Salesforce Tutorial - Ultimate Learning Guide for Beginners & Beyond (2024)

Introduction

Calling all Salesforce enthusiasts! Whether you're a developer seeking a refresher, a beginner eager to master advanced skills, or someone curious about career paths and certifications, this comprehensive tutorial is your one-stop shop for Salesforce knowledge.

We'll cover everything from the fundamentals ("What is Salesforce?") to its industry dominance ("Why is it the go-to CRM?"). You'll learn where it's used, what SFDC means, and how to unlock your full Salesforce potential.

Ready to dive in? Let's start with an introduction to the Salesforce platform.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce isn't just a fancy term; it's the world's leading cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform. Think of it as a one-stop shop for managing your customer interactions, but with the added benefit of opening doors to exciting career opportunities. It helps businesses of all sizes generate leads, boost sales, and close more deals by streamlining these processes. Plus, with over 150,000 integrated applications, Salesforce offers a vast ecosystem to customize your experience and unlock even greater business potential. Whether you're interested in Salesforce development, administration, or becoming a Salesforce consultant, this powerful platform offers a rewarding path for your professional journey.

Salesforce CRM

It helps businesses maintain long-lasting relationships with their clients and combine various crucial systems. As said earlier, it's a SaaS tool that helps organizations develop customized solutions for sales, marketing, ecommerce and other issues. 

All the data in Salesforce CRM is cloud-based. Therefore, it can be accessed from anywhere at any time. It helps to increase business productivity and growth in major factors. 

After introducing Salesforce and Salesforce CRM, let's proceed further and clear your basics of Salesforce.

What Is SFDC?

SFDC in Salesforce is just the abbreviation of Salesforce Dot Com or Salesforce.com. 

Salesforce.com, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company established by Marc Benioff and headquartered in San Francisco, California, in 1999. Gaining major revenue from its CRM (Customer Relationship Management) )service. 

SFDC helps you manage customer relationships, can be quickly integrated with other systems, and even helps build cloud-based apps. There are plenty of tools that help you in creating custom solutions based on your business needs. Today, Salesforce has expanded from just a simple product to many products.

Initially, it was started as SaaS (Software as a Service) Company. Then it was converted to PaaS (Platform as a Service) Company where one platform was given to the users to manage customer details and sales prospects. Soon, Salesforce was ranked as the largest customer success platform with various features listed below -

• Contact leads and opportunity management
• Deal Tracking and Product planning
• Product Manufacturing and shipping

Are you curious to discover why SFDC is so popular? Learn more about SFDC and its functionalities to add value to your career.

So, how did it all begin?

Initially, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems came into existence with a strategy to simplify customer interactions and enhance sales prospects to retain existing customers and generate new leads. But traditional CRM systems were not the optimal choice for leading industries due to the following reasons –

• Higher costs
• They were taking months to set up.
• They were hosted on a personal server of the Company and,
• They were difficult to manage and understand.

Here, enterprises were in dire need of an affordable CRM system that could be set up within a few days and is easy to understand. This was the main idea behind the discovery of Salesforce. Hope this Salesforce tutorial has made your concepts clear in SFDC!

Data can be brought into Salesforce in various ways to guarantee you get fully operational at all measures of time conceivable. Learn how to import data into Salesforce by referring to this blog.

Service Nature of Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform that empowers businesses to manage customer data, streamline sales operations, and orchestrate marketing campaigns.

Convenience at Your Fingertips:

• SaaS (Software as a Service): No need for complex installations, setups, or downloads. Simply log in and access the software from anywhere with an internet connection. This translates to immediate usability and reduced IT burden.
• PaaS (Platform as a Service): Leverage a pre-built platform and readily available applications created by developers. This allows for customization based on your specific business needs, saving valuable time and resources.
• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Eliminate the need for physical hardware or software installations. Securely store your data and applications in the cloud, with automatic backups ensuring peace of mind.

Salesforce as a Training Tool:

Salesforce's robust functionality and extensive user base make it a valuable platform for professional development. Numerous salesforce training resources and certifications are available to help individuals build their expertise and advance their careers in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Why Salesforce?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is the most efficient technique for building trustworthy consumer relationships. It could be utilized to target contacts, leads, and opportunities. CRM software could manage tracking, product planning, manufacturing, and shipping.

Here are the quick points to help you understand what makes Salesforce CRM better than Traditional CRM-

History & Evolution of Salesforce

Salesforce has grown in popularity over the years since its first inception. Outlined below is a brief history of Salesforce

• It was discovered by ex-Oracle employees in March 1999, whose names were Marc Benioff, Frank Dominguez, and Parker Harris.
• It was June 2004 when the Company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol CRM and raised to $110 million US dollars.
• In 2014, Salesforce was announced as the customer success platform with an amazing set of services that we will discuss in detail below. These are service cloud, sales cloud, marketing cloud, analytics cloud, etc.
• It was in 2017 when Salesforce launched a Facebook analytics tool, and Salesforce partnered with Apple in 2018 to improve and build more powerful business apps.
• Today, Salesforce has translated its services into 16 different languages. It generated $29 billion in subscription revenue in 2023, contrary to $24.66 billion in 2022 and $19.97 in 2021.

Salesforce Products

Salesforce isn't just a single product, it's like a toolbox filled with amazing tools. Here are some of the key players:

• Sales Cloud: This is the superhero for your sales team. It helps them manage leads, track opportunities, and close deals faster than ever before. Imagine never losing track of a potential customer again!
• Service Cloud: Ever get frustrated with bad customer service? Service Cloud is here to change the game. It empowers your team to deliver exceptional experiences, handle inquiries efficiently, and keep your customers happy. Think happy customers, happy business!
• Marketing Cloud: Marketing teams, listen up! This tool helps you connect with your target audience in a whole new way. We're talking personalized emails, engaging social media campaigns, and powerful analytics to track your success. It's like having a marketing magician in your pocket!
• Analytics Cloud (now Tableau CRM): Data, data everywhere! This nifty tool helps you analyze all that customer information. See what's working, what's not, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategies. No more flying blind – it's all about insights and making smarter choices.

These are just a few of the amazing products in the Salesforce family. There's also the AppExchange marketplace, a treasure trove of add-on apps to customize your Salesforce experience to fit your specific business needs.

Benefit of Using Salesforce

The answer to this question is quite simple. First, this is a cloud-based platform with better functionalities at much lower costs. Salesforce replaced the lengthy installations with a cloud environment where everything is accessed over the internet. Most importantly, they represent an attractive business model where product licensing is no more expensive and affordable for every small business.

Let us quickly look at Salesforce in numbers and why you should opt for Salesforce training and certifications.

• Apps 7000+
• Market Share 33%
• Customer 150,000+
• Job opportunities 80% extra
• Installations 3 Million

Today, Salesforce gives you the right path from idea to app development. The best part is that you can focus on the core development activities of your app, not the infrastructure, as it is taken care of by the platform itself. It results in time-saving and dollars savings in the end.

According to Salesforce customers, it is unique due to four popular reasons – Faster, Effective, affordable, and Easy to use.

• Traditional CRM systems take over a year to deploy, while Salesforce CRM systems can be deployed much faster within weeks.
• Within Salesforce, you have to focus on app building only, not the infrastructure; this is why it is affordable for enterprises. Due to the increased demand for this tool, there is also an increase in careers in this field. Learn how to prepare for the Salesforce App Builder Certification exam by reading this blog. 
• Salesforce for beginners is easy to use, where you don't have to spend much time learning, but you can drive meaningful business insights quickly.
• Salesforce CRM is effective because it can be customized based on business needs and requirements and converts leads to customers.

Salesforce is a cloud-based platform that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, just with the help of a smooth internet connection and a web browser. Salesforce is changing rapidly with the speed of your business, and Salesforce solutions are highly scalable as needed by the Companies.

Salesforce can seamlessly integrate with third-party tools like Gmail, Yahoo, etc. Even if you want to integrate it with your accounting software, you can do that. If we look at other existing CRM systems, integration is the most difficult task and almost impossible to succeed. These capabilities are why every small business or start-up should opt for Salesforce – today's largest customer success platform.

The first step towards a successful career as a Salesforce professional is to consider enrolling in a certified and industry-recognized certification course. Here's a detailed guide to Salesforce training certification cost.

Salesforce Highlights

Here are the key reason for using Salesforce CRM and what makes Salesforce so popular among cloud-based CRM users:

• It is a feature-rich CRM solution for sales, marketing, service, community management, partner management, etc.
• Salesforce CRM stores the data over the cloud so anyone can access it from anywhere worldwide using a simple internet connection.
• It is designed to cater to the needs of all-sized businesses, whether small or medium.
• Salesforce CRM works on the pay-as-you-go model and also helps reduce overhead costs.
• It has increased customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction over time.
• It helps in accelerating sales productivity as needed by businesses.
• It can be quickly integrated with third-party users when needed.
• It is a clear witness to the overall growth of your business.
• It helps continuously optimize campaigns based on market response and closure interaction with channel partners.

By taking this free Salesforce quiz, drive away boredom and test your subject knowledge.

Here's one of the best Salesforce tutorial videos that will take you through different aspects of Salesforce, such as - what Salesforce CRM is, the benefits of Salesforce CRM, how CRM works, along with Salesforce CRM demo and use case. 

Let's look at the different Salesforce offerings. 

Customer Success Platform

To better understand the platform, you first need to discuss the Salesforce.com overview, Salesforce offerings, and how to use them. 

You can access plenty of services and products within the cloud that helps business in the ultimate growth and sales profits.

Salesforce.com offers a group of CRM products or services specially designed to fit into an organization more effectively and efficiently. Moreover, this is a set of IT services like IT development, deployment, etc., over the internet. Some of the most popular cloud services and products offered by Salesforce include –

Salesforce Architecture

Salesforce architecture is divided into different components, as discussed below:

A). Trusted multi-tenant Cloud

Here, different instances of multiple apps operate separately in a shared environment. The instances are also named as tenants that can be quickly separated from each other. Although all tenants physically stay in the same hardware, it offers the maximum-security levels organizations need.

B). Scalable Metadata Platform

This is another popular component that helps you in customizations. It also helps increase the overall amount of data and concurrent user instances.

C). Enterprise Ecosystem

The enterprise ecosystem is bigger as different partners contribute to the platform and help maintain this platform effectively.

D). APIs

Salesforce offers a robust suite of APIs for developing mobile apps. It makes app development easy and more flexible for programmers.

F). CRM and Related Functionality

It would be best if you had a formidable architecture to do the kind of wonders that Salesforce is doing. Learn what Salesforce architecture is.

Why Is Salesforce So Popular?

The graph clearly shows how Salesforce has led the market since 2017, edging out Microsoft and Oracle. While it is more expensive, Salesforce has the most user-friendly design of any CRM programme.

Source: Salesforce

• Leads Generation and Sales Productivity: It helps you to measure customer engagement by tracking email activities and converting them into potential customers.
• Quotes & Opportunities: it helps vendors to create quotes and opportunities.
• Contacts Management: It helps pull customers' data like activity history, customer communications, frequent contacts, etc.
• Build Apps: It helps in building, running, scaling, and managing more innovative apps as needed by your business.
• Analytics Management: it helps in accessing the data, performing analysis, creating dashboards, etc.
• Sales Communities: you could enable online community software that enables organizations to connect with partners, customers, employees, etc.
• Email Integration: Salesforce provides third-party integrations for customer services, support, and customer experiences.
• Salesforce Engine: This is one more amazing feature focused on personalized contacts with the help of campaigns designed by the marketing team.
• Sales Collaboration: It helps you address customer feedback and queries more effectively than usual.
• Leads Management: It allows you to create multiple territory models. You can preview before rollout, and it helps you optimize and balance territories.
• Workflows & Approval: This interface offers simple drag-drop options that anyone can use.
• Partners Management: This feature helps build partners and communities to share business objectives, goals, activities, etc.
• Files Management: This feature enables the sales team to share and update multiple files whenever needed.
• Sales Forecasting: This feature lets you get a real view of the sales team's forecasting.
• Reports & Dashboards: This feature offers a real-time picture of the business at a glance in the form of reports and dashboards like charts, graphs, etc.

It is impossible to miss the name Salesforce while recalling the name of the best CRMs. Here is the amazing Salesforce features that you shouldn't miss out on.

How are Companies Using Salesforce?

Here is a quick idea of companies using Salesforce and successfully implementing this CRM.

CRM systems have come out as one of the most aspiring career domains for learners worldwide. What is the future growth of a Salesforce Developer? Check this blog to know about it!

How to Access Salesforce?

Salesforce is available for a 30-days trial and we will register for the same.

Step 1 – Go to the Link to register your profile as given: https://www.salesforce.com/in/form/signup/freetrial-sales/?d=70130000000EqoP

Here, you should add the required details as shown like Name, Email ID, Job Title, Phone number, Company name, Country, etc.

Step 2- Once you are done, click on “Start my Free Trial” option.

Step 3 – It will take time in setting up the Salesforce profile, so have patience, and you will be directed to the login page momentarily. Here is the screen you can see after the Login.

Making money is challenging but it has no real limitations on how much you bring in. Do you know what is the best way to grow your salary in Salesforce? Read this blog.

Step 4 – At the Welcome screen, there is one Accounts option on the top.

Here, you have to click the “New Account” option and add the necessary details to create a new account quickly.

Step 5 - Click the Save option, and you are done. A new account is created successfully. The user interface of Salesforce CRM is self-explanatory, and you can perform other operations in the same way with ease and more convenience. All the Best!

Explore Salesforce Career Path and grow your career with Salesforce.

What is Salesforce APEX?

APEX is an object-oriented programming language that allows developers to execute the transactional control and flow statements on the Salesforce server using an API. It also helps developers in adding business logic to their programming codes. Here are a few advantages of utilizing APEX language in Salesforce.

• APEX uses easy syntax and semantics that can be understood quickly and offers faster and more effective results.
• APEX language is designed so that multiple queries and DML statements can be threaded together into a single unit on the Salesforce server.
• APEX directly references schema objects like objects or field names, etc.

This blog lets you learn more about the whats and why's of Set methods in Salesforce Apex.

Introduction to Cloud Computing

Before ending the Salesforce tutorial, let us look at cloud computing, which forms the basics of Salesforce and the popular cloud platforms. Cloud computing involves shared resources, software, and information provided via mobiles or computers. There are three popular cloud platforms used frequently by industries –

• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – Cloud providers largely focus on infrastructure services like hosting, server, storage services, etc.
• SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) – This is a software delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and hosted centrally.
• PaaS (Platform-as-a-Services) – This category of cloud computing services provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage apps.

Salesforce marketing cloud is a powerful marketing platform. 

Since we are talking about cloud computing, let's have a quick look at the different types of cloud computing.

Types of Cloud Computing:

Four different types of cloud computing services are available: public, private, hybrid, and community cloud. Let's look into e

1.  Public Cloud: The entire public cloud infrastructure is located on the CSP premises that offer computing services responsible for maintaining everything from servers, storage, and hardware to software. In Public cloud infrastructure, the resources are shared between multiple users, and the cost of Cloud services is determined by using IT resources consumed by individuals.
2. Private Cloud: Private Cloud is dedicated infrastructured as per Individuals/organizations' needs and is not shared by any other individual/organization. It offers great security and control over services.
3. Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid Cloud combines public and private Clouds, allowing them to share data and applications. It enables your businesses with more deployment options and gains greater flexibility. Organizations mainly use Hybrid Cloud when their On-Premise infrastructure needs more scalability, so they attain scalability using Public Cloud to meet fluctuating business demands. 
4. Community Cloud: Community Cloud infrastructure is built per industry-specific needs and shared among the users of the same industry, sharing common business goals. This infrastructure serves all the community's needs.

Salesforce Cloud has revolutionized customer support by smoothing interactions between an organization and its customers. Explore the Salesforce service cloud certification Guide for Beginners to know more.

Summary

Let us quickly go through the blog summary of what we have discussed in the blog and highlights of the Salesforce Tutorial:

• Cloud computing is all about storing, managing, and processing data on a remote server instead of using a local server.
• CRM is popular software organizations use to store customer details and maintain long-term customer relationships.
• Salesforce is a SaaS CRM, and Salesforce.com helps you to manage customer relationships. It can be quickly integrated with other systems and even helps build cloud-based apps.
• Salesforce is a feature-rich CRM solution for sales, marketing, service, community management, partner management, etc.
• Ex-Oracle employees discovered Salesforce in March 1999, whose names were Marc Benioff, Frank Dominguez, and Parker Harris.
• The major components of Salesforce architecture can be given as important salesforce components: Trusted Multi-tenant Cloud, Scalable Metadata Platform, Enterprise Ecosystem, APIs, CRM, and Related Functionality.
• The three service nature of the platform is SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS.
• Important Salesforce Products are Sales Cloud, Market Cloud, Service Cloud, Analytics Cloud, Community Cloud, Commerce Cloud, IoT Cloud, Health Cloud, etc.
• Salesforce is used in various Industries like Communications, Finance, High Tech, Health Care, Media, etc.

The Salesforce platform enables us to create various Applications, Objects, and Fields. Learn more about building apps, objects, tabs, and schema builders in Salesforce as a Developer.

Salesforce Career Path

Now when you are about to finish this salesforce tutorial, we will have an eye on the Salesforce career in this section.

To grow your career in Salesforce, you must choose among many potential avenues, from Salesforce Admin or Developer to Business Analyst, Architect, and more. Accordingly, join a professional salesforce beginner training course and obtained relevant Salesforce certifications. For example, if you want to become a Salesforce administrator, you can go for salesforce administration guides or salesforce tutorial pdf available online for free.

Learning Salesforce will make you well-versed with the world's most dynamic CRM platform that has helped organizations save time and money while dealing with complicated customer databases more efficiently.

Explore top  Salesforce interview questions and crack the interview with confidence.

Final Words of Salesforce Tutorial

That's all for the day! We have ensured that this ultimate guide for Salesforce admin and Salesforce Developer will take you through all the important aspects of the cloud-based CRM system that you need to know before you start using the platform. To explore more on the platform, you may enrol for the Salesforce Certification Courses with JanBask Training immediately. We wish you luck for a glorious future in the Salesforce space with us!

Found this post on the Salesforce tutorial for beginners helpful in understanding what Salesforce is? Why is Salesforce getting so popular over other CRMs? What do you find different from other Salesforce tutorials? Is Salesforce easy to learn? Feel free to comment below!

FAQs

Q1. Why should I take a Salesforce  certification course by JanBask Training?

Ans- The objective of our online Salesforce training is as follows-

• This particular Salesforce course online is similar to your offline classroom that has been designed with an objective to help students to professionals in mastering the Salesforce Development and Administration in a more comprehensive way & in terms of the real-industry case scenarios.
• The Salesforce course online ensures job success and helps you to pass the certification exam via intensive, skill-oriented & instructor-led virtual classrooms, well-researched & tailored study materials, and the hands-on real-time assignments.

Q2. Why are Salesforce certifications necessary?

Ans- Salesforce Certifications are necessary as they:

• Are verified proof to any professional's approved knowledge in the Salesforce field.
• Increases job interview invitations.
• Gives great push in career prospects - during the job hiring preferences and the salary negotiations.
• Brings confidence and positivity in approaching any job or project.

Q3. What are the skills needed for a Salesforce job?

Ans- Must-have skills of a Salesforce professional and the areas that he needs to specialize in are as follows:

• Salesforce Configuration and Customization
• Salesforce Out of box features
• Salesforce Office Automation using workflow and process builder
• Data modeling, data management
• Org security - role, profile, sharing rules
• Salesforce app customization
• Lightning framework and components
• Platform development
• Search solutions and Visualforce
• Apex-object oriented programming
• Salesforce object query language - SOQL, SOSL
• Apex Triggers, batch jobs

Q4. What skills will I learn in this course?

Ans- Once the online Salesforce course gets completed, you will get complete knowledge of SFC data models, different building blocks of Salesforce, a deep understanding of the salesforce security model, salesforce apex triggers, salesforce test classes, and Salesforce automation options. You will be able to master the Salesforce clouds like sales cloud, service cloud, community cloud, analytics cloud, marketing cloud, etc., report generation, dashboards, and the basics of integration.

Q5. Who should attend this course?

Ans- The online Salesforce training course is perfect for any individual interested in mastering cloud skills and Salesforce development, particularly:

• Students pursuing any IT course
• Individuals looking to build a career in Salesforce
• System administrators
• IT managers
• Product managers
• App Builders
• Developers

Q6. How should I prepare for the Salesforce certification exam?

Ans- We at JanBask Training offers you the following features inside our online Salesforce training that help your certification journey substantially.

• Every one of the sessions are directed in a real-time environment
• The students are placed in a cooperative environment of learning
• Surprise tests, live discussions are a regular part of student's every day schedules
• It is an extensive Salesforcee developer training online that covers theory and practical training
• It accompanies a variety of intriguing learning assets
• Students get real life ventures-based learning so they can get exceptional and industry-oriented training to learn Salesforce developer concepts in terms of industry application.

Q7. What help do you provide for the certification exam?

Ans- Our online Salesforce course curriculum is prepared in a way that it has all the concepts of Salesforce Consultant’s certification already inserted in it. A team of industry experts diligently sit and then develop our Salesforce Consultant training course syllabus after an aggressive market research on all the recent technology, exam patterns, Industry Requirements, etc.

Q8. What learning benefits will I get from this course?

Ans- Our organization is breaking every one of the generalizations of online training and has now concocted a training routine to enable you to take a shot at genuine industry case situations. In this exertion of our own, each student is appointed with a case that had occurred in the business and required an answer from a Salesforce proficient. With this training, we expect to familiarize our students about the difficulties that they are going to face in the savage business outside the solace of their virtual study hall. 

Q9. What is the concept of a demo class? Is it free?

Ans- A demo session is like a sample session that gives you a glimpse into our Salesforce Developer training sessions. You don’t have to pay for these demo sessions; as they are given free of cost. We also refund your money as per our refund policy in case you don't like the sessions.  

Q10. What is covered in the beginner’s level of this course?

Ans- For the beginners, the online Salesforce course starts with the detailed introduction of CRM, Salesforce, and cloud computing to deliver you all the necessary skills required to start with this technology.

• No technical background is needed, but you should have a zeal to learn something new and trendy.
• The course will teach you about cloud technology from scratch so that you can get a broader understanding of the platform.
• As soon as you are done with the beginning level, this is the right time for you to switch to the advanced salesforce stage.