How to Pass Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam
1. About the Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam
 | Salesforce Certified Sales Representative candidates exemplify sales excellence using a customer-centric methodology. The Salesforce Certified Sales Representative develops trusted relationships with their customers, ensures deal success by aligning with entire account teams, executive sponsors, and stakeholders, and takes full ownership of the sales process by planning, managing, and analyzing their business. |
 | Content | 60 multiple-choice questions and up to 5 non-scored questions |
 | Time allotted | 105 minutes |
 | Passing score | 70% (42 out of 60 questions) |
 | Exam Fee | USD 200 plus applicable taxes |
 | Retake Fee | USD 100 plus applicable taxes |
 | Prerequisite | None |
For an up-to-date information about this exam please refer the exam guide.
2. Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam Outline
2.1 Planning: 21%
- Describe the elements of territory planning.
- Create an approach to engage key accounts.
- Calculate sales quota attainability based on account, territory, and prospect insights.
- Develop business relationships and build partnerships with key roles and personas.
2.2 Customer Engagement: 15%
- Demonstrate thought leadership and build credibility to shift the customer’s thinking.
- Leverage multiple touchpoints to build prospect interest and align on why a solution meets their needs.
- Nurture relationships and drive product adoption to maximize value for the customer.
2.3 Deal Management: 37%
- Identify how to qualify a prospect and when to move to the next stage of the sales process.
- Determine customer’s business strategies, goals, initiatives, and challenges to define the scope of the solution.
- Develop and present the value proposition of a solution based on customer needs.
- Identify and remove all challenges to finalize the deal.
- Gain customer commitment and close formal contract.
2.4 Pipeline Management: 12%
- Identify and generate new pipeline.
- Analyze pipeline health insights ensuring data integrity to improve customer relevance.
- Explain pipe progression and stage velocity.
2.5 Forecasting: 6%
- Assess forecast accuracy to drive opportunity consistency.
- Measure the risks and opportunities associated with a business deal.
- Explain key inputs that drive the forecasting process.
2.6 Customer Success: 9%
- Identify the actions needed to book and fulfill orders.
- Identify the post-sales customer journey.
- Assess customer realized and expected value.
3. Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam Guide
4. Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam Trailmix
5. Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam Practice Questions
6. Important Topics for Salesforce Sales Representative Certification Exam
6.1 Planning: 21% (13 Questions)
- Pipeline is a comprehensive view of a rep’s open opportunities, no matter what stage they’re in. It includes everything from the newest prospect to that opportunity with a pen in hand, ready to sign.
- Forecast is a subset of the pipeline and includes just those deals expected to close in a certain period, like this quarter, for example.
- Best practices that can help your sales teams make smarter decisions
- Define Your Sales Process: Define these steps from start to finish, then communicate them to your entire sales team.
- Inspect the Forecast Constantly: Review your forecast data often, including on dedicated calls with your sales team
- Track Your Forecast in Salesforce: Your data is updated in real time, anytime a rep makes a change.
- Sales Path is used to guide Sales Reps through the sales cycle automatically.
- 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.
- Optimize trade promotions to achieve a 360-degree view of spend and return on investment (ROI).
- Forecast customer demand to gain complete commercial visibility and drive transparency and profitability within accounts.
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Growth: Nurture growth on metrics such as sales volume, revenue, and margins. Metrics can be based on a region, account, or product category mix.
- Revenue: Reach a sales volume figure in your accounts. In cases where there’s a universal unit of measure across multiple categories, 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 derived from a live rate percentage of revenue available to reach targets for the year to date.
- Activity measures are KPIs that focus on the actions sales people do daily, weekly, monthly, that help drive relationship building and connecting with new customers. Activity measures are designed to lead sales people to achieve outcome measures.
- Outcome measures focus on the end result of these actions, and are usually tied closer to money.
- Common incentives that may be found in an incentives package:
- Cash Incentives or Commission
- Material or Cash-Related Goods
- Social Recognition
- The Dale Carnegie Sales Model
- Step 1: Connect – Show that you care about the customer and their needs.
- Step 2: Collaborate – Uncover true needs, wants, goals, and desires.
- Step 3: Create – Work with your customer to find a solution that meets their needs and goals.
- Step 4: Confirm – Confirm with the customer that the presented solution will be effective.
- Step 5: Commit – Your customers commit to the purchase, and you commit to following up and continuing a relationship with them.
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- 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: Describe the customer’s situation before implementing your solution.
- Action: What the customer did to solve the problem (using your solution).
- Benefit: Describe how your solution solved the problem and the value received by the customer.
- Client Credibility Statement is made of three steps:
- Make a connection: This is when you either begin the conversation or casually steer the conversation toward a challenge or opportunity that your 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—but do not try to sell it just yet!
- Tell a story: This is your chance to build trust by describing how a similar client has benefitted.
- Clarifying Questions
- In what regard?
- How so?
- Tell me more…
- How do you mean?
- Oh?
- Tell me why…
- That word has so many different meanings. What does it mean to you?
- Confirming Questions which can usually end with, “Is that right?”
- What I’m hearing you say is…
- Let me test my understanding…
- It sounds like…
- It seems to me…
- As I understand it, you…
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- Questioning Model helps you draw out the needs of the customer by focusing on As Is, Should Be, Change, and Payout questions.
- The Summary Statement should:
- Begin with the statement, “Based on what you’ve told me…”
- Be a quick, simple statement.
- Make a specific recommendation.
- Reference the customer’s Should Be and 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, Benefit, Application:
- Facts are specific, true, provable statements. Some facts will be accepted without hesitation and some may require proof.
- Benefits are brief, clear descriptions of how any customer could use and enjoy the solution. The benefit should be directly related to the fact previously stated.
- Applications clarify how your specific customer will apply and benefit from the solution. This resonates strongly with the customer because it comes more personal.
- Dale Carnegie’s principles to help you listen effectively.
- Maintain eye contact with the person talking.
- Be sensitive to what is not being said. Observe body language for incongruent messages.
- Practice patience. Do not interrupt, finish the speaker’s sentence, or change the subject.
- Listen empathetically and listen to understand. Act as if there will be a quiz at the end.
- Clarify any uncertainties after the person has spoken. Make sure you understand what was said by rephrasing what you heard.
- Don’t jump to conclusions or make assumptions. Keep an open and accepting attitude.
- Practice empathetic listening. Remove all distractions.
- Turn off your mind and “be with” the speaker. Try to see things from their perspective.
- Levels of Listening:
- Empathetic – also involves listening with your eyes.
- Attentive
- Selective
- Pretend
- Ignore
- Dale Carnegie tactics to address objections:
| Tactic | Description |
|---|---|
| Cushion | A response that shows you listened to the concern and recognize its importance. It does not agree, disagree, or answer the objection. It acknowledges the emotion that was conveyed. |
| Clarify | Ask a nonthreatening question to clarify the objection. |
| 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. – Admit: Admit current or past problems. – Reverse: Turn objections into reasons for buying. |
| Trial Commitment | Ask a question to determine if the objection has been resolved. |
- Method to gain the customer’s commitment:
- Direct Question Method
- Alternate Choice Method
- Minor Point Method
- Next-Step Method
- Opportunity Method
- Weighing Method
- Dale Carnegie methods to develop continued business in order of effectiveness:
- Referrals
- Social media
- Cold calling
- Door-to-door
- Seminars
- Mass emails
- Networking events
- Customer Continuum
- Hostile
- Resistant
- Discontent
- Ambivalent
- Favorable
- Supportive
- Champion
- Champions are people who are loyal to you and your solution. They are likely to refer others to you. The best champions are articulate, dynamic, and well-respected within their organization.
- Dig Deeper into Relationship Selling
