Recently our very own Antonio Margarita performed a certification marathon by getting 3 Salesforce Marketing Cloud certifications in a timespan of 76(!) days. Very impressive considering he joined Transformative as a Junior SFMC Consultant only a few months prior. We asked him a few questions on how his experience was so far here at Transformative and within the Salesforce consultancy world.

How did you find Transformative and how is your experience so far?

Antonio: Transformative is a startup company with a new innovative approach. The team is great, full of different cultures and everyone is ready to help you. Personally, I am Italian and very sociable and outgoing, so I really liked the open mindedness of the team and the way I was able to easily establish relationships with everyone.

What's your opinion on the Salesforce Certification track? What was your path to becoming a SFMC Developer?

Antonio: Salesforce certifications are a great way to measure your understanding in specific areas of Salesforce since it requires a lot of research, trailhead tutorials and experiencing inside the platform. In my example, my programming background helped me a lot in getting the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer. It took me 9 months of practicing and studying and thanks to the team at Transformative who trained me and answered every question I had; I was able to get my 3 first Salesforce certificates quite fast apparently.

How did you find the experience of learning with the SFMC Academy at Transformative?

Antonio: The SFMC Academy is an extremely useful tool provided by Transformative. It contains information on best practices and a lot of exercises to develop in our sandbox environment.  I personally used it a lot since it’s full of documents and exercises that prepare you for everything you need to know before you go for a Salesforce certification and far beyond. The resources are up to date with the latest exam topics and the exercises are designed to cover your level experience whether you are just getting started with Salesforce Marketing Cloud or you are a senior with years of experience. Overall is a great way to improve your Salesforce Marketing Cloud skills.

Do you have any advice for those starting out in their career that might have limited experience with Salesforce?

Antonio: Coming from a programming background my advice to people who have zero or limited Salesforce knowledge, would be to focus on the programs used by Salesforce like SQL and Server-Side JavaScript. For people starting from scratch with no access to the Salesforce platform, the Salesforce Trailheads can result too theoretical, so I would recommend watching videos and moving to the Trailheads once you have access to the platform.

Which certification are you going to focus on next?

Antonio: As I said before I already got 3 (Administrator, Email Specialist and Developer) out of the 4 Salesforce Marketing Cloud exams available. Now I will focus on the last one, the Marketing Cloud Consultant certificate. The ambition for next year (or two) will be to get the B2C Solution Architect certification.

Salesforce has a partner programme that allows independent agencies or consulting businesses to offer services based on the Salesforce technology stack. Are you interested in how a Salesforce consulting partner can help? If so, you are in the right place. In this article we will answer the following questions:

• » What is a Salesforce Consulting partner?
• » Why hire a Salesforce Consulting Partner?
• » How can one Salesforce Consulting Partner differentiate from another?
• » How to find a Salesforce Consulting Partner?

What Is a Salesforce Consulting Partner?

Salesforce consulting partners are consultants authorised by Salesforce to design, develop and provide custom solutions, as well as manage implementations & integrations. These companies are recognised by Salesforce in their ability to help push forward the digital transformation of Salesforce’s customers based on their experience and knowledge.

To provide the most value for our clients as implementation partners, Transformative looks at your existing marketing automation setup and determines a customised roadmap to complete your marketing transformation.

Why Hire a Salesforce Consulting Partner?

Their team has the experience you need.

Salesforce consulting partners demonstrate their expertise by keeping their certifications renewed and by displaying portfolios of successful projects. Staying up-to-date is part of the day-to-day life of a consulting partner, which shows their interest and commitment to each of their clients. This allows them to help you improve and grow your business, while enriching your experience.

Save time and money.

Organisations often decide to go through the implementation process on their own, and when they find themselves at a dead end, they turn to a Salesforce consulting partner. By then, they have already invested time and resources of all kinds, which will be wasted because the proposed objective was not achieved.

A wise decision is to hire the services of a consulting partner to carry out the Salesforce implementation from the beginning, as well as the corresponding updates with each release. They will be able to help you with integrations by systems, departments and third-party applications. Whether you hire the service part-time or full-time, it will save you significant time and money.

Partnering with a Salesforce consultant will help you meet deadlines for completing tasks while minimising setbacks and help you get the most value out of each of the modules in your licence as well as find synergies that might be obvious to an inexperienced partner.

They will improve your business decisions.

You won’t be the only one to benefit from hiring a Salesforce consulting partner, your clients will see the benefits too. You will be able to offer them personalised services, meet their needs and demands. In this way you will improve relationships with them and this will directly impact the performance of your business. You will have a comprehensive view of your client which will allow you to design better business strategies.

Making the right decisions is more complex than it seems. Sometimes we do not have the necessary information to do so. A Salesforce consulting partner can help you enrich the information you need to make your decisions right. You will work together with your management team to meet the proposed objectives.

Increase return on investment.

With the support of a Salesforce consulting partner, your business will get better and better. This means that, with their help, your goals will be met as planned, increasing the efficiency and profitability of your business. You will obtain greater productivity from your workers, saving time in unnecessary activities, good implementation practices and a wide range of opportunities that will make your business more efficient.

Effective implementation project (before, during and after)

When a Salesforce consulting partner accesses an organisation, they carry out a situational diagnosis to identify the issues that affect or may affect the implementation process. This constitutes an advantage because, knowing the problems, they can be addressed immediately to project solutions that have a positive impact on the organisation.

If you rely on an expert to carry out the Salesforce implementation, everything will be easier. This means that you will have by your side a partner who masters the characteristics and potential of the platform, the necessary changes to be made according to the type of organisation, the new functionalities, etc. There is no point in using Salesforce in your business if you are not going to exploit it to the fullest.

Is one Salesforce consulting partner as good as another?

Short answer - No. Salesforce consulting partners are not all cut from the same cloth and your expertise can vary widely. If you’re considering hiring one, you’ll need one who’s trustworthy. Salesforce partnership tiers are good to distinguish the scalability and size of a Salesforce partner but does less so in demonstrating their experience in working in specific fields of expertise such as marketing or specific sectors such as healthcare, FMCG or e-commerce.

While Transformative brings in a very solid Salesforce Marketing Cloud expertise and views the Salesforce stack from a marketing point of view, other Consulting Partner will have experience and expertise in ERP / Business Intelligence. Trust is earned over time through good experiences. You may never have worked with a Salesforce Partner before, but you can listen to what their other clients have to say. A good partner will offer testimonials or case studies as proof.

How to Find the Right Salesforce Consulting Partner?

Check what kind of content they bring to the table. Should you speak to a Platinum Salesforce Partner that doesn’t speak about knowledge in Marketing Automation?

• » Check for relevant working experience.
• » Check for relevant customers.
• » Check if the Salesforce partner provides an adoption strategy by the users in your organisation.
• » Check for a ROI-plan strategy based on the licensed Salesforce products.
• » Check if the Salesforce consulting partner has a team with the relevant Salesforce Certifications.

It’s a difficult choice as most consultancy agencies tend to look the same on the surface, offering implementation for Salesforce’s most popular products (or even all of them) and managed services for ongoing support. That’s why we believe relevant industry experience holds more importance.