Getting Started with Salesforce

This is the first lesson in my end-to-end Salesforce training series.

No setup, no configuration, no hands-on yet.
Just the big picture: what Salesforce is, where it came from, and why so many people are building careers around it.

What You’ll Learn in This Lesson

By the end of this lesson, you’ll understand:

• What Salesforce is in simple terms
• What the world looked like before Salesforce (pre-Salesforce era)
• How Salesforce evolved from a CRM tool to a full cloud platform
• Where Salesforce fits in today’s tech stack
• A high-level view of the Salesforce job market and roles
• Whether Salesforce seems like a good fit for your career

Treat this as your orientation episode before the technical stuff begins.

1. The Pre-Salesforce Era – How Companies Managed Customers

Before Salesforce and cloud CRMs, businesses mostly used:

• On-premise CRM software
• Desktop tools like Excel and Outlook
• Custom-built internal tools
• A lot of manual work and scattered data

Common problems:

• High upfront cost: licenses, servers, infrastructure
• Slow implementations: projects taking months or years
• Complex upgrades: every new version meant disruption and IT effort
• Limited access: tools were tied to office networks and specific machines
• Dependency on IT teams for even small changes

Result: powerful systems, but:

• Hard to adopt
• Hard to change
• Hard to scale

Businesses needed something simpler, faster, and more flexible.

2. What Is Salesforce? (Simple Explanation)

In simple words:

Salesforce is a cloud-based platform that helps companies manage their customers, sales, support, marketing, and business processes.

Key ideas:

• Cloud-based
  You access Salesforce through a browser or mobile app. No local installation, no servers to manage.
• CRM at its core
  It started as a Customer Relationship Management tool to track:
  • Leads
  • Opportunities
  • Accounts
  • Contacts
• Platform, not just a product
  Over time, it became a platform where you can:
  • Customize data models
  • Automate workflows
  • Build custom applications
  • Integrate with other systems

So when people say “Salesforce,” they might mean:

• The CRM application, or
• The entire cloud platform that powers many apps and solutions

3. The Birth of Salesforce – “No Software”

Salesforce was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff and a small team in San Francisco.

Their core idea was:

Software should be delivered over the internet, not installed on local servers.

This model is called Software as a Service (SaaS).

Instead of:

• Buying licenses
• Installing software
• Managing servers

Companies could simply:

• Subscribe
• Log in from a browser
• Start using the product

This was a huge shift at a time when most enterprise software still lived on-premise.

4. How Salesforce Evolved Over Time

Salesforce grew from a basic CRM to a full cloud ecosystem. A simplified view:

Phase 1: Sales Cloud – Core CRM

• Focused on sales teams
• Features for leads, opportunities, accounts, contacts
• Reports and dashboards
• Goal: help sales teams sell more efficiently

Phase 2: Service Cloud – Customer Support

• Tools for customer service and call centers
• Cases, knowledge base, SLAs
• Multiple channels: phone, email, chat, social
• Goal: help businesses support customers better

Phase 3: Platform – Custom Apps & Automation

• Introduction of the Salesforce Platform / Force.com
• Click-based customization (Admins)
• Code-based customization (Apex, Visualforce, Lightning components)
• AppExchange marketplace for ready-made apps

At this stage, Salesforce became a platform to build business applications, not just a CRM.

Phase 4: Multi-Cloud & Acquisitions

Salesforce expanded into multiple clouds and products:

• Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Experience Cloud
• Analytics (Tableau), Integration (MuleSoft), Collaboration (Slack)
• Industry-specific solutions for finance, healthcare, education, and more

Today, Salesforce is closer to a business operating system than a single tool.

5. Where Salesforce Fits in a Modern Tech Stack

Salesforce usually sits at the center of customer-related operations:

• Sales teams use it to manage deals and pipelines
• Support teams use it to handle cases and tickets
• Marketing teams use connected tools to run campaigns and track leads
• Management uses dashboards to see revenue, performance, and health
• IT teams use it as a platform to build and integrate applications

Salesforce often connects to:

• Email systems
• Company websites
• ERPs and billing tools
• Marketing platforms
• Payment gateways
• Internal tools and databases

Learning Salesforce means learning:

• How businesses store and use customer data
• How processes are automated
• How systems talk to each other

6. Overview of the Salesforce Job Market

We’ll go deeper into roles and salaries in later lessons, but at a high level:

Thousands of companies worldwide rely on Salesforce.
They need people who can:

• Configure the system → Salesforce Administrators
• Customize using code → Salesforce Developers
• Design solutions → Consultants and Architects
• Test and integrate systems → QA, DevOps, Integration Engineers
• Run campaigns → Marketing Cloud specialists, etc.

Common Salesforce roles:

• Salesforce Administrator
• Salesforce Developer
• Salesforce Consultant
• Salesforce Architect
• Business Analyst (Salesforce)
• QA / Test Engineer (Salesforce)
• Marketing / Pardot / Marketing Cloud Specialist

Because Salesforce becomes deeply embedded in a company’s processes,
the demand for skilled professionals stays strong and long-term.

7. Is Salesforce a Good Fit for You?

Salesforce can be a strong career path if you:

• Like a mix of business + technology
• Enjoy solving real-world problems for users
• Are open to both point-and-click configuration and possibly some coding
• Want to work with cloud, SaaS, and enterprise applications
• Prefer working close to business teams (sales, support, marketing, operations)

It may not be the best fit if you only want:

• Low-level programming (OS, compilers, embedded systems)
• Game development or graphics programming
• Pure research roles (e.g., hardcore AI research)

This series will help you evaluate the fit more clearly over time.

8. What’s Next in the “Getting Started with Salesforce” Series

This lesson is part of the Getting Started with Salesforce module.
Here’s how the upcoming lessons are structured:

Lesson 1: Getting Started with Salesforce – What It Is, History & Jobs

You are here.

• Big-picture overview of Salesforce
• Pre-Salesforce era and the problem it solved
• Evolution of Salesforce and where it sits today
• High-level look at the job market

Lesson 2: Understanding CRM – Why Businesses Need Salesforce

• What CRM really means
• Types of CRM: operational, analytical, collaborative
• Business pain points that CRM tools solve
• Why Excel + email are not enough anymore

Lesson 3: Salesforce Products & Clouds – The Ecosystem

• Major clouds: Sales, Service, Marketing, Experience, Commerce
• Salesforce Platform and AppExchange
• How these pieces fit together in real companies

Lesson 4: Salesforce Roles & Career Paths

• Admin, Developer, Consultant, Architect, BA, QA, and more
• Responsibilities and expectations in each role
• Typical growth path for a Salesforce professional

Lesson 5: Learning Ecosystem – Trailhead, Certs & Community

• How to use Trailhead effectively
• Overview of key certifications
• Community events, user groups, and how to grow your network

Lesson 6: Your First 90 Days in Salesforce

• Practical roadmap for beginners
• Balancing theory, hands-on, and projects
• Tips to build a portfolio and stand out

9. Summary – Your Next Step

For now, your next step is simple:

• Understand why Salesforce exists
• Recognize its role as a cloud-based business platform
• Decide whether this direction feels exciting and worth exploring

In the next lesson, we’ll zoom in on CRM itself—
because to truly understand Salesforce, you must first understand the customer relationship problems it was created to solve.