End of 2013 CRM Selection for Small Businesses

CRM Growth This Year

Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) cloud pro­grams are a hot item for small busi­ness­es in 2013. I received a lot more emails and calls this year than ever before ask­ing me what CRM is the best. That is a very dif­fi­cult ques­tion to answer, because most of the pro­grams all have strengths and weak­ness­es. I am a firm believ­er that what­ev­er CRM a com­pa­ny selects, it will most like­ly do a good job if they are com­mit­ted to using it. The num­ber one rea­son CRM pro­grams fail is not the CRM’s fault. It is because the busi­ness­es that signed up don’t use even 25% of the fea­tures and just give up. I know folks who are pay­ing a month­ly fee for CRMs and have not even touched it in prob­a­bly over a year. So before I list the top CRMs I’ve seen on the mar­ket in 2013 and what to look for in 2014, I’ll put anoth­er plug in there for you all read­ing this to do one big thing(s) in 2014: 

• Find a CRM you will like
• Don’t get a free ver­sion or you won’t use it.
• Learn how to use it (Train your­self and your team)
• Com­mit to use the CRM
• Use it

Top 2013 CRM Pro­grams on the Market

Base CRM

Base, by FutureS­im­ple is the CRM pro­gram that I use and like. I’ve used it for almost 2 years straight. That says a lot, because I test and login to oth­er CRMs often! The desk­top ver­sion is get­ting bet­ter every quar­ter (lots of real­ly cool fea­tures com­ing in 2014…so stay tuned). But the real sell­ing point of Base is the amaz­ing Mobile Apps they’ve devel­oped. You can pret­ty much use Base from a tablet or smart­phone with­out log­ging into the desk­top ver­sion: that is how good it is. To learn more about some of the lat­est fea­tures in 2013, read this blog among oth­ers. Sign up for a Free Tri­al of Base

Pipeline Deals (PLD)

Most of my paint clients are using Pipeline Deals CRM and have for the past 3 years+. I’ve been work­ing with Pipeline for over 4 years now and real­ly like their team. They have pro­duced a very sim­ple and straight­for­ward CRM for small and medi­um size busi­ness­es. The key CRM fea­tures are in place: con­tact man­age­ment, deals, cus­tom report­ing, sched­ul­ing of appoint­ments, and so on. Read a more thor­ough review of them here. The pro­gram is not buggy…it is super clean. I believe this is because their devel­op­ment of the cloud app is slow and care­ful. So when they release a new fea­ture, it has been thor­ough­ly test­ed. The down­side is that there are not new fea­tures very often. So those of you look­ing for some­thing spe­cif­ic or cus­tom may be dis­ap­point­ed with Pipeline Deals. Their mobile devel­op­ment, for exam­ple, has been a slow process. The good news is they do have an iPhone App that works pret­ty well and a soon-to-be-released Android App.

Cork CRM for Painters

Cork is a new CRM that seems to be focus­ing its mar­ket­ing on paint­ing con­trac­tors. Being that my audi­ence is typ­i­cal­ly painters, I’m excit­ed to see the role Cork’s CRM will play in 2014. They have asked me to look at the pro­gram and write a review. I’ve done a lit­tle bit of test­ing. At this point, I’m not ready to ful­ly endorse it for my clients, but I do believe they are off to a good start. They have includ­ed a few fea­tures oth­er CRM com­pa­nies have left out: sched­ul­ing and light project man­age­ment.

Sales­force

There is not much to say about Sales­force except this: it is prob­a­bly the most pow­er­ful CRM on the mar­ket. It can do just about any­thing you want to do: sales, mar­ket­ing, project man­age­ment, invoic­ing and more. There is a price tag for all those fea­tures, but if you are tru­ly com­mit­ted to using a CRM, Sales­force will not dis­ap­point. To real­ly use Sales­force, you will need thor­ough train­ing. I’ve had cus­tomers send staff mem­bers (on a plane) for sev­er­al days of train­ing. The only thing I think lack­ing with Sales­force in 2013 was the lack of mobile devel­op­ment. They are behind Base CRM on this. They have deep pock­ets though, so I’m sure their mobile apps will be improved in 2014.

ImproveIt360

I do not know a lot about ImproveIt360 to write much on this post. I do know that they are doing some­thing right because Sales­force recent­ly acquired them. I did go through a pre­sen­ta­tion about their prod­uct sev­er­al years ago and was turned off by the poor UX and UI fea­tures (user experience/​user inter­face). I did­n’t like how it looked, felt and per­formed. Again, with Sales­force behind this pro­gram, I’m sure the fea­tures will only get bet­ter. It is one of more expen­sive CRMs on the mar­ket too. None of this is meant to be crit­i­cal. This pro­gram is meant to real­ly help a con­tract­ing com­pa­ny with a lot of key sales and mar­ket­ing fea­tures. I would prob­a­bly have a con­trac­tor look at ImproveIt360 before Sales­force, because it is geared toward the con­struc­tion indus­try.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM has been a key play­er in CRM devel­op­ment along­side Sales­force. If you want a cheap­er alter­na­tive to Sales­force, go with Zoho. From all the time I’ve spent inside Zoho’s plat­form, it seems to do just about every­thing Sales­force does for less mon­ey per user. Their mobile apps are also pret­ty clean and strong.

Nut­shell CRM 

Nut­shell CRM is a small­er and sim­ple CRM. Over­all I like Nut­shell. My only hes­i­ta­tion to endorse it for my clients is that it seems more geared to sell­ing prod­ucts (inven­to­ry), not ser­vices.

Batch­book

I have not spent much time in recent years inside of Batch­book. I’ve reached out to them to allow me to use their prod­uct, but they have not respond­ed. 3+ years ago, I remem­ber enjoy­ing the sim­plic­i­ty of Batch­book. They were one of the first CRMs to release a native iPhone app too. They are one of the cheap­est CRMs on the mar­ket too. It is not as pow­er­ful on the cus­tom reports that Base, Pipeline and Sales­force can give you, but all in all Batch­book (for the price) is worth look­ing into.

Insight­ly

This com­pa­ny start­ed out as the free CRM for busi­ness­es and had fan­tas­tic inte­gra­tion with Google Apps. They kept that free sta­tus for sev­er­al years as they increased mar­ket share. Over a year ago, they added more fea­tures with pre­mi­um accounts (paid). The paid ver­sion is very good and works well. I think they are slow on devel­op­ment as well, so don’t expect fast upgrades and changes in 2014. If you are a Google user, you’ll prob­a­bly like Insight­ly. They have Androit and iPhone apps and one of the ONLY CRMs that has a built in Project Man­age­ment pro­gram. This fea­ture is not as good as Base­camp and for inter­nal use. But hey…it is there and it works. So there you have it. I’ve only list­ed the ones I have spent time review­ing and using. The two I use the most are Base and Pipeline Deals. In 2014, I believe we will see even more key fea­tures on these CRM pro­grams. Base has not allowed me to release some of their ​“cool” fea­tures and plans for 2014, but I can say I’m excit­ed about what they’ve told me. The one thing I’d like to see in 2014 would be more inte­gra­tion with a good project man­age­ment pro­gram like Base­camp. Even bet­ter, I’d like the CRM to have an amaz­ing and easy to use project man­age­ment fea­ture built in! A CRM is not just about sell­ing. It is all about the post sale too. Let me know what CRM pro­gram you are using now or plan to use in 2014.