5 Crucial Ways Salesforce CRM Can
Add Value to Small and Medium Businesses

So if anyone can relate to the story of ‘humble beginnings, it is Benioff and Salesforce! In 1999, when Marc Benioff and a few others started Salesforce, it operated out of a small San Francisco apartment. It was a small business that served the needs of other small businesses.

Today, Salesforce has more than 150,000 customers. Some of the biggest companies in the world – from Adidas, Canon and T-Mobile to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Philips and Toyota – rely on Salesforce and its applications. Despite this distinctive cachet, the company is not taking its eye off the customers who got them to where they are today. Salesforce offers solutions specifically designed to help small businesses thrive and grow. The Salesforce Essentials platform helps SMBs work efficiently and prioritize the most critical tasks. It incorporates features like a built-in AI (Salesforce Einstein), automatic upgrades, connected social media channels, enterprise-level security, and ongoing support so that SMBs can accelerate their journey into the big leagues. And all this for as low as $25/month (USD/user/month billed annually)!

And this is just one of the reasons why Salesforce is the CRM of choice for thousands of startups and small businesses.

As a company, Salesforce is a tech titan. However, it is more than just a CRM. Salesforce offers several other services and solutions that help SMBs market smarter, win more happy customers, streamline and automate their processes and do whatever they need to scale their businesses and accelerate their growth journey. For example, Salesforce Sales Cloud helps sales reps close deals faster. It also enables company leaders to guide the overall sales strategy to boost their revenues. With Salesforce Service Cloud, SMBs can make (and keep!) customers happy by providing personalized support across digital channels, resolving cases faster, and even empowering them with engaging portals and communities.

With Salesforce’s fully-customizable CRM products, you can get 32% more leads and close 26% more deals, a boon for SMBs in more ways than one!

Despite its current high profile, Salesforce understands small businesses’ unique challenges as they try to acquire new customers, run their operations, and compete in the crowded marketplace.

For example, Salesforce’s research has found that trust is one of the most critical priorities for SMBs when dealing with customers, employees, and vendors. Salesforce also understands that because SMBs do not want to be overly dependent on any one client, they need to broaden the offerings portfolio, diversify the customer base and ideally, do both. The solutions can be tailored to mitigate such challenges.

Salesforce recognizes the autonomy of SMB firms and respects their processes. It does not use the ‘I-know-better-than-you’ dominating approach but instead provides options on how it could integrate with current strategies to improve them. This empowers small businesses to find the processes that truly work for them, identify and mitigate issues and set themselves up for real success.

Thanks to AppExchange, a robust ecosystem for Salesforce apps, SMBs get several advantages.

First, through AppExchange, Salesforce encourages startup developers to be accredited partners of Salesforce. Thus, it gives them greater exposure to a large market with huge demand.

Second, owing to robust APIs and other software integration systems, SMBs who have already invested in other applications do not need to worry about how to make these apps work with Salesforce. With thousands of applications already present in AppExchange, many external applications can be integrated with Salesforce outright, which provides SMBs the advantage of a unified system right from the beginning.

Salesforce hosts several Dreamforce events and large-scale software conferences where SMBs can meet thousands of experts and users and learn firsthand how Salesforce can help them move forward with their small businesses.

With ‘Salesforce Ventures‘ (Salesforce’s venture capital and investment arm), SMBs can access Salesforce’s resources and experts to propel their businesses up to the next level.

Salesforce for Startups provides access to Salesforce technology and the resources and expertise needed to become a thriving customer and community-focused company.

For startups that need to establish a more solid footing, Salesforce Accelerate provides insights, learning, and support that startups need to achieve more market space and more significant growth.

Salesforce also has a gamified learning system called Trailhead that offers learning modules and guided trails to help SMBs make the most out of Salesforce’s solutions.

With solid mentorship, training, and exposure, Salesforce provides SMBs a greater chance of success in the AppExchange ecosystem.

With enhanced support, SMB-centric software solutions, funding opportunities, and access to a large community of mentors and experts, Salesforce is an excellent solution for SMBs.

Since 2010, we have helped dozens of SMB and large companies leverage the power of Salesforce to transform their business outcomes and create more excellent value than ever before. And SaaSnic can help you get started on your Salesforce CRM adoption journey! Please look at our website for further details about our services portfolio.