The time has come! Salesforce released a new certification last week that encompasses it’s own CPQ platform.
For those new to CPQ, you can read my previous post on the topic. It’s pretty amazing how far the Salesforce CPQ product has come in such a short amount of time. It was founded in 2012 as Quote Quickly, an app created by the Steelbrick company(look at their original blog!), it was then at some point rebranded to Steelbrick CPQ, then in December 2015, Salesforce acquired Steelbrick for a cool $360 million. 3 years. Amazing, right?
As some may know, the transition from Steelbrick to Salesforce is still ongoing with the product (I still have Quote Quickly assets and I only installed the package in Q4 2016), and one of the biggest pieces of it is the training and certification.
Initially, Steelbrick had “Belt” levels of certification, paying homage to either Six Sigma which uses belts for levels of certification and
knowledge, or martial arts, i’m not sure which. I’m assuming Six Sigma. But anyway….the next belt was brown belt which was advanced cpq/advanced admin level knowledge. Initially they were Steelbrick certifications, which then were rebranded to “Salesforce Steelbrick” then “Salesforce CPQ” belts, but still unofficially certifications.
But now, thankfully, there is a Salesforce recognized certification you can obtain as of last week. Like the other non architect certifications, the cost is $200 take/$100 retake and 60 questions with a 90 minute time limit and a 68% pass rate. On Webassessor, it is in the Admin track if you can’t find it.
After looking over the study guide provided by Salesforce which you can find on the certification page, I realized that even with how deep I am in CPQ at the very moment, I still have a lot to learn. I can have a piece of glass configured 2000 ways in it, but I know diddly squat about subscriptions and am weak on discounting. I do plan on getting this certification in 2017 though.
If you decide to brave down this path, I wish you luck!
Leave a Reply