Operations
A CRM holds the record of who your customers are and what has happened with them. Which one you choose matters far less than whether the people doing the selling actually use it.
Context
A CRM nobody updates is worse than no CRM, because decisions get made on data everyone believes is current and is not.
Choices
Every choice below has a reason attached. A stack without reasons is a logo wall.
Where we apply it
The questions we work through before recommending anything in this area.
Recommending something everywhere is the same as having no opinion.
The one your team will keep updated. Most platforms in the category are capable enough; the differences that matter in practice are process fit, how much is captured automatically, and whether it integrates with what you already run.
Usually because it demanded manual entry that produced no visible benefit to the person entering it. Adoption follows when the CRM gives back more than it asks for.
A CRM holds the record of who your customers are and what has happened with them. Which one you choose matters far less than whether the people doing the selling actually use it.
A CRM nobody updates is worse than no CRM, because decisions get made on data everyone believes is current and is not.
A handful of customers and one salesperson: a shared document is genuinely adequate and honest about it; As a substitute for a defined sales process; the tool will encode whatever confusion already exists; and Where the real problem is lead quality, which a CRM records but does not improve
Can the actual sales process be represented without workarounds; How much can be captured automatically rather than typed; and Whether the platform has a documented, versioned API
Most platforms in the category can do most things. The question that predicts success is whether the sales process can be represented without contortion, because a CRM that fights the process loses.
Few required fields, each of which someone acts on. Long mandatory forms are the most reliable way to get a pipeline full of records completed carelessly to get past the form.
Connected
Bring the existing system and the constraints around it. We will tell you where this fits, where it would be the wrong tool, and what we would leave exactly as it is.
