If you are planning to hire a Salesforce consultant to join your in-house team, you should look for someone who has:
- Profound knowledge of the platform
- Unparalleled skill set
- Far-fetched expertise
The right Salesforce consultant should be able to offer scalable and game-changing solutions to take your business to the next level.
A capable Salesforce consultant not only helps you to streamline business processes, but they can also help you manage your clients and set client relationships more effectively.
To find such a qualified Salesforce consultant, you need to properly screen each potential candidate when interviewing them.
Let’s find out the kind of questions you should ask during the interview to make an informed decision.
5 Technical Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Salesforce Consultant
A Salesforce consultant should have the necessary technical knowledge to recommend the right Salesforce solutions. Make sure to test their technical acumen with questions such as these:
-
What Are Some Ways to Maintain Clean Data in Salesforce?
An experienced functional consultant Salesforce should ensure that any data that enters Salesforce is clean. Implementing this rule should reduce the instances where retroactively cleaning data becomes necessary.
There are several ways to keep the original data clean and various ways of cleaning it retroactively. Here are a few examples:
Validation: Experienced Salesforce consultants use Validation to keep data clean. It can come in various forms such as:
- Required fields
- Validation rules
- Using picklists instead of free text fields
- Setting correct permissions
These features are there to make sure that users can only enter clean data into the system. It is also one of the best methods for preventing bad data from entering the system.
Duplicate management: Duplication of data is a common issue Salesforce users face. Duplication of data can occur from various sources such as:
- Initial data load
- Marketing leads
- Manual entries
A Salesforce consultant should be able to use the platform’s powerful duplicate tools to prevent this from happening.
Training: The best way to maintain clean data is to offer sufficient training to the users. A capable Salesforce consultant should be able to explain to the rest of the team how to enter and access data without corrupting it.
Can You Explain The Difference between Sales Cloud and Service Cloud?
Sales Cloud was the first product released by Salesforce. It is designed to help businesses manage sales cycles and keep track of their customers and customer relationships.
Sales Cloud also extends the CRM by providing features and functionalities for:
- Opportunity management
- Lead management
- Forecasting
- Quoting
Service Cloud is a similar product, but it is part of the platform’s core CRM cloud. The primary goal of Service Cloud is to support organizations with their customer service department. It has functionalities such as:
- Entitle Management
- Case management
- Email2Case
- Knowledge bases
A Salesforce functional consultant should be able to tell you how these features help an organization streamline its sales and customer relations departments.
What are the Top Benefits of AppExchange?
The primary goal behind Salesforce AppExchange was to allow Salesforce partners to develop specialist apps on top of the platform.
AppExchange offers similar benefits that any app store such as Google Play or Play Store offers.
It mainly provides out-of-the-box applications (both free and paid) that help to extend the functionalities of Salesforce.
Salesforce offers both simple and complex apps that help to automate core business processes.
How is a Role Different from a Profile in Salesforce?
In Salesforce, Profiles are features that you can add to a user record. Profiles are a fundamental requirement when setting up a user, but Role is optional.
With Profile, you can control object privileges such as Create, Read, Edit, and Delete (CRED). Profiles also contain system permissions for users to perform such as exporting data.
On the other hand, Roles are necessary when it comes to sharing records across the organization. Roles function in a hierarchical fashion, offering users access to records, which are owned by individuals lower down in the hierarchy.
Why Should You Use a Sandbox to Make Changes?
A Salesforce technical consultant should be able to tell you the importance of using Sandbox when making changes.
A Sandbox provides users with an environment where they can make changes without the risk of breaking anything.
Since Salesforce development is fairly complex, using a Sandbox for making changes is necessary.
5 Exploratory Questions to Ask before You Hire a Salesforce Consultant
The following exploratory questions should help you figure out whether a candidate has the right experience to join your team.
How Would You Deal with Non-Technical Clients?
An experienced Salesforce consultant should know how to deal with non-technical clients since most people involved in a project are from a business perspective. That is why a consultant should:
- Be understanding of the fact that not everyone has the technical acumen.
- Avoid talking too much in technical jargons and explain processes and features in layman’s terms.
- Explain Salesforce solutions by going over how automation works instead of talking about core technical stuff.
Even in situations that call for technical discussions, an experienced Salesforce consultant should be creative in drawing real-life examples to help people understand.
What Tips Would You Give to Improve User Adoption?
Adoption is the most critical step that occurs at the end of a project. Building an efficient roll-out and training plan is necessary to make sure that users are fully equipped to use and apply the system correctly. A capable Salesforce consultant will improve user adoption through methods such as:
- Training
- Ongoing support
- Project involvement
- Feature development
The right Salesforce consultant focuses on the end goal right from the beginning of a project.
What is Your Advice for Customers Who Have No Salesforce Experience but Are Looking to Self-Implement?
This question is really asking “is it worth hiring a Salesforce consultant?”
Salesforce is a complex system that requires hardcore technical knowledge. A self-implemented system is bound to have flaws, which can create problems.
A capable Salesforce consultant should be able to explain why they are necessary.
