What’s the Best Sales CRM for Your Business?

CRM Platforms

Finding the best sales CRM fit for your business

It can be a long, hard road to finding the best sales CRM for your business. For most offices, it’s an intense process of trial and error to find one that fits.

In sales, we make difficult decisions all of the time that directly affect the company’s bottom line. We need to choose our targets, set goals, and decide if certain leads aren’t worth pursuing. The decision you have to make when settling on the best sales CRM for your business is no different. A CRM is an investment that will have an impact company-wide. This tool influences the effectiveness of your sales team, the ease with which you can reach out to new leads, and the workflows you already have in place. Executive teams and managers will use CRMs to determine sales performance, budget for headcount, and determine close rates for performance reviews. Your marketing department will use the CRM to monitor the quality of leads they bring to your sales team and customer service departments will use the CRM to maintain customer relationships.

DemandZEN understands the importance of choosing a customer relationship management tool that not only integrates with your business, but allows your sales team to achieve better results.

So what’s the best sales CRM you ask? While there is technically no right answer to that question, we have a strong opinion that the CRMs below are a cut above the rest. Here are the favorites we recommend you try based on your individual needs.

salesforce-logo

Salesforce

We’ve all heard of Salesforce, right? We love it so much that it even made our list when we highlighted our favorite marketing CRMs in October. It’s the No. 1 ranked CRM in the market, and for good reason.

Positives

Salesforce is cloud-based contact management software that is easy to use. They’ve been around a long time, and they’ve developed a great support team that a lot of people love.

It’s a powerful tool that allows for user customization with a variety of third-party connectors. Chances are, it connects to software you are already using. We can say this with some certainty since Salesforce can connect to over three thousand different applications.

This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Users can personalize their dashboards based on their individual workflows. Salesforce has done a great job of building a product that could conceivably please everyone. And as a bonus, it does marketing automation!

But why isn’t it perfect?

Drawbacks

If you’re a microbusiness or a nonprofit, Salesforce is not for you.

Because Salesforce is so powerful and can integrate with so many third-party applications, it can be costly to setup and maintain. Some businesses might find they need to hire a developer to help customize the software, which can be too expensive for smaller businesses. It also has a complicated pricing structure that winds up being costly if you need more than five users in the system.

hubspot logo

HubSpot

HubSpot is a great choice for companies on a budget looking to expand their online presence.

Positives

If you’re looking for a basic tool, HubSpot’s sales CRM is no-frills and completely free. No joke. It’s an intuitive platform and is especially simple to learn for teams already using HubSpot marketing automation.

Those leads generated by your marketing team are seamlessly pulled into the sales CRM for your sales reps to contact. HubSpot eliminates a lot of the manual data entry customers are used to with other CRMs.

Though it does not integrate with as many applications as Salesforce, it does have a customizable interface for users.

Drawbacks

Free isn’t always better. And it doesn’t always mean it’s truly free. While HubSpot the CRM won’t cost you a cent, HubSpot the marketing automation requires you to get out the piggy bank. To enjoy the full benefit of HubSpot’s CRM, you’ll need to invest in the marketing tool.

Companies with long sales cycle won’t find many advantages in HubSpot because of its limited reporting abilities. These companies will most likely need a more robust tool than what HubSpot offers.

agile crm logo

Agile CRM

Agile is a suitable name for this flexible CRM.

Positives

This is a solution that scales to your business. You can start out free (with up to 10 users), and increase your spend as your company’s needs grow. This is a CRM that will work for garage startups and enterprise companies.

Agile looks to simplify the responsibilities of the sales rep by enabling call automation and recording. The system also allows seven different contact import methods, so you’re not bound to creating a spreadsheet to the exact specifications of the CRM.

Agile is also another CRM that encompasses marketing automation in its toolset.

Drawbacks

This CRM is only three years old, and it still has a few bugs to work out. Customers have cited instances of notes and deals disappearing from the system, as well as issues with their drag-and-drop functionality. You might find yourself reaching out to customer support more often than you would like.

And though this is an affordable solution for those starting out, it can get pricey when users upgrade to the enterprise option.

nimble crm logo

Nimble

If you love comparing tools against one another on G2Crowd, you’ll notice Nimble is rated No. 1 right next to Salesforce. Let’s see why just so many people are head over heels for this one.

Positives

If your business cares about social, you have to get this CRM. With Nimble, sales reps can look at the social profiles of leads to see what they’re interested. This enables end users to make the decision if a lead is right for the product based directly on the words of the lead (without speaking to him or her).

Nimble is praised for its usability and attractive interface. Its pipeline system is simple to use and understand, as is its task calendar.

Like HubSpot, Nimble boasts little-to-no data entry on the part of the end user. It also integrates with tools like Hootsuite, Constant Contact, and Freshdesk. It has an especially good Google app integration.

And to top it all off, it’s pretty inexpensive.

Drawbacks

As beloved as this CRM is on G2Crowd, it just hasn’t been tested in the same way as other CRMs. It’s relatively new compared to more veteran CRMs that are out there.

There’s a chance you’ll run into a glitch here and there that you’ll have to report to customer service. One such glitch is that contacts with the same name will be merged into a single contact, even when emails and phone numbers are unique to those contacts. To avoid this, users will have to add characters or descriptors to the end of contacts’ names.

While Nimble is integrative, it is limited in its integration. There are only a few applications it directly integrates with. To use all other applications with Nimble, you will need to use a tool like Zapier. In some cases, while you can pull the information from Nimble to a third-party app, you cannot pull the information the opposite way.

Making the decision

Ultimately, the decision is up to you decide what makes a CRM the best. There are plenty of CRMs out there, and there is one that will fit the needs of your business. We guarantee it. Just remember to identify your needs for your CRM and define your sales cycle before embarking on your search.

Looking for advice on implementing one of the CRMs listed here? DemandZEN would love to help you out. Give us a shout.

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