When I started, I thought adding value meant becoming technical as fast as possible: objects, fields, permissions, automations, integrations, APIs. All that language that feels like a wall at first.
And yes, you have to learn it.
But in real projects I understood something that changed how I saw myself: Salesforce does not live only in technology. It lives in companies, teams, sales, service, operations, meetings, exceptions and decisions that almost never fit cleanly into a diagram.
Before Salesforce, I spent more than 20 years in sales, dealing with customers, teams and stakeholders. That did not automatically make me a senior Salesforce consultant. But it did give me something important: business context.
I knew how to listen to a need that was not yet clearly expressed. I knew when a solution sounded nice but would break in real operations. I knew people use Excel even when a CRM exists. I knew a badly understood process creates more work, not less.
That context matters.
A good consultant does not just configure. They ask, organize, translate, prioritize and help the tool fit the reality of the company.
Field Service fit me especially well because it brings Salesforce down to the ground: technicians, appointments, work orders, mobility, planning, urgent cases, end customers and real operations. There, technology cannot live in an ivory tower. It has to work.
Salesforce can be learned. Business judgment is trained through years of reality.
The key is knowing how to connect both.
I did not come from IT. I came from listening to customers, understanding companies and surviving real processes. That counts too.