What I Like About Pipeline Deals CRM for Small Businesses

I’ve been a fan of Pipeline Deals CRM since I first heard about, around four years ago. The only thing I really did not care for with Pipeline was the lack of Mobile integration. The end of April of 2013, Pipeline Deals released their first native App for the iPhone. It is version one and has a few bugs to work out, but that was a very helpful upgrade and feature for iPhone users. In this post I want to explain a couple of reasons why I like Pipeline Deals and why you should consider it for your small or medium size business.
- Good integration with Google Apps: Those who are using Google Apps will like most of the features Pipeline has to offer. You don’t have to leave your email to type important information about a client or prospect. You can do all of this within the Pipeline Google Gadget. This is a time saver and works beautifully. All notes, task, events, emails, etc can go right into Pipeline Deals directly from your Gmail interface. The two way calendar feature from Pipeline and Google Calendar also work well. The only thing that is still a little sketchy is the Google Contacts feature. It works, but I’ve found a lot of duplicates with multiple users.
Goals: This is one of the only CRMs on the market that has a Goals section and that is easy to use. You can have individual sales and team goals. So if you want to know where your team is at for the week, month or year, Pipeline Deals makes it very easy to find out! This really is a valuable tool for those who have 2 plus sales people.
- Reports: The reporting in Pipeline Deals still has room for improvement. For now, you typically do what you need right within the program. They also give you the opportunity to Export reports into Excel and do more advanced reporting. I have a few clients who’ve built custom Excel spreadsheets and then export the Pipeline reports into Excel. It works well, and they have all the reporting data they need. I primarily use the reports to look at the marketing. I like to see the total leads from each source, dollar amount won, lost etc. So it helps me know what marketing programs are working more than others.
- Contact Management: Keeping track of contacts within Pipeline is pretty simple once you get used to the interface and spend a little time poking around in the program. I know quite a few people who are NOT tech savvy at all who can move through Pipeline Deals with ease. Customizing Pipeline Deals to take down new lead information, schedule, follow up, all of the key areas involved in the sales process can be done within this CRM. The only thing that is lacking, and this is true for most CRMs, is advanced features for post sale management. Some of the post sale can be done now, but takes a little more effort and customization.
- Support: Pipeline Deals probably has the best customer service support team I’ve seen. You can email, chat or call them and they are there to help. This is a free feature (within reason). If you call them everyday and spend 30+ mins, they might ask you to limit your tech support! Actually, you can pay for custom work from them too. So if you want them to help custom Pipeline for your operation, they can do this for a small fee, which is worth it.