March Ventas Consulting Spotlight on Sheldon Simmons
With two Salesforce Certifications, Sheldon Simmons is one of Ventas Consulting’s newer consultants. He has earned the Certified Admin and Service Cloud Certification and continues with a pursuit of more training—Java, Platform App Builder, and Trailhead badges.
Sheldon is a US Navy veteran, with eight years of service. Since leaving the service Sheldon has worked in Small Businesses—in particular his family’s Childcare business, hoping to make his mark there. As a Salesforce consultant he has worked with small startups, using his skills to help them further their mission.
After his Navy career, Sheldon admits to the usual struggle to reassert himself into the regular business workforce. He recognized his need to move on and while helping his family’s childcare business pick “some kind of CRM”, he ran across Salesforce and it held his attention. He attended a Salesforce demo and was hooked, joined Hector Perez and the Merivis Foundation and struck gold! So, he took the week-long Salesforce training offered free to Veterans and got his first Certification.
With his training, he worked with a few nonprofits, again wanting to use and share the Salesforce goodness. Once more searching online, he read about Ventas Consulting and thought that Ventas Consulting stood for the things he stands for. Excellent service, help for veterans through the Vets2Cloud program, and, he says, “David’s friendly face.”
He called Ventas Consulting founder David Franklin during Dreamforce and was surprised when David called him back with a promise to get in touch after Dreamforce. Again, to Sheldon’s surprise, David did call him back right after Dreamforce. David impressed him right away. “Before we discussed any business or skills or anything, David asked me about my well-being. He cares about how I’m doing.”
Since being at Ventas Consulting, Sheldon earned his second Certification and worked on a team that got super-star reviews “We…worked directly with Andy and Sheldon to help build out our revenue engine. We had very specific requirements…(and)Andy and Sheldon took the time to understand our business and unique challenges and translated them. Unanticipated challenges came up and the Ventas Consulting team did an excellent job of leveraging their expertise…”
In the Navy, Sheldon was an Aviation Boatswain’s Mate. The last three years of Sheldon’s military service were spent in Spain and today he has a yearning to return to that beautiful, friendly pace. Till then, he’ll probably get married to his long-time girlfriend, Judith. He’s even trying to get Judith to bring her database skills and learn Salesforce. And he spends quality time with his 10-year old son, Zion.
Furthering his Salesforce and business tool box is highest on his list of career goals. Sheldon Simmons really just wants to help people and their businesses to run more efficiently. A little further up the list of goals is to have his own business—probably consulting. The idea of being his own boss is pleasing to him.
What do you do for fun: Playing pick-up games of basketball and kayaking
What are you watching: The Man in the High Castle
What are you reading: Books about helping yourself, how to study better, Salesforce tutorials