What makes an outstanding Salesforce Consultant?

1. Domain Excellence

Domain Excellence in the Salesforce ecosystem means having a deep understanding of Salesforce products, their functionalities, and their applications in various business scenarios. It involves becoming an expert in specific areas within Salesforce, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and more.

Choosing the Right Domain

Your choice of domain should align with your interests, career goals, and available opportunities. There's no one-size-fits-all answer. As you gain experience and certifications, you'll naturally gravitate toward the areas that resonate with you. The key is to continually learn and stay updated in your chosen domain to provide expert guidance and maintain high consulting standards.

2. Business Experience

Business experience is more than just knowledge; it embodies a deep understanding of specific industries, including their operations, challenges, and best practices. It's the practical insight gained through hands-on involvement in various sectors.

Consultants often have the privilege of working across diverse industries, depending on their consulting partner's specialization. While specialization can lead to higher rates and salaries, it may limit exposure to new technologies and industries. Pei values her 25 years of diverse project experiences, as they enrich her teaching and storytelling to her students.

In essence, having business experience empowers consultants to leverage industry-specific knowledge and insights, offer valuable advice, solve intricate problems, and deliver tailored solutions to clients. This paves the way for a successful consulting career and contributes significantly to clients' business success.

3. Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is an active cognitive process that involves analyzing and evaluating information, questioning assumptions, and making informed judgments. It goes beyond passive acceptance of information and encourages deeper, analytical problem-solving.

Key Traits of Critical Thinkers:

✓ Question Everything

✓ Think Systematically

✓ Examine Information Carefully

✓ Look Beyond the Obvious

✓ Use Evidence and Logic

✓ Avoid Assumptions and Fallacies

✓ Acknowledge Cognitive Biases

✓ Consider Diverse Perspectives

✓ Apply Critical Thinking for Informed Judgments

3. Ethics & Professional Behaviour

Ethics involve doing the right thing, even when not observed or when faced with temptations. Consider scenarios like:

🤑The shopkeeper has given you too much change.

🍩 You received 13 donuts instead of the expected 12!

🤐 You've encountered a missed requirement that could jeopardize the system, but you're a contractor who won't be around when the issue surfaces.

😈 You've fed your arch enemy to your pet alligator (just kidding)

Your actions create a pattern of behaviour, shaping your personal brand. How do you decide on morally ambiguous decisions? What guides your thought process?

Professional Behaviour in the workplace is all about respect and courtesy. It includes:

✓ Punctuality: Be on time; don't be habitually late.

✓ Preparedness: Always come to meetings well-prepared; clients count on your professionalism.

✓ Keeping Commitments: Keep your word to build trust.

✓ Responsibility and Accountability: Take ownership of your duties.

✓ Avoiding Shortcuts: Don't cut corners without proper consideration.

✓ Appearance Matters: Dress, hygiene, posture, and body language count.

✓ Expense Guidelines: Stick to company expense rules, be honest, and don't handle expenses in front of clients.

✓ No Gossip: Avoid discussing sensitive topics or gossiping about colleagues, clients, or projects.

✓ Respect and Kindness: Foster strong relationships through respect and kindness, especially during high-pressure projects.

✓ Composure: Maintain professionalism in challenging situations, resolving problems calmly and effectively.

5. Tools & Processes

Salesforce consultants must master Salesforce tools and processes for various reasons, including customizing solutions, maximizing platform capabilities, improving efficiency, effective data management, ensuring user adoption, troubleshooting, staying updated with changes, and achieving cost-effectiveness. This knowledge is crucial for successful Salesforce implementations and ongoing support.

Methodology

1. Waterfall: The much-reviled old-school method of project delivery with quality gates and processes that can be incredibly cumbersome. It's slowly but surely being displaced.
2. Scrum / Agile: A nimble approach to project delivery, with regular sprints focused on delivering value to end-users. Unfortunately, many people misunderstand it and struggle with its implementation.
3. Hybrid: The methodology most consulting companies use, especially when there's a defined scope of requirements and a budget to adhere to.

(Note: For detailed discussions on these methodologies, sign up for our membership site or upcoming masterclass 😁)

Apps

1.  Meeting/call recording/transcribing: Essential for accurate meeting documentation, though it may require additional review and editing.
2.  Documentation: Effective documentation is critical. Common tools include:

✓ Google docs: Collaborative but may raise security concerns and have limitations in formatting and functionalities.

✓ Microsoft Word: Known for robust formatting and advanced features.

✓ Confluence: Ideal for internal documentation and team collaboration.

3. Documenting Requirements: Crucial in consulting projects. Useful tools include:

✓ Google Sheets: Capture and refine user stories collaboratively.

✓ JIRA: A favourite for managing user stories in agile projects.

✓ Excel: Indispensable for data cross-referencing and manipulation.

4. Capturing Process Flows: Essential for understanding and improving workflows. Methods include:

✓ In-person: Traditional methods like post-its and brown paper but this is less feasible in remote work settings.

✓ Online: Use tools like Zoom, Lucidchart, Miro, or Visio for online flowcharting and process documentation, especially in remote work scenarios.

5. Personal productivity: Key for effective work management. Tools that enhance productivity include:

✓ OneNote & Google Keep: Useful for notetaking and idea organization.

✓ Calendly / Doodle: Vital for finding suitable meeting times and reducing communication overhead.

✓ Trello: A versatile personal kanban board for task and activity management.

2 most Important Consulting Tools

1. Active Listening: The foundation for high-quality work, involving understanding, reviewing, and validating information for clear and accurate communication.
2. Insightful Questioning Skills: The foundation for high-quality work, involving understanding, reviewing, and validating information for clear and accurate communication.

6. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) plays a vital role in the consulting field, especially when projects involve assembling teams that may not have worked together before. Effective collaboration and communication are essential for achieving successful project outcomes. Dan Goleman's EI Quadrants provide a valuable framework for understanding and improving EI in the consulting context:

Dan Goleman’s EI Quadrants

Dan Goleman's framework divides emotional intelligence into four quadrants, offering a useful tool for understanding oneself and human behaviour:

• Self-Awareness: This quadrant forms the foundation of emotional intelligence. It involves recognizing one's strengths, weaknesses, and behavioural patterns. Self-awareness is crucial for personal growth and transformation.
• Self-Management: Self-management focuses on impulse control and the ability to maintain professionalism in challenging situations. It emphasizes responding thoughtfully rather than reactively, which signifies mature decision-making.
• Social Awareness: Self-management focuses on impulse control and the ability to maintain professionalism in challenging situations. It emphasizes responding thoughtfully rather than reactively, which signifies mature decision-making.
• Relationship Management: The fourth quadrant combines self-awareness and social awareness, empowering individuals to establish effective connections with others. It serves as a superpower that facilitates making friends, forming partnerships, building connections, leading teams, and nurturing relationships.

By developing emotional intelligence across these four quadrants, consultants can enhance their ability to work collaboratively, communicate effectively, and build strong relationships with team members and clients, ultimately contributing to project success and overall career growth.