💃 Thinking in Exceptions Will Lead to Exceptional Thinking 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Happy path is good times!

But happy path is not the real world 💯.

The real world is full of defects, bugs, and exceptions 😅.

Happy path is “expected” but how many of you would be out of a job if everything was happy path?

Empty ticket queues. Empty rooms of issue-resolving frontline associates. Just AI 🤖 running all the happy things.

Nah, this ain’t it 🙅. Humans are gonna human 💯. Salespeople are gonna salespeople 💯.

“Only the record owner can have access to files on opportunities. Except Sally. And only on Thursdays. And only when there is a waxing crescent moon 🌙. kthxbye!”

😩

Agenda for today includes

• Thinking in Exceptions Will Lead to Exceptional Thinking

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Thinking in Exceptions Will Lead to Exceptional Thinking

Today we will discuss-

💃 What Is It? 🕺

💃 Why Should You Care? 🕺

💃 How Do You Get It? 🕺

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WHAT IS IT?

Sales Ops: “Each Lead record needs a unique email!”

Salesforce Admin: What about couples who share an email? We’ve seen this is common in the senior demographic.”

Sales Ops: “Yeah, ok. Unless they’re seniors, every Lead needs a unique email!”

Salesforce Admin: 🤔

Exceptions are an everyday occurrence in your Salesforce daily life. They can take many forms-

✅ They can be an exception for a Salesforce solution, like the above examples.

✅ Or an operational exception, like “This is your highest priority!” and the CEO comes walking by with a new highest priority….

✅ Or a people exception, like the database admin who kinda shows up to work whenever they feel like it, dressed in their pajamas and fluffy puppy sandals 🐶.

So…

If you know exceptions are gonna occur, then what good is a happy path?

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Happy path is essentially a baseline- something to measure exceptions against 📐.

Happy path is “easy.” Everything goes right, no friction, all fist pumps 🎉.

Salesforce essentially has the “happy” out of the box! Standard objects. All that pre-built functionality in the Lead. You could get a working org from lead creation to opportunity closed/won in about 5 minutes.

And that’s with the confetti 🎊 !

Happy path, for the win!

Except…

The exceptions.

“Yeah, most of the leads are gonna have a unique email, except this group….”

And we spend 80% of our time managing exceptions. Exceptions that account for only 20% (or less!) of the total inputs 😮!

And here’s the point-

Happy path is easy, and you need to get to the happy path definition quickly.

Why?

Because you will be spending 80% of your time identifying, understanding, defining, and then implementing exception management components.

😬 Permission sets. (bonus points if it’s for 1 specific person!)

😬 Formula fields.

😬 Custom Apex.

😬 Automated exception codes/messaging.

😬 Manual processes like an exception report and then an export and dataload to resolve.

HOW DO YOU GET IT?

Aim for the stars ✨ and you will land on the clouds ☁️.

If you focus on exceptions, the happy path will come easy.

But, like all great things, it takes time ⏰ and repetitions 🔄 to get good at this. It’s a significant mindset shift, for most.

One more huge disclaimer- being an exceptional business analyst is REQUIRED for thinking in exceptions. BA’s have the ability to breakdown biz process, understand the happy path, and do the gap analysis (exception management, included).

With these considerations, thinking in exceptions is an advanced technique.

The next time you are working with stakeholders to define a sales process, remind yourself the sales process is not a reinvention of the wheel 🛞.

Lead. Contact and Account. Maybe a Person Account. Opportunity.

There’s not many ways to chop that up. You know this process intimately 🧠.

So, focus on the exceptions. Interview the stakeholder for the exceptions. Design and build for exceptions. Test the exceptions.

By principle, the happy path is well within the exceptions 🙌.

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes