Which CRM for small business?

[custardtart]

I'm growing the business to take on 6 new sales reps spread nationally (Australia) and working remotely.

I want to be able to track their opportunities and manage their activities as best I can as well as helping them be more efficient in managing their time.

So I've been looking to implement a CRM, preferably cloud based and have briefly looked at salesforce.

Does anyone have any recommendations/experiences for this?

Thanks
Matt

[Dick Dastardly]

I found salesforce to be way too complicated and OTT for what we needed. We also trialled ACT, Capsule and some others until we settled on Pipedrive. It's very simple to use, can track all emails against contacts, has a great iPhone app and is very customisable. I thoroughly recommend it, though I use it in a business with half the sales people as yours.

The thing with any CRM is its only as good as the data entered. If you don't have the type of salespeople who will log every meeting, email and call (do those actually exist?) then the reporting isn't going to give you the full picture of what they are up to all day.

[Frimley111R]

It's an interesting question, given we've just launched a cloud based open source customer, workflow and decision-making tool, we know this area well.

The best thing to do is to list out what you really want the system to do: because most clients do have specific workflows and tasks which are different to the norm. I'd suggest listing them in this kind of order: essential, desired and hopeful... And do you want it cloud-based because you just want to be able to access it remotely, OR because you also want to connect it to other apps / softwares?

Once you've answered these, then you can assess which systems can help you out best.

We created our product (FWIW) because most CRM systems don't actually solve problems or really shape themselves around businesses that well without either:
a) Substantial additional cost (i.e. Salesforce seems cheap, but is a 'golden shackles' and if you want to do things like Marketing Automation then it starts getting eye-watering very quickly)
b) Substantial involvement from consultants (which again you will need to get a large chequebook out)

So, we created something that is more like blu-tack, stitching your favoured (or recommended) systems together rather than trying to do everything in one box.

However if you just want traditional sales path CRM then there are plenty out there, including some mentioned. Just be prepared to be underwhelmed!

[andy-xr]

We used to use WebCRM.com which was OK, but the mobile app was flaky and there was some stuff in there just not relevent to us. moved to pipedrive and it's very simple to set up and get going on, you can start/track deals with just a name and contact, add products and create a decent pipeline / forecast within about 5 minutes.

Takes imports really well from stuff you might already have, fairly standard stuff. It comes into it's own on mobile though the web interface is good on it's own

Salesforce is too bulky and intrusive when you want to get your deals down and add followers to them

[surveyor]

Have a look at podio....

[KarlS]

Another shout for Pipedrive here. I was specifically looking for something which worked well in an office using iMacs, and this is perfect for my business (I assume it works exactly the same on pc's). It's very intuitive and easy to use, and tactile! For example I love the way you can attach files by just dragging them from the desktop and on the deals screen it's a simple drag and drop to move Customers along as they move through the process. Each deal has it's own Pipedrive email address so that you can just cc and it appears in the notes section of the deal, which worked better than other CRM's we trailed.

It's also relatively cheap for a small office.

We tried Capsule before this which was okay, but not as good IMO.

[bga]

We use Base and I'm pretty happy with it. We tried Zoho & although the functionality was ok the user interface was rubbish. Base made it easy to update & we are all using it much more effectively because its easy to use.