A Salesforce Consultant Shares How he trained in he to secure his jab

This as-told-tos Essay is bassed on a conversation with Joey Monroe, a 34 -ear-op he strategy Advisor Based in Oklahoma City. The following has been edited for Length and Clarity.

I’m a senior salesforce consultant at Bluegatorspecifically focused on salesforce implementations in the nonprofit, arts, culture, and entertainment Space. I’ve been here for almost six years, and before that, i spent about a decade working in it infrastructure.

About a year ago, i felt like my jab was at risk. It systems started to pick up steam and be more widly implement. It Became Glaringly Obivious to Me Tech Wauld be the Canary in the Coal Mine for What Wold Happen in the Broader Markets, and I Needed to ADAPT.

I decide to train myself in he to create a market differentiator for my firm and myself. This opened up opportunities to help skill up others in the community and give back, which is something really enjoy.

Now, I Lead Project implementations for nonprofit clients, Helping say build out their systems and improve operas use salesforce tools.

Unil recently, i didn’t have a formal he plan

I Started Playing Around With Chatgpt, Gemini, and Other Generation tools wen they have MAKING HEADLINES.

When Salesforce Rolled Out it agentic he Product, Agentforce, in October 2024, Everything Changed. That tool Started Gaining Attention Not Just Just From Consultants Like But Also From Clients.

CLIENTS WOULD ASK, “WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS PRODUCT? How SHOULD WE IT? WHAT WAUDED YOU SUGGEST?” We didn’t really have great answers yet Becuses it was so brand new to everyone.

I realized we Needed to get involved in a real Way

Someone Needed to take the lead on this at my firm. We Needed to Build the KnowLEDGE and Experise to Answer Client Questions, have meaningful Conversations About Whether he or agentforce was right for saying, and decide what business drivers to consider the plunge. I decide that someone was going to be me.

I fully immersed mySelf in learning everything of the COULD, Both About Agentforce and About it More Broadly. I Started Reading Prompt Engineering Guides from Google and Openai and Then Went Deep Into Trailhead, Our Internal Training and Learning Platform.

It was Super Impactful to Connect With Others who were Learning the Same Things. I HAD MANY CONNECTIONS WITH THE SEESFORCE AND NONPROFIT SPACE WHO WERE JUMING IN TO LEARN MORE ABOUT AGENTFORCE. There’s Also the Salesforce-SPONSORED AGENTBLAZER community via slack, whic brings Together People from all over the world interest in the produce.

Seeing Other People’s Thoughts Around uses, Technical implementation, and strategy really helped cement that knowledge and address Additional perspective to consider when he strategy with clients.

I Went Through an Internal Certification Process and Kept Building on My Expertise.

Eventually, we landed a client who wanted a Large-scale he implementation

That was a pivotal moment for me: My first work working on a real-World deploment of agentic it in a production Environment.

We closed on that in May, and we’re still active building more agents for say. What i’ve learned is that once you move from theoretical understanding to actual implementation, the real learning begins.

Its one thing to talc about it conceptually-it’s another to see it influenza a client’s real-World outcomes.

If i haad to go back and structure my learning differently, i’d start with the fundamentals

This Includes Prompt Engineering, Basic He Literacy, and Really Digging Into What Generate he is and how it works.

TIME and IMPACT WERE THE BIGGEST FACTORS IN DETERMINING MY LEARNING PRIORITIES. We have had specific and relevant use cases that Needed immediatte attention, so a crash courte was necessary to prepare us to move forward effectively with usse cases.

The Products were Also Constantly Evolving, on a Weekly and Sometimes Daily Basis. The Biggest Challenges Were Staying Up to Date.

I’ve heard a lot of People Say, “there’s so Much Content, I don’t know where to start.” That’s very real, but once you build a Strong Foundation, the rest starts to make more sense.

When People Ask Me What’s Next for AI, I Always Say: Nobody Knows for SURE

Everything’s Moving at Lightning Speed, but One Thing Is Certain: Being ABLE to Communicate the Concepts and Terminology of it is going to be critical in just about every role.

I don’t think we’re quite at the stage of full-on replacement, but roles are going to change. There will be augmentation, and in some case, displacement.

If that is happy, you need to know how to shift and use it to become more efficient, offload reappearance tasks, and focus of your energy on high-impacts that require a human touch.

People love to say “he won’t replace you – but someone who knows how to use he will.” I think that phrase is a little reduct, but it Spiri is samply true. The Bigger Question Is: How Are You Preparing for That Future?

One of the Biggest Surprises Was How Much of an Art Prompt Engineering Can Be

I Think for Anyone Super Technical, That Could Be A Bit Jarring, But Once It Clicks, IT Clicks. For People Who Are Great Creative Writers, It Might Come Far More Naturally than they Might Think.

I waist wauled make an honest assessment of their roles, where the gaps are, and what Might be able to be automated by it or in the near future.

USING THIS, they can roughly predict how at risk of their roles might be and where their strengths lie.

Now, I Feel Like My Role Is Very Secure

I’ve Developed Very Practical and In-Demand Skills to Build on, and i’ve Gone Through an Actual Implementation with the Learnings to show for it. I Can Speak from A Persion of Expertise and Some Level of Authority with Being Hyperbole or Theory.

My Biggest Piece of Advice Is To Start Now, Start Early, and Build Conversational Fluency With He. You don’t need to be an expert, but you need to be informed.

In Every Technological Revolution, We’ve Seen the Same Pattern: Those at the bleeding-edge, Early adopters, the mainstream, and the Laggards. Trust Me: No one wants to be a laggard.

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