How I Went From Service Manager to Salesforce Evangelist

As part of our three-part #AdminMasterSeries, we caught up with Salesforce Super User Claus Pedersen to learn how he improved sales’ processes and became a CRM boss.

During our conversation, we discussed stakeholder engagement, Trailhead, and how Accelerators kicked off his Salesforce adventure.

How did you start on your Salesforce journey?

I was hired as a senior sales and service manager for Bitfury — our CRM tool was Salesforce for our sales team. My key responsibility was to document sales and support the process. Any CRM tool has to be easy to use, intuitive, facilitate processes between teams, and collect useful data to display key areas for better performance.

My main objective was to work closely with Salesforce users to enable me to paint a picture of the basic tools and features. As it happened, my Salesforce guru left the company soon after and I temporarily became the system admin until a replacement was hired. However, the replacement never came and I added Salesforce Admin and business owner responsibilities.

I had to quickly learn and master Salesforce with little experience. My first step was to engage with my Salesforce account manager and explain an immediate need for support — he introduced me to my customer success manager, who introduced and explained Salesforce Accelerators which we had access to through our Premier Success plan.

An important second step was the introduction to Acccelerators which kicked off my Salesforce journey. Since then I became an avid user of Trailhead and continue to acquire Salesforce badges with each new skill.

Claus Pedersen turned to Accelerators to kick off his Salesforce adventure

It sounds like you’ve been instrumental in getting key stakeholders on board, can you share more about how you achieved this buy-in and any struggles you may have encountered?

It’s vitally important to me to have an easy, intuitive, and efficient CRM tool to deliver results in the short- and long-term. I could see immediately with my first Salesforce Accelerator on Reports and Dashboards how I could complete my first objective to deliver Reports and Dashboards efficiently to my chief revenue officer (CRO). It was exciting as I realized that my other objectives could also be completed with the help of Accelerators.

Some of the pragmatic steps I took to get buy-in from stakeholders and ensure I met my key objectives with stellar results were to:

• Address the confusion around Salesforce workflows and customer onboarding by improving the sales path and updating our internal program “Guidance to Success” to align with the sales team
• Decrease team meeting times by improving the sales lead overview with more detailed information on individual leads, allowing managers to quickly pinpoint challenges and prioritize solutions
• Streamline sales processes and ensure accurate data by removing outdated form fields while updating required fields

You mention Trailhead; for our Salesforce newbies, can you describe how following the trails got you up and running?

I began practicing using Accelerators with Trailhead; I started with Reports and Dashboards, then Fields and Record Types.

By taking the trails, with their associated quizzes, I earned badges and gained a thorough understanding of how to use Salesforce. The gamification of Trailhead makes learning new skills fun and quickly earning badges was motivating. Within weeks I made my own tutorials and passed them along to our sales team to help them use Salesforce more efficiently.

How do you track stakeholder engagement? Any tips?

I run the user-management report on a weekly basis to help the sales teams keep track of their pipelines, a customer onboarding report for the legal department, and a revenue report for our finance team. My stakeholders count on the reports to help them measure company performance.

• My tips for managing stakeholder engagement are to: Listen to your sales team to understand their needs and help them use Salesforce to be more efficient with their day-to-day activities. Guide your sales team on Salesforce best practices to help them understand how to better manage their Dashboard by using tools like the Kanban View and Reports.

• I also make the adoption of Salesforce part of the Sales team individual 1:1 performance reviews.

How do you keep on top of new releases and ensure you get the support you need for your implementation?

To keep on top of releases and get the support I need, I’m active on the Salesforce Admin communities mailing list and am a member of my local user group. I make good use of my Premier Success plan by using Accelerators and raising cases for support as required. Finally, I attend the Release Readiness webinars so that my team and I are ready to hit the ground running with each new release.

Any last words of wisdom?

To quote Nike’s slogan, “Just do it.” Learning the ins and outs of Salesforce may seem overwhelming at first, so begin with the end in mind. Talk to your stakeholders, identify gaps, and build out your team of super users so that you have a community of advocates. Use Trailhead to train your team up and use your Success Plan. From Accelerators to developer support, there are Salesforce experts there to help you!

I enjoyed my personal learning journey with Salesforce. Seeing the growth of my skills and experience during the process was exciting. The Trailhead journey will motivate you to do more, I promise!

Listen to our Admin Masters Series for top tips from our Awesome Admins on the frontline.

And, check out the full list of Salesforce Accelerators in our Accelerator Library.