Ask Better Questions: How to Get the Right Requirements

June 20, 2025

Early in my Salesforce career, I used to build exactly what was asked.

“Can you add a checkbox?” “Can you make a flow that assigns this to marketing?” “Can we just copy this old spreadsheet into Salesforce?”

And guess what? Half the time, what I built wasn’t actually what they needed.

These days, I ask a better question first:

“What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?”

That question alone has changed my approach.

When a client asked for a “training completed” checkbox, it led to a conversation about tracking attendance across multiple sessions, logging instructor feedback, and showing a full training history — not something you can solve with a checkbox.

Great admins and developers don’t just gather requirements — we uncover them.

That means:

• Listening for pain points, not just feature requests
• Digging into how users work, not just what they say
• Validating your understanding before writing a single line of automation

Salesforce is powerful, but only when we solve the right problems. Better questions lead to better systems — and happier teams.