How to Pass the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification 

Sales Representative Introduction

The Salesforce Sales Representative Certification is a brand new certification for Salesforce. Introduced earlier in 2023, not a lot of people are aware this certification even exists. The certification itself will test you and your sales knowledge, taking on sales methodologies, solving use cases, choosing the best option for a scenario, etc. This certification is slightly different from the other Salesforce Certifications, as it is single choice – with 3 options per question. Usually the format is single choice or multiple choice, from 4 options, so this makes it a similar layout to Associate exams.

Even if you have lots of Sales experience, you should not underestimate this exam, although having the Sales experience will make it a lot easier, you will need to know about certain methodologies and apply the best option for given scenarios (and for some questions, there could be multiple that are correct, you just have to choose the best option for that given scenario).

Overall we think the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification is a great certification to have a on you CV/Resume if you are in any role in Sales, whether working for Salesforce, a partner, or an end user.

In this blog we will walk you through what the Salesforce Sales Representative certification exam looks like, and how you can increase your chances of passing!

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About the Exam

Description	Answer
Number of Questions	60
Time Limit	105 Minutes
Average Minutes per Question	1.75 Minutes (105 minutes / 60 questions)
Passing Score	70%
Delivery Options	– Online – Onsite – At Dreamforce
Cost	$200
Prerequisites	None

Black Cloud Difficulty Rating

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Why not also check out our blog – Ultimate Guide to Acing Your Salesforce Certifications

Topics & Weightings

Find below an outline of the Salesforce Sales Representative certification. (In each bullet point there is a link – this will take you to an associated Trailhead module for you to practice).

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Important Topics for the Exam

Use the below information as recommendations for what you should be revising and have a strong knowledge of before entering the Salesforce Sales Representative certification exam. Take this as a high level “cheat sheet” of information.

Planning (21%)

• Best practices to help sales team
  • Define the sales process
  • Inspect the forecast constantly – review the forecast often, including on dedicated calls with the sales team
  • Track the forecast in Salesforce
• The Sales Path is used to guide sales reps through the sales cycle
• Managing key accounts allows brands to
  • Design smarter territories that positively impact sales performance and revenue growth
  • unlock account collaboration to increase productivity with shared tools
  • Engage in joint business planning. Integrating channel planning and budgeting
  • Optimise trade promotions to get a 360 degree view of spend and ROI
  • Forecast customer demand to gain complete commercial visibility and drive transparency and profitability within accounts
• KPIs
  • Growth – Sales volume, revenue and margins. Can be based on region, account or product category mix
  • Revenue – Sales volume figures for accounts. Revenue can also be measured by volume
  • Margin – deliver the growth and revenue targets in accordance with a certain margin goal
  • Trade spend – trade spend budgets are fixed or delivered from a live rate percentage of revenue available to reach targets for the year to date
• Activity measures – KPIs that focus on actions sales people do, like number of meetings, calls etc. These are what will help reps reach outcome based measures
• Outcome measures – on the end result of these actions, and are usually tied to money.
• Types of incentives –
  • Cash incentives or commission
  • Material or Cash related goods
  • Social Recognition
• The Dale Carnegie Sales Model
  • Connect – Show that you care about the customer and their needs
  • Collaborate – Uncover true needs, wants, goals and desires
  • Create – work with your customer to find the solution that meets their needs and goals
  • Confirm – Confirm with the customer that the presented solution will be effective
  • Commit – Your customers commit to the purchase, and you commit to the following up and continuing a relationship with them
• Relationship selling focuses on
  • Long term results
  • Building trust
  • Offering insights
  • Creating value for the customer
• Transactional selling focuses on
  • Short sighted, one off deals
  • Making a sale
  • Product
  • Price
• When telling the story, include the following elements
  • Incident – the customers situation before your solution
  • Action – what the customer did to solve the problem (using your solution)
  • Benefit – how the solution solved the problem, and the value the customer received
• Client credibility statement is made of three steps
  • Make a connection – start a convo, or steer a convo towards a challenge or opportunity that the customer is facing
  • Strike a nerve – get their attention by relating directly to their wants and needs, or cite an industry related challenge that you know you can solve – no selling yet
  • Tell a story – build trust by describing how a similar client has benefitted
• Clarifying questions
  • In what regard?
  • How so?
  • Tell me more
  • How do you mean?
  • Tell me why…
  • That word has a lot of different meanings, what does it mean to you
• Confirming questions can casually end with ‘is that right’?
  • What I’m hearing you say is…
  • Let me test my understanding
  • It sounds like…
  • As I understand, you…
• Questioning model – helps you draw out the needs of teh customer by focusing on As Is, Should Be, Change, and Payout questions
• Summary Statement should:
  • Begin with a statement, ‘based on what you have told me’
  • Be quick, simple statement
  • Make a specific recommendation
  • Reference the customers Should Be. Payout that you uncovered through the questioning process
  • Use a confident tone and powerful words
• Demonstrate the value of what you’re offering using
  • Fact – specific, and true statements. These might be accepted without hesitation, or sometimes require proof
  • Benefit – brief, clear descriptions of how any customer will apply and benefit from your solution. Should be directly related to the fact
  • Application – How the specific customer will benefit from the solution. Make it personal.
• How to listen effectively – Dale Carnagie
  • Maintain eye contact with the person that is talking
  • Observe body language for incongruent messages
  • Listen empathetically and listen to understand. Act like there is a quiz at the end
  • Practice patience. Do not interrupt.
  • Clarify any uncertainties after the person has spoken
  • Don’t jump to conclusions or make assumptions
  • Turn off your mind and be with the speaker. See things from their perspective
• Levels of listening
  • Enthusiastic – listening with your ears and eyes
  • Attentive
  • Selective
  • Pretend
  • Ignore
• Tactics to address objections (Dale Carnagie)
  • Cushion – Recognise the importance, doesn’t agree or disagree, just acknowledges what was conveyed
  • Clarify – Ask a non threatening question to clarify the objective
  • Cross-Check – Confirm that the specific hesitation is the only factor preventing the commitment
  • Reply – Deny, admit or reverse the hesitation, provide an explanation
    • Deny – deny falsehoods or misinformation
    • Admin – admin current or past problems
    • Reverse – Turn objections into reasons for buying
  • Trail commitment – Ask a question to determine if the objection has been resolved
• Methods to gain customer commitment
  • Direct question method
  • Alternate choice method
  • Minor point method
  • Next step methor
  • Opportunity Method
  • Weighing Method
• Dale Carnegie’s methods to develop continues business in order of effectiveness
  • Referrals
  • Social media
  • Cold calling
  • Door to door
  • Semindars
  • mass emails
  • Networking events
• Customer Continuum
  • Hostile
  • Resistant
  • Discontent
  • Ambivalent
  • Favorable
  • Supportive
  • Champion – people who are loyal to you and your solution. Refer others to you.

Customer Engagement (15%)

• You can take control and redirect the customer conversation by using OFNR questions
  • Observation – what is the conflict? What stake is at jeopardy?
  • Feeling – how did or do they feel about the focus of the conversation?
  • Need – What does the customer need
  • Request – what are they asking
• Best practices further steer the conversation in a productive direction
  • Manage emotions – focus on the customer and their body lanaguage, not your personal feelings or emotions
  • Give aknowledgement – allow the customer to talk, practice active listening and paraphrase with empathy
  • Be transparent – If you misstep, take responsibility. Stick to teh facts, avoid power struggles over who is right
  • Be solution focused – provide the right recommendation – one that helps move the customer towards success, deliver in the right time
  • Adopt a mindset of inquiry – after you’ve acknowledge the customer and taken the necessary responsibility, its time to ask questions so you can get a clear view of the issue
• When we receive information, the brain sends it to two locations
  • Prefrontal cortex – helps make choices, . Keeps us calm, rational and logical
  • Amygdala – can impede your hippocampus from getting the full story during stages of heightened emotions
• Tips for preparing for and conducting a difficult conversation
  • Focus on breathing before the meeting
  • Stand in a power pose before the meeting begins
  • Listen to a song of playlist to calm your brain
  • Write down the facts for the meeting and create an outline with the key items you have to hit during the meeting
  • Practice your message in the car, shower or with a manager.
  • Bring a notepad and pen instead of your computer. Computers can block eye contact
  • Make eye contact
  • Set the expectations – you may be aware that this conversation isn’t going to occur in one instance, its OK to set the expectations up front by giving a hard out for yourself
• The art of problem solving
  • Make recommendations – finding the right solution that works for the customer right now
  • Be transparent – if you don’t have the answer – tell them
  • Focus on solutions – Means putting aside your own agenda
  • Follow up with progress
• Design thinking – creative problem-solving process used to find novel solutions
• Types of perspective
  • Desirability – Perspective focuses on who the user is, what they care about and why
  • Feasibility – Perspective focused on technologies and tools they can use to address a need or opportunity
  • Viability – Perspective focus on a given business strategy of a financial target
• Cold calling – the solicitation of business from potential customers who have had no prior contact with the Salesperson
• Tips for cold calling
  • Explain your value proposition
  • Draft your questions
  • Approach your prospect as a person, not a target
• Four stages in the buying process
  • Attention – the customer is aware of the product
  • Interest – the customer demonstrates a desire to learn more about the product
  • Desire – the customer chooses to purchase the product
  • Action – the customer makes the purchase
• Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT) – a survey asks customers to rate their satisfaction directly on a scale. Usually summarised 1-5
• Customer Engagement Score (CES) – A survey Asia how much ease the customer feels while interacting with your businesss, good for measuring customer loyalty
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Measures the extend to which customers would proactively refer the company to someone else. It is a reflection of a customer loyalty and retention

Deal Management (37%)

• BANT framework – lead qualification decisions based on:
  • Budget – there is always a budget, is theres suitable?
  • Authority – Sales reps may move away from leads that seem too junior
  • Need – Think of need as a spectrum within an individual sales lead
  • Timing – Nobody likes a long sales cycle, particularly those doing the selling
• Sales Process is a series of steps that move a sales rep from product and market research through to closed sale and after sales
• Stages of a successful sales process
  • Research
    • Build product knowledge
    • Research your ideal prospect
  • Prospecting
    • Lead generation
    • Quality prospects
    • Analyse a customers needs
  • Sales call and close
    • Lead a sales call
    • Follow up and close the deal
  • Relationship building
    • Nurture the relationship and upsell
• Common mistakes to avoid in the sales process
  • Don’t be unprepared
  • Don’t skip the discovery call
  • Don’t make teh sales pitch before qualifying the lead
  • Don’t highlight features, highlight value
  • Don’t be unempathetic
  • Don’t talk to much
• Different types of sales methodologies
  • Challenger Selling – these reps are all about pulling prospects into their world, instead of the other way around
  • Trigger or signal based selling – Looks for signs of customer need in data trends, then addresses this with product or service solution
  • Value based selling – leans heavily on value first engagement and a customer centric sales approach
  • 360 degree selling – focused on long term relationship building. SAlesforce calls it the Customer 360 Methodology
• Customer centric discovery had 4 steps
  • Goals – what they want to achieve
  • Values – What their guidance principles are internally and with their consumers
  • Initiatives – What they do now to achieve their goals
  • Strategies – what they plan to do to achieve their goals
  • Obstacles – what problems they face as they work to achieve goals
• Revenue model
  • Subscription – recurring fee
  • On Premises – buys software outright, revenue is recognised up front for the licenses
• Deal terms
  • Annual Order Value – value of the contract
  • Total Contract Value – Total amount a contract is worth
  • Annual contract value – How much the value of a tract has gone up or down compared to last year
  • Revenue – Money your company earns can recognise in its financial statements
  • Deferred Revenue – Cash up front on a subscription contract based on invoice generated. Turns into revenue as you deliver the services
• Pricing Terms
  • Worldwide/company price list – list for all product SKYs
  • Discount approval matrix – Hierarchy of approvers for pricing discount percentage based pricing – list of products with derived pricing
  • Pricing system – colour coded, this guidance helps you know if your pricing is great, good or below average
  • Percentage based pricing – list of products with derived pricing
  • Approval matrix quoting – A hierarchy of approvers for contractual terms of a deal
• Pricing strategies
  • Cost Plus pricing – Take the base cost of production, or cost of going business, and add to that a markup
  • Bundle pricing – combine several products or services to create an incentive to buy more at a lower price than buying each individually
  • Value based pricing – pricing based on the customers perception of how valuable your product is
  • Competitor based pricing – Price products or services based on your competitors pricing
  • Price skimming – set a higher price and slowly lower the price as more and more competitors enter the market
• A sales proposal – a document you create to show the value of your product or service. Show your prospect why they should invest in yo and how you can help their business
• Important elements of sales proposals are
  • Description of products and services
  • List of customer needs and challenges
  • Explanation of how your product or service will benefit them, why they need it
  • ROI
• Elements to include in sales proposal
  • Title
  • Introduction
  • Challenges
  • Solution you can provide
  • Selling proposition and benefits
  • Pricing
  • Timeline
  • Case studies
  • Client testimonials
  • Terms and conditions
  • Next steps
• Objection – a statement or question that indicate a barrier in the buying process
• Objections can be great becasue
  • Give you clues to what the customer cares about
  • Helps you determine whether to move forward in the sales process
  • Show you that customers want to hear more
• Objection types
  • Product or feature
  • Price
  • Business – authority based objection – prevents customer from making a decision
  • Implementation or integration – specific to how the customers business operates
  • Hidden – have to ask more questions to uncover
  • Stalling – objection customer use to block progress in teh sales process
• Steps to handling objections
  • Defuse- acknowledge the objections and address the emotion behind it
  • Discover – ask questions to get more details
  • Deliver – respond to the objection
• A sales contract – agreement between buyer and seller
• Sales contracts often include
  • Sales agreement
  • Order forms
  • Change order forms – allow buyers to make changes
  • Mater service agreements – long term agreements, outline the terms and conditions
  • Statement of work – contracted work and services
  • Terms of service – define how users interact with offerings such as digital products, websites, mobile apps, softwares etc.
  • Renewal and upsell agreement – a renewal is a contract where a customer chooses to renew a previous contract.

Pipeline Management (12%)

• Sales pipeline – summary of available and upcoming sales opportunities
• Seven main stages of sales pipeline
  • Prospecting – through ads, public relations and other promotion activities, potential customers discovery your business
  • Lead qualification – move leads downstream, e.g. offer an ebook. White paper, webinar or another type of lead magnet.
  • Demo or meeting – afterward, schedule a demo or meeting to introduce potential buyers to your offerings
  • Proposal – Make your case by summarising how your company can help address the potential customers needs
  • Negotiate and commitment – discuss expanding or shrinking the scope of work, adjusting pricing, and managing expectations to come to agreement
  • Opportunity won – close the sale and move towards order fulfilment
  • Post purchase – sales should be considered closed at the first contract signing, instead your reps should invest in providing exceptional service during onboarding and regular monitoring the accounts progress
• How to create sales pipeline
  • Lead source – determine how your leads find your business
  • Industry – find the industry that your product is more popular
  • Decision markers involved – always count the number of client side contact you need to lease with.
  • Deal size – some buyers are ready to spend lots of money on products, while some not so much money/ Segment them accordingly
  • Probability to close – estimate how likely each lead is to convert into a c storeroom based on your teams conversations with them
• Key sales pipeline metrics
  • Conversation rate – the percentage of leads that convert to opps
  • Sales velocity – how much revenue does your team generate each day
  • Sale pipeline value – tally up the dollar value of every deal in the popeline
  • Sales cycle length – how much time passes between a rep qualifying a lead, and then closing that deal?

Forecasting (12%)

• Sales forecasting should be based on 5 simple questions
  • Who – sales team should make forecasts based on their prospects.
  • What – exactly what solutions you plan to sell.
  • Where – in what location is the prospect making their buying decision?
  • Why – Why is the prospect or existing customer considering new services?
  • How – how does the prospect make purchasing decisions?
• A sales forecast – an expression of expected sales revenue. Estimates how much your company plans to sell within a certain time period
• Teams usually responsible for sales forecast
  • Product leaders – put a stake in the ground for what products will be available to sell and when
  • Sales leaders – promise the numbers that their teams will deliver. Depending on the seniority of the leader, how they forecast will vary
  • Sales reps – report on their own numbers to their managers
• Objectives of sales forecasting
  • Smooth internal operations – when forecast met, the friction inside the organisation goes away
  • Smooth external operations – when forecasts met – internal operations are flowing as they should be, company can continue finding external marketing events, staffing ample customer service touch points, investing in community etc.
• Sales forecasting plan focuses on 3 primary activities
  • Calculating number and time period – explain how you’ll calculate the estimated monetary amount and what timeframes
  • Reviewing and revising – you should also plan to review the forecast at key milestones and revise if necessary
  • Breaking the patterns – burlap you find new ways of crafting even more accurate forecasting

Customer Success (9%)

• Top 5 factors driving customer success growth
  • Demand for improved b2b experiences
  • Need to accelerate embedded customer base growth
  • Opportunity to create shared risks and shared acountability
  • Discovery hidden customer needs
  • Innovate together
• 4 steps to value selling
  • Do your discovery – know the customer
  • Build a value hypothesis – turn customers pain into gains with your solution
  • Create a cost benefit analysis – show how the benefits of an investment in your solution outweigh the cost
  • Build you business case – Bring it all together in executive ready form
• 6 differentiators that set Salesforce araprt
  • Intelligence
  • Speed with the platform
  • Mobility
  • Productivity
  • Connectivity
  • Customer success

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Salesforce Sales Representative Definitions

Use the below as a dictionary for the exam – most of the wordings and definitions you will need to know and understand

• Pipeline – Comprehensive view of a reps open opportunities, no matter what stage they’re in. It includes everything from the newest prospect, to opportunities that are nearly signed off on.
• Forecast – Is a subset of the pipeline, and includes just those deals expected to close in a certain period, like this quarter, or this month.
• The Sales Path/Process – Used to show your Sales Reps where they need to go. Helps adopt and adhere to your company’s sales processes without getting sidetracked.
• Activity Measures – KPIs that focus on actions sales people do, like number of meetings, calls etc. These are what will help reps reach outcome based measures.
• Outcome measures – These KPIs are the end result of the action measures, and are usually tied to money or something tightly aligned with the companies measurements.
• Incentive – A sales incentive is a reward/compensation (cash or non-cash) that’s given to a salesperson for performing up to a level, mainly for selling a particular amount of goods or services.
• KPI – Key Performance Indicator – A type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organisation/individual or of a particular activity in which it engages.
• Design Thinking – Creative problem-solving process used to find novel solutions.
• Cold Calling – The solicitation of business from potential customers who have had no prior contact with the Salesperson (If you have ever had a random call from somebody you don’t know and they try to sell you something, this is a form of cold calling. Usually done very badly – but can be effective depending on the industry and the way it’s done).
• Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT) – A survey asks customers to rate their satisfaction directly on a scale. Usually summarised 1-5.
• Customer Engagement Score (CES) – A survey asks how much ease the customer feels while interacting with your business, good for measuring customer loyalty.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Measures the extent to which customers would proactively refer the company to someone else. It is a reflection of a customer loyalty and retention.
• A Sales Proposal – A document you create to show the value of your product or service. Show your prospect why they should invest in you and how you can help their business.
• A Sales Contract – Agreement between buyer and seller.
• Objection – A statement or question that indicate a barrier in the buying process.
• Annual Order Value – Full value of the contract
• Total Contract Value – Total amount a contract is worth
• Annual contract value – How much the value of a tract has gone up or down compared to last year
• Revenue – Money your company earns can recognise in its financial statements
• Deferred Revenue – Cash up front on a subscription contract based on invoice generated. Turns into revenue as you deliver the services
• Account – A company/customer in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management System)
• Lead – A prospect
• Opportunity – A qualified prospect – when they have been clarified to have actual interest in a product or service (a progression on from a lead).

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Our thoughts on the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification exam

• Slightly different format to most Salesforce exams. Still hosted on Webassessor, but the questions themselves are single choice questions, with 3 available answers. Instead of a mix of single and multiple choice questions, and answer usually being 4-5 options.
• Requires a strong understanding of typical sales cycles and given a scenario – what stage in a sales cycle it would be covered under. Or the opposite – given a sales cycle, what activity would happen there.
• Requires strong knowledge on Pipeline Management and Forecasting
• Requires an understanding of job roles, as well as what they mean to your company (e.g. decision maker, influencer, etc.)
• The exam itself is quite easy if you have a background in sales, we believe most of it is comprised of ‘common sense’ in sales.
• It is not completely focused on Salesforce, so you don’t have to know too much about Salesforce itself, but it will help if you have been an end user before.

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Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Revision Materials

Description	URL
Salesforce Trailhead should be where you always start when undertaking a new exam. Each certification page in Trailhead will have a suggested Trailmix – complete this. (Free)	Trailhead: Sales Representative Trailmix
Salesforce Trailhead also has Exam Guides for each of its certifications, here it will outline what’s expected of people sitting the exams, and what you should focus your revision on. (Free)	Trailhead: Sales Representative Certification Exam Guide
Black Cloud Salesforce Sales Representative Practice Exams – sit practice exam questions that very closely mirror that of the actual exam. (Paid)	TBC
Blog: Ultimate Guide to acing your Salesforce Certifications – Black Cloud. This blog goes extremely in-depth into what it takes to pass a Salesforce Certification, and how you can increase your chances for all Salesforce Certifications. (Free)	Blog: Ultimate Guide to acing your Salesforce Certification

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Conclusion

Whether you are directly a Sales rep, or work closely/in a sales team – the Salesforce Sales Representative certification is a great way to show off your sales skills and professionalism. With a little bit of smart preparation, you too can pass this certification and join many of our students who have been on their way to becoming a Salesforce Certified Sales Representative.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

Is the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification exam hard?

We believe this is a scale of 0 (Beginner) -100% (Advanced), this exam is a 40% in difficulty.

How much does the Salesforce Sales Representative certification cost?

The registration fee for the Salesforce Data Cloud Consultant exam is USD $200, with a USD $100 retake fee.

How can I register for the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification exam?

Everything you need to know about the exam can be found at trailhead.com, or directly you can sign up/log in at webassessor.com

How long do I need to revise for the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification

If you have adequate Sales experience, we think 2-3 weeks of steady revision is enough for this exam.