Comment by ivan_gammel
5 hours ago
I owned Salesforce setup with 4 engineers and 500+ licenses. I don‘t see how could I replace our SF setup with an in-house product on the same budget within reasonable timeline. We won local competition within a few years, because our sales could use good CRM from day 1 and our competitor, according to the rumors I heard, could not calculate properly sales agent commission. Vendor lock-in is not always a stupid thing. Sometimes it‘s the bet that wins you a market.
Zoom out a little though. I've always felt the main reason That most companies use Salesforce Is that most companies use Salesforce.
I'll give you an example. At a previous employer, We used Google Analytics. We paid for Google Analytics. I feel positive that as a mid size company, We shouldn't have paid for Google Analytics. The free product with 50 events in GA4 should be plenty for us. But why do we use Google Analytics in the first place? Because everyone uses Google Analytics.
I agree that sometimes Salesforce might be a good idea. However, it should be a part of an overall strategy, not just because everyone does it. This kind of deliberate tooling strategy is difficult though because the way Google Analytics or Salesforce works from what I understand is make marketing folks feel they are specialized in Google Analytics or Salesforce so they feel like they have to keep using it or their skill will become useless.
It is like resume driven development but for the whole business.
>I've always felt the main reason That most companies use Salesforce Is that most companies use Salesforce.
It's like this for most software, but as a salaryman it's better for you if you use the common software. If you have an interview you can now say "I know how to use the thing that most people use" instead of "Actually we had an inhouse system so if you hire me I need to be onboarded for 3 months".
I got hired to my 2nd job in large part because I knew how to use Broadridge Paladyne (back then it was pretty good if you got over the pretty bad UI/UX, by today's standards it's not great).
I think it‘s kind of a common knowledge now that Salesforce is very expensive, so it is not a go-to choice for most startups/no-CRM-experience people. You are more likely to start with Hubspot today than with anything else, but those low-effort CRMs are also quite easy to migrate from. Google Analytics too, so it’s not exactly a „lock-in“. The lock-in happens when you struggle with your current setup or risks associated with it become unacceptable, but do not have the budget and a competent team or external partner to execute the migration.
„Everyone does that“ is definitely part of decision-making process almost everywhere, but I personally have not seen companies where it’s just a cargo cult rather than a reasonable strategic choice. The obvious benefits are that it’s easier to find implementation partners, the costs are predictable and your users may already know the system, so you won’t have unnecessary friction in your ops.