Maintaining great customer relations can positively improve your bottom line, reduce customer dissatisfaction and facilitate business growth. That’s why Customer Relation Management (CRM) software is so important for small businesses. This is because it affords the opportunity to get more visibility from both customers and prospects with smooth marketing automation. And in turn, they provide you with valuable insights in identifying pain points and interact more with customers to better tweak your offerings. CRM software also streamlines workflow among customer support, sales, and marketing teams that enable lead management to expedite your sales funnel.
Must-Have Features for CRM Software
Choosing the right CRM means identifying what your business needs when it comes to the customer journey. When shopping for customer relationship management software for your small business, make sure the CRM systems you choose have the following features to keep customers in your sales team pipeline.
Customer Support
Customers expect fast and personalized support from businesses. Your CRM software should help provide the high-quality service that your customers expect from you. Your sales team should be able to quickly see what products customers have ordered. This means getting a record of every interaction so they can give customers the answers they need in a timely manner.
Third-Party Integrations
Your CRM software should integrate with third-party solutions as it will provide your customers with highly personalized campaigns based on their individual information. Third-party integrations will help you with a wide range of features and tools to use within your CRM. Integrating with other third-party software and platforms reduces the need to copy information from one tool to another, or switch back and forth between programs.
Customer Data Management
Essentially CRM is all about managing business interactions with current and potential customers, and storing and analyzing data about past interactions. Your CRM software should allow you to manage your customers’ data in a manner that flows between teams such as sales, marketing, and customer support. The data will allow you to get valuable analytics about customer behavior patterns.
Workflow Automation
Your CRM software should help you automate repetitive tasks in your sales and marketing efforts and decrease error. Tasks like data entry or migration, reminders, and keeping track of assets can at times be overlooked, but CRM workflow automation can decrease these errors. Workflow automation minimizes your workload and takes care of the tiny details. The result when using a good CRM is there are fewer human errors thus increasing productivity through integration.
Customer Relationship Management Software
When seeking a CRM solution for your business, you may encounter many options. Read our list of 30 top CRM systems to decide which is right for you.
1. Hubspot CRM
HubSpot’s CRM tool offers free tools that are ideal for small businesses. The solution includes Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub products. The tools help businesses manage lead generation, create web forms, a reporting dashboard, live chat and bots, advertising tools, and helpdesk tools. This platform helps you track leads and build a full database of customer activity to enable you to get insights into where they stand with each customer in the buying process. CRM tools included in Hubspot’s CRM solution are contact deal and task management; email tracking and engagement notifications; email templates and scheduling; document sharing; meeting scheduling; live chat; sales quotes and more.
The free version of Hubspot CRM lets you manage up to 1,000,000 contacts, has no limits on users or customer data, and has no expiration date. While the Starter plan for Hubspot comes with a monthly subscription of $45 and offers everything in automation; goals tracking; conversation routing; multiple currencies and rep productivity performance along with the solutions on offer on the free version.
2. Zendesk Sell (Formerly BASE)
Zendesk Sell (formerly Base) offers sales force automation software to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for your sales team. With this CRM solution, you get access to integrated tools that provide your business with a full context of a customer account. This will keep you in the loop and allow you to capitalize on opportunities that work on all devices including Android, iPhones, and even tablets.
Capabilities that come with the Zendesk Sell solution include reminder system; campaign management; categorization; collaboration tools; contact database and management; content management; customer service analytics; customer support; import and export data; document storage; email marketing; and more.
Zendesk Sell pricing starts at $19.00 per month and offers email integration; up to three paid users, one custom sales pipeline, built-in click-to-dial, and call recording, and a fully-featured mobile CRM. A free trial version of this CRM system is also available.
3. Monday.com
Thanks to its intuitive interface Monday.com allows you to get full control over your pipelines, track trends and manage leads. This CRM software solution is customizable letting you utilize a list view, a timeline for viewing tasks, chart views, assignees, and more. It also offers drag-and-drop functionality, along with tailored columns and rows that can be used for pretty much anything within your customer management system.
With this CRM, you can manage your contacts, documents, tasks, and more without the need to switch between tools. This is in addition to customer tracking, marketing operations, customizable dashboards, and workflow automation.
Monday.com pricing starts at $29.00 per user, per month however, a free version of this CRM system is also available.
4. Zoho CRM
Zoho’s CRM solution is part of Zoho’s cloud-based suite that is built to give you all you need to easily run your small business. Zoho CRM software helps small businesses organize contacts, market their brand, manage sales, provide customer support, and a lot more. With this solution, you get full integration with the other marketing tools you already use, capture leads through social media, segment visitors, and offer support using built-in live chat.
Considered as a Swiss army knife for marketing and sales outreach, Zoho CRM includes features such as multichannel contact management (email, phone, live chat, and social media); an AI voice assistant for creating dashboards and forecasting business trends; sales lead management along with lead scoring to prioritize leads and convert them faster; analytics; mobile apps; team collaboration tools and team roles and more.
Zoho’s paid plans for its CRM software start at $12 a month per user which is billed annually and offers scoring rules, workflows, multiple pipelines, mass email campaigns, and custom dashboards. A free version is also available with limited features.
5. Agile CRM
Agile CRM software offers a one-stop solution for sales, marketing, telephony, and customer service features. Users can automate marketing; use its drag-drop editor for sales and customer retention; convert website visitors directly to leads in the CRM; track and score leads automatically using web or email activity; Omnichannel communication; analytics; monitor customer behavior with real-time alerts; manage helpdesk tickets with all of the customer’s history in one place and more.
The free version of this CRM for 10 users lets you manage 50,000 contacts and companies; custom data fields; lead scoring; manage unlimited deals, tasks, and documents; appointment scheduling; custom deal milestones; email tracking; two-way email integration; custom deal tracking, and more.
The paid plan for this CRM software bills a monthly subscription of $8.99.
6. Freshworks CRM
Freshworks CRM’s (formerly Freshsales) customer relationship management platform helps to provide users a 360° view of their customers by capturing and combining customer experiences in one place. It offers the ability to engage with customers across multiple platforms; build relationships with customers and prospects; get insights into your business; improve your team’s productivity and boost your sales capture.
Freshworks CRM software comes with a straightforward and intuitive user interface that helps to do away with the need to wander around to get work done. In addition, it uses AI-based lead scoring, phone, email, and activity capture features.
The small business plan for this CRM starts at $29 a month billed annually and offers 1,000 Marketing Contacts; contact, account, and deal management; live chat and Facebook Messenger; web forms; website tracking; predictive contact scoring; lists and segments; drag-and-drop journey builder; five published Landing Pages; visual sales pipeline; 20 workflows; custom reports and dashboards, and more.
7. One CRM
One CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM)software solution that helps businesses manage sales, customer service, and other business operations. The features include contact management; email and calendar; order management; payments and billing; case management; project management social CRM; sales automation and forecasting.
With One CRM, you can also create flexible customizable dashboards, fields, and modules to maximize efficiency on your desktop and mobile. You can even choose your theme and color scheme. It enables you to focus on follow up with every lead, keep the team on the same page, and close more deals one sales action at a time. Even when you are on the go with iOS and Android mobile apps.
One CRM’s all-in-one CRM solution comes with a monthly subscription of $13 per user gives you the option of cloud service or on-premise deployment; comprehensive order management; project and service management; timesheets; expense management and more. A free trial is also available.
8. Salesforce Sales Cloud Professional
Salesforce offers an all-in-one, cloud-based customer relationship management solution that has everything you need in CRM software. Salesforce offers a wide variety of CRM features and tools that include Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Analytics Cloud, Data Cloud, Community Cloud, and App Cloud. It offers a range of features and functionality, at a cost that is scalable to fit any business.
The small business edition offers a robust set of CRM tools that includes lead generation, contact and opportunity management, sales forecasting, and workflow automation.
Its all-in-one sales and support plan starts at a monthly subscription of $25 billed annually and offers account, contact, lead, and opportunity management, email and social media integration, and the Salesforce mobile app. This CRM also comes with a free 30-day trial.
9. Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Dynamics’ customer relationship management (CRM) solution helps to drive sales productivity and marketing by offering social insights, business intelligence, and campaign management. It comes with options to choose from cloud-based, on-premises, or with a hybrid combination. You can even use Microsoft’s cloud platform to reduce operating costs and simplify deployment across your infrastructure.
The features on this CRM include – sales force automation, marketing planning and automation, social tracking and engagement, customer service, and analytics. This CRM software solution works seamlessly with Office365, SharePoint, Yammer, Skype, Cortana Analytics, PowerBI, and MS Azure. It lets you manage multichannel campaigns featuring email marketing, web content, and events. You can also personalize the buyer experience by customizing customer journeys based on user engagement; gain insights into your brand reputation and market through real-time data analysis. The tool prioritizes leads using multiple lead scoring models using its artificial intelligence (AI) to guide your business decisions and drive innovation as well as many other features.
Microsoft Dynamics’ sales professional plan comes at a monthly subscription of $65 per user.
10. Salesmate.io CRM
Salesmate is a CRM software system that helps you to convert prospects into customers with targeted emails, texts, calls, and follow-ups all automated and personalized. The analytics and reporting are further boosted thanks to its customizable and interactive dashboard.
Salesmate CRM offers a suite of sales, engagement, and management features that enables small businesses to start automating and improving their marketing, sales, and service experiences at each stage of customer journey without breaking their bank or back. The plan starts with a monthly subscription of $15 and offers sales management; contact management; deal management; multiple pipeline management; notes and follow-up activities; custom fields; dependency fields; custom views; custom layout and more.
11. Salesflare CRM
Salesflare is a CRM software solution that lets you connect with customers with just a few clicks, and generate more sales. It automates filling out your address book and keeps track of all interactions with the people you’re in contact with. It also takes data from social media, company databases, phone, email, and other information to generate automated customer timelines that tell you everything you need to know. The visual pipelines and insights put you in control of your sales funnel. Intuitive and easy-to-use, Salesflare turns complexity into simplicity so you can turn leads.
Also included with this CRM solution is a leader board, team insights, sales funnel analysis, revenue insights, goals and quota management, interaction tracking, automated to-do lists, automated reminders, opportunity assignment, communication history, opportunity prioritizing, sales intelligence, custom fields, sales pipeline management, lead management, website tracking, email tracking, plus predictive lead scoring and more.
Salesflare pricing starts at $29 per month and a free trial is also on offer.
12. Capsule CRM
Capsule CRM software helps you build stronger customer relationships, boost sales while saving you time. With it, you can track customer conversations, gauge history and deliver more personal experiences, tailor your pipeline to match your sales and easily spot the deals in need of attention.
The customer relationship management tools that come with Capsule CRM help you store and share contacts with colleagues; categorize data using tags; create contact lists and send group emails; generate reports; manage to-do lists and calendars; create tasks relating to particular deals and share them with teams; integrate the system with Google Apps and third-party tools, like Mailchimp or Zendesk; and more.
The professional tier CRM plan comes with a monthly subscription of $18 per user and helps you manage up to 50,000 contacts, get 10GB of storage per user; integrate with G Suite, Xero, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and Wufoo; activity reporting, and more. A free 30-day trial is also available.
13. Streak CRM
Streak is a CRM software that helps you manage workflows from your Gmail inbox. It helps you manage the full gamut of your customer relationship management effort that includes tracking views, scheduling emails, send mass emails, as well as create separate email threads that cater to different teams in your organization.
This CRM offers a business customizable workflows that help track different processes that include sales, recruitment, project management, and more. In addition, it helps in segmenting customer profiles by organizing all of their relevant contact information, personal details, and attached files. A business can also assign tasks, set reminders, and share pipelines to facilitate collaboration within your company.
The paid plan starts with a monthly subscription of $15 a month per user which allows you to offer basic CRM functions for 5,000 contacts; mail merge 800 capabilities; email tracking and more. A free version is also available.
14. Keap CRM
Keap is a sales and marketing platform that helps a small business organize its contact data so they can deliver great customer service. This all-in-one customer relationship management software is designed to help reduce repetitive tasks, easily implement automation and integrated apps. It lets you get more leads and nurture them to paying clients with its built-in landing pages, custom forms, and an easy automation builder.
This CRM software offers a a small business a robust toolbox of marketing tools that include A/B testing; analytics/ROI Tracking; auto-responders; calendar management; campaign management; cataloging/categorization; customer surveys; customizable templates and more. The paid tier starts with the Lite plan that comes with a monthly subscription of $56 offering core CRM features that include automation, and email tools to get organized and automate follow-up. This is in addition to marketing and sales automation; mobile app; email marketing; unlimited emails; data migration support and more.
15. Less Annoying CRM
Less Annoying CRM is an easy-to-use customer relationship management platform that is built with small businesses in mind. Its dashboard helps users to manage contacts, tasks, leads, notes, calendar, to-do lists and more from one simple web app. It comes with an intuitive UI and offers a robust range of help and support options with setting up, only taking a few minutes. With this all-in-one solution, you do not need to jump back and forth between different apps. It even syncs with Google Calendar for easy access from your mobile phone.
It generates simple lead reports that show an up-to-date list of every lead in your pipeline, including the status and priority of the lead, contact info, and the note from the last time you talked to them. This is in addition to the regular CRM software solutions that include contact management, calendar and tasks, leads and pipelines, working with multiple users, and mobile access. Less Annoying CRM pricing starts at $15 per feature, per month and also has a 30-day free trial option.
16. ConvergeHub CRM
ConvergeHub is a cloud-based CRM software that helps you manage sales, marketing, customer service, and billing from one unified platform. With this solution, you get a 3600 customer view and avoid duplicating data entries. The simple and intuitive navigation helps maximize productivity thanks to its easy-to-use interface.
Users can get started in minutes with easy setup and built-in templates, dashboards, and reports. ConvergeHub includes built-in SalesForce automation and marketing automation modules that help you run your customer relationship management functions without the need for a big budget to integrate or pay for expensive add-ons. The tools available include alerts; analytics; reminder systems; campaign management; team collaboration tools; customer service analytics; import/export data; storage; expense tracking; interaction tracking and more.
Pricing starts from $9 a month per user.
17. Nimble CRM
Nimble CRM software helps users combine contacts, email, and social media interactions all in one place. It works by integrating with productivity apps such as inboxes and calendars to deliver a streamlined user experience. Nimble’s solution combines the strengths of traditional customer relationship management and classic contact management features. This includes social media outreach, sales intelligence, and marketing automation into a powerful relationship management platform that delivers relationship insights.
In return it allows businesses to keep track of contacts, boost following and engagement, celebrate customer milestones and more. On the last point, users can set reminders to ‘Stay in Touch’ with customers as well as mark certain communications as important to stay ahead of the game.
With this CRM software solution, you get salesforce automation, marketing automation, customer support, mobile and social media outreach, reporting and analytics. It also integrates with Google Apps and Office 365 while its Smart Contact App makes adding contacts to a CRM easy.
Pricing for Nimble Business plan comes at a monthly subscription of $19 per user/month. This plan allows you to engage with up to 25,000 contacts; unlimited email messaging syncing; 2GB storage and more.
18. ReallySimpleSystems CRM
ReallySimpleSystems is a CRM software system that helps businesses build lasting customer relationships. It offers a set of features that includes modules for marketing, sales, and service desk to enable team collaboration that drives sales growth. Designed with small businesses and startups in mind, this CRM solution is easy to set up and simple to use, letting you train your team in minutes.
With its integrated marketing solution, you can build campaigns and send newsletters directly from your CRM system without the need for a separate emailing tool. At the same time, you can monitor your leads, opportunities, and values at campaign level to track your ROI and optimize marketing spend.
As an alternative to its full, marketing program, the company also offers a simpler solution. Simple Marketing gives you the tools you need to keep in contact with your database. With all the important CRM features a small business needs, this CRM software helps you work smarter, managing and tracking your leads and customers so you can get on with growing your business.
The solution comes in both free and paid editions. The free edition offers only sales force automation (SFA) tool while paid edition offers additional tools for marketing and customer service.
ReallySimpleSystems’ pricing starts at $14 per feature, per month, billed annually. There is also a free version.
19. EngageBay CRM
EngageBay’s CRM helps you align marketing, sales, and support teams around single view of your customers. With this CRM software solution, users can store unlimited contacts and build stronger relationships by keeping track of all your customer details in one place. And the marketing automation solution helps you to live chat and send personalized messages to target audiences. This is in addition to email marketing, lead generation tools, and landing pages
This platform provides multi-channel listening and aggregating contact info from across all your customer touchpoints. You can also track contact activity, web activity, email response, open and click rates, and more. It does this while integrating with Gmail, Zapier, SendGrid, WooCommerce, Shopify, Facebook, and others.
The free plan offers a limit of 1,000 contacts and 1,000 branded emails while the Basic plan is set at $8.99 per user, per month billed annually.
20. Pipedrive CRM
Pipedrive’s CRM helps users to both drive their sales process and track customers’ contacts. This CRM solution comes with a simple, visual, and straightforward UI that is designed to help move customers down the sales pipeline and close deals. Users can get up and running with this CRM software in just a few minutes. And once up and running you can schedule calls, emails, and lunches, and let Pipedrive show you what to prioritize.
The features include managing leads and deals; track communications; automate repetitive administrative tasks; gain insights on performance through customized metrics; sync information across channels; and access Pipedrive from your mobile devices (both Android and iOS).
Pipedrive’s Essential plan is set at $12.50 per user/per month and billed annually, a 14-day free trial is available for the Essential, Advanced, and Professional plans.
21. Apptivo CRM
Apptivo is a cloud-based CRM software that offers customer relations, project tracking, and financial management functions for users. This CRM helps businesses to cover the complete customer life cycle that includes marketing; sales; web help desk; project management; field service; quoting and billing; order management; and procurement and supply chain.
This CRM is also mobile-enabled, meaning there is no need to jump between apps. This lets you increase productivity and boost your client relationship by managing your customers, finances, and support right from your pocket. In terms of integration, Apptivo integrates with G Suite, Office 365, Slack, Quickbooks, Xero, Dropbox, PayPal, WordPress and more.
Apptivo CRM offers a free Starter plan while the paid tiers start with the Lite plan billed at $10 a month. This allows 100 custom fields per app, 25 workflows, eight custom dashboards, and 3rd party service integration.
22. Act! CRM
Act! CRM provides users with everything they need to market their products and service and maintain relations with customers. The CRM tools it offers include contact and customer management; calendar management; opportunity management; sales pipeline management; e-marketing; social integration; analytics; customizable dashboards and even integration with Outlook, Google, Dropbox, and others.
Features on offer with Act! include A/B testing; analytics; reminder system; contact database; customizable Call To Action; import and export data; document storage; manage drip campaigns; email marketing; interaction tracking; landing pages and web forms; lead management; lead qualification and more.
Act! CRM Essentials plan starts with a monthly subscription of $22 per user and has a free trial on offer as well.
23. Vtiger CRM
Vtiger is a CRM platform that helps businesses implement a strong customer experience strategy with the power of one view. The company says its UI can drive adoptions by giving you a 3600 view of your customers. It uses AI technology to help users save time as well as get valuable customer insights.
Tools on offer include contact and opportunity management, email marketing, SMS campaigns, built-in telephony, automation workflows, task management and collaboration, a mobile app; and reporting and analytics. A light-free plan is available for businesses getting started on their CRM journey.
The paid plans start at a monthly subscription of $30 per user offering dashboards for sales, customer insights, and customizable reports.
24. Ontraport CRM
Ontraport CRM platform offers users a sales and marketing platform that can be scaled up and automated to boost your revenue. This all-in-one suite features a CRM and marketing automation system that interplays seamlessly with its built-in landing pages, email marketing, eCommerce, and analytics tools.
This in return allows businesses to give their customers streamlined, targeted experiences that include a membership site, a referral program, sales force automation, and business process automation features. Through its block-based editor, it also allows users to begin either from scratch or proceed with one of its pre-built templates.
Additional tools include A/B testing; auto-responders; business card scanning; reminder system; CAN SPAM compliance; contact management; customer surveys; document storage; drip campaigns, email marketing; event management; forecasting, and more.
The company also offers a free CRM trial for 14 days while paid plans start at $79 per month.
25. Salesdash CRM
Salesdash is a CRM that is designed to assist businesses to manage custom sales funnel, have notes in one place, improve customer satisfaction, and grow revenue. This intuitive CRM platform helps keep track of all follow-up tasks, customer communications, and sales details to quickly navigate clients throughout the sales lifecycle. It offers a simple design that helps sales reps have access to all client information within one screen, allowing them to pull contact history within a few seconds in order to build stronger relationships.
It comes with tools to forecast sales, analyze sales strategies, and build sales insights for future win-loss reporting using an integrated sales funnel. With the single dashboard, users can track daily activities, newly generated deals, and follow up on deals. This is in addition to features that include account management, integrated calendar, sales reporting and analytics, dashboard monitoring, customer data customization, and more.
Salesdash pricing starts at $20 per month which allows you to manage up to 50,000 contacts, 10 GB storage per user, team collaborations, manage workflows, integrations. A free CRM trial version is also available.
26. FreeAgent CRM
FreeAgent’s customer relationship management platform helps teams get everything on a unified platform, collaborate on various projects, and track and improve operational performance. This CRM tool connects remotely, allowing for real-time collaboration and code-free customization solutions. Its features help users optimize sales, marketing, customer relationship, project management, and more. With the activity timelines, you can capture customer interactions across multiple channels.
Additional features of FreeAgent CRM include personalized task lists, reminders, customizations, workflows, and automation. This is in addition to tools that include A/B testing; account alerts; notifications; reminder system; call list management; call management; campaign management; channel management; collaboration tools and more.
FreeAgent’s pricing starts at $42 per user billed monthly.
27. Copper CRM
Copper is an easy-to-use CRM platform for small businesses so they can manage more sales leads and grow customer relationships. It integrates with Gmail and other Google Apps allowing you to log on to all your emails and other customer interactions. With it, you can also see your sales and relationship efforts from email threads, previous interactions, to tasks- all in one place. It scrapes and captures all of your contacts, emails, and other crucial account details so everything is automatically there and ready for you to start selling.
This CRM software not only organizes your contacts for your convenience but also automates tasks, tracks deals, manages projects, gets you valuable analytics and integrates with popular apps and tools.
Copper’s CRM offers a free trial while its paid plans start s at $29 a month. This allows you to manage up to 2,500 contacts, calendar syncing, project management, manage multiple pipelines, and team collaborations.
28. Onpipeline CRM
Onpipeline is a cloud-based CRM tool that helps you manage sales, contacts, and activities all in one platform. You get leads from third parties, web forms, and an API connection that helps you track deals. By syncing with Gmail or Outlook calendar you can set events to take control of your sales process. You can activate and track 3rd party sources and control their access anytime and drag and drop your deals into the next stage while working with one or more customizable pipelines.
It comes with tools such as account alerts; asset management; audience targeting; calendar reminders; call center management; campaign management; categorization; channel management; client tracking; commission management and more.
Paid plans on this platform begin at $12 per user per month. For the price you get access to pipeline-centric CRM, workflow automation, a logical user interface, reporting, as well as email, phone calls, and recording capabilities.
29. ActiveCampaign CRM
ActiveCampaign’s CRM combines contact organization with sales automation prioritizing leads, keeping track of your tasks, and automating contact management. You can manage your entire sales process at a glance and track customer interactions to keep your team on the same page. It features lead scoring, win-loss probability, and automated segmentation combined with marketing automation to help you close deals easily.
This CRM comes with A/B testing; ROI tracking; auto-responders; calendar reminders; CAN SPAM Compliance; customizable CTAs; drip campaigns; email marketing campaigns; event-triggered actions; image library; landing pages and more.
Paid plans start with the lite plan set at $9 per month paid annually.
30. HoneyBook CRM
HoneyBook CRM helps you book clients, manage projects and get paid all in one place. This all-in-one management platform can automate your work schedule and lets you stay on top of all your to-do lists, saving you time and money to grow your business. It includes tools that integrate CRM with lead and project tracking, invoicing, proposal creation, contracts, scheduling, online payments, and automated workflows all in one package.
It offers users a friendly and user-focused CRM system; easy onboarding; marketing, customer service, and support; a dynamic pipeline-focused system; integrates business management, invoicing, automation, and payments; versatile iOS and Android apps, and more.
A limited free trial of this CRM system is available while paid plans start at a monthly subscription of $9. This gives you access to all features, $10k in total transactions limit, and up to six months of concierge support.
What is CRM software?
Customer relationship management software help sales and marketing teams to log communications, manage leads and sometimes build marketing campaigns. It is a tech solution that helps your business to maintain and build a relationship with your customers and other businesses. CRM software offers a convenient way to store information and track communications with customers. CRM solutions help in building customer relationships, marketing, analytics, communication, and project management.
What is the difference between CRM and marketing automation?
One of the main differences between CRM and marketing automation is who they can target. CRM software is primarily sales-focused, while marketing automation software is marketing-focused. Essentially, CRM solutions will help your sales teams by working as a task management tool to help their overall sales and business processes.
You can use the CRM software to store information including how long a contact has been with a customer, what the past purchase records look like. They also look at the dates and notes of conversations with contacts along with conversations customers and prospects have had with your sales and/or customer service teams.
It also helps you integrate organizational processes across marketing, sales, and customer service.
Marketing automation for its part follows the buyer’s journey by starting from raw leads and going up to the qualified lead’s stage. Once qualified leads are generated the data is fed into your CRM system which goes into accepting the sales lead, exploring opportunities, and ends with the deal being sealed.
What is the best free CRM software?
HubSpot CRM software is the best CRM software as it offers a set of powerful tools that helps businesses to organize and manage their customer relationships on a centralized platform. Besides incorporating CRM best practices Hubspot helps in tracking leads and building a database of customer activity which gives you insight into where customers/or prospects stand in the buying process.
HubSpot’s free CRM includes contact deal and task management; email tracking and engagement notifications; email templates and scheduling; document sharing; meeting scheduling; live chat; and sales quotes.
Why does your sales rep hate CRM?
From tracking customer interactions to logging data and leveraging information, CRM for small businesses is capable of helping sales teams work faster and more efficiently. However, implementing CRM systems in your business operations is only half the work.
You will need to get buy-in from your sales reps. With the right CRM systems, you can get your sales, marketing, and customer support teams to work faster and more efficiently. This is not to say, your sales rep will not procrastinate over working with CRM systems if they feel that it disrupts their productivity.
Other reasons why sales reps might hate CRM systems include feeling that it is time-consuming; the CRM system might have a clunky interface making it difficult to sell easily, and it makes it difficult to collaborate with other departments.
You should invest time in identifying the right easy-to-use CRM software for your business. You should also invest time to show them how the CRM works in the sales process, allow them to be decision-makers in the CRM system and let them find the value in CRM for small business.
Image: Depositphotos
