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I might be biased here (having worked on a CRM before), but it does sound like the old joke about "What's an Internet Service Provider?" to me.

...It's a provider for your internet service. The explanation isn't going to get any easier than that.

A CRM is where you manage the relation to your customers - whatever that means depends on the vendor and customizations. Run analytics who to upsell to, send marketing material to, get reminded that a customer's subscription is running out, ....

"Customer relationship management" - which is basically "manage sales and marketing".

Which is a huge problem in organisations of all sizes.

people don’t explain exactly what a database is, why would a common business software need explanation?

If you're familiar with CRMs you wouldn't be asking what Salesforce is, in the same way that if you were familiar with databases you wouldn't be asking what SQL is.