Imagine a company that is driven by actual salespeople — like car dealerships, or any telemarketing or charity operation — where someone is making phone calls and trying to make sales.
Salesforce is their CRM, a Customer Relation Manager. You can get a complete history of an individual and their buying history within your company.
I worked for a travel-adjacent company a couple years ago, the entire thing was predicated on a half-dozen sales reps making handfuls of deals worth $50k+ each. Nothing like e-commerce. Salesforce was their Rolodex and their beating heart.
That said, it isn't a good CRM. It's nineties tech that became very essential to very very big companies. Someone else here described it as akin to PhpMyAdmin and he absolutely nailed it.
I think Salesforce is likely to be worth more someday for their Slack acquisition, not unlike how Meta is worth more for Instagram than Facebook.