💃 So...You're the New Salesforce Admin🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerd! Remember your Day 1 in your Salesforce role?

You’d inherited an ecosystem built by a rotating cast of former admins, consultants, interns, and, based on at least one Flow you’d discovered, this guy.

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently on your Day 1? And what would you do the same and lean into?

Let’s see how well your list matches up with these gems 💎 👇

WHAT TO DO

Non- Negotiables

After you’re issued your machine, email, and badge, these are the three next things you need to be jones’in’ to get into ⬇️

Take a Tour

Being a tourist in another country is great - you casually stroll in, observe, and soak in the experience 🙂.

Being a tourist in your new org is also great, and probably your last time you’ll get to play tourist in there, so enjoy it 🙂.

Being a tourist in the org takes the form of checking each of these items

🪑 License count – how many licenses total. How many are available. Gives you a sense of scale and how tightly (or loosely) seats are being managed.

🧳 Storage – Think about it: a 2 year old org that is at 98% storage utilized. Or a 12 year old org with 10% storage used. The output of processes compounds over time, at different rates, for different reasons. The age of the org, count of records, and storage utilization makes it a lot easier to back into the business process.

🧱 Schema – If you open the schema builder you may see a bowl of spaghetti, a bare cupboard, something in between. Check it, it’s a 2-click serious insight!

🔄 Flows – Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll 😫. Sort by created by, created date, last modified date, etc. Check the descriptions, naming conventions, and note the count of Flows per object. More insights 🧐.

🔐 Permission Sets – The real treasure map of any org. They silently reveal power structures, past sins, and the full history of “just give them this real quick.”

📊 Reports – Specifically, revenue reports 💵! Because if you don’t understand how the company makes money, you won’t understand why your work matters. It’s also comforting when the revenue reports are bursting with $$$ or telling when all the dials are red 💸.

Start and Close a Deal

Aaaaaand your tourist experience is over 😆. Time to make a deal! And nurture it…and close it.

Covered in detail here, it is critical that you are able to sell in your own org 💯. How can you be expected to support your users if you can’t use their tools?

Be Patient with Yourself. Really.

The number one rookie trap? Thinking you need to prove yourself immediately.

You don’t.

You cannot “save” an org in a day, week, or month. You can’t fix technical debt overnight. You can’t untangle five years of inconsistent process design before lunch.

What you can do is set the tone- curious, thoughtful, observant, methodical, intentional.

Your job for the first few weeks is not to rebuild 🙅.

And look - your company is pot-committed, you’re new hire paperwork is filed, payroll profile created, etc. You have more runway than you think and your responsibility is to the success of the company, not to make an immediate impression making Salesforce changes.

Be patient.

WHAT NOT TO DO!

Avoid These, Your Future You Will Thank You

Here are three things to avoid on Day 1 and maybe forever, or at least until you’ve earned the trust of your stakeholders 🤝.

🗣️ Don’t Criticize the Solution

As a recovering junior admin myself, allow me to speak from experience 🗣️

It does not matter that the Opportunity page layout looks like a CVS receipt.

It does not matter that the Flow interview screen says, “click next it broke but it works.”

It does not matter that you found a field literally named Test3_FinalTest_FinalFINAL__c.

It might be a mess.

But it’s a mess built by people who were once in your seat, doing their best with the context they had.

Instead, ask why. You’ll find a history of constraints, politics, or outdated requirements.

Understanding these will make you better at your job and improve your relationships.

Bonus points - do not criticize artifacts or documentation….or the lack of them.

🗽 Don’t Propose a National Monument on Day 1

Common new admin impulses include-

🧨 “Blow it up!”

🧑‍🏫 “The schema is broken, let’s start there.”

👷 “The business processes need optimization, SOPs, and people need to be held accountable!” ✊ ^{*shakes fist in the air}

Even if you could fix everything immediately, avoid proposing rebuilds until you understand-

🕵️‍♀️ Current processes.

🕵️‍♀️ Downstream dependencies.

🕵️‍♀️ Cross-functional impacts.

🕵️‍♀️ Unspoken rules (these matter more than spoken ones), aka tribal knowledge.

🕵️‍♀️ Who the decision-makers are.

Big recommendations without context make you look reckless and inexperienced.

🤥 Don’t Overpromise 

It’s natural to want to impress your new company, and a common form of this is talking a big game, but without the necessary context, your may not be able to deliver. In the sea of Salesforce challenges, there’s always a bigger fish -

🥵 A bigger data migration

😵‍💫 A more complex lead routing logic

🔀 A real-time integration is needed when only batch is available

After you’ve earned some trust and then missed some marks, you’ll get a pass. But in your early days, when everyone is feeling each other out, you don’t want to set a floor you’ll never raise up from 💯.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

On Day 1, you’re new, but you’re not powerless.

You walk in the door with a discovery plan and and a steer-clear list to keep you out of trouble 🙅.

Your responsibilities include designing and building Salesforce solutions. But the complexity of Salesforce demands your respect, not speed. Be patient as you learn the nooks and skeletons in the closet. Speed soon come.

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes