Top 50 Salesforce Interview Questions & Answers (With Images) (2023)

The Salesforce job market is booming. The demand for Salesforce professionals continues to be sky-high and the salaries are some of the well paid in the cloud industry. While Salesforce was already growing at an insane rate, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend.

This comprehensive Salesforce interview questions post has been designed to test you on some of the most common questions you will get at an interview. Get stuck in and let us know how you did!

General Salesforce Interview Questions

This first section is designed to test you on the fundamental concepts of Salesforce and cloud computing systems. If you are a Salesforce veteran, you might know this inside out, but it’s a good idea to refresh your memory.

Here are our general Salesforce interview questions…

1. Describe how Salesforce CRM is used by organisations?

At its core, Salesforce is a customer-facing CRM system. It is used to record customer details and the organisation’s interactions with them. Salesforce’s most popular product is Sales Cloud. This is used by organisations to record initial interest from customers (Leads) and follow through a sales cycle, taking them through the various steps to win their business.

On the other side of the coin, you have Service Cloud, which is designed to support customer service teams from within a business. Service Cloud helps agents deal with customer queries, as well as solve issues.

Sales & Service Cloud are Salesforce’s two main products, but over the years, Salesforce can support all kinds of internal teams within an organisation, including Marketing, Analytics, Portals, Integration and Collaboration (Slack).

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2. What are the main benefits of a cloud solution like Salesforce?

Salesforce is a Cloud SaaS platform (Software-as-a-service), which means you access it through your web browser, as opposed to a desktop application. Cloud systems have major benefits over legacy computer systems that require huge amounts of server power to run. This is why most applications you access today, in your business or personal life, will be cloud-based (Spotify, Gmail, Office365, Dropbox, etc…).

Some of the biggest benefits of cloud computing solutions include…

• Cost – Older on-premise solutions required a huge upfront investment of infrastructure. You would need to buy all the servers, install them and maintain them. With Cloud computing, you are essentially outsourcing the maintenance of the infrastructure to the provider, such as Salesforce.
• Upgrades – Instead of managing upgrades to your software yourself, Cloud computing providers take care of this for you. Salesforce will upgrade your solution to the latest version 3 times a year. This comes with new features and improvements to the system without you lifting a finger, or paying additional fees.
• Mobility – Cloud computing tools can be accessed from anywhere. As long as you have a device and an internet connection, you can access any information that is stored in Salesforce. This is particularly handy if you travel frequently for work or meetings.

3. Can you describe the main differences between Sales Cloud & Service Cloud?

Sales & Service Cloud both act as the core CRM platforms for Salesforce and will be used by the majority of organisations. While both share some similarities, they are distinctly different products that contain different sets of features for their specific function.

• Sales Cloud – This product is designed to support businesses with their sales cycle. Taking a potential customer on a journey from qualifying them through the Lead object to converting them into an Opportunity where the main sales cycle takes place. Sales Cloud also has a number of other features to support this process, from quoting to forecasting.
• Service Cloud – Service Cloud on the other hand helps organisations with their customer support process. Customers initiate a support process by emailing, calling, or submitting an online form. Once this case has been created in Salesforce, agents can use features such as a Knowledge base to help find answers to questions, milestones to ensure SLA (Service Level Agreements) are met, as well as features like live chat to talk to customers in real-time.

Read More: Sales Cloud vs Service Cloud – What Are The Differences?

4. Apart from CRM, what other products do Salesforce have in their offering?

Over the years, Salesforce has built up a huge portfolio of other products to help serve its customers. One of the most attractive selling points is the fact that they can seamlessly integrate with each other, creating a full 360-degree view of their customers.

Some of Salesforce’s other products include Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Experience Cloud, Mulesoft and Slack. For a full overview of Salesforce’s products, check out the link below…

Read More: Ultimate Guide to EVERY Salesforce Product in 2021

5. What is the Salesforce Platform (Force.com), and how does it help organisations?

One of Salesforce’s biggest selling points is its platform (Previously called Force.com). This enables you to create powerful customisations on top of Salesforce’s products, that allow you to completely tailor the applications to your organisation’s exact needs. This is made even more attractive by the fact that you can create customisations with clicks, not code.

At a basic level, this allows you to create custom fields and objects, to store unique information related to your organisation. One of the most popular customisation possibilities is automation. You can create automation to pretty much do anything in Salesforce, update a field, create a record, send an email, etc…These types of customisations can end up saving users a lot of time.

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6. Can you provide an example of a custom App you could build on the Salesforce platform?

Taking customisations one level further, Salesforce enables you to build custom applications on the platform. Think about how Sales & Service Clouds are set up with their various features designed for a certain purpose, this can be recreated for any team function.

If you are familiar with Trailhead, you may have already created a few custom applications that will give you a good answer to this question. If not, here are a few ideas…

• An HR application to help internal teams manage jobs and job applicants.
• A finance system that can track invoices
• A goal setting App that can help managers set targets and goals for their team.

7. Can you describe the differences between declarative and programmatic customisations?

When it comes to Salesforce customisations, there are two main types, declarative and programmatic.

Declarative customisations are point and click. These allow non-developers to build powerful customisations by using a wizard to create custom fields, automation and tables of data. One of the latest developments Salesforce has brought out is Mulesoft Composer, which allows integrations into other systems to take place using only clicks!

Programmatic customisations on the other hand are built with code. Whilst you can do almost anything with declarative customisation, there is a limit to more complex solutions. Apex is Salesforce’s coding language and may be required if the requirement is particularly complex.

Lightning development, on the other hand, is Salesforce’s UI coding language, this can be used to create completely custom screen layouts. In addition, it’s common that in most integrations, some level of coding experience using API’s will be needed.

8. Can you explain how Salesforce releases work?

Being a SaaS platform, Salesforce delivers updates to your system automatically. The major releases happen 3 times a year, with some other, much smaller updates being delivered in between.

The major releases are labelled, Spring, Summer & Winter, with the fiscal Salesforce year following the name, e.g. “Salesforce Winter ’22 Release”. Each release will have a huge amount of features and updates included, across most Salesforce products.

It’s important to stay alert around release time. Whilst Salesforce rarely breaks anything whilst updating your Org, it’s important to test everything and ensure that it works as expected.

9. What is the Salesforce Lightning Experience, and how does it help organisations?

Salesforce Lightning was primarily a new UI that was released in 2015, it took Salesforce’s UI that was mostly unchanged since 1999 and brought it into the 21st century. Salesforce centred the design around a modular experience that allowed Salesforce Admins to easily control the layout of all pages.

This resulted in a rise in user productivity with the help of new features, as well as an easy to navigate UI. Pretty much, every single page of Salesforce Lightning Experience is fully customizable. You can customise the home page, record layouts and create dashboards to suit your specific needs.

Check out the slideshow below to see the evolution of Salesforce…

10. Can you describe an example Sales process that a company might implement?

Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s most popular product and it’s more than likely you will need to support this product. This is why it’s more important than ever to be able to recommend and support a company’s Sales process.

When someone refers to a Sales process, they are referring to the process that a salesperson will follow in order to sell a product or service to a potential customer. This is then translated into the “Lead Status” and “Opportunity Stage” fields. At an extremely basic level, that could look like the following. Qualify > Discover > Analysis > Proposal > Negotiation > Closed Won (Or Lost).

Here is an example below that includes a full Sales process, from entering the organisation at the Lead stage, all the way through to its closing.

11. Can you describe an example Service process that a company might implement?

Similar to the above questions, it’s important for Salesforce professionals to understand how a customer support organisation works and the different stages they go through to solve a case.

Unlike a Sales process that is split across the Lead & Opportunity objects, Service processes are contained on the case object. Here is an example of a Service process. New > Working > Waiting on Customer > Escalated > Closed.

12. What are objects in Salesforce and how are they used?

In normal database terms, an object in Salesforce is simply a table of data. A table of data will contain various fields and in turn, these fields contain information like email address, phone number, or company name.

There are two types of objects in Salesforce, standard and custom. Standard objects are those that come out of the box with Salesforce products. For example, in most Salesforce products, Accounts & Contacts come as standard. In Sales Cloud, you will get objects such as Lead & Opportunity, whilst in Service Cloud, Cases & Entitlements will be standard.

Custom Objects on the other hand are created by yourself. These are the objects that can be created as your foundation for building custom applications.

13. Salesforce has an App Store similar to an iPhone. What is this called? Can you name some Apps you have used in the past?

One of Salesforce’s selling points is the AppExchange. This has near enough similar functionality to the iPhone App Store or the Google Play store. You can install pre-built Apps directly into your Salesforce org, to easily add additional functionality. Some of the most popular Apps include e-Signature, Document Generation and Form tools.

There is a near certainty that any Salesforce company you join will be using at least 1 AppExchange App. This is why it’s important to have an understanding of how to use these applications. Check out some of the most popular Apps in the post below and remember that most apps have a free trial, so there is no harm in getting stuck in.

Read More: Best Salesforce Apps in 2021

14. How are changes tested in Salesforce before being deployed to Production?

A fundamental concept of any IT system is that changes should never be made in Production. They need to be tested in a safe environment to ensure nothing breaks and user processes are not disrupted.

Salesforce provides a feature known as Sandboxes. These replicate your Production configuration, giving you a safe environment to test changes and implement new features.

Sandboxes come in different flavours, ranging from a Developer sandbox that only contains your custom configuration, all the way through to Full Copy Sandboxes, that contain all your configuration and data.

Read More: What is a Salesforce Sandbox? A Beginners Guide

15. Can you describe some of the main differences between Salesforce editions? (E.g. Professional & Enterprise)

Salesforce has a few different versions of its products including, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise & Unlimited. It’s important to understand some of the differences, at least from a high level. If you join an organisation that has a lower tier than you are used to, it may reduce the functionality you can implement. Here are a few of the main differences…

Functionality – Most Salesforce editions will contain core CRM functionality including Account & Contact fields, email integration and the mobile app. However, some of the lower editions will not include automation, API availability for integration, or some advanced features such as Flow.

Limits – All Salesforce editions have some kind of limits, these can include daily API calls, data storage limits, custom apps, or the number of custom objects of fields. Higher-level editions will have higher limits.

Cost – As you might have guessed, the more advanced versions can cost a lot more. You can expect the Essentials version to cost $25/month per user and the Unlimited one to cost $300/month.

16. How do you move changes between Salesforce environments?

Once changes have been implemented and tested in a Salesforce sandbox, they need to be moved to another sandbox and ultimately, the production environment.

There are many ways to move changes between environments. However, the most common way is to use change sets. Change sets are a packaged set of components that can be created in one environment and moved across to another.

If you want to really impress your interviewer, learn all about Salesforce DevOps, the next generation of deployment tools.

17. What is the difference between Data and Metadata?

Metadata relates to the fields, configurations, code, logic and page layouts that go into building the information architecture and look and feel of your Salesforce environment.

Data relates to the records that a business relies on, such as Users, Accounts, Contacts, to name a few. On the other hand, Metadata is the data that describes other data.

Read More: What Is Salesforce Metadata? A Beginner’s Guide

18. What is a Queue in Salesforce?

A lot of objects in Salesforce have to be owned by an individual. For example, Accounts, Opportunities, Contacts & Campaigns must be owned by a user in Salesforce.

However, there are certain objects where it is useful to be owned by a Salesforce Queue. Queues are like holding areas in your CRM, where records wait for a user to pick them up, assign them to an owner and work on processing them.

Read More: Everything You Need to Know About Salesforce Queues

19. What is Salesforce Customer 360?

For a few years now, Salesforce has been trying to create a suite of products that allow users of its platform to see a 360-degree view of their customers. This means that users of Salesforce can see every interaction with a customer, from the first enquiry through the website, to which products they have bought and what issues or queries they have with their products.

This helps businesses by allowing them to serve their customers better, by knowing everything about them and ensuring the businesses is working off a single source of truth.

20. Where can you view Salesforce system status & scheduled maintenance?

Salesforce has 3 releases each year and occasionally has scheduled maintenance such as Org migrations to different servers. On very rare occasions, Salesforce can also go down for a limited period.

You can access all information pertaining to scheduled maintenance and downtime, at http://trust.salesforce.com. You can also sign up for notifications to be kept up to date with your server status.

Admin Salesforce Interview Questions

This section contains fundamental knowledge of the Salesforce platform. No matter your role in the ecosystem, everyone should learn these Salesforce Admin concepts that will be found in your Certified Administrator Certification.

Here are our Admin Salesforce interview questions…

21. Can you describe the differences between a Role and a Profile?

Roles & Profiles are two fundamental concepts of the Salesforce platform. They control what users can see and do on the platform.

Profiles control what a user can do on the platform, for example, they control what kind of access rights a user has to a certain object, such as create, read, edit, or delete. They also control individual permissions such as “Export Reports”, “Create Dashboard Folders”, or “Modify All Data”.

Roles, on the other hand, are used to control what users can see. They are designed to open up access through a hierarchy so that more senior members of the organisation can see more records. For example, someone at the bottom of the hierarchy, like an Account Executive, might be only able to see their own accounts. But the VP Sales US, would be able to see all accounts owned by individuals below them.

22. What are some of the automation tools available to Admins, and how can they be used to help businesses?

Automation tools in Salesforce are an Admin’s best friend. They are designed to be easy to use and enable businesses to automate complex processes. This, in turn, helps users be more productive, allowing them to focus on revenue-generating activities instead of manual Admin work.

For example, once an Opportunity is closed won, you could easily create automation to create a case, which prompts the customer success team to get in touch with the customer to begin onboarding.

Examples of automation tools include Workflow, Process Builder & Flow.

Read More: Process Builder Vs Flows – Become the Ultimate Admin

23. What are the main types of relationships you can create between objects in Salesforce?

Creating relationships between Salesforce objects is a fundamental skill. It’s important to create them in a scalable way, ensuring you pick the right relationship for the right solution.

The most common types are the Lookup & Master-detail relationships. Lookups can be defined as loosely coupled, meaning that you can relate records easily to other records in a one-to-many fashion.

Master-detail relationships on the other hand are tightly coupled. This means that a child record cannot exist without a parent record and if a parent record is deleted, the child also gets deleted with it. For a full overview of all 7 Salesforce relationships, check out the article below…

Read More: The 7 Types of Relationships in Salesforce

24. Describe the differences between Page Layouts & Record Types

Page Layouts & Record Types are some of the first features that a Salesforce professional needs to learn. They control the user interface in various ways and can be used in conjunction with each other to create customized experiences for your users.

Page Layouts determine which fields are displayed to your users on a record. They also allow you to add fields, sections, custom buttons and other features. The “Details” tab in the image below, contains a lot of the elements that are controlled by the page layout.

Record Types, on the other hand, let you offer different business processes, picklist values and Page Layouts to your users. For example, one of the most common use cases of Record Types would be to create two different sales processes on the Opportunity object. Each with different sales stages and Page Layouts.

This means that with Record Types you can now apply multiple Page Layouts per object, per user profile.

Further Reading: When to use Record Types Vs Page Layouts?

25. Describe a few ways that Account & Contact information can be imported into Salesforce?

Importing data into Salesforce is a vital skill to hold, but it’s also important to understand the differences between the tools available. Here are a few of the main tools available…

• Data Loader – The Data Loader will be a staple of any Salesforce professionals toolkit. It allows you to import, export, update and delete large amounts of records in a single operation. The Data Loader has to be downloaded to your desktop for use.
• Data Import Wizard – The Data Import Wizard is a simplified tool, that as the name suggests, allows you to import data into Salesforce. The wizard is accessed from within Salesforce and also has deduplication features.
• Dataloader.io – Dataloader.io is an advanced, cloud-based data loader that is packed full of features. Whilst this is primarily a paid product provided by Mulesoft, the free version allows a certain number of importing/exporting activities and is very useful for some more complex scenarios.

Read More: The 5 Best Data Loaders for Salesforce

26. What is a Junction Object?

A junction object is used to create many-to-many relationships in Salesforce. This is used when a normal parent-child, or, a one-to-many relationship doesn’t work.

This is exactly how the Opportunity & Product tables are joined in Salesforce. Check out the article below for more details…

Read More: What is a Junction Object in Salesforce?

27. What Salesforce product can be used to provide your Partners with the ability to create Leads and Opportunities?

The Salesforce product you are looking for here is called the Experience Cloud (Previously called Community Cloud). This allows you to create portals that connect to your Salesforce instance, for a specific purpose. Two of the most common types of portals include…

• Partner Portal – This is an area where your partners can create leads and manage the sales cycle of opportunities. All partner activity can be viewed within your Salesforce Org, along with the provision of full reporting capabilities.
• Customer Portal – A common use case for a customer portal, is to provide support as well as help articles. Customers can log cases, as well as search knowledge bases for answers to their queries. You can even go as far as to create a community that allows customers to interact with each other.

Read More: Ultimate Guide to EVERY Salesforce Product in 2021

28. Can you name the types of Salesforce reports and the differences between them?

The reporting capabilities in Salesforce are a favourite amongst users, so it’s important to understand the types of reports and their differences…

• Tabular – This is the simplest of reports and is suited just to show lines of data and nothing else. It is similar to an Excel spreadsheet. If you just want to show data without the need to show totals, calculations or groups of data, then this is the report for you. It is also best to use this report type if you are planning to export data.
• Summary – As soon as you add a grouping, you will turn the report into a summary report. Summary reports are probably the most commonly used and are great for showing groups of data, e.g., if you want to see the number or value of opportunities per account, you would group your report by Account Name. You can also subgroup fields by dragging them under the initial group.
• Matrix – Matrix reports are very similar to a summary, but they allow you to group by rows as well as columns to see different totals. Building on the example above, you might want to see the value of opportunities per account, by month. So you would see that Edge Communications has $100,000 of opportunities in January, $50,000 in February and so on.
• Joined Reports – Joined reports allow you to create two separate reports so that you can compare data. You could use a Joined report to show the total number of opportunities and cases per account, side by side.

Read More: How to Create a Report in Salesforce

29. What is a Dynamic Dashboard?

Dynamic Dashboards are a fantastic way to create a personalised experience for your users when viewing a certain dashboard. It allows the data on a dashboard to change, based on the user who is viewing it.

For example, you could have a single, personal sales dashboard for sales reps. Whenever a different user viewed this dashboard, it would only show their leads, opportunities and accounts. This works by using the “My” filter on all dashboards.

30. Describe the different ways to make a field required in Salesforce?

Making fields required in Salesforce is a great way to ensure that correct information is being captured and at the right point in the process. Over time, this massively improves data quality. Here are a few ways you can make fields required…

• Custom Field Settings – Whenever you create a new custom field, you have the option to make this required. This is a “hard” limit and will be required whenever you are creating a new record inside of Salesforce or uploading via a data loader.
• Page Layout – On a Salesforce Page Layout, you also have the option to make fields read-only, or required. This is considered a “soft” limit, as it will only apply if you are creating a new record via the Salesforce interface, not when uploading via a data loader.
• Validation Rules – Finally, we have validation rules. These have much more advanced logic and can be built to only make a field required, under a certain condition, e.g. If Opportunity Stage = Closed Won, make X field required. Validation rules have a hard limit.

Developer Salesforce Interview Questions

Although you might not be interviewing for a Salesforce Developer position, it’s important to understand the role that they play, as well as some of the concepts that can intersect with both, a Salesforce Developer & Admin.

Here are our Developer Salesforce interview questions…

31. What is the Salesforce Order of Execution?

The Salesforce Order of Execution is a set of rules that describes what events happen when a record is saved in Salesforce. For example, if you have validation rules, flows, Apex triggers, etc…there is a consistent sequence in which these events get triggered.

This is important to understand when designing solutions, as well as when you are troubleshooting issues.

Read More: Become a Salesforce Order of Execution Hero

32. Can you describe what Apex is, and why it is required in some scenarios?

Salesforce has a huge variety of declarative tools at its disposal for Admin’s, but the primary reason that Developers are brought into the picture is to code.

Apex is Salesforce’s primary backend programming language. This allows developers to write complex automation that runs on the Salesforce platform. Examples for using Apex over declarative tools may include…

• Writing complex business processes logic that is not supported by declarative automation such as Flow
• Integrating Salesforce into other systems
• Creating custom email services

33. What is the difference between Visualforce & Lightning Development?

Both, Visualforce and Lightning are frameworks that can be used by developers to create completely custom user interfaces on Salesforce.

Visualforce was primarily used back in the Salesforce Classic “era” and based on tag-based markup language, similar to HTML. Whilst Lightning is a modern, componentized UI Framework that uses HTML and Javascript.

34. What is SOQL used for?

SOQL stands for Salesforce Object Query Language and is used to search Salesforce data when developers are writing custom logic. SOQL is structured similar to SQL and can be used to retrieve data from a single object, or multiple objects that relate to one another.

Read More:

35. What are Governor Limits?

As Salesforce is cloud-based software, this means that you share server resources with other customers (Whilst of course keeping data completely separate). Governor limits are a concept that allows Salesforce to set certain rules on the number of resources you can monopolize to ensure that everyone’s instances of Salesforce continue to run.

An example of a Governor Limit is “Per-Transaction Apex Limits”. This includes a number of rules that only allow you to run a certain number of queries within a single Apex transaction.

Read More:

36. What is Mulesoft?

Mulesoft is an integration platform that was acquired by Salesforce in 2018 for $6.5B.

Mulesoft’s Anypoint platform, allows you to integrate with other systems easily, with a set of templates that provide out-of-the-box API’s. Salesforce acquired Mulesoft to better serve customers going through their digital transformations and required integration with backend systems such as HR, Finance or ERP.

Salesforce has also recently released Mulesoft Composer, which is designed to give Admin’s a declarative way to integrate with other systems.

Read More: An Admin’s Guide to Salesforce MuleSoft Composer

37. What is an Apex Trigger?

Apex Triggers are written by developers to fire logic before, or after a record is saved. As discussed previously, Apex can handle the most complex automation scenarios in Salesforce.

38. When should Flow be used over Apex?

Whilst Apex has always reigned as the king, when it comes to complex automation, in recent years, Salesforce has rebuilt Flow to bring it close to Apex in functionality. Parker Harris, the CTO of Salesforce has even been quoted saying “Just Because It’s Possible to Write Code, Doesn’t Mean You Should Write Code”.

As a general rule of thumb, if Flow can handle the use case and will not hit any limitations, it’s a good idea to build the automation in Flow. Flow has a simpler user interface and can be understood by a wider range of Salesforce professionals.

39. What is Apex test coverage?

Before deploying Apex that has been written in a sandbox, to production, developers must meet a minimum test coverage of 75%.

This requires developers to write test classes that run through their code, ensuring that the code is of good quality and will run successfully in production.

40. What is the difference between Lightning Components & Lightning Web Components?

Back in 2014, Lightning Components were originally released alongside the Lightning Experience; they use a standardized Javascript framework.

Lightning Web Components were released in early 2019 and instead, use an updated web standards-based framework. This provides easier accessibility for users who are unfamiliar with the Salesforce platform. They utilize standard technology such as CSS, HTML and updated Javascript.

Read more: Lightning Web Components vs. Lightning Components

Consultant Salesforce Interview Questions

If you are interviewing for a Salesforce Admin or Developer position, you will almost certainly need to put on your Consultant hat at some point. So it’s important to understand some of the following concepts to really impress your interviewer.

Here are our Consultant Salesforce interview questions…

41. At a high-level, can you describe the Software Development Lifecycle?

The Software Development Life Cycle is a concept that defines the best practice way to implement IT systems, by following a series of stages. These stages include planning, analysis, design, implementation, testing & integration and maintenance. It can also be pictured like the following image…

This is important to understand, as these stages need to be followed whenever you are implementing a new Salesforce product or feature.

42. Can you name a few ways to help improve Salesforce user adoption?

Salesforce adoption is always an important topic and it’s vital to understand how to support users if adoption numbers start dropping. Here are a few ways you can help improve user adoption…

• Training – If you are onboarding new users onto a new system, it’s important to provide them with sufficient training. Showing them how to use Salesforce and answering their questions will ensure that they continue to use the system. If users feel unsupported, they may go back to using pen and paper, excel, or another system of their choice!
• Feature Development – Salesforce professionals will get feature requests from their users all the time. Although not all of them will be possible, it’s important to address their issues and ensure that they feel heard.
• Super Users – Identifying super users, or “champions” of Salesforce can help drive user adoption. Salesforce Admins won’t be available all the time to support users, so if you have a network of champions that can drive user adoption, answer questions and gather feedback, this can only help.

Read More: 5 Tips for Salesforce Lightning User Adoption

43. What can be implemented in Salesforce to help ensure clean data?

Clean data has been an issue ever since IT systems existed. However, if properly managed, having a nice, clean system, can lead to happy and more productive users. Here are a few features and products you can implement to promote clean data:

Validation – Using Validation in Salesforce is a great way to keep data clean. This can come in a few different forms such as required fields, using picklists over free text fields, validation rules, as well as setting correct permissions. All of the mentioned features are simply trying to ensure that users can only enter data they should be entering. This is one of the most effective prevention methods for bad data.

Duplicate Management – A common issue for users and admins using Salesforce, is duplicates. They can come from various sources including an initial data load, marketing leads (events/website), or users themselves manually entering them. Salesforce has various simple but powerful duplicate tools to prevent this.

Deduplication Tools – If bad data has become such a problem and is beyond repair, luckily there are AppExchange Apps that can help. A couple of our favourites are DemandTools & Cloudingo

44. How is the Salesforce DevOps movement helping companies using Salesforce?

Back in 2015, Salesforce was voted the most dreaded platform to work with by users of Stackoverflow. Unlike other systems at the time, Salesforce had very few tools to support developers in building applications, as well as testing and deploying them.

Fast forward to today and the widespread DevOps movement has now fully embedded itself within the Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce themselves have been focusing on Salesforce DX (Developer Experience), to bring out tools and frameworks to support coders. In addition, there is a huge range of AppExchange Apps to also help Salesforce professionals, build, test and safely deploy changes. For more info, check out the article below…

Read More: Complete Guide to Salesforce DevOps

45. What is the “Person Accounts” feature, and how can it help organisations?

Salesforce was originally built as a B2B system, for companies selling to other companies. However, there is an increasing number of companies in the B2C space that are using Salesforce for customer support, commerce, or marketing.

Salesforce extended the functionality of their platform to deal with B2C businesses. Person accounts allow you to access a new type of record (Which is actually a combination of the Accounts & Contacts objects), that can support a B2C business.

Read More: Salesforce Person Accounts – Pros and Cons

46. What are some ways you can customise the look and feel of Salesforce?

With the introduction of Salesforce Lightning, you can now customise the Salesforce UI to really make it feel like your own. Here are a few ways you can impress your users by branding Salesforce using a feature called Themes…

• Change Logo – By default, Salesforce will show their own logo on the top left-hand corner. This can easily be changed to your own when setting up a custom app.
• Colours – You can change a lot of the colours of Salesforce using Themes. This includes an overall brand colour, as well as the back background colour and global header background.
• Background Image – You can even set a background image that will display behind components on record pages.

47. What is the Lightning App Builder used for?

The Lightning App Builder was a key part of the Lightning Experience. While Page Layouts let you edit the detail part of record pages, the Lightning App Builder lets you edit the rest of it. You can move around components, add new ones and change the page template (number of columns/rows).

This helps Salesforce customers create truly customised experiences, which is a world apart from Salesforce classic.

48. How would you explain Salesforce to someone who has never used a CRM?

As an Admin or a Consultant, it won’t be unheard of to come across a user who is completely unfamiliar with Salesforce and CRM software. Here is an easy way to explain CRM software to someone who is unfamiliar with the concept…

“CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. All businesses in the entire world will have some form of CRM. The software simply records who your customers are, what interactions you’ve had with them and what products they have bought.

If you run a hairdressing salon, you might have a spreadsheet or a notebook of your regular customers – if you run a catering company, you will have the same, or if you run a 10,000 employee international conglomerate, you will have CRM software.”

49. Can you explain the key dates you need to be aware of with every Salesforce release?

Salesforce releases happen 3 times a year, in Spring, Summer, & Winter. There are multiple dates that any Salesforce professional should be aware of to ensure they keep with releases…

Release Date – No surprises here! This is the date the release actually happens and can change, depending on your Org location.

Sandbox Preview – This is the date on which your own Org’s sandboxes will be upgraded. It is very important for testing the new release against your own customisations.

Release Notes – Finally, it’s important to understand when the release notes will be available. It’s a good idea for all professionals to familiarise themselves with the main aspects of any release.

Release dates change every year, so check out the latest dates with our posts!

50. What is scope creep?

Any experienced consultant will be familiar with the dreaded term,’ scope creep’. A successful project is one that is kept within the budget, scope and completed on time. However, when in the middle of a project, new requirements often come up, which means that a customer may want the extra scope to be added.

It’s important for every Salesforce professional to understand how to handle scope creep and how to manage customers expectations.

Summary

This article has been designed to give you a complete overview of typical Salesforce interview questions, at any level. If you would like a more in-depth dive into some specific Salesforce roles, check out some of our more specialised interview questions below…

• Data Science Interview Questions (for Tableau Consultants)