It’s safe to say that Salesforce is dominant in almost all the markets that it operates in. They lead the charge with 23% of the CRM market, a position they have held for the 10th consecutive year, and includes apps in the sales, service, marketing, commerce, and integration categories.
But typically, Salesforce isn’t the first choice for SMBs or startups, with businesses looking at more cost effective options such as Monday.com, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Zoho. But over the past few years, Salesforce have their sights firmly fixed on the SMB market.
Salesforce & SMBs
There’s no doubt that Salesforce has one of the best tech platforms for businesses. They have 25 years experience pioneering apps in the Cloud, with many customers choosing the platform for its power, scalability, and ability to tailor every inch of the platform to their specific business processes.
But it’s also one of the most expensive, with Sales Cloud Enterprise edition (often the go-to option), starting at $165/user per month. If you would like to choose their top Sales Cloud package which includes a bunch of add-ons, as well as the latest AI-tech including Einstein 1 Studio, you’re looking at $500/user per month. This is even before you have started to explore Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft, Slack, or the many other Salesforce products in its extensive family.
For small businesses, this pricing can be immediately off putting. For many of the companies I used to consult for when I ran a Salesforce consultancy selling into startups, the CRMs of choice were HubSpot & Pipedrive: two of the most common platforms we used to migrate people away from.
But generally, as companies scale, they will always need to consider Salesforce. Whilst other CRMs on the market can be easy to use and require little to no implementation costs, they just don’t have the power or scalability that the Salesforce platform has. Which is why the vast majority of Fortune 100 companies use the platform (they used to state that 99/100 used Salesforce).
Although it may be natural for companies to use a cheaper CRM, and then upgrade when the time comes. In the age of rapid advancements, digital transformations and AI, there will be big benefits to companies with high ambitions who are using a more powerful CRM straight out of the gates.
This is why today, Salesforce are releasing “Pro Suite”, an upgraded version of their Starter Suite that was released last year.
The Opportunity for Salesforce
Salesforce have always focussed on the SMB market, with 1000’s of Account Executives across the world partnering with companies who are 200 employees and under. This is largely due to the fact that SMBs make up a significant portion of countries revenue, making 43.5% of GDP in the US, and 53% of GDP in the UK.
But Salesforce is facing stiff competition from the likes of HubSpot, Monday.com, and Pipedrive, especially in the years of belt tightening that we find ourselves in.
Salesforce have recently taken aim at HubSpot and other SMB-focused marketing automation tools with the release of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition. This edition of Marketing Cloud is built directly on the core Salesforce platform (unlike the main Marketing Cloud platform that is on a separate platform due to the acquisition of Exact Target in 2013), providing easier integration with other Salesforce products, and use of platform features such as Flow.
HubSpot tends to lure in customers with its freemium plans, and whilst we are unlikely to see Salesforce offer anything similar, it makes a lot more sense for businesses to start with the platform they mean to go on with. SMBs will have less stress using a system that doesn’t scale when they need to; they will ultimately get more value out of a more powerful system, and it won’t come with a hefty implementation fee to switch platforms when the time comes.
So, now that we have a bit of context: what is Pro Suite?
What Does Pro Suite Include?
Salesforce Pro Suite is the upgraded version of Starter Suite, and I was surprised to hear from Salesforce that this system is already being used by over 3,000 customers!
Both Starter and Pro Suite include Sales, Service, Marketing & Commerce functionality. Pricing starts at $25 and $100 respectively, and the fact that businesses do not need to purchase multiple, disparate systems that don’t integrate, can ultimately result in savings and a better architected system.
Functionality in Starter edition includes everything you would expect for an all-on-one CRM: Accounts & Contacts, Opportunities, Reporting, Case Management, Email Builder, and even a payment functionality linked up to Opportunities.
Pro Suite has all this included, but with the addition of Forecasting, Quoting, Live Chat, and most importantly, the ability to create custom objects, flows, and approval processes, as well as access to AppExchange apps.
For those familiar with Salesforce Professional Edition, this very much looks like the upgraded version, but rolling in additional functionality described above. The system is also purpose built for SMBs, with guided onboarding, reporting templates, and pre-built dashboards. You can see a full demo of Pro Suite here, as well as a full comparison between Starter and Pro here.
Summary
Salesforce have released a variety of tools over the years aimed at SMBs, but with 3,000 customers already using the starter suite, it bodes well for the CRM giant.
SMBs have the same growth ambitions as the bigger players, and as data & AI take center stage as the topics that will drive businesses forward for decades to come, it’s important all businesses take stock of what they need to thrive in an ever-competitive environment.