How I Passed the Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant Exam

I successfully passed the Sales Cloud Consultant exam today and it was pretty tough. I used 103 of the 105 minutes allotted but I did the same on all the exams. When I pay $200 out of my own pocket to take an exam, I’m using all the time to check each answer until I feel in my gut that it’ the best answer I have to give.

It took me about 30 minutes to do my first response answers for all 60 questions and I use the pencil and paper given by the administrator to rate my feeling about each answer on a scale of 1 to 3.

• 1 = I am unsure of my answer or the question and want to prioritize these first in the review before submitting


• 2 = Pretty sure of my initial answer but want to review it before submitting


• 3=Dead sure of the answer, no need to re-review before submitting

I memorized the breakdown of my initial answers and 13% (8) were 1s, 65% (39) were 2s and 22% (13) were 3s. Carving out the 3s, I focused on the 1s and found the best answers, then combed through each 2 until I had them all re-reviewed.

Pushing the submit button is the most nerve wracking moment of the whole exam because you know that in 2 seconds your resume and respect in the Salesforce industry is either going to change…or it isn’t. I always put a hand on my gut, close my eyes and ask myself if I have answered every answer to the best of my ability, if I’ve considered every word in every question and whether I’ve employed all my knowledge and experience in every answer.

Then I press the button.

So, my first piece of advice on those taking this exam is to obviously use the study guide. I create a word document and type out each question with a Header 1 font type, starting with the section that is valued the most in the exam. Then, I go through the questions one by one, typing out my study notes, using Salesforce Help, the Developer community and my own experience. The latter is going to be your most valuable asset in this exam. It’s import to keep in mind that this is not a test of how the system works, it’s a test on how you can make the system work for a customer who is giving you specific requirements they want developed or situations they are in and want to get out of. This means not only do you need to know what the system does; you need to know how it works best and then how to apply that knowledge to a client’s pain points.  It’s about being a good consultant.

In other words, it’s a difficult exam to study for and pass. You have to do a lot of reactive thinking and the best reactive thinking comes from the muscle memory of experience—sorry to be a downer for those new to Salesforce Development and Administration who were hoping to walk in and ace the test but if you were able to do that, it would make the achievements of those of us who’ve earned the knowledge through years of mistakes and successes in the system, that much less. My experience with Salesforce is six years of being a user, five years of administration and configuration development and about a year of Apex and Visualforce. I’ve worked in five different systems ranging from 6 users to over 8,000 and I’ve seen a lot of wrong ways and a lot of amazing ways to do things. No matter what your experience level, make sure you use at least 100 minutes of the testing time and give it the best you have.

 

PHOTO: Stretch © by Byron and Tamara

Comments

[GG]

Hey Joshua,

Thanks a lot for this information. I am a Salesforce certified consultant. I have cleared CON201 exam last year.
Can you please tell the difference between nature of questions for CON201 and new Sales cloud certification exam? From your comments, it seems like Sales cloud exam is similar to CON201

Thanks

[Wendy]

To whomever posted that comment ... the Sales Cloud and the old Consultant exam are very similar (I have passed Admin, Adv Admin, Consultant, Developer, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud). I found a LOT more "pick 3 out of 5" questions (which make it very difficult) and the outlier answers (the ones that are false) sound much more likely that the obviously wrong ones in the original Consultant exam. I use a similar question tracking system as Joshua mentioned -- except I create 3 columns on a piece of scratch paper and label them "Know," "Short," and "Long." Then I write the number of each question into one of the 3 columns (I circle it to ensure the numbers don't run together). The "Short" ones mean I can review the question and options quickly (e.g. short situation summary or pretty sure of the answer) and make a decision. The "Long" questions I leave until the end - either I have no clue what the answer is or it'll take a while to read the question closely enough to differentiate between the possible answers. I calculated that I need 44 questions in the "Know" column before I hit submit. If I don't have 44, I figure out how many more I need and ensure I have 3 times that number in the "Short" column - double-circled to indicate that I'm more sure of those answers than the others. I used up all but 5 min of time on both the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud tests ... and I've been doing SFDC consulting for 6 years. In my head, I kept yelling "It depends!!" to many of the questions that had realistic scenarios but the recommendations I'd give a client aren't listed as possible answers! Tough exams. BTW, Service Cloud is easily twice as hard as the Sales Cloud.

[Maddy]

Hi, Thanks for your valuable inputs. I have around 9 years of experience in sales & marketing. Now I am planning to do Salesforce certification to get a job in IT industry. In regards to this can you please guide what is the best suited certification to me based on my experience. And do you know any training institutions for certification in UK.

Request you to guide me.

Thanks & Regards.

[cbse question bank]

Wow, theres some nice links there - where do you find them all? I’m going to read all those through in detail and apply a few.. Thanks for sharing!

[Mariano]

Hi Joshua,

Few month ago I took the ADM201 certification. Now I'm studing for take the Sales Cloud Consultant Certification. In addition, I don't have a lot expierence in salesforce implementation. Could you say the study material that I should use for my case?

Thanks Mariano

[Abhishek]

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