One of the most important parts of your business is your relationship with your clients. As your business grows, so does the volume of relationships you need to manage. While at first, one-off emails, various databases, or paper spreadsheets can do OK at keeping your customer data within reach, as your business blossoms, so do your needs for a toolset that’s more robust.
Customer data is only useful if it’s being utilized. Once you get to the point that you can’t hold your client information in your noggin or in an arm’s reach, it’s time to go digital.
A small business CRM is a critical piece of software that will keep all your client information in one place. Some offer more tools that are related to sales, some offer more marketing reporting, but all offer the basic functionality of customer information management.
Let’s look at ten of the best CRM tools that are perfect for small businesses.
Hatchbuck is a sales and marketing tool that helps you from the moment you capture a lead until you close a sale. Not only is the price point small business-friendly, but Hatchbuck’s platform includes a CRM that allows you to easily see client activity, track leads, and keep your information organized. With an all-in-one marketing platform, Hatchbuck also offers email marketing and automation that integrates directly with your CRM to easily manage all customer and prospect communication in one place. The platform allows users to automate marketing efforts with intelligent actions and keeps more opportunities on the path to conversion.
Price: Starts at $39/month and scales up based on contacts, emails sent, and users. Billed semi-annually.
Image courtesy of Nimble
Nimble is a CRM that works inside of your inbox, whether you’re using Office 365 or Gmail. It allows you to manage contacts, deals and company records seamlessly inside of your existing workflow. Their all-encompassing dashboard lets you see exactly what’s happening with your business at all times – from managing deals and tasks to keeping track of upcoming events and opened emails.
Price: Starts at $19/user per month, billed annually.
Hubspot is a popular free CRM for small business that features a decent set of tools to help your business manage its contacts, tasks, marketing efforts, customer feedback, sales, and customer service initiatives. The basic version of their CRM is free, but more robust options come with a cost. Never-the-less, Hubspot remains a popular option for small and medium-size businesses with basic CRM needs.
Price: Basic CRM is free; other tools vary by volume, tool type, and bundling.
Image courtesy of Dubsado
Dubsado is a newer CRM on the scene. They bill themselves as a business management solution that allows more than just customer relationship management. Dubsado features tools to easily communicate with your clients, create automated workflows, view leads, track financial goals, and even book appointments. It’s a software designed with small businesses in mind. For the CRM side of their business, their interface is sleek and simple with easy to use lead capturing, project management, and client portal features.
Price: Dubsado has a free trial and is only $35/month for unlimited clients and projects.
Image courtesy of Agile
Agile CRM is an all-in-one CRM solution that lets users manage their sales, marketing, and service initiatives in one software solution. They are a cloud-based SaaS system that can be easily used on both a desktop computer and mobile device. Their CRM provides robust solutions for sales, marketing, and customer service applications with features like contact management, one-click calling, appointment scheduling, helpdesk features, customer feedback, marketing automation, and a landing page builder. If you’re unsure of how to utilize their CRM to the fullest potential, Agile offers webinars to further educate their users.
Price: Agile CRM is also one of the most affordable options on the list, starting with free memberships for low-volume users.
Image courtesy of Zoho
Zoho offers a multichannel sales CRM for small businesses looking to cover all of their bases. They offer email, live chat, call management and social media integrations all in one application.They also offer a visual process management tool called Blueprint that allows users to build and automate their sales process. If you’re a little more tech-savvy and looking for a tool that does almost anything you could imagine, Zoho might be the right fit.
Price: Zoho’s professional plan starts at $20/user per month for unlimited contacts and scales up from there.
Image courtesy of Pipedrive
As you might guess from their name, Pipedrive is a strong pipeline management tool. Their CRM offers activity and goal tracking, sales forecasting and reporting as well as email integration. Their platform focuses on activity-based selling so their tools are there to help you follow up consistently and automatically. Pipedrive’s visual sales pipeline makes it super easy to see exactly what action you need to be taking and when.
Price: Their baseline Essential package starts at $12.50/user per month, billed annually and scales based on the features you need.
Image courtesy of Insightly
Insightly, a more B2C-focused CRM, helps you build better customer relationships through streamlined business processes, customizable dashboards and a plethora of integrations. With lead routing, project management and email tracking in one application, business owners can track customers from introduction to sale and beyond. Insightly also offers the ability to create custom apps for your business and to deploy them for employees across the web.
Price: Starts at $29/user per month, billed annually.
Image courtesy of Copper
Copper’s CRM is specifically designed to integration with G Suite. With their deep integration, you never have to leave the inbox to keep tabs on contacts, deals or emails. Copper seamlessly integrations with every app in G Suite including Calendar, Data Studio, Google Docs and more. Another amazing feature is that Copper’s CRM is up and running in minutes and all of your data is automatically populated from Gmail. Who doesn’t love all of that time savings?
Price: Starts at $19/user per month, billed annually.
Image courtesy of Zendesk Sell
Zendesk Sell, formerly Base CRM, is designed specifically with sales reps in mind. It gives a holistic look at the sales pipeline so your teams aren’t left in the dark when they’re out on the road. It also offers a support tool that lets your sales and customer service teams keep tabs on every customer conversation. Sell’s Smart Lists help your team easily segment and filter contacts so they’re sending the right message at the right time.
Price: Starts at $19/user per month, billed annually.
A CRM can be transformative to your business. It can improve not only the efficiency of your sales staff but your entire team. Once your CRM is implemented, you’ll see that it is incredibly useful for sales, marketing, customer experience, and customer support. No matter the industry you’re in, if your paper files are stuffed to the gills with client files you can’t utilize, it’s time to switch to a CRM.
The CRMs presented on this list all share a lot of similar features; where they tend to differ is usability and price point. The best way to select a CRM for your business is just to try a few out. Give them a shot and see which ones offer the most manageable learning curve and the data points that work for you.
Considering there are small business CRMs available at every price point, there’s no reason to not utilize their benefits. Start trying a few out. You and your customers will both be happy you did.