A CRM - or customer relationship management - solution is vital for any firm that wants to track communications with customers or prospects relating to sales, marketing messages and more, whether you're a B2B or B2C business.
Although a CRM traditionally is a place to store contact details of prospects and customers, they have evolved to track the entire sales funnel, including phone conversations, emails and face-to-face contact. You can track if a customer made a purchase, what it was and how they came to buy it, as well as analysing their behaviour to see what they may want to buy in future, further tailoring your marketing materials to their profile.
The majority of CRM platforms will keep track of interactions in real-time, so if your colleague sent a customer an email yesterday, that should be logged, as well as the follow-up phone conversation you had with them this morning, for example.
Collaboration is a vital part of a CRM, because everyone needs complete visibility of the relationship journey. It will not provide a good customer experience if both you and your colleague have the same conversation with the same contact within days of each other - it could even result in a lost sale. If you can see that your colleague spoke to them, you could follow on from the conversation or delay your follow-up.
If you're unsure how your business's needs will change in the future, it's best to choose a modular system that allows you to add on features when you need them. For example, the first stage could be creating a database of all your contacts, but in the future, you may want to be able to send out tailored marketing materials to them too.
Other modules available for a wide range of CRM software include shared calendars, so employees can see who's meeting which client and when and cost tracking to generate sales reports for each member of your sales team. Specialised modules may be specifically tailored for a particular industry, making it more relevant than just buying a generic solution.
Our guide to the best CRM software will help you make the right decision for your business to get your sales and marketing off the ground in 2018.
Other modules available for a wide range of CRM software include shared calendars, so employees can see who's meeting which client and when and cost tracking to generate sales reports for each member of your sales team. Specialised modules may be specifically tailored for a particular industry, making it more relevant than just buying a generic solution.
Our guide to the best CRM software will help you make the right decision for your business to get your sales and marketing off the ground in 2018.
Apptivo
Apptivo is a modular CRM tool that allows the business to pic and mix elements according to their specific business' needs. It's also one of the cheapest at $10/user/month, providing maximum ROI when you consider the productivity it generates.
The low-cost plan includes the ability to brand the CRM with your company logo, IMAP email access, invoicing, contact management, third-party integrations, 3GB storage, reports and message templates to make sure everyone in your business is communicating in the same way.
The dashboard shows you any scheduled meetings or calls, with your tasks listed to make sure you can start the day knowing exactly who you're going to be communicating with and when, planning your work time in the cost efficient way possible. You can of course change what information is shown, making it a wonderfully tailored solution for each user.
In total, Apptivo offers access to 40 different apps across nine categories that have every single part of the sales funnel covered.
Price: From £10/month
URL: Apptivo
Why download? Apptivo offers it all: a wide range of apps to choose from, an easy to use, customisable Ui and a low price.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 isn't just a CRM, but also a collaboration platform for your sales team to chat in real time, manage projects and share documents to help them seal the deal.
The CRM part of Bitrix24 combines contact management, with deal tracking and a quotes and invoicing tool to help you manage your finances. On the contact management side of things, you can change the information displayed according to your preferences, so the sales team can make sure the most important details for them are shown first.
Other CRM features include end-to-end deal management, from first contact, through to invoicing and payment. With Bitrix24's full suite of services, it's a much more robust sales tool, with a free version available for up to 12 users.
Price: From free for limited features, $39/month for everything
URL: Bitrix24
Why download? Much more than just a CRM, Bitrix24 will help your sales team become more productive too
TrackVia
TrackVia isn't just a contacts tracking platform, it's a tool that can be turned into the CRM application of your dreams. You can upload a spreadsheet of contacts and information and personalise it to your organisation, making it tailored specifically to your needs. You can create your own database-powered apps to track every part of the customer journey and build your own CRM, so you don't have to rely on other systems meeting your criteria.
Although TrackVia does need a little time invested to make it work exactly how you want it to (using as little coding as possible), once you've set it up, you'll have a fully personalised CRM app for your entire organisation to use.
Price: Available upon request
URL: TrackVia
Why download? TrackVia lets you create a CRM specifically for your organisation with minimal coding required
Base CRM
Base CRM is a unified contact management and sales tracking platform for Android tablets and smartphones. The app can be used to manage your contacts, log calls, track sales or create tasks from your smartphone or tablet and view the entire sales process. If you make changes on the move these will be synced with the desktop platform to ensure your whole team understands what is going on whether they are on the road or in the office. At business meetings you're able to add new contacts with a few taps and also track up to 50 sales at any time.
Price: Free on Android, desktop version from $25/month
URL: Base CRM
Why download? Free on Android, Base CRM is a great app for tracking opportunities on the move
ClinchPad
Most CRM solutions allow you to track the progress of sales leads and conversations using contacts as a base. However, most make it far too complicated to add contacts and track activity.
ClinchPad simplifies this process. It asks for a name and an email address for the contact, but you can add more information if you wish. You can search for these easily and track the progress of the sale, including to do lists and current relationship status in a Kanban-like UI.
Price: From $3/user/month
URL: ClinchPad
Why download? Inputting contacts doesn’t have to be a challenge. This CRM solution demonstrates just how easy it can be
Highrise
From the same company as collaboration platform Basecamp, Highrise collates every little detail from your customer and contact database, including their name, email address, phone number, postal address, plus every email conversation you've had with them and file you've shared.
Not only is it a contacts database, but it also features the ability to send emails right from the desktop or mobile interface. You can send emails to individuals or to entire teams, making it a great solution for managing the entire communication process.
Price: From $4/user/month
URL: Highrise
Why download? Highrise puts communication at the centre of everything, collating all your contacts and email history in one place. The ability to email direct from the platform makes it an all-emcompassing solution.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot is one of the most renowned CRM and content management platforms that helps you keep an eye on your consumer interaction, tracking emails, monitoring phone calls to clients, understanding client purchase or withdrawal patterns and a lot more. You can even sync your contacts through Gmail in order to interact with them on a more advanced level.
Although the basic version is free, for more add-ons there are premium and paid features that you can use along with the HubSpot marketing suite.
Price: Free (basic version)
URL: Hubspot CRM
Why download? Allows you to get to know your consumer better and what makes the interaction most fruitful, by managing your contacts and maximising your marketing and strategy execution.
Insightly
Insightly combines CRM and project management in one integrated platform that can be used via your browser, on iOS or Android. It also includes a wide range of social features, allowing businesses to combine their leads with customers' social profiles to build up a better view of what they're talking about and to whom. With business overviews and reports, Insightly gives a fully-rounded view of a potential customer and integrates with a huge array of third party apps and services, such as Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Apps, MailChimp, Outlook 2013/Office 365 Business Edition, QuickBooks Online, QuoteRoller, Torpio, Xero and Zapier.
Price: Free for one user & paid services (starting from $12/user/month)
URL: Insightly
Why download? With everything in one place, Insightly is a tip-top solution for small businesses, with a low price tag too
Nimble
Nimble focuses on building relationships rather than just being a bank of contacts. It brings together detailed insights about each person in the database, including contextual information from their social accounts (think actual tweets rather than just their Twitter handle) and allows you to segment people based upon their interests and more. It will also track your entire relationship with that person from every channel connected to it so you have the information you need to refer to right at your fingertips.
Price: Free (subscriptions from $15.99/month)
URL: Nimble
Why to download: Nimble gives you much more insight than just the standard contact details, meaning you can concentrate on building the relationship.
Odoo
Odoo helps you organise and manage your contacts and information, have your projects, inventory, managing e-commerce, invoices, internal blogs and a lot more in one place. Its CRM tools allow you to track your users to leads, right until they become customers. Kanban boards, charts and reports are all integrated to help you get to know the relationship of your offering with the customer, enhancing sales records and team productivity.Like HubSpot, Odoo also features automated marketing options.
Price: Free
URL: Odoo
Why to download: Odoo has everything your company needs in one place!
PipeDrive
If you’re the sort of person who likes to see an entire overview of the sales process, PipeDrve crams every single piece of vital information into one dashboard, making it super-simple for detail obsessives to track the sales process.
Although probably too cluttered for some, PipeDrive includes information about the contacts, meetings, prospects and everything else, in one place, with the choice of using filters to make the linear interface look a little more manageable.
Price: From $12/user/month
URL: PipeDrive
Why to download: You can see every single sales funnel in one place with this app
Pipeliner CRM
Pipeliner turns your entire CRM into a Kanban-style board so you can see prospects' journey from start to finish, in a beautiful and easy to follow UI. It's all drag and drop, so you can move your opportunities from one column to another as they progress into sales.
You can organise contacts exactly as you wish, with elements including Activity Stream, Target Overview, Notifications, Suggestions and Business Overview in one place, for a full overview of everything happening with your sales team.
It's supported across platforms, so whether you're sitting at your desk or out and about, you can track the progress of opportunities and leads, viewing everything in perfect detail, on an interface designed for the screen size.
Price: From $35/user/month
URL: Pipeliner
Why to download: If you work best with a visual environment, Pipeliner does exactly that, presenting the oportunitys journey in one place
ProsperWorks
If the UI of a CRM application is vital for you, make sure you take a look at ProsperWorks when you’re choosing which route to head down. Lots of white space and easy to read text and columns make this one of the easiest CRM applications to use.
If you need more than just looks to be convinced, consider this: ProsperWorks integrates seamlessly with Gmail to show what your sales team is up to at any point during any day, so if you use Google Apps, it’s the perfect solution for your organisation.
Price: $19/month
URL: ProsperWorks
Why to download: The UI of this app is simply beautiful and it integrates with Gmail perfectly
Sage CRM
Publisher: Sage Format: Android, Browser, Desktop, iOS
Price: Starts from approx $39/user/month (30-day trial available)
Sage CRM helps users save time, increase productivity and gain greater visibility for decision-making across their business and includes workflow automation, customer management and target campaign frameworks. The software is straightforward to deploy and maintain, and combining it with Sage ERP offers firms additional advantages, such as a single, customer-centric view across their entire business. The service is available on-premise or in the cloud, and is also available on mobile platforms.
SugarCRM Community Edition
Being a Blockbuster name in the CRM world, Sugar CRM is an open source code, paid enterprise-ready application that has various pricing plans, starting from $35 per month for every team member. It’s synched with your database so you can remove or add in any of the hundreds of modules available, bringing you a CRM app that perfectly suits the needs of your business. These features include tools to track contact information and email marketing based on automatically set schedules, harnessing those relationships to become hot leads, and also gathering additional leads via polls and forms.
Price: Free trial & paid services (starting from $35/month)
URL: SugarCRM
Why download? Sugar CRM engages the customer and your enterprise in a seamless way.
Zoho
Zoho CRM combines all elements you need to keep track of your customers and leads in one place. Not only can you log the communications you have with any of them automatically, you are also able to add additional data, such as entire call recordings with any of them and make calls direct from the app. Zoho can be used online and offline with any changes automatically synching to the cloud when connectivity is restored, so you needn't worry if you're using the app when you're on the tube or in a remote area.
Price: Free trial & paid services (starting from $12/user/month)
URL: Zoho
Why download? With the ability to make calls and record them for one app, you'll never forget your last conversation with a customer again.
