Although Salesforce offers a wide range of features and ongoing updates that can benefit your business, the complexity of the platform can prove challenging to your team. It's essential to receive complete Salesforce training through various learning options.
Harald is the Co-Founder of Hutte, bringing his vision of no-code DevOps to life. His passion enables teams and individuals to focus on what matters most – bringing value to the users they build for.
Manuel Moya Ferrer is a highly skilled freelancer who serves as a technical architect, developer, and DevOps engineer. He specializes in Salesforce solutions, covering all technical aspects of their development lifecycle.
Article Highlights
The article emphasizes the need for comprehensive Salesforce training, as 35% of salespeople surveyed by Whatfix feel they require better training to use CRM systems effectively.
It categorizes top Salesforce training resources into instructor-led classes, in-app guided training, self-paced courses, and supplemental resources, providing options for different learning preferences and needs.
The resources mentioned offer a range of customizable learning paths, from in-person and virtual classes to self-help materials and discussion forums, ensuring teams can tailor their Salesforce training to their specific roles and requirements.
Whatfix conducted a survey, which revealed that 35% of salespeople believe that more comprehensive training is necessary to use their customer relationship management (CRM) systems more effectively.
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Over 150K companies rely on Salesforce. Due to its popularity, numerous learning tools, classes, and resources are available for selection.
Researching to find the best training resources for your team can be challenging. That's why we've done the work for you, curating a list of the top Salesforce training resources categorized as follows:
Instructor-led classes
In-app guided training
Self-paced courses
Supplemental resources.
If you're starting with Salesforce or want to offer ongoing training, this list will help you pick the perfect program for you and your team.
Usually, during daily work, we focus on a specific side of Salesforce, such as an ISV, DevOps, or Sales Cloud. Consequently, we may not learn about many other beneficial and useful aspects of Salesforce. To supplement my knowledge, I have always put extra effort into courses (Trailhead, Udemy, or even reading blogs) and getting certified, which is ultimately a rewarding way to learn specific topics.
Manuel Moya
Technical Architect, Developer, and DevOps Engineer
Instructor-led training classes
Instructor-led classes may cost more and require more effort from your team regarding scheduling and coordination, but they come with some unique advantages.
Your team will benefit from expert instructor-led Salesforce training to gain expertise, and they will be allowed to ask additional questions for improved understanding.
The organized atmosphere will encourage learning and help keep everyone focused.
Salesforce's Trailhead Academy offers over 50 in-person and virtual courses and is one of the top Salesforce training resources.
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Each one focuses on a different part of the platform. These strategies are tailored to specific jobs or roles. Among other courses, reporting strategies for business analysts are designed for those in business analyst and sales manager roles.
Each course varies in length—it can be completed within a few hours or multiple days. Certification exams may also need to be completed. As Salesforce or an associated partner oversees these training courses and programs, your team can learn from the best.
Trailhead was a godsend when I started diving into the platform.
Stony Point, a Salesforce training partner, offers in-person and virtual training. Their unique Training as a Subscription Service (TaaSS) option is available throughout the year, setting them apart from other providers.
This course allows you to access any of the business's instructor-led courses at a discounted price. Stony Point divides its courses into three categories based on how you’ll use Salesforce:
Technical training
Salesforce end-user training
Sales training.
The length of the course may range from four to 40 hours.
You can save on Stony Point courses through volume discounts for teams, the TaaSS offering, and custom training plans or study guides created by experienced Stony Point instructors.
Beth Saunders Associates provides specialized Salesforce training for nonprofits and co-ops. The CRM requirements of nonprofits can vary.
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They engage with donors and build long-term relationships to sustain ongoing donations rather than having a traditional product to improve or grow.
At Beth Saunders Associates, instructors will collaborate with you to design a face-to-face training plan or create a continuous coaching process to help you learn Salesforce.
Creating a tailored Salesforce training plan ensures your team only learns the required features.
In-app guided Salesforce training
Practicing with Salesforce's in-app guidance training program is an effective way to train, as team members can go through the platform's various functions step-by-step, and they can tap into practice exams.
This type of learning experience allows your team to develop skills and familiarize themselves with the software all at once from industry experts.
After upgrading to Salesforce Lightning, Salesforce implemented an in-app guidance feature, which prompts users to follow along as they navigate the platform.
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Walkthroughs and prompts share similar purposes, yet the former entails a step-by-step guide, while the latter refers to a single notification.
You can get hands-on experience, build personalized prompts and tutorials, or install a ready-to-use package from Salesforce AppExchange.
Salesforce's in-app guidance is already integrated, making it compatible with the platform. Setup of these prompts requires no coding knowledge as they are pre-installed features. So, no matter what job roles your team members are in, they can be on top of their game.
Salesforce's in-app guidance capabilities are limited, especially for those without a “myTrailhead” subscription. Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) provide further supplemental guidance for increased features and customizability.
The Whatfix Digital Adoption Platform offers walkthroughs, alerts, and self-help materials to drive Salesforce adoption, guiding your team and enabling them to maximize the platform's capabilities.
Furthermore, Whatfix provides user analytics and the ability to acquire feedback within the app, so you can monitor your team's progress and supply specific assistance if needed.
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The platform's self-help menu presents team members with walkthroughs and other materials related to their job function and work progress. Similarly to Salesforce, there is no need for coding knowledge on Whatfix for content creation.
Self-paced Salesforce training courses
Asynchronous, online training courses are self-paced training. It is an excellent way for large, geographically dispersed, or rapidly expanding teams to get the most out of their training.
These classes don't need an instructor, making them more cost-effective and flexible than other training options. Plus, team members can stop and start as needed to fit the training into their schedule.
We mentioned Trailhead Academy earlier in the article, as it provides immersive training and formal classes. However, Salesforce Trailhead also offers over 800 self-paced individual learning modules at an advanced level. These training online short courses are focused on the platform's different functions, training tools, and capabilities.
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Suppose you're looking to dive deeper into a particular subject (such as complicated concepts or more advanced concepts). In that case, the program offers more than 200 Trails – a collection of modules designed as learning pathways from industry professionals.
To access tests and monitor your progress, you must log in using your Salesforce, Google, LinkedIn, or email account. For more in-depth or organized Salesforce training for various experience levels, Trailhead has created Trailmixes – collections of Trails grouped under topics such as “Lead a Sales Team from Anywhere.”
If you're seeking video-based Salesforce development training or organized self-paced courses with completion certificates, look no further than Udemy. The digital institute offers more than 70 Salesforce lessons.
At Udemy, you can learn about Salesforce from a beginner's level with Salesforce 101 or delve into more advanced topics, such as Salesforce reports.
Udemy's beginner courses have excellent ratings, notably Salesforce 101, which has 4.4 stars from over 3K reviews.
The selected courses range from 'bite-size' options lasting under an hour to extensive multi-part lessons totaling over 28 hours. You can choose the perfect length of time and most suitable topics to meet the needs of your team's skill level.
Simplilearn is a training program that offers comprehensive Salesforce certification training. It features four online training courses addressing different Salesforce certifications, including those for developers and administrators.
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At Simplilearn, you can find in-depth and step-by-step courses consisting of digital content, projects, case studies, and quizzes. Rated at a high 4.6 stars on Trustpilot and Course Report, many learners have found these courses extremely beneficial.
To ensure your team prepares well for the Salesforce certification, Simplilearn offers hands-on training and practice tests. Additionally, they provide plenty of free articles and certification guides that serve as supplemental Salesforce training materials.
Supplemental Salesforce Training Resources
In addition to providing a wide range of self-paced training, give your team members supplementary educational materials on Salesforce.
Team members can utilize these resources to quickly learn more about complicated features which they would otherwise need an entire course for. What’s great is that your team can bookmark articles or documents for easy reference.
Salesforce offers downloadable tip sheets and guides so your team can work on their self-paced training anytime and from any location.
These information sheets cover various topics and use cases to help with certification exams, from Salesforce's fundamentals to specifics about using certain features.
You may want to provide team members with guides or tip sheets tailored to the Salesforce aspects they find most challenging to understand. You can also select guides based on each member's experience levels.
Your team can keep the downloadable tip sheets and guides on hand, providing access even without an internet connection.
Learn Salesforce on their YouTube channel. It is an excellent source of information on its latest products and features. It also offers engaging interviews and webinars. Moreover, they regularly post helpful video guides that explain how to use different features.
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Your team can quickly gain experience by locating instructional videos for the feature they are using due to the vast amount of short-form videos.
Some employees may benefit from visual learning more than reading, and YouTube is the perfect platform for this (especially regarding certification training). It allows team members to observe how tasks are completed rather than just read about them.
Chances are, if you're using Salesforce and face a problem, somebody else has had the same experience.
Salesforce's discussion forums allow you to research how existing issues have already been solved, and you can request help from the community if your problem has yet to be asked.
You can sort through the forum topics primarily centered around development to look for questions related to sales or general platform usage.
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Rather than sifting through generalized self-help materials and product specs, your team can get immediate, direct, and targeted solutions to their problems.
You could provide your team with Salesforce training in various formats, including videos, courses, and reading materials. With this approach, you'll be able to cater to different learning styles and let each person find their learning niche.
Implement a Salesforce training leaderboard
Overcoming the challenge of getting to grips with technology, especially Salesforce, can be tricky. Introduce an element of playfulness by ‘gamifying’ the process.
Gamification elements are built into many Salesforce training resources. If you look at Salesforce Trails, as an example, they have an achievement-based system. Team members can level up on the platform and earn badges.
These badges can be posted on social networks to show their upskilling journey.
One way to inspire your team is to create a leaderboard dashboard to display each member's progress and achievements, which can generate an atmosphere of healthy competition.
Salesforce training tips
You now have an idea about the Salesforce resources you have at your disposal, but it can still be confusing when you have so many options to choose from. Perhaps these tips can help guide you in the right direction.
Make sure your Salesforce fits your business process
Employees don't normally prefer to spend time learning a completely different business process in addition to using a new tool. For increased CRM user adoption, it is best if the process is similar to one users are already accustomed to.
Some helpful tips:
Personalize objects to reflect the data you track
Ensure that the field names match what you have discussed with your team
Ensure that anything unnecessary is deleted from the system.
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If you aren't familiar with how to work on it, there are a variety of online teaching resources and experienced service providers that can help you optimize your configuration.
Make sure everyone is ready for change
Ensuring everyone is familiar with Salesforce is crucial to successful user adoption. Consider organizing meetings to discuss any difficulties users may have in tracking necessary data.
Explain how Salesforce can help solve their problems, using specific examples. If someone is still unconvinced, address this objection as soon as possible.
Have everyone brainstorm their motivations and come to a consensus that Salesforce will improve their performance. If they are on board from the beginning, there will be more excitement about the training and implementation process.
Introduce proper training
Ongoing Salesforce training is essential to stay up-to-date with the ever-evolving features of the tool.
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When creating your CRM plan, it's essential to make sure that any training you provide your staff is tied to the actual platform they'll be working with. This means establishing a training program tailored specifically to the needs of your business.
If your users comprehend the significance of each lesson as part of their expected system, then your training is effective. To do this, ensure that you give both technical education, such as basic Salesforce information, and situational knowledge – like examples of how they will use Salesforce.
Supplying users with a more robust understanding of how Salesforce will be employed day-to-day will help them get ready to utilize it frequently.
The right people should learn the right information
Often, not everyone needs to have access to every detail in Salesforce. It's not necessary for your sales team to learn how to use tools built for the HR team or vice versa.
Cutting down the information that users need to take in and only training them on the parts of the platform that apply to their role makes things easier for everybody.
This will reduce the time necessary for this task and spare your employees from having to learn unnecessary and complicated things.
Salesforce training begins today
Salesforce training is a key factor in helping your team grow in their abilities to solve problems and provide solutions. But it's also crucial for Salesforce users to periodically revisit training to be up-to-date with the latest processes and techniques. This helps ensure that their work is done correctly and efficiently.
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By reinforcing training, you can promote an effective dialogue, which will offer ways to deal with any current difficulties people encounter with the tool and motivate users by ensuring they are effectively utilizing Salesforce.
Refresher training for everyone in your organization who uses Salesforce can help maximize the tool's potential and promote user adoption.
As the saying goes by Henry Ford, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
So, it is never too late, and the day is never too young to begin Salesforce training. If you would like expert training on Salesforce DevOps and Git-based Salesforce development, get in touch with Hutte!
