The driving forces behind every successful business are its products’ quality and outstanding customer service. It would help if you had a deeper understanding of your customers and what they want from your products and services to achieve this. And, with a good CRM like Salesforce, you can upscale your marketing, sales, and customer service quickly. This is where the benefit of a Salesforce developer comes in.
Benefits of a CRM
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is a technology used to develop relationships between customers and businesses. It helps you as a brand to develop a model to improve all aspects of your operation, like marketing, sales, and customer service, by making all customers’ data collected and processed effectively.
With CRM software, you can serve your customers better, form stronger long-term relationships and leave them satisfied and happy.
Your buyers are your biggest salesmen or saleswomen! A happy customer forms a long-term relationship with your business and eagerly promotes it. It helps you transform your business strategy from a mere sales funnel into a more efficient flywheel.
That said. When it comes to developing CRM software, the platform matters, it determines the features available, thus, your success as a business. Salesforce is one of the most powerful tools for building CRM software.
What is Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that helps businesses like yours build CRM software. This feature-rich CRM platform enables you to create applications to understand customer data better and cost-effectively.
American Express, Coco-Cola Enterprise, and Sony are examples of big companies that have achieved immense success using Salesforce. The list is quite long.
What does a Salesforce Developer do?
Salesforce developers are responsible for setting up any CRM tool or application for businesses. They communicate with you about your CRM applications and help you understand the resources needed to achieve the desired functionalities. Hence, they help to create an efficient project plan.
They also code, design, and develop the interface, functions, and connections of CRM applications using different programming languages like JavaScript, HTML, and Salesforce-specifics like Lighting Framework or Visual Force, Einstein AI, SQOL, Apex code, and the code you invented yourself. (haha, just kidding!)
Salesforce developers also run the applications’ tests, fix all bugs, and help increase the functionalities of existing CRM software.
They also integrate third-party applications like Heroku, MailChimp, Dropbox, Whatsapp, etc., needed for your CRM applications to work and interconnect other applications within your company.
Primarily Salesforce developers work with the Lightning Frameworks and Apex code in the Salesforce developing environment to build CRM applications for your business.
However, when you need many features not covered by the drag-and-drop elements of the Lightning Frameworks, a Salesforce developer uses other Salesforce-compatible codes or apps like JavaScript and Heroku to create customized applications for you.
How to Find and Hire a Salesforce Developer?
Salesforce developers are incredibly hard to find. And this worsens daily. This is because their services are in very high demand. I mean, look at you; who are you looking for? (Exactly!) However, due to the complexities of the job, many developers are shying away from choosing different tools or areas to specialize in. This makes the labor supply of Salesforce developers very low.
Finding a Salesforce developer is exhausting but not impossible. Here are a few ways to find Salesforce developers:
Ask around: The fastest way to get a developer for your Salesforce CRM is to ask your friends, business partners, other developers you worked with, etc. These people have most likely worked with one or several and can introduce them to you.
Post Job Online: Another effective way is to post a Salesforces developer’s job online. Many jobs are posting sites like Upwork. Indeed, GitHub Jobs, Stack Overflow, Product Hunt, Mashable, etc., can help you quickly find Salesforce developers with different experience ranges. In addition, Linkedin is worth highlighting where most of us are searching for jobs, and all the Salesforce developers we knew were actively or passively on Linkedin. In addition, Medium and Salesforce-related tech articles can also allow you to find talented Salesforce Developers.
Find a Salesforce Developer Agency: The best way to find a competent Salesforce developer is through an agency built specifically for that service. That’s where WE come in.
How to Hire the Right Salesforce Developer
It is easy (not always, not everywhere) to find a Salesforce developer, but hiring the right one can be tricky. Even though every hiring process takes a different approach each time, they are things to look for in applicants.
Here are what to look for when hiring a Salesforce developer:
Communication Skills: Communication skills for a Salesforce developer is an absolute must. You should not just look for the most straightforward developer who knows or has touched code before. You are looking for a colleague/partner who will communicate and talk with the business or at least a project manager/business analyst to understand the functionalities you would like to implement truly and what the business needs. In our opinion, most of the bugs and malfunctions are sourced from miscommunication.
Experience or Resume: Every developer grows from constantly practicing learned skills in real-life situations. After finding a rare gem Salesforce Developer you might be attracted by the visuals of the shiny CV, but keep the focus on work experience descriptions (not the years necessarily, but what they did). The highlights are constantly communicating, integrating with external systems, developing features sharing with the business, and the scalability/ use case of the solutions. In addition, it is also essential to see Salesforce Certification, as Salesforce ensures they provide certifications that can prove the candidates’ theoretical and practical skills. Nevertheless, keep in mind the current size of your team; if you do not have a seasoned team member who could guide a junior salesforce developer or a not-yet-autonomous team member, you should look for an experienced Salesforce Developer or Architect.
Interview: Calls or one-one conversations with a developer help you connect with them and learn about their ethics or attitude towards work faster. And if it does not match your company’s culture, they are not the right hire for you.
Test their Skills: You want to hire your candidate, you feel a bond, a synergy, but you don’t have a technical clue about their skills. If you do not have a seasoned Salesforce Developer, you could use some basic Salesforce Dev certification or interview questions, but trust me, they are simple, and you probably learned them by heart. The difficulty with technically interviewing a Salesforce Developer is that it is particular knowledge; yes, you might ask for object-oriented programming principles and domain-driven design, TDD, and general development best practices. However, Salesforce Development is more about knowing the system itself, its’ limits (Governor Limits), SOQL best procedures, Apex best practices, integration best practices, and limitations, declarative (like Flows) vs. code, when to choose which, custom settings/ custom metadata, deployment best practices and so on and on. If you know a Salesforce developer friend, you could ask for their help or contact us to participate and help you with interviewing and assessing their technical skills! Either way, all aspects matter to provide your team and new team member with the most productive, growth-oriented work environment.
If you are struggling to find the right solution and sourcing for a Salesforce development team feels overwhelming, contact us and let us help you find the team that satisfies your needs using our contact form or phone number.
