Careers Spotlights
Salesforce Functional Consultant
How much do Functional Consultants make?
| Junior pay band | Senior pay band | Contract rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States ($) | 117,000-143,750 | 143,750-166,000+ | 100-150 (p/h) |
| United Kingdom (£) | 46,500-59,500 | 59,500-82,250+ | 566-810 (p/d) |
| Germany (€) | 52,750-72,250 | 72,250-100,250+ | 621-777 (p/d) |
Junior pay band
| United States ($) | 117,000 - 143,750 |
| United Kingdom (£) | 46,500 - 59,500 |
| Germany (€) | 52,750 - 72,250 |
Senior pay band
| United States ($) | 143,750 - 166,000 + |
| United Kingdom (£) | 59,500 - 82,250 + |
| Germany (€) | 72,250 - 100,250 + |
Contract rate
| United States ($) | 100 - 150 (p/h) |
| United Kingdom (£) | 566 - 810 (p/d) |
| Germany (€) | 621 - 777 (p/d/) |
of Functional Consultants are satisfied with their job, up from 57% in our last survey
of Functional Consultants are satisfied with their salary, down from 64% in our last study
Permanent Functional Consultants work an average of 41 hours per week
Freelance Functional Consultants work an average of 34 hours per week
What factors impact your earning potential as a Functional Consultant?
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Years of technical experience with Salesforce | 94% | 5% | 1% |
| Exposure to large projects | 89% | 9% | 2% |
| Becoming a Salesforce product specialist (e.g., working with Salesforce Industries [Vlocity], CPQ, FSL, Sales and Service Cloud) | 81% | 15% | 3% |
| Years of experience in IT | 80% | 16% | 3% |
| Salesforce certifications | 80% | 15% | 5% |
| Specific vertical industry experience | 72% | 21% | 7% |
| Years of experience working for a partner organization | 67% | 24% | 9% |
| College/University degree(s) | 65% | 16% | 19% |
| Years of experience working for an end user | 61% | 25% | 13% |
Years of technical experience with Salesforce
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 94% | 5% | 1% |
Exposure to large projects
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 89% | 9% | 2% |
Becoming a Salesforce product specialist (e.g., working with Salesforce Industries [Vlocity], CPQ, FSL, Sales and Service Cloud)
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 81% | 15% | 3% |
Years of experience in IT
| Satisfied | Neutral | Dissatisfied |
|---|---|---|
| 80% | 16% | 3% |
Salesforce certifications
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 80% | 15% | 5% |
Specific vertical industry experience
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 72% | 21% | 7% |
Years of experience working for a partner organization
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 67% | 24% | 9% |
College/University degree(s)
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 65% | 16% | 19% |
Years of experience working for an end user
| Important | Neutral | Unimportant |
|---|---|---|
| 61% | 25% | 13% |
What steps should you take to become a Functional Consultant?
Education
As with similar roles across the ecosystem, 84% of Functional Consultants hold at least a Bachelor's degree. However, only 38% consider that a degree is needed to work with Salesforce, while 65% consider a degree to be an important factor when it comes to increasing earning potential.
Certification
Official vendor-accredited certifications are a great way to upskill and verify your knowledge in the eyes of potential employers.
We discovered that 88% of Functional Consultants are certified, while, 84% believe that having a certification makes you a more valuable candidate.
As with the Technical Consultant path, there are no certifications specific to Functional Consultants in the same way that many other roles, such as Developer and Administrator, do. However, once you have your Salesforce Administrator certification then you can begin to pursue other certs that might be relevant to your role.
These include:
- Field Service Lightning Consultant
- Non-profit Cloud Consultant
- Experience Cloud Consultant
- Education Cloud Consultant
- Tableau CRM & Einstein Discovery Consultant
- Omnistudio Consultant
- Sales Cloud Consultant
- Service Cloud Consultant
- Application Architect
There are also the Pardot Consultant and Marketing Cloud Consultant certifications, though they require you to earn other certs as prerequisites first, namely Pardot Specialist and Marketing Cloud Admin, respectively.
What certifications do Functional Consultants hold?
Roles that can lead on to becoming a Functional Consultant
Functional Consultants are experts in requirements gathering, process mapping, and documentation. For these reasons, they often start their careers doing similar, less technical roles within the Salesforce space such as Administrator or Business Analyst. Due to the highly transferable skills involved, however, many begin their career journey in other types of business analyst or project management roles. These can include:
- Salesforce Administrator
- Business Analyst
- Non-tech professionals who've used Salesforce as an end user/customer
What skills and experience should Functional Consultants have?
- Extensive knowledge of the Salesforce Platform and its architecture
- In-depth understanding of Salesforce best practices and optimal configurations
- Background working with technologies including Visio, Jira, Marketing Automation, Cloud Solutions
- Experience with Agile project delivery and preferably either Scrum Master certification or experience working on Scrum teams
- Confident customizing Salesforce apps using Apex and Visualforce
- Experience with data migration and data migration tools
- Understand API integration
- Ability to guide discovery conversations to gather complex requirements and translate them into clear user stories and solutions
- Basic knowledge of programming languages like C#, Java, Kotlin, Python, Angular Js, React Js, SQL, Swift, Android, R, and F#
- Salesforce Admin, Consultant, Architect or Developer certification
- Experience with Tableau CRM
- Experience with business process mapping/design
- Experience with change management, including rollout planning, training plan development, and user adoption
What are the opportunities for progression for a Functional Consultant?
Are you looking to hire Salesforce professionals?
Are you a job seeker?
Are you looking to hire Salesforce professionals?
Are you a job seeker?
Our key findings report contains highlights from this year’s Careers and Hiring Guide, plus our salary tables allow you to compare your salary or benchmark your teams’ salaries no matter their role in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Our key findings report contains highlights from this year’s Careers and Hiring Guide, plus our salary tables allow you to compare your salary or benchmark your teams’ salaries no matter their role in the Salesforce ecosystem.
