You’ve got clear business goals you want to achieve. You’ve got the technology you’ll need to make it happen. The only thing left is to empower yourself with the training necessary to make the best use of your toolset. And if you’re part of the Salesforce Ohana of customers and partners, that’s where Trailhead comes in.
Available online to anyone, anywhere, Trailhead was designed to reflect the level of choice and flexibility that learning new technologies requires.
When computers and software first entered the workplace, for instance, most of the training was fairly generic, assuming that everyone would use technology in much the same way. Training was also something that required employees to take time out of their regular workday and gather in a designated room.
If you failed to pick up some of the nuances of using the technology, meanwhile, it would lead to an increased volume of help desk tickets for the IT department to weed through. In some cases it also led to costly errors that hurt the business.
Salesforce developed Trailhead to completely reimagine the way people could acquire the skills they need to grow their business with digital technologies.
Besides offering lessons that could be accessed remotely, Trailhead allows you to choose your own learning adventure. You can try bite-sized units or modules, for example, or get more hands-on with step-by-step instruction on a project. Trailhead Live, meanwhile, gives you an alternative to on-demand lessons.
As you use Trailhead more regularly, you can track your progress by earning badges for your skills, or certifications that validate your mastery of specific lessons.
When you first start exploring Trailhead, of course, the natural first question might be, “Where to begin?”
You’ll notice that you can filter through all the potential options in a variety of ways. This includes your role (whether you’re an admin, a business user or developer, for example), the products you’re using and your level of experience.
Here are a few suggestions of courses well worth checking out, particularly if you’re a business user or admin at the “beginner” level who wants to develop a better sense of what the Salesforce platform can offer you:
1. Discover Salesforce fundamentals to support your business
If you work in an area like sales, marketing or customer service and aren’t very familiar with how Salesforce solutions work, consider this course a warm welcome.
You’ll quickly get a solid understanding of why cloud computing has enhanced the business value of tools like customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation. You’ll also get exposed to features that let you manage users and data, and discover ways to boost collaboration with tools like Chatter.
The lessons in this three-day course won’t just help you get your feet wet with Salesforce, but can help you better understand the best ways to drive adoption across the rest of your team.
2. Build and analyze customer journeys using Marketing Cloud
It’s never been more important to understand each step a customer might take from the moment they first hear about your company to when they convert into a paying customer.
You can make these journeys a lot more compelling when you know how to develop relevant content and segment it to specific groups of customers.
This five-day course primarily focuses on email marketing, but it speaks to the larger concept of creating an exceptional customer experience across your entire company.
As part of the lessons, for example, you’ll see how to use data to run more effective tests. This will make your campaigns more successful, while also teaching you more about what your customers may want and need from you as your relationship with them develops.
3. Explore and share data with Tableau CRM
Most organizations are numbers-driven to some extent, whether it’s the amount of revenue coming in the door, the number of customers they’re winning (or losing) and what kind of marketing tactics are driving engagement. The hard part is often making sense of those numbers in a way that’s easy for others to grasp.
This short, one-day course provides you with a solid grounding in how to take advantage of Tableau CRM’s vast data visualization capabilities. You’ll see how simple it is to create a dashboard to track all the key metrics that matter to you, and how to find insights in the data you can act upon.
Even better, this is where you’ll see how you can take a dataset and share it with other people on your team, or even your leadership team. This is where a real shift towards data-driven decision-making can begin.
Other ways to find the best Trailhead lessons
Your company might have initially chosen Salesforce solutions to help address a specific pain point. This could range from driving more revenue to simply getting ahead of the competition.
The “Product” filter in Trailhead will come in handy here, allowing you to search for courses based on Commerce Cloud and set up a high-performing online storefront, or Einstein Analytics to harness the power of artificial intelligence and predict future changes to your business.
If you’re working on a more specific project, meanwhile, don’t miss the “Tags” filter. This is a fast way to get to Trailhead lessons about the best ways to manage app lifecycles, integrate with other tools or strengthen your IT security.
There are also tags to explore lessons for specific industries, and lessons for partners who might offer Salesforce technologies to other companies.
You may be using Trailhead on your own, but that doesn't mean you’re ever truly alone. Part of the power of this learning platform is the opportunity to connect with other Trailblazers who are tackling many of the same business challenges you are.
As you get to know more of this community, ask them about their favourite lessons, and point them to the ones you’ve loved best so far, too. Trailhead is all about give-and-take, especially when it means everyone learns more as a result.
