Many believe selling is not only art, but science as well, and the science of sales gets more and more complicated each day. As more factors get involved, it becomes more complex to predict and act efficiently. That is why investing in an integrated digital tool seems like a better option than ever.

That’s why you need to know and use CRM services. CRM enables you to know your customers, to create a relationship with them, to automate many services and many more. The result is obvious: you will sell more.

What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship management. It refers to all of the techniques, strategies, and tools that companies use to attract, develop and keep customers.

A CRM software system helps companies to build up their relationship with their clients. It allows you to organize and manage every detail more efficiently, and also get better use out of your time.

It is pretty hard to get by in sales without using an integrated tool. The whole cycle of sales, including the sales leads, sales processes, and sales teams can be helped managed through CRM.

To choose the CRM software that suits your business the best, you must first be aware of your business needs. Many of the CRM platforms out there provide features such as automation and workflow management which can be used to get the most out of your team, with the least amount of resources. But with so many options it can be pretty hard to choose, so you must know exactly what you need.

Why is CRM necessary?

• It makes harmony possible: through the use of CRM, you can align your sales, marketing, and service teams. By doing so your team will be able to work as a whole, streamlining all the stages of the customer’s journey.
• Building your business core around customers: with a business that is quickly evolving, the loss of valuable leads is predictable. But with the right CRM solution, your business will be centered around the customers, creating the best possible experience for them.
• The automation of daily tasks: one of the biggest benefits sales CRM software can bring. It helps you work more efficiently, doing the necessary time-consuming work for you. Good examples of tasks that can be done by automation are data entry, contact record updates, email sequences, sales workflows, chatbot conversations, campaign analytics, lead to rep assignment, and more.
• Building workflows: workflows can be created to enroll records and handle operations of your choice. They can organize and complete sales, marketing, and service process to save you time.
• And many more!

Why is sales CRM indispensable?

Effortless documentation

Good CRM software makes it possible to work with whoever you want from anywhere you want. It grants you the benefits of remote work. With good CRM, all of your sales team can be on the same page, from anywhere they are. You find the chance to work internationally, and all the activities related to the sales can be streamlined in one place, making management easier.

 Having all the documentation of what you and your team have done so far, makes communication easier, and no good planning comes without good communication. You will not need to spend extra time and effort on the documentation either. Everything you have done, want to do, and are planning to do will be clear to you.

The ability to organize customers and contacts

Most CRM systems give you features such as allowing you to register leads and contacts. It is hard to keep track of all your customers, and without good customer organization, you lose many. Anyone in the sales industry can easily tell you that “no” probably means “not today.”

Keeping track of your current customers keeps them from going away, and reminding your existence as a possible supplier to a business will keep you on top of their minds. In sales, you need to keep track of your current customers, lost customers, prospects, suppliers, partners, potential partners, influencers, and inactive customers.

Every single customer interaction can be tracked

This gives you the upper hand every single time. Being fully aware of all the interactions that have happened before with a customer makes it more likely for you to make a sale, and it will make them feel understood. This creates trust, which is the underlying structure for any long-term customer-supplier relationship.

You should not be fishing for customer history and emails out of each person’s mailbox. Everything should be archived in your system. And when a lost customer comes back around, they sure better be treated not like new customers, but how could you know if you were not keeping track?

You can save potential sales

There are infinite numbers of potential sales, in the prospects you have not sold to yet. As stated earlier, a “no”, does not equal the end of a customer-supplier relationship in sales. Anyone you have not sold to yet might become a client later on.

With a good enough marketing strategy, great seminar plans, and email marketing too, you might win them out over some time. Stay on top of their mind, and alive and kicking in your CRM base.

Keeps your data safe

There are so many ways a business could lose valuable sales data. Employees leave, and sometimes they do not leave anything behind.

People make errors too, and sometimes the sales pipeline does not get updated. Sometimes the contacts are lazily not updated. No other employee can get in contact with some important potential clients because the information was stored locally. CRM prevents all this from happening to you.

It is now a more possible option too

Some people still think of CRM as a complicated, expensive and discouraging, and ugly tool, while that is not necessarily true.

The new wave of CRM systems is created to be user-friendly, considering and keeping small businesses in mind. There are both cloud and on-premise data solutions available as well. More and more businesses are starting to use CRM to get an edge over their competition and keep up with the market.

The rise of the use of CRM made the CRM market more competitive as well, and vendors are now trying more than ever to manage to deliver more beneficial products. All of the expensive features which were previously only available to enterprise-level businesses now can be found for cheap and learned easily. Features such as marketing automation, sales forecasting, sales force automation, etc, are available to all businesses.

Most CRM software providers offer android and IOS apps for CRM on the go. This makes it possible to manage sales from everywhere, helping you to use every single second of your time. Through mobile CRM options you can close deals from anywhere you might be, let alone access information of contacts or track leads.

What features does a basic CRM tool provide?

The goal of CRM software is to improve all aspects of the customer relationship. Most CRM systems usually unify and enhance the process of sales, marketing campaigns, and customer service. This is achieved by the simplification and rationalization of workflow. CRM systems analyze data, create a sales pipeline, and automate tasks.

If you are mainly concerned with sales, the CRM system you are after manages your social media, email touchpoints, chat, and customer-facing voice in one place. Work will be easier and more efficient with a tool like this. Your team’s performance will be dramatically more visible, and you will have a better view of your customer base and the market in general.

Sales automation

Through sales automation, a business can achieve a simplified, more rational workflow. The manual data entry decreases by the use of sales inventory tracking. Agent performance tracking tools aid in achieving the best practice, plan for busy times, and organize team members.

Lead management and contact management

Lead tracking allows for better identification of sales leads, and a better look at all possible, and possible sales chances. Information can be collected from different platforms and channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, telephone, website chat, and email. With this great benefit of lead management and contact management features, the streamlining of data, you will grasp a better understanding of all the parties related to your business, and where they exactly stand in your sales cycle.  

The best way to win loyal customers is by building up an individual rapport. When you are aware of a customer and their history with your company, you will be able to nurture their leads with relevant and personalized data over time, creating a constant presence.

Account management tools put together all the clients’ data in one nice package for you. Through using this feature you will have easy access to a client’s activities, related contacts, awaiting deals and offers, and payment situations.

Quotation control

This feature enables you to quickly create quotes and document all you have used so far or might be using at the same time. Quotation management is a handy feature to take care of your business’s product and operational necessities, and section customers and leads to create even more precise sales channels.

Opportunity management

This tool enables you to quickly recognize potential sales opportunities as soon as possible, and as they are developing. You can act right away, as proposal management tools aid you in managing projects, quotes, notes, conteracts, and messages.

What is the best CRM software for sales? 

We do not intend to speak of what is the best CRM solution out there in the market, but of some potential candidates you may want to consider, and perks and downsides they each have. 

Keap

A perfect option for smaller businesses, Keap offers easy contact management and creates a sales streamline. Keap is a suitable option for you, if you are a small business, in the world of e-commerce, or a self-employed freelancer. Keap is simple to use and has an easy learning curve.

It allows for the creation of a rich lead database, by importing spreadsheets, scanning business cards, and exchanging contacts from other CRM. Keap is highly customizable and lets you customize fields and contact information to best suit your particular business processes.

What are the downsides?

Unfortunately, Keap is not as easy to integrate with other apps. Because of the many features and tools Keap provides, it might take some time before one can truly master it. The price might be a bit high for individuals, startups, and new businesses just starting.

The price:

• Keap offers a Lite plan which costs 56$ for each user, each month.
• The Pro plan Keap offers is 105$ for each user a month.
• And the max plan is 140$ for each user, each month.
• Keap provides a free trial for the Lite and Pro plans.  

Really Simple Systems

The name says it all. The Really Simple Systems offer an easy-to-use yet sophisticated and well-designed CRM. It provides features such as marketing automation, contact management for clients, vendors, suppliers, and leads. It also provides sales force automation, and customer service tools to assure customer satisfaction.

Really Simple Systems especially values the safety of customer’s information and provides advanced data security and encryption. This trait makes this software especially favorable to financial organizations and governments.

What are the downsides?

Generating reports does not need to be as hard as Really Simple Systems makes it. There is not an option to trigger active reminders in a user’s inbox and the provided marketing campaign email templates are nothing special.

The price:

• Really Simple Systems offer a free plan for up to 2 users.
• Their starter plan costs 14 for each user a month if billed annually. The starter plan costs 15$ each a month if paid monthly.
• The professional plan they provide costs 30$ for each user a month when billed annually. If billed monthly, the costs are 33$ per user, per month.  
• Their enterprise plan is at the cost of 46$ for each user a month, if billed annually. With monthly payment, it costs 50$ per user, per month.

Salesmate

The biggest defining characteristic of Salesmate is how easily one can learn to use it. It is perfect if you do not want to spend long learning to work with software, and prefer to get into actual work as soon as possible. While it is the preferred software for many startups and small businesses, many people in the real estate and construction industries are huge fans of it as well.

Salesmate can be counted on to be constantly updated and improved. The Salesmate team is heavily dedicated to keeping up their game in the competitive CRM market. It has recently given its analytics and reporting a significant upgrade. The dashboard has become more customizable and interactive as well.

New tools have been added for phone calling and deal management, and the mobile app has been improved. They are planning to add even more new features such as live chat and DocuSign integrations.

What are the downsides?

One could find it a bit hard to create custom data fields, as some of the customization features might be unsatisfactory. The other downside is that some of the basic essential tools are only available in the more expensive version.

The price:

• Their first plan is the starter plan. It costs 12$ for each user a month, billed annually.
• They offer a growth plan which costs 24$ for each user, a month, billed annually.
• The boost plan is priced at 40% per user, per month, also billed annually.

Zoho CRM

A great CRM solution, providing service to various types of businesses of all sizes.  Zoho CRM has an amazing and uncomplicated user interface, customizable modules, and it offers computerization and social media features.

Through Zoho CRM you can automate operations, define workflows, schedule and plan for casual and everyday tasks, and manage leads. You have the option of integration with social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. This allows for quick and efficient engagement with leads, at the right time and circumstances.

Their gratis offering is a good option if you are looking out for free CRM. Although its features are limited, it is available for up to three users. You will have access to ten email templates and can send 50 individual emails each day.

The standard paid plan is more handy and functional with features such as forecasting of the sales and tracking of KPI. You can get features such as stage-by-stage sales funnel tracking by upgrading to the enterprise edition. It also includes customizable data comparisons across teams, users, and even regions.

What are the downsides?

In our opinion, there are not that many things to dislike about Zoho. While many consider Zoho only an affordable option for small businesses and startups, their fair pricing does not mean low quality.

Businesses of all sizes and types can find  Zoho a fitting choice.

The price:

• They provide a free version that up to three users can use. There is also a 15-day free trial available for paid models.
• Their standard plan costs 14$ for each user, a month and it is paid annually.
• Their professional version costs 23$ for each user monthly, and it is billed annually.
• The enterprise model is priced at 40% per user a month, and it is billed annually.
• Zoho CRM also offers an Ultimate edition which costs 52$ for each user monthly, billed annually. The Ultimate edition is available to try in a free trial.

Capsule

It cannot be easier to learn a new system than it is with Capsule. It aims to not only aid you in the better management of your relationships with the customers, but all your business relationships. The user interface is simple and clean, and there is hardly anything you need to learn.

Capsule does not intend on piling up features. It focuses on the improvement of the quality of your daily tasks. You can easily access your sales timeline and your team’s to-do list. Bids, lead generation, proposals, customer data, etc, are all easily viewable.

The capsule is also very good at organizing information and making it easy to find crucial information. You can import contact lists from Gmail, Outlook, and your CVS spreadsheet and database files.

They offer a free version of their software which can be perfect for a small business run by one or two people. The professional version of the software provides Zapier, G Suite, Zendesk, Twitter, and Mailchimp integration. Through the created unity across all your apps, it becomes easy to collect information, and capture leads.

What are the downsides?

You cannot have more than 250 contacts if you are using the free plan. This makes it easy for you to suddenly hit a glass ceiling and be cornered to pay at least 18$ each month to keep up with the software you have used and invested in for your business.

Tracking and auto-generating contacts from your email are not possible without remembering to BCC them into your Dropbox, which has a very high error percentage.

The price:

• Capsule provides a free basic version for up to 2 users.
• Their professional plan costs 18$ for each user monthly, which you will be billed for monthly.
• Capsule also offers a Teams version, which costs 36$ for each user a month, billed monthly.
• The capsule team offers a 30-day free trial, for both the Professional and Teams plans.

Method: CRM

An option you can customize to fit your needs. Method: CRM is a worthy CRM candidate if you use QuickBooks. You can eliminate double data entry as it offers two-way, real-time sync with QuickBooks. All the customer data, such as their estimates, invoices, and payments, are visible in one place, making customer relationship management easy.

Verticals such as construction, accounting, manufacturing, and field service can hugely benefit from this software. Method: CRM is suitable for small businesses and can easily be used for online customer payment and syncing the data back into QuickBooks.

What are the downsides?

None of the sales pipeline tools are available in the basic edition, making it hard not to spend more to go pro. If you are not a QuickBooks user, Method: CRM is not the best software solution you can go for.

The price:

• Method: CRM offers a basic contact management plan for the price of 25$ for each user a month, billed annually.
• Their CRM Pro plan costs 44$ for each user a month, billed annually.
• Method CRM also offers 30 days of a free trial.

Salesforce

If you are looking for a highly customizable app you can tailor to your needs, Salesforce might be exactly what you are looking for. It provides well-developed tools to manage sales processes, team co-operations, and integrations.

Salesforce is a rich and mature application with many features. The system is designed to be mended by sales teams and sales managers to fit their needs and build up very complex task management systems.

It makes eliminating many tiresome tasks and decision-making processes out of your daily work routine possible.

What are the downsides?

It takes some time and effort to master Salesforce. But the vendor has provided a set of “Trailhead” lessons to help with the learning process, which they do so efficiently.

Salesforce does not have very reliable customer service. It is a huge monster company, and it seems to have attracted negative reviews on its support. The help desk seems to be very often unresponsive, and customers are left on hold for long periods. The support staff is constantly changing, so it is hard to build a relationship with someone who knows your company and its history and needs.

It creates a huge paradox when a CRM software company is weak in customer support.

The price:

• Salesforce offers an essential plan for all-in-one sales and support. This plan costs 25$ per user monthly with an annual payment.
• Their professional plan provides a complete CRM for any team of any size. It is priced at 75$ for each user a month and is billed annually.
• With their enterprise plan, Salesforce offers deeply customizable sales CRM for your business at the price of 150$ for each user monthly, billed annually.
• They also offer an Unlimited plan for “unlimited power and support” which costs 300$ for each user monthly and is billed annually.

EngageBay

EngageBay introduces itself as a HubSpot alternative. It offers three business process-oriented options: marketing automation, Live chat & Helpdesk, and CRM & Sales Bay. The last suit, CRM & Sales Bay includes some tools for contact management that are easy to use and are meant for company growth.

You can collect contact information from all over your customer touchpoints. You can follow a contact’s activity, web activity, email response, open click rates, and more.

EngageBay can sync to Gmail, Office 365, or all other IMAP services. Through the use of Zapier, SendGrid, Mailgun, Xero, and Mandrill integrations, your CRM can be connected with your other business processes and your operations can be more streamlined.

What are the downsides?

Engagebay kind of lacks native integrations with third-party apps. There are also not that many email templates available, and the options are very simple.

 The price:

• EngageBay provides a free plan, with maximum contact and branded email number of 1000.
• They offer a basic plan which costs 10.39$ for each user each month, if paid annually, and 12.39$ for each user a month if it is billed monthly.
• They offer a Growth plan which costs 19.99$ for each user if it is billed annually and 24.99$ for each user if paid monthly.
• The Pro plan they offer is priced at 39.99$ for each user monthly if billed annually and 49.99$ for each user each month if billed monthly.

Nutshell

A CRM solution that has it all. Nutshell comes in with all the automation and marketing tools. It is easy to learn, and easy to use, and you do not need to have an IT department to use it.

You can build conversation histories with clients, which you can access later on. Website visitors can be made into contacts through lead form integration. Nutshell provides the ability to organize leads and customers, in detailed and precise ways. Information such as industry, lifetime values, and the location of the customers can be documented.

Many other handy features are included, such as the map view, sales automation suite, fully customizable reporting tools, and the ability to make calls and record them in the app. Many are fans of the personal mail sequences feature.

Nutshell changes your sales email game forever with the ability to connect your Google and Nutshell contacts through its Gmail Chrome extension. The software is in complete harmony with Google tools. It automatically syncs and updates Google events with nutshell activities, and enables you to create tasks, manage communication timelines, write notes, and easily take a look at what emails have been shared with teammates inside the app.

What are the downsides?

Some users are unsatisfied with the possibility of customization,  capabilities, and also the lack of automated integrations. This is a weak point that can be made up for by using third-party integration software like Zapier.

Depending on your situation and business, Nutshell and its easy-to-set-up interface is a charming option you might want to go for.

The price:

• Nutshell offers a starter plan, which is 19$ for each user, each month if billed annually, and 22$ for each user, each month, if it is billed monthly.
• The pro plan Nutshell offers is 35$ for each user, each month if it is billed annually. If you choose a monthly payment method, the pro plan will cost 39$ for each user, each month.

Both the starter and the pro plans have a 14-day free trial.

Freshsales

A complete sales force automation CRM system, Freshsales has it all. It provides to all the needs of a sales team; from attracting quality leads to engaging in contextual conversations, driving deals with artificial intelligence-based knowledge, and taking care of and nurturing customer relationships.

Freshsales provides built-in email, phone, chat, and telephony. It increases the team’s efficiency and productivity by automating the sales process. They help the sales team to predict and take the best action course and get insights on the best deals.

Their solid pipeline management can elevate any company to the next level. You are also provided with native CPQ which can make creating and sharing quotes and other important sales operations easy.

What are the downsides?

As it is common with most software, some of the best features which make the software unique are reserved for the more expensive editions. Some of these features include time-based workflows, chatbot tools, and advanced metrics reporting.

The free and basic plans are still an amazing option and a nice place to start and see if you like the software’s interface. You can always upgrade, or switch to another option.

The price:

• They offer a completely free startup plan.
• Freshworks CRM offers a Growth plan which is priced at 15$ for each user monthly and is billed annually.
• Their Pro plan is priced at 39$ for each user monthly and is billed annually.
• Freshworks CRM also offers an enterprise plan, which costs 69$ for each user, a month, and is billed annually.

Salesforce provides a 14-day free trial for all of the plans.

Close

Close provides Voice, SMS, pipeline view, reporting, and email marketing all in one package.  

Pre-recorded voicemail is one of their many great features which will save you a ton of time. Their popular predictive dialing feature makes it possible for the sales team members to auto-dial multiple numbers at the same time to increase productivity. Many great integrations with other platforms are also provided, including Mailchimp, Facebook, Zendesk, and Zapier.

What are the downsides?

There is usually some manual cleaning required with close, as the CVS files are imported in bulk.

The price:

• Close’s Start plan is priced at 29.75$ for each user a month when billed annually. If you decide to go for a monthly payment, the price will increase to 35$ for each user monthly.
• Their Basic plan costs 55.25$ for each user monthly when paid annually. With monthly bills, the Basic plans cost 65$ for each user, each month.
• The Professional plan is priced at 80.75$ for each user monthly, billed annually. In the case of monthly bills, the plan will cost 95$ for each user, every month.
• The business plan costs 123.75$ for each user, each month when billed annually. If you decide to go for a monthly payment method, the price will be 145$ per user, per month.

HubSpot CRM

One of the most famous options out there, HubSpot is a known name in the world of CRM. It provides a free platform with some basic features. The free version handles some of the basics of the sales process, such as lead management and cross-channel tracking of customer interactions. Through Zapier integration you will be able to share information over apps like slack and Google Sheets.

The paid CRM add-on majorly changes the game. It provides features such as AI assistance, deeper prospect insights, and high-end automation.

What are the downsides?

Hubspot tries to be an accessible option for all businesses, but it is not the most flexible and customizable option. This can be an issue for you if what you are doing is not that common.

The price:

• Hubspot CRM does not cost anything and allows for an unlimited number of users.
• Hubspot offers add-on packages that cost 50 each a user, monthly. These packages include Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub.
• The Hubspot CMS plan starts at 300$ per month and is billed monthly.
• They also offer an All-inclusive Starter Growth Suite, with a starting price of 113$ for each user, per month, with monthly payments.

Copper

A great option if you use G suit a lot, as Copper is in complete sync with Gmail. Gorgeous design and visuals make this application enjoyable to use. Leads can be easily managed through the well-designed sales pipeline. You can easily access contacts via text, email, and voice message inside the app. Copper also provides a voice transcription feature, allowing you to take notes as you go.

You can create custom filters and alerts to keep on top of all the important things you must remember. Copper provides you with weekly pipeline progression reports that can be of great assistance in team communication and workflow.

What are the downsides?

Whenever you want to attach a file to an email, you have to switch to Gmail. You cannot attach files to emails inside the app. It takes some time and effort to learn to work with the software, and the provided tutorials do not always suffice and solve the issues. This might be shocking as the interface seems extremely user-friendly at first.

The price:

• Copper offers a Basic plan, costing 19$ a month per user and billed annually.
• The professional plan they offer is priced at 49$ for each user a month and is paid for annually.
• Copper’s business plan is priced at 119$ per user monthly, and it is billed annually.

All of the plans have 14-day free trials.

Zendesk Sell

A salesforce automation solution that aims in bringing in and harmonizing the sales and services team together to improve the customer experience, and increase customer satisfaction. With the help of sales automation, the sales team can work more effectively focusing on the more important things.

Zendesk Sell allows you to set triggers for when you get a new lead, qualified deal, or incoming deal. Every team member will be notified, and there will be a chance to communicate, collaborate and analyze. This allows for the decrease of misunderstandings, miscommunications, unnecessary meetings, and it will help to make better decisions.

Zendesk Sell can be used for deal-making, keeping loyal customers, getting a better outlook, and improving conversions through keeping in touch with potential clients and timely sales interventions.

You can gather information and context on leads, through the use of lead prioritization tools such as funnel tracking, custom lead forms, customizable lists, communication templates, channel optimization, and conversion rate tracking.

The mobile application for this CRM software has been rated to be the best many time before, and it includes a simple and natural consumer-grade user interface.

What are the downsides?

Automated data entry errors and a slow loading speed have been reported before. It might also not be the best option for startups and small businesses because of the pricing.

The price:

• Please contact Zendesk sales to directly discuss pricing and custom plans

Best CRM software for sales

CRM software is a tool to manage all kinds of sales and organize the relationship between a company and its customers. 

Dewzilla provides one of the best CRM softwares for companies of any size and business plan. 

To conclude

There is no denying the importance of CRM in the fast and data-based sales world today. Before committing to any paid CRM software, you must determine and specify your needs. The question is not what is the best CRM option, but what CRM is best for your business?

Find what it is that you are the most concerned about and choose software that provides for your needs. How important is social media to your business? Do you care most about the building of a customizable sales pipeline for your product?

There is no best CRM for sales teams, only options that suit you better. And to find which of the top CRM software is the one to go with, you must know yourself. There is something out there for every business and every need. No matter how strange and peculiar.

Good luck!

FAQs