7 Salesforce Issues SaaS Companies Face During Rapid Growth 

SaaS companies don’t mess around when it comes to technology. Many organizations start off managing their sales, approvals, upsells, and renewals with simple (but increasingly complex!) spreadsheets. But when it’s time to invest in tech, SaaS leaders know the value of a great tool and go for best in class. 

The problem is that best-in-class tech doesn’t guarantee best-in-class revenue operations. 

Salesforce is a perfect example. At OpFocus, we know that Salesforce is hands down the best CRM solution for rapidly growing SaaS companies. But we also know that SaaS companies face unique challenges related to their Salesforce tech stack. 

In this article, we’ll break down common Salesforce issues for SaaS companies and identify their root causes. You’ll also learn how working with a Salesforce consulting firm can help alleviate these issues and keep your growth trajectory on track.

Root causes of Salesforce issues

The root causes of Salesforce issues for SaaS companies lie in their unique growth trajectory—namely, their mandate for hypergrowth. Private equity and VC investors generally require SaaS companies to scale quickly. In the “move fast and break things” environment, the focus early on is squarely on product.

It’s difficult under these circumstances to be introspective about something as mundane as the systems—much less the processes and governance—that support a scaling company. (To see how you stack up, check out our Growth Readiness Assessment.) 

Companies rarely devote enough time or bandwidth to these less glamorous areas, and budgets rarely allocate enough resources to develop them, either. This approach creates inefficiency and inconsistency, and technology problems with the Salesforce ecosystem usually aren’t far behind. 

SaaS companies know well enough to invest in best-in-class tech, but without the right systems, these tools end up underleveraged, poorly integrated, or simply not functioning as intended. Tech companies often tap internal development teams to “fix” these Salesforce issues, but if these teams don’t have Salesforce expertise and familiarity with best in class tools in the ecosystem, they may end up with clunky, over-engineered solutions that won’t hold up at scale. 

7 Common Salesforce Issues for SaaS Companies

We’ve identified seven Salesforce issues SaaS companies face that arise as a result of these root causes. If you’re growing quickly, you’re likely experiencing pains in one or more of these areas:

Conversions

Your conversion rates are lower than projected. You likely have leaks in your funnel that need to be shored up so you make the most of every dollar spent on demand gen.

CAC to LTV ratio

If your marketing investment is increasing without a clear ROI, your CAC to LTV ratio could be off, which may end up stunting future growth. The right visibility can help you identify issues so that you can rebalance your CAC to LTV ratio if needed. 

Pricing

Complicated manual calculations and slow approval processes jeopardize the accuracy of your prices and prevent your sales team from quickly closing new business. You need to standardize pricing, automate quoting and approvals, and simplify your renewals process.

Customer 360

Without the ability to monitor customer health, platform usage can decline and adoption may remain low. The right analytics can help your customer success team excel at increasing adoption and proactively managing accounts.

Churn & retention 

It doesn’t matter how good your product is if customers churn because their renewals fell off your radar. Automation and the right analytics help your team reach out at the right time, every time to reduce churn and increase retention. 

Scalability

Hypergrowth puts revenue into overdrive, but to be sustainable, you need people, processes, systems, data, and governance that can keep up.

Frankenstack

If your tech stack feels bolted, sewn, or pasted together, you’re not set up to leverage those best-in-class tools you’re using. You need to streamline your tech stack to eliminate redundancies and maximize integration and automation.

Turn Salesforce from an issue to an asset

If you’re experiencing one or more of these seven issues, you’re not alone. It’s extremely common for SaaS companies to experience growing pains as they scale. The good news? You’re already working on a best in class platform. With the right plan in place, Salesforce can become an asset that helps you solve each of the problems we’ve outlined in this piece.

Interested in learning about comprehensive planning for your Salesforce organization? Check out our article, OpFocus Salesforce Roadmap: What is It and Why Do I Need One? If you’re looking for a configure-price-quote solution, take a look at our post, How Can Salesforce CPQ Help Me Scale the Growth of MRR/ARR?
At OpFocus, we specialize in Salesforce consulting for SaaS companies and draw on hundreds of use cases when helping companies make decisions. If you’re ready to start a conversation about optimizing your Salesforce ecosystem to support rapid growth, get in touch with us today!

fast-track your mission critical project

start here

April 19, 2022

Jack Campbell, Strategic Sales Manager

about the author

Jack Campbell

Jack’s been selling Salesforce solutions in one capacity or another since 2014, spanning a breadth of different organizations. He was attracted to OpFocus because of their specialization in SaaS, and his 3 years here have allowed him to extend that specialization to product knowledge across the Salesforce tech stack.

His favorite Salesforce features are CPQ, and more generally, the platform’s ability to integrate with 3rd party platforms and applications. CPQ speaks for itself in SaaS — they need it to grow and scale. Salesforce’s dominance of the CRM space has brought along with it an enormous 3rd party ecosystem, and required other large software companies such as Oracle to easily integrate and play nicely. Jack believes that’s a powerful position to be in, as it allows SaaS companies to be flexible in how they approach their broader revenue operations tech stack.