Missed Opportunity by Salesforce: Slack Communities
SaaS companies are leaning into Coummunity-Led GTM motions. But Salesforce makes it impossible to build Communities in Slack.
Slack charges per user regardless of use case, meaning a Community with 2,139 members costs $139,569 per year when building it in Slack.
This pricing decision by Salesforce is sending Communities to Discord and other competitors.
It's is an overlooked opportunity and fatal mistake.
Why Slack Should Enable Community Building
In my opinion, this would be a simple marriage btwn Salesforce <> Slack.
It’s beneficial in a few ways:
- Drives organic, bottom-up Slack adoption
- NEW USE CASE provides insights to inform on new features/products
- Communities play a big role in the Sales motion (Slack >> Sales Cloud)
- Access to vast conversational data for AI
Point 3 is likely the most important of all.
The way companies Go-to-Market is changing.
And Salesforce needs to be listening to the market better.
It’s not just inbound (Marketing) vs. outbound (Sales) motions.
The new normal includes Community-led and Partner-led.
For years, Salesforce wanted to go after a social platform.
First, LinkedIn. Then, Twitter.
Slack provides the same opportunity.
TENS OF THOUSANDS of Communities could exist in Slack. Each Community has a very specific topic and persona.
Layering conversational insights on top of pre-defined personas is gold.
Salesforce would benefit greatly from:
- Greater Product Innovation
- A Wedge into SMB
And Slack gives them the opportunity for both.
But it doesn’t seem like they’re going to capture it.
