Sales Cloud for Small Business
The pipeline lives on Opportunity
Candidates must know the standard sales objects and how they connect: Lead (unqualified interest) converts into Account, Contact, and optionally Opportunity; Opportunity tracks a deal through stages toward Closed Won or Closed Lost; Products and Price Books attach line items; Quotes formalize pricing. Know that lead conversion maps fields and that converted leads are locked from editing.
Forecasting and pipeline hygiene
Understand that forecast categories map stages to predictions (Pipeline, Best Case, Commit, Omitted) and that probability usually ties to stage. A frequent trap: changing a stage does not retroactively change historical reports unless field history tracking is enabled. Another: Opportunity amount versus product line-item total can diverge if products are not synced.
Productivity features
Know Activities (tasks and events on the timeline), Einstein Activity Capture for email sync, Kanban views for drag-and-drop stage changes, and Path for guided stage prompts. Small-business questions often test whether you know these are configuration, not code.
Worked example
A rep's lead shows as converted but no Opportunity exists. Rule of thumb: conversion creates an Opportunity only if the user checks that option or the org's conversion settings default it on. Check conversion field mapping and the 'create opportunity' setting before assuming data loss.