In a recent announcement, Salesforce unveiled its new all-in-one CRM solution, “Starter”, designed with the needs of small and growing businesses in mind. Starter combines the functionalities of sales, service, and marketing in a single solution and is the next iteration of Salesforce Easy, which was launched last year as Salesforce’s first product led growth (PLG) offering. By bringing these capabilities together in a simpler package, Salesforce believes that it can provide important capabilities to these businesses for managing customer relationships, centralizing critical data, and fostering efficient growth. The solution provides an easy-to-use user interface (UI) featuring guided onboarding, reporting templates, unified customer data, built-in AI, and pre-built dashboards.

Why Salesforce Starter?

Starter is set to address the common difficulties that small businesses face with CRM systems, which are often viewed as overly complex and difficult to set up. Such businesses frequently find it challenging to integrate new CRM solutions with their existing sales, service, and marketing tools, especially when the software is outdated or there are multiple tools in use. According to Salesforce, Starter negates these issues, offering a user experience that avoids complex setups and provides a complete view of business operations across sales, service, and marketing.

There are a number of CRM solutions targeted for small and medium businesses. What sets Starter apart from these other lightweight CRM platforms is its ability to scale up quickly through the Salesforce product portfolio. Starter is designed to grow with your business, allowing businesses to find, win, and keep customers. As a business expands, Starter adapts and expands along with it, eliminating the need for costly migrations to different CRM platforms. The “average” Starter customer is an SMB that operates in a highly competitive market, where the right technology investments can be a significant differentiator.

Beyond SMBs

In addition to SMBs, Salesforce believes that Starter is ideal for teams looking to establish a strong foundation using the best of Salesforce's sales, service, and marketing features. As a business grows, Starter can accommodate more customization, automation, and integration solutions. Its design allows new customers to enjoy the benefits of CRM quickly without the expense or complexity, but then have access to all Salesforce has to offer as the business grows.

Salesforce reported that they reimagined Starter from the ground up. The user experience, sign-up and onboarding process, and even the way the product is purchased have all been optimized. Salesforce improved the user experience by adding in-app guidance and ready-to-use, pre-built tools and templates. A simplified sign-up process coupled with a 30-day free trial makes Starter an easily accessible tool for customers. AI capabilities are also incorporated with features like Einstein Activity Capture and Einstein Send Time Optimization to improve sales and marketing efforts.

Starter is not just limited to a specific type of business or industry. Companies of different sizes across various industries can use Starter to increase sales, resolve service issues, deliver high-quality customer experiences, and effectively market to their customers. Its easy-to-use tools and onboarding process have already shown success with companies like MedLogiq and Snapology. Starter is generally available now at a price of $25 per user per month, with the marketing application set to launch later this month, August 2023.