How Many SaaS Companies Has the Salesforce Playbook Ruined?
Systems of record need a services model. Software people chose because it was a pleasure to use doesn't.
People see the massive services success at Salesforce and think that to build a multibillion dollar company, they have to copy exactly what Salesforce does. In my opinion, hundreds of SaaS companies have been ruined, or had their wings and future potential clipped, by falling into the trap of copying old playbooks.
I think it’s fundamentally down to a lot of SaaS employees, especially in GTM teams, not understanding the difference between a system of record and a system of engagement, or an entrenched platform and a point solution. The data moat and business criticality of the former is why Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP et al can, and need to, build a services model on top of their software. It’s key to getting a stupidly complex system set up.
For consumer grade SaaS companies, forcing yourself down that route is silly. It completely contradicts the whole point of why you built better software in the first place. Customers chose you partly because you built great software. Software that gets organic adoption, that’s a pleasure to use, that’s a dream to administer. These are creative tools, tools for production, tools for collaboration. They spread like wildfire.
And too often they’re betrayed by people with good intentions who spoil the whole pot. In the quest for continued hypergrowth, companies crowbar in services and products that are intentionally hostile experiences for the customer. Things that should be simple become intentionally complex, to justify positions and the need for services. The arrogance that no team could set this up and use it for themselves.
Well, newsflash. You can’t enjoy the ride up on the premise of how software has changed, then revert to the old ways when it suits, in pursuit of more revenue. That’s how you go from innovator in your customers’ minds to just another big tech company treating them like a cash cow. If the value you deliver isn’t exceptionally high or business critical by then, they’ll start looking elsewhere. They’ll lose interest in the partnership and stop investing time in enabling people on your product. It starts to feel like they serve you more than you serve them.
That’s so difficult to pull back from. Market sentiment shifts, and you can find yourself on the scrapheap if you’re a point solution posing as a system of record.