Salesforce has empowered many organizations with cloud-based solutions, and it continues to evolve to meet the needs of businesses worldwide and show them the best practices through the Salesforce Trailhead platform.
As a result, Salesforce professionals and job aspirants are eager to learn new skills to boost their employability and drive business success. So whether you’re a seasoned Salesforce professional or a newcomer in the Salesforce market, you can acquire the skills from Salesforce’s very own learning platform.
Salesforce Trailhead is your gateway to a world of unlimited learning that helps you align with the ever-changing Salesforce ecosystem. Here, you can learn the most in-demand skills and harness the platform’s power. And in this article, we’ll explore what it is and how you can use it to upskill as a Salesforce professional.
What Is Salesforce Trailhead?
Salesforce Trailhead is an interactive learning platform that helps Salesforce enthusiasts learn the CRM software inside out and keep up with its new features and updates. With its gamified approach, Trailhead makes learning a fun and rewarding experience. As you progress with your learning plan and finish modules, you earn badges, which is a great way to showcase your expertise and achievements.
However, Salesforce Trailhead isn’t another run-of-the-mill e-learning platform. It’s also a community of like-minded individuals with a similar passion for Salesforce. You can interact with peers, participate in fun challenges and find opportunities for networking, mentorship, and collaboration.
Some of the key features you’ll love in Salesforce Trailhead include:
- Guided learning paths, a.k.a “trails,” to help individuals gain expertise in specific areas of Salesforce.
- Each trail consists of interactive modules that dive deep into Salesforce concepts and applications. These modules are accompanied by interactive elements such as quizzes, hands-on experience, and real-world scenarios to help you apply what you learn.
- Trailhead gamifies the learning process by awarding points, badges, and ranks for completing modules and challenges.
- It has an active and engaging community of learners and experts called Trailblazers. This is where you can ask questions, interact with other Salesforce professionals, find entrepreneurial opportunities, and much more!
- The learning platform keeps up with the evolving Salesforce ecosystem, which means you can get access to learning modules related to the latest Salesforce features.
- The learning platform supports multiple devices, such as laptops, mobile phones, and tablets, allowing seamless learning on the go.
Is Salesforce Trailhead Free?
Salesforce Trailhead is free to use – even without a Salesforce account. However, if you want to create customized learning environments for your teams, Trailhead does offer paid plans starting at $25 per month.
Moreover, if you want to get certified on Salesforce Trailhead, you can purchase the certification ranging from $200 to $400, depending on the type of certification. These certifications help you stand out in the job market and are an excellent way to showcase your expertise in Salesforce. They’re especially great if you’re applying for a more senior position or aiming for a promotion in your company.
Components of Trailhead
Salesforce Trailhead offers various learning components to help you progress in your journey and pick up skills effectively. The secret? Its gamified approach:
- Badges: You earn badges as you complete the units in a module.
- Superbadges: These are rewards you earn by testing your knowledge in real-world scenarios. Once you complete the foundational modules, a superbadge gets activated.
- Projects: Want real-life industry experience with Salesforce? The “projects” section in your dashboard will help you get hands-on experience in multiple niches.
- Trails: A group of modules that help you learn a particular topic.
- Trailmixes: These are learning paths you can custom-create for yourself or your team.
- Trailblazer.me: It’s a free account where you can access all the digital products offered by Salesforce, including Trailhead, AppExchange, Trailblazer community, Salesforce help, and more.
- Instructor-led Classes: You can access video lectures led by Salesforce experts covering a wide range of in-demand topics.
Who Can Use Trailhead?
The best thing about Salesforce Trailhead is its versatility. It caters to all skill levels, from novice to expert, and creates a dedicated learning path according to your needs.
Salesforce Trailhead for Beginners
Trailhead is an excellent resource for those who are new to Salesforce. It offers a beginner-friendly learning path that anyone can follow along to build a solid foundation on Salesforce concepts. You can start from the basics while moving at your own pace and gradually progress to more advanced topics.
Salesforce Professionals
What’s more powerful than your own team of Salesforce experts ready to conquer the world? Trailhead makes it a breeze for Salesforce professionals to expand their existing knowledge of the platform and become a pro.
In fact, companies such as Manulife use the learning platform to build internal competencies and drive Salesforce adoption within their organization. They designed a custom 6-month contest motivating their employees to complete certifications, earn badges and win rewards.
This not only reduced their dependency on Salesforce system integrators but also helped create a culture of learning within their organization.
Salesforce Trailhead for Salesforce Admins
Of course, admins can leverage the platform to deepen their understanding of administrative tasks, configuration options, and security best practices. It offers step-by-step guidance on setting up and managing Salesforce instances, creating custom objects and fields, defining user roles and permissions, and more.
Salesforce Developers
Trailhead also offers modules on programming languages such as Apex and Lightning Web Components. It offers a vast library of tutorials on integrating external systems, customizing user interfaces, and leveraging Salesforce APIs, which makes it a hit among Salesforce developers.
Consultants
Salesforce consultants, partners, and operations analysts can use Trailhead to gain in-depth knowledge of Salesforce implementation methodologies, design solutions, and run successful Salesforce projects. For example, NewVoiceMedia used Trailhead to create an onboarding program that teaches their newbie consultants the ins and outs of the Salesforce platform. As a result, they were able to get their new hires certified for their specific roles.
Salesforce Trailhead for Sales and Marketing Professionals
Salesforce Trailhead offers dedicated trails and modules to work on Salesforce’s sales and marketing functionalities, including:
- Lead management
- Campaign management
- Customer engagement
- Creating custom reports
- Leveraging analytics tools such as Salesforce Einstein Analytics
- Team collaboration
And more! All in all, it’s the perfect way to show your team how they can stay synced and aligned on the most important goals in your organization.
HR Professionals
Onboarding new employees remains a top challenge for HR managers, and Salesforce streamlines the process for them by storing and managing employee information and automating various workflows.
Metacube faced similar challenges with its onboarding process and needed a strategy to reduce its onboarding time. That’s when Trailhead came into the picture! Using Trailhead, they were able to curate job-specific trail mixes. Their new and existing employees would easily consume on-demand content that reduced manual work for them, reducing the overall onboarding time by 30%!
How to Use Salesforce Trailhead
- Create a free Trailhead account by visiting trailhead.com. (You can also sign up using your existing Salesforce credentials if you’re on a plan already.)
- Explore the recommended trails, popular modules, and featured content to see what the platform offers.
- Choose a trail or module that aligns with your interests and goals.
- Start your learning journey—read the content, watch videos, and take quizzes and hands-on exercises to maximize your learning experience.
- As you progress through the learning plan, you’ll earn badges. Aim to earn as many as possible to showcase your achievements.
- Track your progress and rank in the Trailblaze community to know where you stand compared to your peers.
- Pursue certifications to validate your skills.
Grow Your Salesforce Skills with Trailhead
Salesforce Trailhead is an exceptional learning platform for professionals looking to learn Salesforce and become experts at it. The platform is user-friendly, interactive, and well-structured, allowing a seamless learning experience. Moreover, it fosters a powerful community that connects peers, industry experts, and job seekers to network and share insights on Salesforce-related topics.
However, Salesforce Trailhead isn’t enough to become a Salesforce expert! Despite how comprehensive it is in terms of its learning plans and content, it’s still just theoretical learning. Real learning comes from applying your knowledge in the real world and experimenting.
So, leverage Trailhead as much as possible while gaining hands-on experience in Salesforce, and you’ll soon become the master of the most popular CRM in the world!
