Businesses often encounter challenges in configuring their customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, whether because of requirements specific to their organization or industry or a lack of institutional technical knowledge. In the worst case, the consequences can be severe. A 2021 survey from CRM software vendor SugarCRM found that 50% of companies don’t know how to access customer data across their marketing, sales and service systems, while 53% said the administrative burdens of their CRM software causes friction for their sales team.
Aiming to lighten the development load around Salesforce’s ecosystem in particular, Sweep today emerged from stealth with a no-code toolkit for building sales playbooks in Salesforce’s CRM software. The startup is well-capitalized, with $28 million in equity financing from Bessemer Venture Partners (which seeded Sweep) and Insight Partners (which led the company’s most recent round, a Series A).
Said Bessemer’s Adam Fisher in an emailed statement: “Modern businesses constantly make changes to their business operations to drive productivity and efficiency, but are held back due to a reliance on system integrators. Sweep’s no-code approach empowers Salesforce users to take back the reins, and makes Salesforce a more agile and responsive platform.”
Sweep was co-founded by Ido Gaver, who says he experienced the pain of managing business processes on CRM platforms firsthand over the last 10 years — both as an admin and a manager of go-to-market teams. Gaver previously co-launched Flok, a customer loyalty platform, which was acquired by Wix in 2019. Gaver stayed on at Wix for three years as general manager of Wix’s business-to-business division before starting Sweep in July 2021.
Eran Kirshenboim, Sweep’s other co-founder, also helped co-launch Flok. Kirshenboim worked alongside Gaver at Wix until they left the company together in early 2021.
“The lack of agility and the gap between how go-to-market processes are managed versus online funnels were constant areas of frustration [for Sweep’s co-founders], including me,” Gaver told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Moreover, we saw how difficult it was for the revenue operations team to do their job — how they constantly struggled between different areas of responsibility — and we decided that we want to create a tool that would change their day-to-day.”
To add to Gaver’s point, CRM deployment can prove to be a costly endeavor when dealing with a company lacking in in-house CRM development skills. CRM firm Close pegs the bill at between $10,000 to $20,000 for a sales team of around 10 users, which includes the time spent choosing and implementing a CRM and expenses for consulting, training and reduced productivity during the migration process.
Sweep sits adjacent to installed Salesforce software, allowing teams to create and update sales funnels — the marketing term for the journey potential customers go through on their way to purchase a product. Abstracting away the typical Salesforce code and validation rules, Sweep provides templates for adding funnels to Salesforce and provides guidance for managing data within existing Salesforce layouts.
With Sweep, users can create and visualize CRM processes, rules and automations with drag-and-drop tools while the platform constructs the necessary backend infrastructure in Salesforce. For posterity, Sweep records a log for processes and generates reports for all the elements in a funnel.
“We believe that traditional solutions result in over-complication which loses deals and limits a company’s ability to achieve its growth potential. [Moreover, there’s a] shortage of skilled Salesforce admins to support the growth of the ecosystem; companies are struggling to hire talented admins to support their growth,” Gaver said. “These days, when companies are trying to save money and cut costs, Sweep’s no-code editor helps them to run a lean operation without relying on external resources.”
Sweep is one of a number of vendors building businesses around Salesforce’s growing CRM portfolio. On the DevOps side, there’s Gearset, a tooling provider for Salesforce software, as well as AutoRabit and Copado. It’s certainly a lucrative market to chase after, given that global spending on CRM software is projected to reach $49.6 billion by 2025 (according to Statista) and that Salesforce had a 32.2% share of the CRM segment in 2021 (by one estimate).
The sizeable investments in Sweep to date are a strong bet on its future success. It’s been a slow ramp-up for the 30-person startup, though — Gaver only named two customers, Empathy.com and Demostack, and declined to reveal the revenue is coming in.
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