I would argue they won because of marketing, not because they had unique functionality. Features are not that hard to build, most basic tooling can be cloned with a relatively small budget.
If the market values fast software, you'll see a lot more fast software. There _is_ a lot of unnecessarily slow software these days, so it _is_ starting to happen. Think Superhuman, Linear.app, etc. — an entire category of software based primarily on the idea of being fast, aimed at the power user. If these apps succeed, you'll see a lot more of them. If the market doesn't value fast software, most commercial software will be slow.
I don't think companies choose to make bad software as a tradeoff. Salesforce had enough budget to build out those features and not be terrible. I think in general, when software is bad it's because the company wasn't able to make it good. And I think the distinction between those categories is important.
My point was that SalesForce has fairly poor user experience and performance, but does offer the features. It has the additional advantage (for SalesForce) or quick lock-in once the customer commits to it. SalesForce has improved the user experience over time because they have the customer base and revenue to allow that.