The Salesforce Architect exams each come with a resource guide, which includes helpful links for each section of the exam. I have found those incredibly useful in my study. Resource guides don’t currently exist for the standard exams, so I have compiled content into a series of resource guides. This is the Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant resource guide.
The Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant certification focuses on a broad knowledge of the tools and features of the Salesforce platform. The consultant exams present you with scenarios and asks you to consider different options and propose the best solution. This requires that you understand limitations, capabilities and possibilities within Salesforce. Know what best practices are within the platform. While a trigger and workflow may both accomplish a task, you would recommend a workflow since that is a cleaner path to a solution.
Understanding the Tests
As I mentioned in a previous post, understanding the intention and structure of the exams is key to passing. Salesforce provides a study guide for every certification test. In those guides, they provide a breakdown of the different sections and their relative weight. Take note of those while studying.
Breakdown
| Topic | Weighting | # of Questions |
| Sales Cloud Solution Design | 21% | 13 |
| Opportunity Management | 13% | 8 |
| Account and Contact Management | 13% | 8 |
| Implementation Strategies | 12% | 7 |
| Sales Cloud Analytics | 9% | 6 |
| Sales Productivity | 9% | 6 |
| Integration and Data Management | 8% | 5 |
| Marketing and Leads | 8% | 5 |
| Industry Knowledge | 7% | 3 |
Under each topic in the study guide, there are bullet points that describe the information you need to know. For example, the ‘Integration and Data Management’ section, the bullet points are:
- Explain the use cases and considerations for integrations common to Sales Cloud implementations.
- Explain the use cases and considerations for data migration in Sales Cloud.
- Given a scenario, analyze the implications and design considerations of large data and transaction volumes.
These commonly break out into general understanding and best practice recommendations. Make sure you understand the intention behind each bullet point. For example, in the above point #3, you will need to data volumes, and the tools associated. If you’re unfamiliar with transaction limits, you’ll need to do some study there.
Resources
SALES CLOUD SOLUTION DESIGN – 21%
- Given a set of requirements, design an end-to-end sales process from lead to opportunity to quote to close to order.
- Given a scenario, analyze customer requirements to determine an appropriate solution design considering capabilities, limitations, and design trade-offs.
- Given a scenario, identify an appropriate approach when designing the lead conversion process.
- Describe the implementation considerations when designing a sales process. (validation rules, process builder, automation, record types, page layouts, workflow, Visualflow and triggers).
- Given a scenario, determine when it is appropriate to include custom application development or a third-party application.
- Describe the appropriate uses cases for Account and Opportunity Teams and the effect on sales roles, visibility, access, and reporting.
- Explain the capabilities and use cases for Enterprise territory management.
- Explain the capabilities, use cases and design considerations when implementing Orders.
- Explain the capabilities, use cases and design considerations of Salesforce mobile applications pertinent to the sales process
OPPORTUNITY MANAGEMENT – 13%
- Given a set of requirements, determine how to support different sales process scenarios.
- Given a scenario, determine the relationships between sales stages, forecast and pipeline.
- Describe the relationships between opportunities to assets, product line items and schedules, price books, quotes, contracts, campaigns, etc.
- Given a set of requirements, determine the appropriate forecasting solution.
- Describe the impact of multi-currency on opportunities.
ACCOUNT AND CONTACT MANAGEMENT – 13%
- Explain how the ownership of account and contact records drive visibility of related sales information such as opportunities, activities, etc.
- Explain the various methods for establishing relationships between accounts and contacts.
- Explain the impact of having an account hierarchy.
- Explain the methods for populating and maintaining account and contact data using data enrichment tools.
- Explain the use cases and implications for implementing person accounts.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES – 12%
- Given a scenario, determine how to facilitate a successful consulting engagement (plan, gather requirements, design, build, test, and document).
- Given a scenario, determine appropriate sales deployment considerations.
- Given a scenario, measure the success of a Sales Cloud implementation project.
SALES PRODUCTIVITY – 9%
- Given a scenario, determine the key features that help to enable and measure sales productivity and adoption.
- Identify use cases and considerations for using email and productivity tools.
- Given a scenario, identify the appropriate mobile solution to improve sales productivity.
- Describe how Chatter enables collaboration in the sales process.
INTEGRATION AND DATA MANAGEMENT – 8%
- Explain the use cases and considerations for integrations common to Sales Cloud implementations.
- Explain the use cases and considerations for data migration in Sales Cloud.
- Given a scenario, analyze the implications and design considerations of large data and transaction volumes.
- Explain how integration facilitates the exchange of data between Salesforce organizations.
MARKETING AND LEADS – 8%
- Explain how marketing capabilities support the sales process.
- Given a scenario, recommend appropriate methods for lead scoring and criteria for lead qualification.
- Explain the best practices for managing lead data quality.
- Describe the best practices for using lead automation tools and campaign management.
INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE – 7%
- Explain the factors that influence sales metrics, KPIs and business challenges.
- Explain common sales processes and key considerations.
- Describe the common marketing processes and key implementation considerations.
SALES CLOUD ANALYTICS – 9%
- Given a set of desired metrics, determine the appropriate report, dashboard or reporting snapshot solution.
- Describe the implementation considerations of multi-currency on reports and dashboards.
- Given a scenario, determine permissions and access to Reports and Dashboards.
Ready for the Exam?
Book your exam now, even before you start studying. There’s no better way to drive you to study than booking your exam. For this exam, you are taking on the role of a consultant. You will be asked to make recommendations and design solutions based on scenarios. So this exam really requires you to understand the options available, as well as pros/cons and limitations of the different platform features.
If you have questions during your exam preparation, please feel free to reach out. I’ll do my best to respond with some help and guidance.
Thank you for the guide Chris so much
I wanted to let you know that the links for the official certification guides are no longer working (for all your guides). I found them by searching on google. Thanks
The link of Offical Certification Guide is broken 🙁 http://certification.salesforce.com/SG_CertifiedSalesCloudConsultant.pdf
The new link seems to be: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/help?article=Salesforce-Certified-Sales-Cloud-Consultant-Exam-Guide
Cheers!
Thanks for letting me know. I’ve started to go through all of my guides to update the links, topics and breakdowns. This one is now up-to-date.
Very interesting,good job and thanks for sharing such a good blog.
I am happy for sharing on this blog its awesome blog I really impressed. thanks for sharing. Great efforts.
Rare copies