The Salesforce Sales Representative Certification exam is one of the newest certifications offered by Salesforce! They released this in May 2023 and is showing to be a valuable certification to show your sales knowledge!
This certification differs from the Sales Cloud Consultant in that the consultant certification focuses on the sales tools the software had and the sales rep certification focuses on selling strategies!
It really focuses on educating on some of the more standardized parts of the selling process. This includes things like the stages of selling, how to deal with customer objections, and pricing techniques!
I took this exam a week or so after it was released and found it to be a fairly easy one to pick up, after studying the vocabulary. As well as knowing the context for the terminology.
Further down on this post, I will mention my experience taking the exam and the different resources used and that have since been made available! These resources will be marked free or paid to help you get this cert with resources that fit in your budget!
Feel free to save this post and bounce around to the different sections!
🚨Update: We have recently released a course covering all that you need to know for the exam! Check it out here!
Youtube Video
Before we jump too far into the post I want to mention that there is a corresponding youtube video on the Salesforce Emily youtube channel.
I will embed that here but keep scrolling to get to the good stuff!
Overview of the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam
The Salesforce Sales Rep Certification is geared towards those who are sales reps or who touch the sales section of a business.
While I am not and have never been a sales rep I do think that this certification was valuable for me to understand more of the sales reps perspective. As well as how an ideal sales process should go.
The Sales Representative exam is a lot more terminology focused than most other salesforce exams! Rather than being very technical, you should know when to use certain sales techniques to do well on this exam.
Here are some quick stats on the exam:
- $200 initial fee for taking the exam
- $100 retake fee for taking the exam
- No Prerequisites
- 60-65 total questions
- Timed: 1 hour 45 minutes to complete
- Online or Onsite proctoring is available
- Passing score: 70%
- Multiple Choice – Choose 1 answer out of 3
There are six sections on the exam, let’s break them down!
Planning 21%
This section is all about the different types of planning you will do in the sales lifecycle. This mainly includes territory planning, quota planning, and key account management. All of these include the different meetings and techniques a sales rep could use in the sales planning process.
Customer Engagement 15%
Next is the customer engagement section which covers the different strategies to get your customer talking. This also includes how to analyze the customer’s business in the light most favorable to your product in order to close the deal. Another large part of this section is managing and nurturing the relationship with your customers.
Deal Management 37%
This is by far the largest section on the exam and covers the sales process as a whole. Including all of the seven stages of selling in detail, how to determine the customer’s goals, and working to create the best deal possible for you and your customer!
Pipeline Management 12%
This section is all about the pipeline! How to create the pipeline, how to ensure the pipeline is clean, and how to keep the pipeline moving. While this can get confused easily with forecasting, you should be prepared to identify the main differences between pipeline and forecasting.
Forecasting 6%
This section is very similar to the pipeline but through the lens of forecasting. So this means being tested on keeping the forecast clean, identifying new opportunities, and different strategies to help move the forecast forward!
Customer Sucess 9%
The final section is all about customer success, or what happens after the deal is closed. You’ll likely study a lot about how to keep customers happy, the different delivery models, and how to engage with a disgruntled customer.
My Background when taking the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification
One thing that I’ve always found beneficial when looking at these types of blog posts or youtube videos is understanding where the person giving the advice was at in their understanding when taking the exam.
A person with decades of work experience in the field will see this exam very differently from someone who is just at the beginning of their career!
This way you can understand where my advice is coming from and gauge where you are in comparison to my experience!
At the time of taking this exam, I had been working on the Salesforce platform for over 7 years.
First, as an end user/receptionist for 4 years then working in an administration role for the next 3 years.
I had a variety of full-time and part-time salesforce roles during that tenure.
However, none of these roles were in a sales role.
Even with no formal sales experience, this exam was totally doable for someone willing to put in the hours to study and learn about the sales process!
Resources I used when taking the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification
Next, let’s jump into the resources I used for passing this exam!
It is important to note that there weren’t many great resources at the time I took this exam. So what I used for the exam was pretty limited compared to what I will mention in the additional resources I’ve vetted!
First, I used the exam guide (free) to understand the logistics of the exam and some of the topics that would be covered on the certification exam.
Next, I went through the official trailmix (free) to help me understand in more detail what would be covered on the exam. While this was an okay resource for learning trailhead, to me, always feels like it gives a lot more information than I need to pass. It was also didn’t cover all of the topics that were on the exam.
Note: It usually trailmixes take days or weeks to complete. However, I use a Chrome extension called natural reader (free with paid addons) to help me listen to it faster. With the extension, it took about 2 days to get through the trailmix.
While I was preparing for the exam I created a quizlet (free) to help me with studying the terms. Again, terms were a huge part of this exam so this was invaluable!
Finally, after studying all of those resources I was able to pass the exam on the first attempt!
Things other than experience that helped
While experience can be extremely valuable to get a certification, it’s not the only thing that can help you pass a certification.
Personally, I had no sales experience before this certification but had worked somewhat closely with a sales team.
First, this exam was term focused! So learning the terms and context behind the terms was so important.
For example, understanding each of the stages of the sales process and what milestones qualify for moving on to the next stage of the sales cycle.
Another aspect of passing that wasn’t experience based was the process of elimination. This exam was structured to choose 1 out of 3 possible answers.
This structure is different than most exams that have a choose 1 out of 4 or 2 out of 5 possible answers.
So it was easy for me to eliminate one answer that obviously wasn’t correct and either make an educated guess or debate between the two remaining answers.
Additional Resources for the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification
This certification is still very new! So there aren’t many more resources to help people to pass.
However, we are working on a course to help you learn all the necessary things for the exam!
Join the email list at https://salesforceupskill.com/ to know when we release that course!
My Thoughts on the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification
Finally, let’s move on to my thoughts on the Salesforce sales representative certification.
This certification was fairly easy for me to pick up because I had some previous knowledge from working alongside some sales teams.
Personally, I thought it was great to learn more about an ideal sales process!
Will this get me a job?
This question is asked about every single certification. I never like to say that certification will or will not give you a job. It is extremely dependent upon the general job market at any given point.
However, the more certifications you have it increases the likelihood you will land a job.
So I don’t think that this certification will land you a job by itself. But you could use this certification to leverage yourself into a sales operations role!
Conclusion
A big congrats to you for making it through this blog post! We hope you found it useful!
Check out the Salesforce Emily youtube channel here.
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And check out our courses here