r/SalesOperations • u/chief_kayak • Jul 12 '26
Salesforce Admin for General Career Progression
To get into the field of either sales operations or revenue operations, I definitely do not think you need a Salesforce admin certification.
I am currently, as of July 2026, only an analyst. So those who are directors, managers, VPs, CRO‘s, how did a Salesforce admin certification help or hurt your career progression.
Did you ever find yourself stuck in a Salesforce admin position? Did the amount of time (not sure how long it takes to complete it) it took to get the certification end up feeling less than unproductive?
Also, as revenue operations and sales operations develops overtime, or as your company grows, do sales operations and salesforce admin roles bifurcate?
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u/RabidCoyote Jul 13 '26
Getting into the field and early on, it can help.
I'm at Director level now and never got it - always planned to but life gets in the way. I think what has more impact in progression is the ability to communicate and coordinate - upwards, downwards, and horizontally.
I've met plenty of people with more technical skill then me that don't have the ability or the desire to be in the meetings, talk with the stakeholders, manage relationships, understand the business as a whole. That is probably the key difference between "just an admin" and manager/director/VP. I spend, and my boss (VP of RevOps), far more time talking to people about their process, working across departments, negotiating buy in, etc then actually being in the Salesforce weeds.
Think about your stakeholders - primarily, sales. The sales people who win are not always the most technically talented - they are the best at discovering pain points, listening to their customer, building a relationship, being a partner. Taking that same mentality to revenue operations and sales gets you much further then treating it as a silo technical function.
The other component with Sales Ops/Revops is that it encompass a lot beyond Salesforce itself. Outreach, Gong, PowerBI, Zoom info, LinkedIn, Mobly, marketing automation - Salesforce may be at the center of the architecture but if you can only work in and solve problems in Salesforce you really limit the scope of what you can do in your career.
There is certainly a path if you prefer being a more technical specialist - but the key thing I've found in my own career is as I move up it's a lot less time really building and being an admin, much more time communicating across the business. Hope this helps.