Growing businesses face a unique challenge with Salesforce. Unlike enterprises with dedicated teams and deep pockets, you’re operating with tighter budgets and smaller teams meaning there’s less room for error. Every investment needs to justify itself quickly and clearly, and Salesforce is no exception.
Most guidance around Salesforce and ROI is written for enterprise prospects. It’s often too broad to be actionable or assumes you have resources you simply don’t have. What’s missing is practical advice for businesses like yours: companies that have already invested, and need to know how to increase Salesforce ROI without breaking the bank.
We’ve written this article to help you understand what might be holding you back, how to maximize ROI on your Salesforce investment and show you how you can access specialized experts to help in the most cost effective way.
Common Salesforce ROI Challenges and How To Address Them
Many of the organizations we work with have a similar story: your implementation was probably completed a while ago and your partner has moved on. Now, you’re left managing a system without the internal resources to fix issues or continuously improve it. Salesforce is technically working, but it doesn’t feel like it’s delivering the value you imagined and you can’t quite put your finger on why.
Let’s explore some common issues Appex has seen inside the SMB market and our advice on addressing them to maximize your Salesforce ROI.
“Salesforce Just Feels Like Admin And Everyone Hates Using It”
You sat in that magical demo where Salesforce made everything look effortless. Reports were auto populated with useful data and you realised how leadership could start making informed decisions. Your salespeople would spend more time selling, while management would finally have accurate data, everyone would save time and work better. Win, win, right?
Then your team actually started using it. Now your salespeople spend extra time logging data that they believe to be pointless. To make things worse, the data is often incomplete, so the reports are unreliable.
The capabilities you saw in the demo are achievable, we’ve seen the successful projects firsthand. However, user adoption is commonly cited as an important factor in Salesforce implementation ‘failures’. You’re not the only one facing this problem, 54% of businesses have confirmed their CRM adoption rates to be below 90%.
The core issue is usually the same: Salesforce is asking people for information without giving them anything useful back. For example, if they’re filling out fields that never get used, the work feels one-way, so people stop doing it properly. Users treat Salesforce as a chore, rather than a tool that can help them achieve more in their day, which is what we are here to help you address.
Improving Salesforce User Adoption
We’ve established that for most teams, Salesforce feels like something that makes their job harder without giving them anything useful in return. To fix that, you need to understand exactly where the friction is and that requires a useful feedback channel, not a survey that nobody fills out.
Create a low-friction way for users to flag problems as they happen. It could be as simple as a Slack channel or a shared Google Form. Could be a standing agenda item in your weekly team meeting. You know your team. The format is irrelevant, but you must encourage end users to say “this field feels pointless” or “I don’t understand how this works”.
Then, you have to close the loop. When someone flags an issue, do one of two things; either start the process of fixing/removing it, or explain why it exists. For example, if a salesperson complains about a mandatory field they think is useless, show them the relevant report leadership uses that data for. If you can’t justify it, then maybe it should be removed.
Make visible changes based on feedback. The goal is to show your team that their input changes the system. Once people see that their efforts lead to improvement, they’ll keep telling you what’s broken and you’ll keep making Salesforce more useful. Create a way of notifying users of improvements, whether that’s a regular call with the core users, a monthly newsletter or In-App Guidance built directly into Salesforce to alert them to changes.
Pair feedback with specific, ongoing training. Short, focused sessions will work much better than one ‘training day’ per year that everybody forgets. Someone must be training your team consistently so they can feel confident to use Salesforce in making their job easier, not harder.
Salesforce needs to prove its value to the people using it every day. Fix that, and the data quality issue fixes itself. You might be thinking “okay great, but who can make these changes?” Don’t worry, that’s what we’re looking at in the following section.
“Every Change Needs a Salesforce Expert”
Your implementation partner may have built exactly what was asked. There’s automations running in the background, integrations with other tools etc. but their role often ends at delivery.
Unfortunately, the engagement model of some Salesforce partners prevents your business from being independent. For example, documentation could be unclear (or nonexistent) so you don’t understand why or how things were built this way.
Enterprises solve this easily by hiring dedicated Salesforce admins and whole teams. For smaller, growing businesses, this is unrealistic. According to Salesforce Ben’s salary survey, a skilled Salesforce administrator will typically command a salary between €60,000 – €80,000 per year across Europe, plus benefits. You probably don’t have 40 hours worth of Salesforce work per week, and this cost may not have been included in the CRM budget.
The more sustainable approach is finding a middle ground: not a full-time hire, but ongoing access to expertise through a managed services agreement. This gives you fractional access to experienced Salesforce professionals who can make changes quickly, advise on best practices, and stop small issues from becoming expensive problems, without the cost of a full-time salary.
This guide walks you through managed services for Salesforce and is written to help you decide if it makes sense for your business. The core principle is simple: you shouldn’t hesitate using and improving your own CRM because you don’t have a Salesforce expert on staff.
Understanding Which Changes Will Improve Salesforce ROI
Every team member has a “quick idea”. A new field to track one more thing or an automation that would “save so much time.” If you say yes to everything, six months later, you’ll have 500 custom fields, dozens of unused workflows, and everyone will say Salesforce is too complicated.
Before you make changes, think:
1. What real problem does this solve?
2. Who is affected and how?
3. Does this align with existing processes and data standards?
4. What’s the impact vs. effort?
5. Who will own it?
Keep Salesforce too simple and you’ll outgrow it. Over-customize and you’ll lock yourself into a system that’s too fragile to change. The right balance builds enough to support your current process while documenting it clearly enough that you can adapt when said process changes.
This is where having someone who’s seen hundreds of SMB Salesforce orgs becomes valuable. At Appex, we can apply both technical and commercial knowledge to show you which changes will create business value and which ones might feel important but will become technical debt. Sometimes the most valuable thing a Salesforce partner does is protect you from your own ideas.
“I Don’t Know How To Measure Salesforce ROI”
Everyone tracks revenue growth, but few can isolate what and where Salesforce actually contributes. That’s where most SMBs get stuck on ROI. They’re measuring big outcomes Salesforce influences but ignoring the individual things they’ve designed their org to improve.
Before you can measure ROI, you have to define what success actually looks like for your business. What does “Salesforce working” mean to you? Faster lead follow-up? Cleaner data? Until that’s defined, you’ll never be able to track impact.
Of course, profit is your most important number. But in our experience, learning what to track inside Salesforce shows you where to improve and when you improve the right things, profit naturally increases.
Here are some examples of metrics you could be tracking:
- Lead response time – How long between a lead arriving and a rep making first contact?
- Forecast accuracy – What’s the gap between what your team forecasts and what actually closes?
- Data completeness – What percentage of your records have the critical fields filled in?
- Time allocation – How many hours per week do reps spend on admin versus actual selling?
Proving Salesforce ROI
When you invest in Salesforce, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. Most budget discussions focus on licenses and implementation which means what happens after go-live often isn’t planned for. Sometimes, no-one has considered the price for the work that actually increases ROI like maintaining and optimizing the system.
That gap has two costs. First, when you eventually need an expert, it’s unplanned spending that wrecks ROI projections. And second, without that continuous improvement, ROI plateaus and the system stops evolving while the business keeps moving.
Also, it’s almost impossible to prove ROI when no one is connecting what’s happening technically to what matters commercially. You need someone who can understand, explain and demonstrate how a field update turns into faster lead response times, or cleaner data into more accurate forecasts.
Our Managed Services make this achievable for businesses of any size. Rather than relying on one person focused on a single area (like a developer or an ops specialist), you get flexible access to a pool of Salesforce professionals with diverse skills, all for a fraction of the cost of in-house hiring.
At Appex, our experts bring a unique perspective that comes from actually working at Salesforce, allowing us to truly shape your org around the outcomes you want.
Summary
ROI doesn’t come from technology alone. It comes from how consistently you improve and measure it, and how confidently your people use it. If Salesforce feels like extra admin, or your reports don’t reflect reality, it’s not the platform; there’s a missing link between setup and strategy.
Appex bridges that link through managed services that help you increase Salesforce ROI in line with your business: simply, affordably, and with measurable impact.
If you’re unsure whether managed services are right for your business, we’re offering a free 30-minute consultation to help you decide. A practical conversation about where you are, opportunities to grow and whether ongoing Salesforce expertise could actually make a difference.
You’ll leave with a clearer sense of what’s possible, and what to focus on next, whether you choose to work with us or not.
