We all know there’s a shortage of skilled Salesforce professionals across Australia, however this shortage is especially apparent in the functional consulting space where a lack of experienced professionals is jeopardising the success of projects across the country.
At Talent Hub we are regularly approached by Salesforce partners and end users who are seeking strong functional consultants especially the elusive Senior Salesforce Functional Consultant. Organisations are looking for candidates with significant hands on Salesforce experience with a high level ability to design and deliver a range of complex solutions. However, when hiring at this level, organisations are placing equal emphasis on the soft skills and broader commercial skills of candidates, alongside their technical skills.
But what are these soft skills and commercial skills? We spoke to a number of our clients and respected members of the Salesforce community to find out what qualities and attributes make up a great Salesforce functional consultant.
Visionary
The best Salesforce Functional Consultants are able to align with the longer-term strategic aims of a program of work or business case, and not just the immediate work stream. They adopt an “outside-in” perspective, looking at the impact of what they are doing on other streams of work, and not giving up on a preferred solution just because it may at first appear harder to achieve.
Ability to Mediate
A key part of a Functional Consultants role and an essential skill they need to have refined is the ability to mediate, whether that is with business streams or a vendor. On any Salesforce project there will be a need for the Functional Consultant to manage conflict/relationships effectively with win/win scenarios for all parties.
Financial Acumen
Ultimately all work on a strategic program of work has a financial implication. A basic understanding of financial concepts & implications demonstrates a breadth of business understanding that is technology agnostic.
Innovation
They have the ability to reapply existing technology and produce new, more efficient ways of working. They are not content to keep doing things the same way just because an organisation has “always” done it that way; instead they want to work smarter and will look to evolve their processes in order to stay ahead of competitors.
Presentation Skills
The best Salesforce functional consultants are able to present authoritatively to range of different stakeholders with varying degrees of Salesforce knowledge. They need to be able to demonstrate high levels of credibility, with the ability to confidently hold an audience of people and convey the presence of a true subject matter expert.