The Ultimate Salesforce Admin: Steve Mo’s Top 4 Tips for Success

Life as a Salesforce Admin can be challenging at times, but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to dealing with the problems you might run into. 

We spoke to Salesforce MVP Steve Molis, aka “Steve Mo,” about his top tips for success as a Salesforce Administrator.

1. Talk to Your Users: Remember the Human Element

Firstly, it’s important for any admin to speak with their users, according to Steve.  

He said: “Find out what their pain points are and what their likes and dislikes are. Also, realize that – especially if you’re new – you aren’t going to be able to make everyone happy.”

Having more than one user will likely mean you’re going to be hearing “more than one idea” about what the optimal configuration for something as benign as a lead page layout will be, Steve added. 

“You’re not going to be able to please all of your users all the time, but definitely engage with them. Whether it’s something as formal as weekly or monthly office hour sessions where you share something from a recent release or something that you’re working on so it’s not a surprise to them. 

“Also, get their feedback on what their annoyances are, or things that they would change if possible.”

Steve added that sometimes you have to be the “bearer of bad news” because what your users might think is a relatively easy-to-implement idea has some technical hurdles that just simply cannot be overcome, or they run counter to something that “a higher power has mandated”.

He said: “Why am I going to fill out all these required fields? Because sales has mandated that those fields be filled out. You can’t just create a deal and have an opportunity name and an opportunity dollar amount. You actually do need to fill out the stage and the close date and things like that. That’s why you’ve got to fill out these fields.”

Steve said that he would have conversations sometimes outside of work in a social setting, and when he tells people who have to use Salesforce what he does, they’re “not happy” when they find out. 

He told us: “My push back is: How many times have you talked to your Salesforce Admin, or how many times has your Salesforce Admin reached out to you? That’s the problem. The problem is not Salesforce; you haven’t communicated this to your admin, or your admin is not seeking input from you. 

“Start that dialogue, but don’t start with saying that it ‘sucks’ – don’t have that be your opener.”

Steve said that even seemingly benign things like whether a field is in one giant section or a neat, collapsible section, can “just drive people nuts”, even if they appear “trivial” at first. 

If you listen to your users and engage with them, you may not come up with a page layout that makes everyone happy all of the time, but you can make it as pleasant as possible for as many people as possible, Steve says. 

Steve told Salesforce Ben how Mike Gerholdt, from the ButtonClick Admin blog, coined the phrase ‘SABWA ’: ’ Salesforce admin by walking around.’ This term highlights the importance of interacting with the people who are experiencing firsthand the system you are administrating. 

Even if you’re not in the office, there are all sorts of ways to interact with your users in a more personal and effective manner, Steve said. 

He told us: “Screen sharing was not even a thing when I first started. Now you’ve got the ability to say, ‘Okay, what problem are you having? Instead of me logging in as you, let’s get on a call and show me what you’re doing. Show me how you’re creating this opportunity, or how you’re adding this contact to this account.’”

2. Don’t Write Off the Little Things

Steve said that one of his first memorable moments using Salesforce was when his company had onboarded a new team of users who sold things differently to the team he had originally onboarded, meaning there were some unique aspects to the opportunity page layout. 

He said: “I just got on a call with the head of this team, and I was like, ‘Okay, so that field, you want it on the left side instead of the right side.’ I just grabbed it and dragged it over to the other side. 

“I was like, ‘Do you want it above this field or above the next field?’ He told me, and I was like, ‘Okay, refresh your browser.’ And I was like, ‘Is that what you want it to look like?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that, exactly.’ 

“That was my first Salesforce moment – dragging a field from left to right and up and down and not having to rewrite HTML code to make that happen. Those moments are still there.” 

Seemingly benign little things can nonetheless lead to important and positive changes for a whole team, Steve said. 

He told Salesforce Ben that Opportunities with Historical Trending reports are one of the most buried treasures of all reports in Salesforce, and he “loves” them.

Steve said: “I’m an analytics geek, and someone came to me and they had to build this Excel spreadsheet from a report out of Salesforce. They needed to show basically trending, but they were wrestling with this spreadsheet that they needed to build every week and send out to all these people, and build all these complex macros.

“I was like, ‘Let me take a look, send me that spreadsheet.’ We got on a call and talked through what he was trying to do and what he needed to do every week to this report that he would extract from Salesforce. 

“There [was] this new report type. They just came out with it, and it looks really promising; I think it might be able to help with this. So I worked on this thing for weeks and tweaked it and tweaked it, but I couldn’t quite get it to the finish line to do exactly what he was trying to do. 

“I was really disappointed that I couldn’t deliver what he wanted. I emailed him and got on a call. I was like this is the best I can do. I can’t code, so this is all I can do, and I was so disappointed.

“He was so elated at what I had built. I showed him, I was like, ‘This is the best I can do’, and he said, ‘You have just given me back eight hours [of my] week.’”

Steve said that he had been nervous that he had oversold his vision, but the person was nonetheless completely ‘elated’ at the results Steve had managed to produce in Salesforce – and it all came off the back of a conversation about Salesforce. 

“It came from having that dialogue, building those relationships with your users and us admins, devs, whatever. We’re not in sales, but you build those user relationships, and those people can sometimes be your champions when you need something.“

3. When They Tell You ‘Salesforce Sucks’, Push Back!

Steve says that every now and then, you will encounter people who, when you tell them you work with Salesforce, will straight away tell you: “Salesforce sucks!” 

He added: “The first question should be: Why? Or, what about it sucks? What exactly – the whole thing?”

Asking vague questions will often yield vague answers, Steve says.

He said: “Yelling does accomplish some things. I mean, some people yelling is not going to accomplish anything. It accomplishes two things: It gets someone’s attention and, hopefully, lets them know that you’re upset about something. 

“But once you have done that, once you’ve gotten their attention and made them aware that you are upset about something, if all you do is continue to yell, you’re never going to get anywhere. You’re never going to get any progress or any closer to a resolution. Once you’ve gotten their attention and made them aware, stop yelling and start talking, and work towards a solution.”

So, if someone says that Salesforce sucks, welcome their feedback. But ask them how exactly it sucks, and how it can be improved, which can lead to more exciting and fulfilling work for the admin. 

“It doesn’t all have to be password resets,” Steve says. 

4. Be Active in the Community

The Salesforce job market can be somewhat unforgiving on new people at the moment. 

Steve says that everybody is looking to hire people with hands-on experience, and he sees precisely that experience reflected in the Salesforce community, where questions are frequently asked and answered. 

He added: “If you’re just starting out and you want to see the types of things that real Salesforce admins are dealing with, look in the answers community. Those are real admins and these are the things that their users or their bosses are asking them for.

“[Things like] ‘I need a validation rule that blocks a user from going backwards on the opportunity stage’, or ‘I need a validation rule that makes these fields conditionally required’, or ‘I need to exempt a subset of users from this rule’.”

Steve said that he remembers someone posting in a formula group in the old Developerforce forum asking about a validation rule that would lock a picklist field if a specific set of values had been selected.

He said: “I had never needed to do anything like that before. But I said, ‘Someday I might have to, and wouldn’t it be nice, when that day comes, if I know how to do it instead of when that day comes I have to scramble to figure out how to do it.’ 

“So I took a crack at it, and it worked – the rule I wrote for her – and I had that little nugget of knowledge tucked in my back pocket for when that day came. Sure enough, months later, a year later, I did need to do exactly the same thing. 

“There have been dozens and dozens of time I’ve bought myself something through the answers community and didn’t have an immediate need for it, but I knew that’s something that would be good to know.” 

Final Thoughts 

Steve is a very well-known and respected voice in the Salesforce community – and with good reason. 

Any budding Salesforce Admins looking to be the best at what they do would do well to heed his advice.