I recently attended Dreamforce 2025, where Salesforce showcased its ambitious AI vision for the “agentic enterprise.” This strategy is built on technology embedded in its new Agentforce 360 platform; on Slack as the interface to agentic AI; and on a more flexible agent pricing model to help bring Agentforce to market. The company is clearly betting that agentic AI, which it defines as intelligent, autonomous assistants that work alongside people, will reshape how businesses of all sizes operate.
I was also able to speak with executives about Salesforce’s latest plans for small and medium businesses (SMBs) at the event. Over the past several years, Salesforce has experimented with multiple SMB-focused offerings with mixed results. I’ll also discuss what’s in the works now, and how these plans dovetail with the company’s agentic AI vision and Slack.
The Agentic Enterprise
Salesforce’s latest version of the Agentforce Platform, Agentforce 360, is the foundation for what it has dubbed the agentic enterprise. The concept centers on AI agents that can reason, act, and collaborate within Salesforce’s governed ecosystem. Salesforce is building a unified system that includes:
- Atlas, a hybrid reasoning layer that enables users to control what data to use and which actions to take.
- Agent Script, a new low-code framework to define how agents behave, helping ensure consistency and control.
- Agentforce Dev Tools, including a new Agentforce builder, Agentforce vibes, Agentforce studio, Agent observability, and testing center. As well as the new Pro-Code Agentforce DX coming in November
- AgentExchange, a marketplace where partners and developers can distribute pre-built agents for specific use cases to Salesforce customers.
Rather than competing to build the biggest large language model, Salesforce is betting that the most valuable differentiation lies in context, governance, and workflow integration, and on making AI feel natural inside the tools people already use.
Slack Evolves from Collaboration Hub to Agentic OS
If Agentforce 360 is the brain of Salesforce’s new AI ecosystem, Slack is fast becoming its face. At Dreamforce and in Slack’s October pre-briefing, executives referred to Slack as the “agentic operating system for the enterprise,” serving as a conversational interface where people, data, apps and agents collaborate in real-time.
The message is that the future of work won’t revolve around clicking tabs and filling forms, but around conversation and context. Some of the Slack updates announced at Dreamforce that supported this vision include:
- Slackbot Reimagined, as a personal AI companion grounded in the user’s work history, conversations, and files. It can summarize threads, prep meetings, prioritize tasks, and even generate content in your tone of voice.
- Today View and Agent Tabs, which give Slack a new home experience that surfaces key actions, cases, and meetings, and agents to users.
- Enterprise Search and AI Huddles, which allow Slack to retrieve information and summaries from Salesforce, third-party tools, and Slack itself to provide users with sources and next steps.
- Agent Hosting, which enables Slack to host both Salesforce and third-party agents. These agents can be added to channels, DMs, or act as team members.
Slack gives the company a sticky, daily-use interface that many businesses already understand and rely on. In the SMB space in particular, Slack gives Salesforce a way to meet users where many of them already work, turning Slack into an accessible front end for CRM and AI workflows.
As Slack CEO Denise Dresser put it, “Slack is already where people work—now it’s where agents work too.” She also noted that Salesforce agent development on Slack has risen 800% year over year.
Foundations and Flex Credits to Foster AI Adoption
Salesforce also addressed a major pain point that has long slowed AI adoption, particularly for SMBs: the cost and complexity of getting started. The company announced its new Foundations and Flex Credit models, designed to make AI experimentation easier and more affordable.
- Foundations provides every Salesforce customer access to core AI services, including Data 360, Agentforce, 200,000 AI Flex Credits, and basic agent/prompt builders, free with both the Enterprise Unlimited Editions. The idea is to give customers an on-ramp to try AI within their existing subscriptions.
- Flex Credits offers customers a single, usage-based currency across Salesforce’s AI portfolio. Instead of buying fixed AI licenses, companies pay for actions completed by agents, such as generating a proposal, summarizing a meeting, or updating an opportunity. Customers can start small, track consumption, and scale as value becomes clear.
AI pricing across the industry remains in flux. But at this point, Salesforce’s “pay-for-what-you-use” structure should help reduce friction. Still, managing consumption and cost predictability could prove challenging. Customers will need Salesforce to provide transparent dashboards to help track value as they use AI agents.
Salesforce’s SMB Strategy Continues to Evolve
I also had an update on Salesforce’s SMB strategy. This strategy has been through a few iterations, including Salesforce Essentials, and more recently, Starter and Pro Suite. All have been aimed at simplifying Salesforce for SMBs.
With so many alternatives in the market, many other SMBs have found competitive offerings from HubSpot, Zoho, and a host of SMB-only CRM vendors to be less complex and more affordable. Additionally, many of these alternatives offer a freemium model, which Salesforce does not currently offer.
Now, Salesforce is also facing a new generation of CRM startups such as Aurasell, Cohesive, and SuperAGI—vendors building agentic AI into their CRM systems from the ground up. While these firms are early-stage, they illustrate that the market is headed toward unified CRM platforms for agents, insights, and actions.
Salesforce isn’t ignoring either competitive flank as it steers its SMB strategy toward a more integrated approach focused on speed to value, embedded collaboration, and consumption-based growth. The company has already implemented a simplified onboarding designed to get Starter customers live in under 60 days with pre-configured workflows, security, and dashboards.
In addition, Slack collaboration is now built into Starter and Pro Suite. The new Salesforce channels feature automatically connects Slack and CRM data to give smaller teams a single hub for conversations, records, and automation.
Salesforce is planning other initiatives, which are still NDA, but will be announced later this year. These will further reduce entry barriers and add long-awaited marketing functionality, so stay tuned for more in this area.
Collectively, Salesforce’s latest approach feels more cohesive than previous efforts, as the company works to more closely align product design, pricing, and delivery around SMB requirements.
Salesforce Opportunities and Challenges
Salesforce’s strategy presents several opportunities that could strengthen its leadership position in the age of agentic AI.
- Unified agentic platform: Salesforce has an early-mover advantage in defining the enterprise framework for governed, multi-agent systems. By combining Slack, Data 360, and Agentforce, Salesforce can deliver end-to-end business orchestration that competitors can’t easily match.
- Trust and governance: As AI regulation tightens, Salesforce’s focus on trust, transparency, and governance provides a competitive advantage. Agent Test Centers and audit trails directly address enterprise risk concerns.
- Ecosystem leverage: The partner network and AppExchange ecosystem provide a powerful channel to distribute AI agents and extensions, which can help scale Agentforce adoption.
- Consumption model: Flex Credits and Foundations lower barriers to experimentation and encourage customers to expand usage organically, helping to generate growth over the long term.
But translating this ambition into widespread adoption won’t be easy, especially in the SMB market, where Salesforce faces some key challenges:
- Adoption vs. innovation: Even Salesforce acknowledges that the pace of innovation exceeds that of customer adoption. Many businesses—especially SMBs—need time and guidance to operationalize AI agents.
- Complexity and perceived complexity: Despite simplification efforts, Salesforce still carries the perception of being a large enterprise solution, the
- weight of a large, multifaceted platform, and multiple offerings that can be hard for SMBs to parse through and deploy effectively.
- Competitive pressure: HubSpot, Microsoft, Zoho, a roster of SMB-focused CRM players, plus a wave of AI-native startups are aggressively targeting SMBs.
- Execution at scale: Sustaining a consistent focus on SMBs has historically been difficult for Salesforce, which tends to prioritize enterprise-scale opportunities.
Perspective
Dreamforce 2025 underscored Salesforce’s transformation from a “CRM company” to a data, collaboration, and AI platform. The Agentforce 360 launch provides a solid foundation for connecting AI, workflow automation, and conversational engagement.
The company’s SMB story remains a work in progress. This year’s iteration, anchored by Starter Suite, Pro Suite, and Slack integration, shows steady progress over past efforts. Maintaining investment and attention in this segment will be key for Salesforce to ramp up growth in this market.
With solid positioning at the forefront of the agentic AI era, the big question is how well Salesforce can maintain the balance between innovation and usability, and between enterprise depth and SMB simplicity.
©SMB Group, 2025