What do you do?
I’m a Salesforce Administrator.
<Blank Stare>

Raise your hand if you’ve gotten this response too. Even in the tech industry or business world, often times, people assume that means something different than it does.

Maybe they think you are an assistant to the Sales Manager, or some other role in ‘Sales’ related to ‘Administration’ – which (TBH) most people think of as paper pushing.

So, what is a Salesforce admin? A Salesforce Administrator is a business leader, deeply knowledgeable about how their company operates, intertwined in making all departments successful through process automations, and thus, integral to running a smooth & lean business.

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/05/what-is-a-salesforce-admin.html

Definitely not just a paper pusher, and not just specific to ‘Sales’. And look at those descriptors:

• business leader
• deeply knowledgeable
• intertwined
• integral

When I was asked to take over setting up a Salesforce CRM 12 years ago, I didn’t know what it meant to be a Salesforce Administrator. I knew it looked like a pretty cool tool (I love new tech) and I knew it represented something I could really sink my teeth into and learn (learning new things is my favorite) and ultimately I had hoped it would help me become more useful and maybe even indispensable in my company.

So fast forward to now and I look at that description of a Salesforce Administrator and I can honestly say I definitely feel as if this is an accurate description.

But it’s not the title that makes me a ‘business leader’, or ‘deeply knowledgeable’, or ‘intertwined’ and ‘integral’ to the business. Those things came from me. From my drive to become those things. From my love of innovation.

This past Dreamforce I was asked to be a part of the Admin Keynote. If you are a long time reader of my blog you may remember this post in 2015 which showed my excitement when celebrating Admins became official at the largest tech conference in the world.

I sat in the crowd in 2014 for the first EVER Admin Keynote and would never have imagined that day that five years later I would actually be featured and get to talk to THE Parker Harris to a room of over 6000 people and simulcast live across the globe.

Parker’s question to me: What’s your advice to everyone on how to deliver innovation?

My answer: I’ve got an E.A.S.Y. formula for you to remember! (because awesome admins love to write formulas, right SteveMo?)

So this is Innovating the E.A.S.Y. way:

Embrace Change

Always Be Learning

Show Your Work

You Got This

Over the next four blog posts, I’ll take a deeper dive into each of these and show you how you can ramp up your innovation game and become the awesome Salesforce Admin described above using this formula!

What are some other adjectives you would use to describe the role of Salesforce Administrator? How do you describe it when asked ‘What do you do?’