sent per rep, over a set period of time
Meetings Set	The number of meetings set per rep, over a set period of time
Voicemails	The number of voicemails left per rep, over a set period of time
IP Logins (Attendance)	How often and from which IP addresses your sales team accesses company systems like a sales force automation (SFA) or customer relationship management (CRM) system
Onsite Visits	How many times a sales rep has visited their prospects or clients over a set period of time
Webinar Attendance	How many attendees a sales rep has driven to a particular webinar

Outcomes Measure	Description
Revenue	Money booked
Attainment	How close, as a percentage, a sales rep is to meeting their revenue goal
New Logos	Newly signed customers
Leads Generated	Inquiries as a result of outbound sales activities
Lead Follow-Up Time	How long it takes a sales rep to follow up on a new inquiry
Lead Conversion Rate	What percentage of leads become customers
Retention	What percentage of customers remain customers year over year
Churn	What percentage of renewable revenue is lost each year from lost customers or customer reducing their purchases or subscription
Customer Lifespan	How long (in years) a renewable customer has been with a business

Below are common incentives that may be found in an incentives package.
1. Cash Incentives or Commission. This is the universally accepted motivator for a salesperson across industries. From software to hardware, to services companies, every sales team member has an incentive plan with a cash or commission component.
2. Material or Cash-Related Goods. Extra paid vacation, consumer electronics (phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches), home goods (coffee maker, food subscriptions), expense paid trips—these are all extrinsic rewards that can be part of a robust incentive structure.
3. Social Recognition. Praise from your colleagues can feel as rewarding as hitting your number! Social recognition can be facilitated via deal bells, team-wide email recognition, leaderboards, and so on. Creating a supportive and even fun environment can boost intrinsic motivation in your team members. Seeing others rewarded can also become an extrinsic motivation for onlookers who may not have hit their goals yet.

Data Management: 8%
1. Ever Wonder? – What are Big Objects? What are Its Use Cases? How are they Implemented? – Of course, You Do!
2. Big Object Basics
3. Strategies for Big Data Architecture
4. Salesforce offers two main methods for importing data.
  1. Data Import Wizard—this tool, accessible through the Setup menu, lets you import data in common standard objects, such as contacts, leads, accounts, as well as data in custom objects.
    1. You need to load less than 50,000 records.
    2. The objects you need to import are supported by the wizard.
    3. You don’t need the import process to be automated.
  2. Data Loader—this is a client application that can import up to five million records at a time, of any data type, either from files or a database connection. It can be operated either through the user interface or the command line.
    1. You need to load 50,000 to five million records.
    2. You need to load into an object that is not supported by the Data Import Wizard.
    3. You want to schedule regular data loads, such as nightly imports.
  3. Follow these steps before you start importing any data.
    1. Use your existing software to create an export file. You’ll use this exported data file to now import the data into Salesforce.
    2. Clean up the import file for accuracy and consistency. This involves updating the data to remove duplicates, delete unnecessary information, correct spelling and other errors, and enforce naming conventions.
    3. Compare your data fields with the Salesforce fields you can import into, and verify that your data will be mapped into the appropriate Salesforce fields. You might need to fine-tune the mapping before starting the import. For details, see Field Mapping for Data Sources in the online help.
    4. Make any configuration changes required in Salesforce to handle the imported data. For example, you might need to create new custom fields, add new values to picklists, or temporarily deactivate workflow rules.
5. Salesforce offers two main methods for exporting data.
  1. Data Export Service—an in-browser service, accessible through the Setup menu. It allows you to export data manually once every 7 days (for weekly export) or 29 days (for monthly export). You can also export data automatically at weekly or monthly intervals. Weekly exports are available in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions. In Professional Edition and Developer Edition, you can generate backup files only every 29 days, or automatically at monthly intervals only.
  2. Data Loader—a client application that you must install separately. It can be operated either through the user interface or the command line. The latter option is useful if you want to automate the export process, or use APIs to integrate with another system.
6. Plan for and work with large data volumes within Salesforce.

Additional Resources

A few blogs help you prepare for the Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant exam.

Sign up for Salesforce Certification Days Webinar for – Sales Cloud Consultant Certification
YouTube Videos
Sales Cloud Implementation Guide
Sales Engagement Implementation Guide
Instructor Led training by Trailhead Academy

Conclusion

If you have basic experience with all the above topics, passing the exam will be a cinch, and you will be able to earn the much-coveted Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant certification exam! However, if you do not have enough experience (9-12 months) with the Sales Cloud implementation and plan to become a Certified Sales Cloud Consultant. I suggest you draw a 12-16 weeks plan (finish the above Trailhead to prepare for it).

I hope that you find these tips and resources useful. If you put the time and effort in, you will succeed. Happy studying and good luck!

Formative Assessment:

I want to hear from you!

Have you taken the Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud consultant exam? Are you preparing for the exam now? Share your tips in the comments!

14 thoughts on “How to Pass Sales Cloud Consultant Certification Exam”

Sasha

November 24, 2022 at 7:19 AMs Reply

Congratulations and thanks! Could you please send any other study material for Sales Cloud Consultant exam?
ishan

October 18, 2013 at 12:28 PMs Reply

Hi , can u please help me- about sales cloud .
can u please share the dumbs for sales cloud & for whats the type of question comes in certifcation exam..
1. Rakesh Gupta
  
  October 18, 2013 at 2:50 PMs Reply
  
  I don’t have any stuff or materials.
  Please follow study guide provided by salesforce.
  1. ishan
    
    October 18, 2013 at 9:05 PMs Reply
    
    thanks for ur quick reply.
    and can u also tell me – >
    how to learn salesforce developer & where to implement in salesforce
    how to write apex,trigger, ( is it neccessary to know about html,css..etcc )
    
    i don’t have any programming language knowledge ,so can i learn ??
Ashish

March 27, 2013 at 11:02 AMs Reply

Congrats
1. Rakesh Gupta
  
  November 20, 2022 at 4:58 PMs Reply
  
  Thanks!
Mariano

November 7, 2012 at 5:44 PMs Reply

Congratulations and thanks! Could you please send any other study material for Sales Cloud Consultant exam?
1. Rakesh Gupta
  
  November 20, 2022 at 4:58 PMs Reply
  
  Sent. Please check your email.
Amar

October 30, 2012 at 5:50 PMs Reply

Congratulations
1. Rakesh Kumar
  
  October 31, 2012 at 12:53 PMs Reply
  
  Thank you!
susi

October 20, 2012 at 2:27 AMs Reply

Congratulations!
1. Rakesh Gupta
  
  November 20, 2022 at 4:57 PMs Reply
  
  Thanks, Susi!
Darin

October 19, 2012 at 10:17 AMs Reply

Congrats Rakesh
1. Rakesh Gupta
  
  November 20, 2022 at 4:57 PMs Reply
  
  Thanks, Darin!