Salesforce Functional Consultant:

This particular role is more often than not, found working with Salesforce partners rather than an End User, although they may be engaged by an End user for a specific project. This role is quite similar to the Salesforce Business Analyst role but often requires more hands-on configuration and a deeper understanding of the Salesforce platform. Salesforce Functional Consultants sometimes come from a Salesforce Administrator background and in some cases it may be their first role in the ecosystem, depending on their background

Salesforce Functional Consultants, or Salesforce Consultants, typically work on various client projects throughout the year. They are the Salesforce champion for the client, who they go to for all things Salesforce. Working with new, or existing complex implementations of Salesforce to help implement new products or build custom functionality, their clients will be relying on them to be experts in multiple Salesforce products or a specialist in one area, across different industries. They could be working on a finance client project at one point and then a retail client project at another, for example, and so adaptability will be important. A Functional Consultant could also be working across multiple client org’s simultaneously.

They’ll have a good grasp on the technical features and functionalities of the Salesforce platform and will bridge between the client and the technical team. They will often have exposure to multiple Salesforce Clouds and AppExchange products, or they could specialise e.g. in CPQ.

With an increasing customer base for the Salesforce CRM across the globe, the demand for Salesforce consultants is on the rise as they’re needed to drive implementation for clients.

What does a Salesforce Functional Consultant do? Typical Salesforce Functional Consultant tasks might include:

• Running workshops
• Managing stakeholders
• Requirements gathering with the client
• Documenting client requirements
• Providing guidance on the design of a solution
• Providing insight on customisation and third party applications that should be incorporated in the solution
• Documenting the solution for client approval
• Solution playbacks
• Hands on configuration of the Salesforce platform
• Providing insight and requirements for the Development team
• User training
• Once the solution is developed, delivering the work to client for approval
• Have an understanding of the overall outcome of the project, whilst not being directly hands on themselves

What qualities will a Salesforce Functional Consultant typically possess?

• Good communication and mediation skills, and the ability to liaise between technical and non-technical stakeholders with a consultative approach where there may be conflict
• Good presentation skills and the ability to demonstrate high levels of credibility to various levels of stakeholders, who are both technical and non-technical
• Accountable to ensure deliverables are met both technically, and to meet client expectations, with financial implications in mind
• An approach which challenges the easiest and safest way of doing things, in order to achieve the best possible outcome for the client. An innovative approach will ensure that implementations are consistently more sophisticated and efficient
• A strategic mindset which hears needs and requirements which the client may not even themselves be aware of

Does Trailhead cover the Salesforce Functional Consultant role?

Definitely! You might like to start with taking a listen to The Trailblazer’s Guide to Careers podcast episode covering this by Salesforce

There’s also a great Trailmix on Trailhead to kick things off! You can find that here:

Salesforce Consultant Career Path Trailmix

 

Which Salesforce certifications should I pursue?

To begin with, the Salesforce Admin and Advanced Admin certifications give a good foundation and there are a number of advanced topics that are covered by Advanced Admin like Territory Management, Forecasting and more advanced reporting. There are then a number of different consultant certifications available like Sales Cloud Consultant, Service Cloud Consultant, Field Service Consultant etc.

The App Builder certification could also be relevant even if you’re on a Functional career path as it’s still important to know what is actually possible to be done declaratively.

Let’s hear from the Salesforce Functional Consultants themselves!

At Talent Hub, we publish a comprehensive annual Salesforce survey which collates the motivations, opinions and aspirations of Salesforce Functional Consultants and other job titles specifically in the ANZ region. We asked Salesforce Functional Consultants a few questions about their own roles to give a bit of a snapshot of the realities of the Salesforce Functional Consultant role.

We asked Salesforce Functional Consultants which job title they would prefer to pursue next. The most popular answer was Salesforce Solution Architect at 51%

 

 

With Architecture being a popular career path with Functional Consultants, we asked Functional Consultants whether they had aspirations to become a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect in the future. 41% do have this ambition, although 31% said that realistically this would be over 2 years away from their current role of Salesforce Functional Consultant

 

FAQs

 

What kind of questions might I get in a Salesforce Functional Consultant interview?

 

We’ve put together a very brief list of possible Salesforce Functional Consultant questions and answers to give a bit of a flavour:

How would you handle a situation when a client’s business process doesn’t align well with Salesforce’s standard functionality?

How would you approach configuring a complex approval process in Salesforce?

Describe a time when you faced resistance from users during a system implementation or training. How did you handle it?

How do you approach gathering requirements from clients or stakeholders? Can you give an example of a situation where you discovered additional requirements during the process?

Can you provide an example of a time when you identified a process improvement opportunity for a client and successfully implemented it in Salesforce?

Is a Salesforce Functional Consultant a good career route to go down?

 

We believe so! 39% of Salesforce Administrators that we asked in our market survey this year told us that the Functional Consultant role was their ideal next career move.

There’s a number of paths one can go down in the future as a Functional Consultant. In this year’s survey, most respondents are planning to take an architecture route, with 51% with their eyes on a Solution Architect role, followed by 24% who would rather become a Platform Manager in the future. There are alternative paths to pursue in pre-sales and project management also

You only have to look at the company forecasts to see how much bigger the platform is still tipped to get, and that means many more companies in the world adopting Salesforce, who aren’t currently. Learning Salesforce could future-proof your career to a degree, by helping you gain skills that will keep bearing fruits for you and your career in the years to come by keeping in-sync with the tooling being adopted by organisations across the world

 

“Salesforce saw a 38% rise in its jobs listings from 2020-2021 and 4.2M direct and indirect jobs are projected to be created in the Salesforce ecosystem by 2024”

 

We’d love to help you with any other questions you may have, and so don’t hesitate to leave yours in the comments section below for us to do our best to answer.