Zendesk Sell - Best Mobile CRM of 2017

Update: Novem­ber 2018: Base has joined with Zen­desk Sup­port. Their new name is Zen­desk Sell. Their pric­ing struc­ture has changed as well. It spans from $19, $49, $99 and $199 per user. I use the words Base CRM in the arti­cle below, writ­ten in 2017. I have been a fan of Zen­desk Sell ever since they came out with their first iPhone app, 6 or 7 years ago. I became an ear­ly adapter of Base CRM and focused on using it for my own busi­ness. They have done one of the best jobs since day one mak­ing their mobile apps act sim­i­lar to their desk­top ver­sion. This makes it much eas­i­er for the techie and non-techie to learn and use. It is rather a pain to switch CRM pro­grams when you have more than a cou­ple of users and lots of data. So do not get tempt­ed to quick­ly jump ship from your cur­rent CRM just because Base is real­ly cool to use and looks good too. Only con­sid­er switch­ing if your esti­ma­tors and sales staff real­ly need more mobile fea­tures and account­abil­i­ty. I want­ed to give you just a quick snap­shot of why SELL works great for iPad, iPhone and Android users who tend to work more remote. Geo map­ping: This is a real­ly cool fea­ture. If your esti­ma­tor is dri­ving around town, he or she can pull up the Base app and click on the leads or con­tact area to see a map. At this point, the user will see mark­ers of all the leads or con­tacts in a giv­en area. He can then click on any mark­er to see more con­tact details. This is the per­fect prospect­ing tool. Note-Tak­ing: I’d encour­age any user that has a good mobile CRM to con­tin­u­al­ly jot down notes under the prospect or contact’s infor­ma­tion. The more notes one has about his prospect, the more ammo he can use to sell down the road. Base makes note-tak­ing a cinch. Email­ing and Email Tem­plates: With­in Base, your com­pa­ny can set­up your email address­es. It also works with Microsoft and Google busi­ness accounts. Any email sent with­in the app is auto­mat­i­cal­ly tracked. Your sales­per­son will be noti­fied when their recip­i­ent opens and reads the email(s). It also keeps count how many times the email gets opened. This works both on the desk­top and mobile app. This is cru­cial for a sales­per­son. If, for exam­ple, your esti­ma­tor sends a pro­pos­al via email and the pro­pos­al gets viewed 10 times, I have a strong feel­ing the prospect is inter­est­ed in your company’s bid. It is worth a fol­low up soon­er than lat­er. If your staff sends sim­i­lar emails, you can cre­ate email tem­plates, which work great on the mobile apps too. This is typ­i­cal­ly more of a desk­top fea­ture in most CRMs. In this way, your sales staff can be much more pro­duc­tive and con­sis­tent with their sales and their time. Final­ly, your HTML or Cus­tom Sig­na­ture is includ­ed in the mobile apps, so no one knows you are on a mobile device work­ing away! Task Man­age­ment: All your tasks relat­ed to a prospect can be cre­at­ed and man­aged with­in Base CRM’s mobile app. Deals and Reports: Zen­desk CRM is not real­ly meant for cre­at­ing pro­pos­als. For this, you’d still have to use your own esti­mat­ing sys­tem. As long as you send PDF or anoth­er type of doc­u­ment (even a link), this is where Base CRM can take over and shine. It can walk your sales­peo­ple through the whole sales process using just the mobile app. He or she can also check out some of the very slip reports to see how he is doing for that week, day, month or year. The reports are very visu­al and easy to use. There real­ly is not a lot of tech learn­ing need­ed. I have found that most good sales folks are not super detailed when it comes to the paper­work. That is why Base can be for the OCD, non-techie or dis­or­ga­nized sales­per­son. It works well for each type of user. There are more fea­tures with­in the updat­ed Base CRM app, but this post is a quick run­down and why I think it is def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing it out. They have more fea­tures com­ing in 2018. They have done a great job tak­ing their time to cre­ate a qual­i­ty user expe­ri­ence with very few bugs (if any). It is still my CRM of choice for mobile users. Let me know what you all decide to do: stay where you are or switch.