Salesforce for Beginners: A practical, narrative-style guide to Salesforce CRM, automation, workflows, and AI for modern teams

Learn Salesforce from scratch and connect sales, service, and marketing in one CRM with hands-on exercises, a real-world storyline, and a gentle intro to Data Cloud and Agentforce

Key Features

Master core Salesforce workflows with step-by-step scenarios across sales and service

Design secure CRM data models, pages, and access for real teams

Automate everyday work with Flow, approvals, queues, and validation rules

Book DescriptionGetting value from Salesforce isn’t about clicking through features; it’s about aligning sales, service, and marketing so teams stop working in silos. Salesforce for Beginners, Third Edition shows you how to build a CRM that supports real workflows by capturing leads, managing accounts and opportunities, running campaigns, handling cases, and reporting on what’s working.

This third edition is rebuilt around a narrative case study. You’ll follow Maya, a new admin at PCG (Partly Cloudy Group), as she converts user requests into solutions. Along the way, you’ll learn modern Lightning navigation, create secure access with sharing and permission sets, model data with custom objects and page layouts, and move changes through sandboxes and DevOps Center. You’ll also get an approachable introduction to newer platform capabilities in a new Data & AI section covering Data Cloud and Agentforce. Without getting overly technical, you’ll see how unified customer profiles, segments, and AI-assisted workflows can support smarter sales and service.

By the end of the book, you’ll be able to configure Salesforce confidently and automate repetitive work with Flow.What you will learn

Navigate Lightning and set up a safe Developer Org for practice

Track activities, leads, accounts, opportunities, and campaigns

Support customer service with cases, email-to-case, and consoles

Build reports and dashboards that answer real business questions

Configure users, roles, sharing, and permission sets for security

Model your data with custom objects, fields, and page layouts

Automate work with Flow, approvals, queues, formulas, and validations

Explore Data Cloud and Agentforce to power smarter, connected journeys

Who this book is forThis book is for anyone new to Salesforce who needs to use or support the CRM in a business setting—sales reps, service agents, marketers, coordinators, and aspiring admins. If you want to connect sales, service, and marketing processes into one smoother flow and understand how the core objects and automation fit together, you’ll feel at home here. A basic understanding of sales, service, and marketing processes is recommended.