5 Ultimate reasons to pursue a career in the Salesforce ecosystem in 2023
Hello, my name is Iulian Chiriac and I am Salesforce Professional and Architect with more than 12+ years in the ecosystem. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have further questions.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Salesforce is one of the hottest products on the market right now and has been for the last 10-15 years (they have actually founded in 1999), so this is not just a fluke-of-the-moment thing. Salesforce created quite a stir in the business community over the last decade. They have new clients adopting their technology by the hundreds every day. Whether it is a small business or a global corporation, a vast majority of them are moving onto the Salesforce platform.
Not a lot of people heard of Salesforce and that is ok. For example, I have been developing systems for close to 25 years now and I only found Salesforce by chance when I was hired by a company to build a mobile application that integrated with Salesforce. That is how I was introduced to the platform around 10 years ago, and my life changed. Do not get me wrong, I like to say that I did not work a day in my life because I was following my passion for coding and optimizing systems, but nevertheless, it was a struggle most times. The constant learning to keep up to date with the never-ending competition and fighting to get a job was always there. With Salesforce, it all just became more … fun.
The fun and support behind Salesforce
The moment of clarity came at a point where a few of my colleagues at the time mentioned that they were looking for other opportunities and they were not having luck getting a lot of interviews over the course of 6 months, I think. That was back in 2013. I was surprised because I was receiving 2 to 3 job offers in a week over LinkedIn alone. It is then I realized that this is due to the fact that I was regarded as a Salesforce specialist.
Spoiler Alert: There is a VERY BIG demand for Salesforce specialists out there, but more about that later. One of the things that came across to me from the way Salesforce works is their “Ohana” concept. So “Ohana” in Hawaiian means “family”. I understand it might sound cheesy but you end up really feeling part of the Salesforce family as you continue on the Salesforce path. It is easy to feel at home and at ease when there is such a great community of people striving to help each other and push each other to better themselves.
How many times were you trying to understand a concept on a new job or trying to solve a problem and you had no one to help you with that? That will never happen in the Salesforce ecosystem. They have very active community boards and an online teaching platform so that you can acquire skills fast and be up to date on the latest innovations (like Artificial Intelligence, state-of-the-art reporting and so on, just to name a few).
On this topic, one of the other reasons to pursue a salesforce career is best described in a bit more business and technical terms but bear with me as we discuss the next topic.
The innovation behind the platform
Salesforce is the leading CRM system on the market. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management by the way. Also, according to Gartner Incorporated, which is the leading Global Research and Advisory firm, Salesforce is by far the winner of what is called the Gartner Magic Quadrant race for many consecutive years. Basically, it is considered the best system for “Customer Engagement” and “Sales Force Automation”.
Now, on top of this, a few years ago Salesforce launched its AI-powered predictive analytics module called Einstein. It is so smart (and constantly getting smarter) that it actually tells you what accounts are your best bet to close (In sales terms) and so much more. For example, it also analyses media posts (including photos – YES photos) and creates a profile around that information to help the Sales Agents be at their best game.
And this is just the beginning. It would take me months to go over all the functionality that Salesforce has, things like Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud (both Business2Consume and Business2Business), Community Cloud (there are a lot of clouds), and so many more, plus a huge amount of Administration and Developer tools and so on. All this is to say, if you want a career that has a great path, is in great demand and you like a challenge, then Salesforce is probably for you!
The empowerment and your real success with Salesforce
I am constantly amazed by the success stories I see around me. I am also very happy to say I contributed to some of them. I worked with people that had nothing to do with systems or computers at their other jobs.
These people were looking for a better life. They were looking for a more meaningful life and aren’t we all? The stress and day-to-day were spiralling them into this gray existence and they were not satisfied with where they were at that point in life. The perspective of job growth was mostly not there, or if there was a perspective it would be excruciatingly painful and unsatisfactory and that is not where they wanted to be.
Now, do not get me wrong. Salesforce is challenging, but it is challenging in a fun and secure way. The “Ohana” concept is felt throughout the entire experience. What I am trying to say is that the true success of a Salesforce career is not money. It is the satisfaction you get to be part of this truly global community that helps each other as a family, that pushes you to be better, and that is there to support you to be better. The financial stability you will get is a byproduct of your success. I personally was so inspired by this that over the last 6 years I have been coaching and teaching people one-on-one how to become part of the Salesforce family. I am proud I helped create a community within the global Salesforce family that to this day is delivering awesome Salesforce implementation and are loving what they do. True success and empowerment are when you can choose what you do, and how you do it and have a supportive community helping you achieve your goals.
The financials
I am sure you are wondering how much a Salesforce career would pay you. And as much as I dislike this answer, it really depends on the path you take. Either way, in most cases it would surely be much more than you are making now, and in the very few cases it is not, I can assure you it will be more in the long run. Not to mention the fulfillment you get from working within the Salesforce ecosystem is enormous. Back to the financials though. Why I mentioned that the pay depends on multiple variables is because there are quite a few career paths you can take. For example, there are the Sales and Service Specialists You can be an Internal Sales Executive within the Sales Department of a company. And if you are wondering how this ties into Salesforce, well a very large number of organizations are using Salesforce internally, and having Salesforce knowledge is crucial for working in those companies. Here you would have to deal a lot with things like Leads, Accounts, Products, Assets, Opportunities and Pipeline forecasts, all of which are part of the Salesforce Sales Cloud solution, and more. On the other hand, the Administrator Path If more part of Salesforce Core, as I like to refer to it, just because that was the core of Salesforce for a long time. I probably will change the way I look at things since now Salesforce has a huge number of solutions from marketing, to communities and partner portal, to analytics, big data, AI and the list goes on. A very impressive list at that. Also, most entry level roles into the Salesforce eco system are usually the Administration Role or custom development on the Salesforce platform. Speaking of custom development, the Technical and Solution Role Path I would say is also part of Salesforce Core, but with a bit more accent on things like development, coding, architecture and solution engineering.
Usually this is not an entry role, but to be honest I trained a lot of people that started as developers on the platform, and still are. Business Analysts and Quality Assurance Roles If you like understand businesses, their process and talking to people, then BA and QA Roles would be very appealing to you. You would be part of meetings with clients to understand their current problems on one hand and then working with technical specialist on the other end to provide solutions to those problems. Also, the Quality Assurance role basically makes sure the proposed solutions are implemented properly, which also involves working very closely with the client’s team. Because of all the services that Salesforce provides, additional roles in the fields of Marketing, Analytics, Mobile development or even Training people on how to use Salesforce are very much in demand. Apart from the above, what I am really trying to explain is that Salesforce encompasses a very large area of specialists. There are Marketers, entire QA teams, Analysts, Data managers and so on that work on the Salesforce platform, and you, whatever your background is, will most likely find something you would love to do on the platform as well. Let us see some numbers.
Sales & Service salaries
| US 2020 | EUROPE 2020 | |
| Sales Management: | $140,000 to $210,000 | €95,000 to €135,000 |
| Account Executives: | $95,000 to $160,000 | €30,000 to €55,000 |
| Sales Lead Generation: | $60,000 to $80,000 | €20,000 to €30,000 |
Administrator & Developer or Solution Architect
| US 2020 | EUROPE 2020 | |
| Administrator: | $95,000 to $130,000 | €40,000 to €70,000 |
| Developer: | $105,000 to $155,000 | €50,000 to €80,000 |
| Solution Architect: | $120,000 to $190,000 | €70,000 to €150,000 |
Business Analyst & Quality Assurance
| US 2020 | EUROPE 2020 | |
| Business Analyst: | $100,000 to $145,000 | €40,000 to €90,000 |
| Quality Assurance: | $95,000 to $155,000 | €35,000 to €95,000 |
Marketing, Trainers, Data managers and a few others
| US 2020 | EUROPE 2020 | |
| Marketing Specialist: | $60,000 to $115,000 | €40,000 to €85,000 |
| Salesforce Trainer: | $105,000 to $145,000 | €65,000 to €85,000 |
| Data Managers: | $85,000 to $115,000 | €45,000 to €60,000 |
| various Consultants: | $80,000 to $140,000 | €35,000 to €90,000 |
Happiness and Choice
I already mentioned quite a bit about how the mindset of the ecosystem differs from a lot of organizations and jobs you might find on the market, but it is really hard to find a job that would truly allow you to be happy and to be able to experience so many opportunities you would like to.
The many Clouds and Roles I mentioned before that you can choose from and switch to in the Salesforce ecosystem give you great flexibility. If you ever feel you might be bored with your current role, ramping up and switching to a potentially more interesting one for you is relatively easy since the new role you would choose is also within the same ecosystem. I know people that were Business Analysts and move to do actual development, and the other way around, people that were in a development role moved to Marketing to try that on as a challenge. And all of these switches were rather seamless. Just imagine, you can finally choose what you want to do, and be happy with your choice all while not risking financially or worrying about it throughout. That is the power of the Salesforce family.
In Summary
- Salesforce is booming all other the world, and the ecosystem is thriving by leaps and bounds. It is growing faster than anything else in IT
- The Salesforce career path is stable, very scalable and flexible.
- The salaries speak for themselves. The high demand for Salesforce professionals is ensuring a very competitive market.
- ANYONE who really wants to be a Salesforce professional can do it. I have personally guided people that had jobs in other spheres (like military and agriculture and so on) that are now Salesforce professionals and are on their way to a great Salesforce Career.
- Major, major companies are on the salesforce platform and looking for talent (Canon, P&G, Philips, KLM, Sony, CapitalOne, Dell, McDonald’s, Vodafone, EA, Honda, Coca-Cola, Accenture and hundreds more). You can really choose who you want to work for.
- Freedom to work is there. Because of the very high demand for professionals, a lot of companies offer flexible hours and remote work as part of the initial package even.
If you think a Salesforce Career is right for you, all you have to do is commit to it. I know anyone can do it. I have seen it happen.
If you would like to find out more, let me know.
About the author
Iulian Chiriac is Software Architect who loves to optimize and is passionate about helping others learn and acquire skills that would lead to a better and more fulfilling life. Founder and content creator who writes about financial literacy, consulting, achieving freedom of location and more at iulianchiriac.com.
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