Brad (Sonar) (00:03):

We’ve already got some folks jumping in, so we’ll give everybody a few minutes to to get in and get settled, but can ask we’re catch up a second ago. How’s how’s the weather over there right now? You’re finally back in the warm now, right?

 

Ben (SF Ben)  (00:19):

It’s beautiful. Yeah. The UK gets such a bad rap for, for its weather, but I’m pro weather pro sun in the UK. We get a good few days across the years, and today’s one of them.

 

Brad (Sonar) (00:33):

Good. That’s good. We’re very, very close to it almost being time to retire all pants and be in shorts weather here in Atlanta and Atlanta just gets so hot so quickly. So it’s getting warmer, but we’ll get there.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (00:49):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice.

 

Brad (Sonar) (00:51):

Good. I know we’ve got folks in already, I see a couple familiar faces, but we’ll get things kicked off. We got a lot to talk about in and a short amount of time to do it, but we’re obviously recording, so we’ll be able to share this out with everybody. But Ben, great to have you again, man. I know we’ve done a couple of these already and I know every time I get to hang out with you and we do one of these webinars, I walk away a little bit smarter. So I know we’ve got a high expectation for that to happen as well today. But I think with this topic, especially thinking about career pathing and, and how you start to elevate yourself from you know, the admin role to other roles, particularly in the Salesforce ecosystem.

 

Brad (Sonar) (01:30):

I know you and I have watched this play out a lot for our customers, for our community members, both on the Salesforce Ben side and on the WizOps side. So I’m really excited to to dive into it. I’ll give everybody a heads up. I’ll start sharing my screen in and out just so everybody can see the topics we’re talking about, but that way, if anybody jumps in late, they can always catch up. But first and foremost, Ben welcome again. I’ll let you take the mic quick and give a quick introduction for yourself.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (01:59):

Thank you very much for having me again. This is the third time we’ve had a chat together, so yeah, and as you say, it’s always good and ditto, I always learned something from you as well. So you know, that’s always good. But yeah, for those that don’t know me, my name is Ben McCarthy. I’m the founder of SalesforceBen.com. It used to be my personal blog and it’s kind of turned into the larger Salesforce news site slash publisher in the world. So our mission is to help advance Salesforce professionals, careers in the Salesforce ecosystem. So this webinar is very relevant to me and our mission.

 

Brad (Sonar) (02:31):

I love it. Absolutely love it. And I think that’s probably one of the reasons why I enjoy doing this with you so much. It’s very similar to the same mission and vision we have on the WizOps side, ultimately just continuing to elevate the Salesforce ecosystem and the folks that are within it from admin to architect, to operations and everywhere in between. So super excited to dive into it. And obviously we say this every time, but for folks on the call please be participating along the way. If you have questions drop ’em into the chat, drop ’em into the que and we want this to be as exciting for you, and hopefully take away some of those learnings as well, but we’ll get right into it. I think about this a lot, you know, when we think about what some of the biggest opportunities admins should be aware of, but I think also we have to start with a little bit of an overview before we get too, too deep into how to truly go and, change your role and career, but, starting with an overview, what are some of the biggest opportunities you see that admins should should overall be aware of?

 

Speaker 2 (03:30):

Yeah, so I kind of think it’s, good to have an overview, you know, I’m not gonna say what the biggest,  individual roles are for opportunities. I mean,  I think flows are pretty interesting at the moment, like declarative kind of developer kind of roles to be quite interesting, but I think first and foremost, you should understand the vast amount of roles that are in the Salesforce ecosystem. Like we did a webinar and it’s on YouTube, if anyone wants to check out about like end user versus SI Salesforce consultancy versus ISV or app exchange company. And we talked about all the different kind of roles in each of those different types of companies, because there are loads and we’re doing an infographic at the moment to, to kind of map it out, you know, and there’s like 10 to 15 different roles per type of company.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (04:16):

And, some of those are overlapping, but depending on what your interests are, what type of company you want to work for, you know, customer facing kind of role in a consultancy or, internal admin or internal solution architect, and then there are so many types of roles available and I think you can pretty much pick and choose, but based on what your interests are, based on where you wanna go in the future to which should tell what kind of role you should be into. And there are a few kind of resources on Salesforce Ben, and the webinar that I just mentioned, that’s called SI versus ISV versus end user. But we’re gonna be putting out a lot more stuff in the future as well to show you the vast amount of roles and which roles go well into other roles. So, you know, admin is perfect for a consulting, for example, and consulting is perfect to go into ISV. So yeah, just being aware, I think.

 

Brad (Sonar) (05:04):

Absolutely. And one thing I’m doing right now for everybody, especially on the webinar, we, we’ve got a couple of links. The one thing that’s been really fun obviously working with you, Ben, and some of the similarities between our two communities, we put out a lot of thought thought leadership on this. And so as we go through some of these questions, I’m gonna start dropping these into the chat hopefully for everyone. So be sure to check out some of these articles, they’re very relevant to the topic we’re on. But I completely agree.  I can’t help, but think about this over a, a specific time horizon here either because you know when you’ve been in the Salesforce ecosystem for so long, and we gotta fire up the DeLorean a little bit and go way back in time, these roles have expanded drastically.

 

Brad (Sonar) (05:43):

But if you think back even 10 years ago, perhaps and you looked at titles that were Salesforce relevant, you had to kind of boil it down to, you had a couple different flavors of them, but it was admin and developer. That’s about it. And I think even zooming way back before that it was just admin. And I think you look at the landscape now and what it looks like, and just the overall number of roles and different hats you can wear. Now you’ve got admin and developers still, of course architects business analysts. But I think what’s even just as unique to that. You’re starting to see more and more folks having Salesforce tied into their title, but also into the operations world. So you start to see you know, the compounded effect of what we’re already seeing in the rev op space, where you know, by title that’s 400% year over year growth on LinkedIn is I think the most recent stat  that I’ve seen, but you see it in not only rev ops, but sales ops, marketing ops business operations.

 

Brad (Sonar) (06:41):

I think that’s kind of the unique part of it. As this ecosystem continues to grow, as we see the platform getting more and more robust, you see the, you know, the Tableau acquisition, you see the slack acquisition, you can only expect to see more and more of these roles be specific to those parts of the platform. And those parts of  the professional side of the expertise side of it. It’s not just this one size fits all anymore of an admin or a developer. So I know we talked about this before too, and we’ll talk about it a second as well. That is also the same reflection that you see in some of the the certifications that you can get now as well. There, you know, again, 10 years ago you had one or two, I think maybe maybe five at most. And I think

 

Ben (SF Ben) (07:25):

It was five or six when I joined in 2012. And now there’s 35. It’s about 35, 35 to 40, I think, but then you’ve got the, what they called accredited something or accredited something on top of that, which are separate from certifications. And there’s another 40 of those as well. S , there’s a lot,

 

Brad (Sonar) (07:47):

We’re gonna look up and there’s gonna be triple digits of this at at some point.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (07:51):

Yeah, yeah,

 

Brad (Sonar) (07:53):

Too good. Well, again, we’ll keep cruising and I’ll drop these links here in a second to some of the articles that we’ve all put together collectively, but you know, when you start to think about the signs of when it would be a good fit you know, to start thinking and expanding in the Salesforce ecosystem this is fun because I think if anybody takes anything away from this, like hopefully everybody’s paying attention to these signals that they, they might be picking up internally in their own business or just overall in the ecosystem. But yeah, when you think about the signs of an admin will be a great fit for other roles in Salesforce ecosystem. What’s the first thing that comes to mind for you?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (08:30):

Yeah. I mean, back when I was an admin and I’m sure it’s still the same, you know, admins just have to wear so many different hats. And I think even though admin is kind of an entry level role kind of it, it’s surprising how fast you can upskill in that role and, and how it makes you perfect for so many other roles. And I think an admin is perfect for loads of roles, you know, just all after a year or two in, in the admin role, you can easily go to another one. I personally left my admin role cause, I felt my learning kind of slowing down, it was a hundred user org, which was 120, which is, you know, fairly sizeable sales service cloud.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (09:11):

But you know, after a while, it was about 18 months or something like that. And, you know, I kind of knew all of it and it  wasn’t challenging me in the same way that it was when I first joined it. So I was like, okay, then that’s how I’ve kind of judged when I’ve left any job. It’s when my learnings slowing down and I need to be challenged again. But I think one of the most common routes for admins is to move to consulting. Just because the admins, I guess, they’re learning you know, if they’re an entry level role and they’ve got this thirst for learning as much about the platform as possible and consultancy are perfect for that because they are the boys and girls who are you know doing the most complex Salesforce implementations.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (09:52):

So yeah, I think they could be perfect for anyone, but I think one of the things that people should be thinking about is, is what they’re enjoying in their admin role. You know, is it more of  the deep technical knowledge, and maybe then you want to move on to be  a solution architect or something like that functional consultant, or is it more, you’ve played around with apex and maybe you wanna go down developer route, or maybe you want to go marketing ops or sales ops, it  completely depends on what you find most interesting about your role. And I think that’s the great thing about admin is cuz you’re wearing so many hats. So you just get to try out a little bit of everything until you know, what you like.

 

Brad (Sonar) (10:26):

I completely agree. I think the thing that I’ve said, especially as, as we’ve been hiring here at sonar and I asked this during interview processes all the time, but I think it’s the same mentality you should think about in, in, in this respect, what’s your dopamine hit? What is it that that’s getting you excited that that’s getting you out of bed, that’s waking you up and to your point, it can be very technical. Like if, if, if you get really excited headphones in hands on the keyboard, I’m jamming out and I’m building this wild flow or this new apex, like yeah, like stay there, like get, get excited about that. Don’t, don’t try to force it into something else. Like if you’re not on the strategy side of things of like, huh, I wonder why our conversion rate changed. Like maybe that’s not your cup of tea, but if that’s getting you up and getting you excited, and those are the challenges you want to solve, absolutely go down those paths.

 

Brad (Sonar) (11:11):

I tell folks, especially given what we do on the sonar side and like what our platform actually does. We obviously work so many admins, but we get this question, like how do I elevate my career? How do I get into that dedicated rev op role? And I tell them all of a very similar thought process that they should probably align to as an admin, when you start getting questions that shift from how to why that’s probably one of those first indicators that you can start making that move. And an example of that being, you know, from an admin side, you have a, a new request come in from your VP of sales. Like Hey Ben, how can we make sure that we fill in this one field when changing from stage two to stage three, perfect answer, go a validation rule, make a required field.

Brad (Sonar) (11:54):

There’s a couple different ways to do that, right? Let’s say, how, how should we go and be thinking about that? But when you start getting these shifted questions from your VP of sales, it’s more of like, why things like, Hey Ben, can you tell me why are conversion rate from stage two to stage three shifted by 15% last quarter? That’s a lot of critical thinking. That’s a lot more business oriented. That’s a lot more in the business operations, the strategic side of it of how you think about it. So I always tell folks, listen to those questions and, and listen to how your business is asking you for for service. If they’re asking a lot of how there’s a lot of admin stuff still there, but the minute you start building that credibility and that rapport with other folks and the, the why starts coming out like, Hey, why did we lose this deal here?

 

Brad (Sonar) (12:38):

Or why are we seeing this trend in our lead conversion? Those are more strategic, more deep thinking, critical thinking mentalities of it. But it’s a, it’s a great way to start positioning yourself to understand how the business is interpret, interpreting you and how you really want to be able to to move that forward. So yeah. How and why <laugh> so we’ll keep cruising it again for everybody on, please. If you wanna join in, jump into the chat feel free to ask any of the questions as we’re going along, but you’re kind of moving into that next step of it. When, when we start to think about resources you know, what are some of those resources that admins can rely on to bridge that gap between their, their current role and really what their career aspirations are?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (13:22):

Yeah, sure. I, I mean you know, first one, when we doing my job, if I didn’t say it, but Salesforce spend is, is a pretty cool site. You know, we’re posting 15 blog posts a week, something like that. And quite a lot of them are, are kind of career. I mean, you know, all of them will help your career, I suppose, but you know, some of them are, are, are dedicated to focusing on career, how to advance your career. We’ve partnered a lot with sonar on, on rev op sales ops, blog posts, and you know, how it’s kind of like a, a very logical step from, from becoming an admin. So definitely check that out. I think something else that, that you should definitely do though, is, is kind of think where, where are, you know, what are your career goals in five years time and pick your next role based on what it is in five years time, because, you know, let’s say it’s it’s technical architect or certified technical architect or something like that.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (14:09):

You know, you probably need to be in a consultancy in order to achieve that. You need to be in a consultancy, which preferably has another certified technical architect. If you go join, you know, an SMB smaller consultancy you know, which that’s where I worked before, you know, it was great fun, but probably wasn’t the best environment to learn how to be a CTA because you’re not working on enterprise projects, things like that. You know, similarly, if you’re looking to, you love the idea of founding your own app exchange app one day, you know, you’re gonna need to know how, how an ISV works all different departments, how the commercials behind it the customer success behind it. So I think you can really tailor your career and, and kind of, you know, not, not don’t wanna call it like a stop gap cuz is the wrong terminology, but, you know, find finding that kind of middle, middle, middle role before you reach your, your dream careers. And I, and I think you can achieve, you know, your, your dream career in, in five years or, or something like that. So yeah, something else. Absolutely.

 

Brad (Sonar) (15:06):

Yeah. Well, I, I think the thing that, that I think about this and I can, I can start broad and again, how I have conversations with folks on our team here about, Hey, how do I elevate just internally at seminar into these next roles? Right. I always tell folks it’s a little bit of the Malcolm Gladwell theory you know, become a master of your domain you know, go spend 10,000 hours doing something first, become a master of it before you can truly move on to to the next thing. So I always reference there, like before you overthink to that next big goal, like make sure what you’re doing here first is, is sound that you built a great playbook that you’re successful in that I compound that a little bit of the, just the, the overall generation that we’re in right now.

 

Brad (Sonar) (15:46):

I think we’re all seeing this from a hiring market. Things are fast and people, candidly don’t sit still for too long and that’s totally fine. That’s a little bit part of our generation versus a little bit different previous generations. Right. But I always like to think about that of make sure you’re tempering your own expectations and setting your own pace for this. Very early in my career, I remember just, you know, starting off on role number one, like, man, what’s the next step? How do I get to that next one? How do I get that next title? How do I get that next pay bump? And candidly, I, I rushed very quickly through it in my first like two or three roles in my, my professional path. And I look back on that and I reflect now, like, it probably would’ve been better for me to sit in that role, learn it a little bit more, become a master in my domain inside of it.

Brad (Sonar) (16:28):

So I always tell folks like, go be very ambitious. You set that north star and you’re gonna go get it. If it’s CTA, CTA, man, go get it. One of my best friends here in Atlanta is is a CTA. And I still go to them often for, for help and advice and questions, but it take it only a very long time to get to that, that path. Right. You have to go, you know, walk that mile for a, for an extended period of time. When I start to think about you, some of the resources that admins can rely on bridge yeah. Same thing, Salesforce, then I’ve been been going to, to your site forever. Obviously we have whiops and everything that we’re putting on from a, an operation specific perspective, but I think the bigger step back to that is surround yourself with like-minded folks that you can grow and build on.

 

Brad (Sonar) (17:12):

I think that’s just the, the sort of Genesis of, of communities as well. Like put the right folks in the right room, let ideas fly let’s sparks, come out of it. And truly embrace being around other professionals who love the ecosystem you’re in. So always ask questions find a mentor, like do all those pieces, but from a resource side. Yeah. I mean, there’s so many great resources, especially on your side, pumping out 15 blogs a week now. I mean, it’s just kind of a machine it’s well oiled. I I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you this, that we didn’t, I prefer you all miss, but we actually just hired a new sales manager here and he he came from Salesforce and he was like, yeah. I mean, the first time I ever heard about sonar was checking out Salesforce, ben.com. I

 

Ben (SF Ben) (17:56):

Oh, amazing.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (17:57):

<Laugh> yeah. I was like, well, so I will send you your recruiter fee later on. Appreciate it

 

Ben (SF Ben) (18:05):

Just fine.

 

Brad (Sonar) (18:07):

Very good. Well, we’ll do that for sure. Here’s a sort of the, one of the last questions, then again, we’ll open it up to the floor and please, for folks that are on, would love to hear from you you know, Ben and I are happy to help answer any question we can as far as how to continue to advance your career, but when you start to think of how admins can showcase their skill and experience to land that next role this is unique and new, I think in my opinion to, to the E we’re in, but what what comes to mind when you think about how to really show off your skills to go land that next role?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (18:38):

Yeah, I, I think it’s a really important point because I think although personal brands, you know, personal brand era has been around for a while. I think kind of a lot more people are taking it seriously. You know, even if you don’t wanna be the next, you know, Gary Vayner, Chuck, or whatever, you know, still having a, a place to showcase, you know, and tell future employers what you’re about. But I personally think LinkedIn is fantastic for this and, you know, they, they give a lot of weight, you know, you can show things off in your banner and they’ve got the featured section where you can add maybe a blog post you’ve done for your company or your own blog, or you know, a YouTube demo of a, of a, an app you’ve built or something like that. I mean, this is something that I used to do when I wanted more experience back at when I was an admin, I was doing freelancing for charities on the side, but I was also building like I came up with a, I dunno, what you call them, but like a, you know, like a building out a portfolio.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (19:29):

So I’d come up with a fake business. It was a gym, I think. And I would build out a, a Salesforce app for this gym that was in my head. And you know, it, it’s not, it’s not like real experience, but it it’s kind of close, you know, or maybe you get someone else to give you the requirements and then you are, you’re building this out. But, but LinkedIn, I think is a fantastic place for, for doing that. Salesforce also, I haven’t done this myself, but Salesforce a Trailhead released out this build build, build out your own website portfolio. Did you see this?

 

Brad (Sonar) (19:58):

No, I didn’t

 

Ben (SF Ben) (19:59):

Portfolio website, sorry. And it’s basically a way you can use commun experience cloud to build out kind of like a portfolio. So using Salesforce. So then on there you can put, you know, the type of projects you’ve been on any custom apps you’ve built, things like that. So you know, and I think if you are, let’s say you are maybe a new admin, you know, you haven’t landed your first role yet. And you wanna apply to a consultancy or something like that. You know, that is a great way to show off to a consultancy. That’s, you know, consultancies are a bit nervous hiring people who don’t have Salesforce experience, even if they’ve got their admin cert. But some people we’ve hired in the past are fantastic, cause they’ve trained so much in their free time and done things like I’m speaking about, you know, fake portfolios and volunteering. And so this is a fantastic way to show that off and, and show to employers what you’re about.

 

Brad (Sonar) (20:45):

Absolutely. I think the, the, the two things that come to me to my mind, when you start to think about how you position yourself for that, it is exactly what you just said build that portfolio treat that portfolio the same way you think of an artist, if they’re, you know, making painting or any other type of art they’re doing, you wanna see that before you hire that person to come in and do a painting for your house or anything like that. So yeah. Keep your portfolio up and it’s super easy to do it. Just even in the aspect of what problem you’re solving and how you went about solving for it. Because what I sell folks all the time, if you are going to apply for that next job, especially in the Salesforce admin side of things and the operation side of things typically sadly, most folks are hiring behind the curve for that.

 

Brad (Sonar) (21:34):

And by the time they need that admin, or they need that new office person, we always use the term like, oh, maybe your Salesforce org, your total tech, a little bit of a dumpster fire. It needs to get cleaned up or reporting’s really bad. Or we have really data integrity issue. Most of the time folks are opening that job wreck probably a little too late. And when you’re applying for it, even on that first interview, be ready, have something in hand that says like, Hey, you know what I noticed on the job description, you need help optimizing your lead routing process, you know, really quick. Let me share my screen. And here’s a little bit of what I’ve built on the lead routing side of things, or here’s the tools that I’ve thought about using this is how I’ve solved it in the past, watching somebody be able to do that, or especially during an interview process.

 

Brad (Sonar) (22:20):

I’ll, I’ll be real honest as somebody who interviews a lot of people all day, every day, I will lean into that. I actually had an interview do that the other day, like, oh yeah, well, lemme share my screen real quick. Here’s what we’ve, we’ve built to solve that. And I immediately like lean into the screen. I’m like, oh, show me more. But so much of interviewing is obviously talking about why you’re qualified, why you’re passionate about it, but being able to put pin to paper on that and actually being able to show some of your work off, even at a high level, brings the person that’s interviewing you so much more like a granular view of how you go and exercise that and how you think. And the first thing in most people’s mind is cool. Yeah, that would probably work here.

 

Brad (Sonar) (22:58):

I’m glad you already have a little bit of a playbook. You can come in very quickly and get some of this stuff done. And so I I very much think about it that way. Like show off your skills, take screenshots of some of your flows. Obviously be very protective of any, you know confidential information, but you can typically blur some stuff out, but even showing just how you’ve built things and how you’ve constructed things is a a great way to do it. So I know we we got six or so minutes left, so I’m gonna keep keep asking folks ask questions. We’re we’re happy to, to help do anything we can, as far as Salesforce career or anything, Salesforce in general. With that being that being said, Ben, I am gonna put you a little bit on the spot, but I’ll give you time to think about it. We see the Salesforce ecosystem just growing rapidly and we see that from the ISV side, from the internal sales force side, from the acquisitions they made curious we’re we’re in 2022. What do you think? Or what’s the most exciting thing that you’re seeing right now in the ecosystem? As well as, what do you think might be the, the big next thing that lands as we as we continue our,

 

Ben (SF Ben) (24:04):

So I, I think the most exciting thing, and even though this is a bit kind of, you know, it’s been around for a while, but is, is like the low code, no code because the, the, the, the waves that Salesforce are making with, you know, migrating to flow. And I think that’s really exciting. And I mentioned this earlier, like the declarative developer, but, you know, this could be a new role we’re seeing where, you know, it’s a developer that actually doesn’t know how to code, but it’s just using declarative tools. You know, you’ve got flow for one, but you’ve also got MuleSoft composer. You’ve heard of MuleSoft composer. Yeah. So it’s declarative integration, which, you know, there are other apps out there that do it, but this is Salesforce’s own app. And, and I’ve, I’ve worked with it quite a lot and it’s pretty powerful, you know, you can do loops within MuleSoft composer to, to go and fetch data and you know, put it, put it in lists and things like that. So I, I still think there’s, there’s a lot of that that’s very exciting and it’s gonna help a lot of people’s careers as well. And then the other, I guess, yeah, I, I guess an acquisition is definitely on the cards at some point you know, HR, HR platform, or what’s one of the HR big HR companies, Workday,

 

Brad (Sonar) (25:13):

Workday. Yeah. Say like we have like Latice and stuff like that.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (25:17):

Yeah. Yeah. But I think an acquisition at some, some stage definitely on the cards.

 

Brad (Sonar) (25:21):

Oh yeah. I think everybody at least I know I do this. I, I gear myself up towards Dreamforce every year and start to think like, yeah, my my guess is there’s probably gonna be some sort of big announcement. That’s gonna, that’s gonna happen. Yeah, I’m the same way I’m with you? I think I actually learned a lot. We, we spoke at DevOps streaming a few weeks ago up in Chicago and hearing so much more about the DevOps side of things. I absolutely love it. And I think there’s so much that’s going into that part of the ecosystem, but it’s also enabling some of that declar development that you’re talking about. You don’t have to be, you don’t have to have a computer science degree to go and do a lot of this stuff. The, the platform itself is becoming so much more easy to use.

 

Brad (Sonar) (26:02):

So I’m excited to see that one as well. We do have a couple questions come in, so I’m gonna to also swim out and I appreciate Laura for asking, you know, how would you get over imposter syndrome, even if you have a solid admin experience, roles, titles, and active admin cert. I find that I sometimes doubt myself. I do this as well, Laura you know, with so many things that are going on. So yeah, when you start to think about sort of the the imposter syndrome how do you think about battling that?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (26:31):

So I’ve definitely had imposter syndrome before. I, I probably still have it a little bit, but definitely at the start of my career, I had it quite a bit and I think I, I never really fo it wasn’t super serious, so I never really focused on fixing it, but I think something that’s definitely helped is as I’ve got older and kind of matured is understanding where my strengths lie and also accepting that I’m not gonna be fantastic at everything, but I definitely do have strengths and finding out what those strengths are and doubling down on them. So yeah, that’s, that’s something that’s personally really helped me cuz I think, you know, it’s, it’s a common thing nowadays. I mean, anxiety is pretty common amongst everyone really. So <laugh>, it’s, it’s, you know imposter syndrome and it’s definitely something that’s there, but you know, of course everyone has strengths, you know, you wouldn’t have a job if you didn’t have strengths. And, but I would just try and find out what those are. Even get maybe a colleague or a friend to write down a list of what they think you are good at. Cause it’s often hard to evaluate yourself like that. And that’s something I’ve done before and that really helped.

 

Brad (Sonar) (27:30):

Yeah. I agree. Imposter center is a real thing. I can tell you, you look starting a company. It, it, I first time CEO over here, I’m gonna be very open about that. So there’s plenty of times where something’s happening. Like, oh man, I don’t, I don’t actually know the full answer to that. Let me go tap into my resources. Let me tap into my board, my, my bosses to find those answers, I think it’s perfectly fine to be comfortable in your own skin and not know the answer to every single thing. I tell our team does often, it’ actually part of my sort of secret sauce for hiring criteria here. I look for folks that have the ability to say the words, I don’t know. If you’re having a hard time saying the words, I don’t know, might have a little bit of ego stroked in there.

 

Brad (Sonar) (28:11):

That’s a little too tough to come overcome, but it’s okay to not know everything also the speed at which everything is developing right now. It’s almost impossible to be an expert of all of it, unless you probably are a CTA at that point, but you know, you need to to be able to embrace that. So I yeah, I always think about that. Just be okay with saying, I don’t know, but tap into the right resource to be able to find it. That’s gonna do two things. It’s gonna make you better at your job. It’s gonna help you answer those questions in the future of it. It’s also gonna keep you growing. So, so it’s a real thing, but totally comfortable with it. So, yep. Got time for probably one more question and I’ll I’ll, I’ll ask this real quick. They just dropped in the chat. Any tips specifically becoming for becoming a Salesforce architect especially for somebody that might be at a current consulting role. How, what do you think about those steps to to take any advice there?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (29:01):

Yeah, I would, I would say I, I would say the first thing is definitely approach your employer. I think there is loads of great resources. You know, we, we’ve got, we’ve got a fair amount of architect resources. We were not a huge amount, but Trailhead are putting more out, you know, there’s the architect, YouTube channel, all these kinds of re resources will be fantastic to learn the theory, but ultimately it’s, it’s about the practical, you know, on project experience and learning from people, you know, existing architects and telling you how to think and things like that, you know, even CTAs when, even when you’re at that level, the, the, the architects, they still need CTAs to train them and, and, and things like that. So, you know, it’s, I think it would be almost impossible to get a CTA without another CTA mentoring you. So I would advise to look at, look for a mentor and approach your company and, and I, I, I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to find out that you wanna become a solution architect. So I’m sure they’ll, they’ll help you there.

 

Brad (Sonar) (29:52):

Absolutely. be open, be transparent about it, have a ton of conversations about where you want to go in your career. Your, your boss, your mentor, your manager, should be on your side for that. They should be openly transparent about how quickly you can get there and if it’s a need for the business and if it aligns that way, but yeah. Get really excited about it. Find the right folks. We’ll squeeze this one in real quick. I know we’re right the top of the time, but this is a great last question. Yeah, there’s a, a, web’s asking seeing several YouTube videos and articles saying that demand for Salesforce admins is actually lessening right now, relative to other positions that are in the Salesforce ecosystem. Yeah. Real quick. Do you think that’s true? Like the, the demand for admins is lessening or what’s your thoughts?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (30:35):

I, I have heard that before, but I haven’t really seen any kind of evidence to back that up. I’m still seeing a lot of people on LinkedIn, you know, landing entry level admin jobs. And I mean, this is something that people quote all the time, but Salesforce have released their IDC report, which says 9.6 million new jobs, or 6.9 million new jobs are, are being created by 2026. And of course, a huge portion of that is going to be, maybe it’s not cool with admin, but admin or admin, like jobs, you know, business analysts or functional consultants or things like that. So I, I don’t, I don’t, yeah, I, I don’t think so. <Laugh>, I think, I think there are roles which are more in demand like developer, but I wouldn’t say that admins yeah. Would wouldn’t are kind of, you know, going at a fashion or whatever.

 

Brad (Sonar) (31:20):

I completely agree. I, I, I think it’s almost impossible to Excel and thrive in the Salesforce ecosystem without at least starting there. Obviously the foundation, you also can’t go and get advanced certifications without getting your, your admin cert first. So I think Salesforce is obviously very keyed into this and they’re gonna make sure that they continue to hopefully get people shepherd along the way. But I, I agree with you. I, I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I don’t think it’s it’s lasting. Do I think some of the titles are a little different? Absolutely. You’re seeing a little bit more. And we, we talked about that at the very beginning of this. It used to just be admin and developer. Now you’ve got so many new rules and titles you can do. So I look at that as a function of just stay there, learn your ropes.

 

Brad (Sonar) (32:05):

I think the last thing I leave anybody with the velocity in which these roles are moving and accelerating through businesses is super fast right now. So I don’t think the demand’s gonna go anywhere, but stay there, get really educated on it. Become a master of it, and you will quickly find yourself moving onward and upward into to additional roles. So I know we’re two minutes over three minutes over now. Geez. We’ll let everybody fly. Ben. Can’t thank you enough. I always enjoy these again. I get smarter every time we do ’em so I just drop Salesforce, bend.com in the chat for everybody. If you’re not going there you’re behind the eightball already go there quickly. Use that as a resource every day. Then lastly, how can folks get a hold of you if they wanna connect?

 

Ben (SF Ben) (32:47):

Yeah. Feel free to message me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to help with any questions. Yeah. Happy to help with anything I can. So yeah, just let me know, but yeah. Pleasure to speak with you again, Brad, and thanks for having me on

 

Brad (Sonar) (32:57):

Always. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for joining. We’ll follow up with more content and how to watch the recording later on, but hope everybody has a great day and the rest of the week. Talk soon.

 

Ben (SF Ben) (33:07):

Bye bye.

 

 

 

Conclusion:

 

The vast amount of roles that exist in the Salesforce ecosystem range from customer-facing roles to internal solution roles, creating plenty of opportunities for growth and development for any Salesforce career path. Revenue operations roles can look different for each professional, depending on where their skills fit into the many different roles available. 

 

This webinar offers great insight into how to recognize signs that an admin would be a great fit for other roles in the Salesforce ecosystem, as well as tips on how to surround yourself with a community of Salesforce professionals to share resources and ideas.

As the nature of Salesforce roles constantly shifts and grows, there are more opportunities than ever to grow your Salesforce career path. Try Sonar for free today to learn more tips and industry insight into how to successfully navigate careers in Salesforce.