What makes a great CRM?
What makes a great client relationship management system (CRM)?
Here are some highlights of what makes one great and you can determine what would be the best one for you!
As with most business tools, one size does not fit all. As I go through this list, you can get a feel for what you might need or some things you're lacking with your existing CRM. If you don't have one, this is a great place to start since there are literally hundreds of CRMs.
There are CRMs that are industry specific or business specific, like for florists, landscape artists, photographers, or graphic designers and everything in between. But there are others that are good for an array of businesses big and small.
What’s going to be really important when choosing a CRM is that client experience. When researching, ask yourself: Is the CRM versatile? Is it going to be an extra thing that your clients or customers have to deal with or is it seamless?
Most people don't want to log into something else. Ideally, it's working with your existing systems, like your marketing emails.
For example: When you send a specific email, your clients get tagged in a certain way. From there, you can see if they've opened an email, if they reply to an email, and you can start some automations.
How to Choose a CRM
One question to ask when researching the best CRMs: What automations are available, so that you don’t have to send the next step or put in that reminder?
There are really two main areas that CRMs cover — demographic data (such as name, email, phone number, location), specific info for your business and communication (how you communicate with leads, clients, and other contacts). Both are going to be so important to maintain and grow your business.
So, what kinds of tools can be integrated in a great CRM? Things like texting capability, chat bots, email, phone calls, what are those things that certain CRMs will have automatically integrated with other software that you can add as a secondary piece.
Next, I want to talk about mobility. We're all working on the run from various places - now more than ever. I’m always excited to be able to work outside or from a different location. I'm the carpool queen, so for me, it's a lot about what I can do from my phone.
Is your CRM connected to social media? Is it connected to your direct messages or connected to your inbox for Facebook or Instagram?
Is it user friendly? That's the number one thing that all of our clients ask because not only do they not want to have to learn something completely new, but also they're growing a team. Whether it's us supporting them, or they're growing their own internal team, they want to make sure that they have a way to transfer that knowledge.
A big piece of communication is not only to be integrated with communication with your clients or how they want to be communicated to them, but also streamlining those channels. I don't know about you, but I constantly have a multitude of tabs open. I'm switching back and forth between emailing, instant messaging, texting, and all of these forms of communication, but a great CRM, can streamline those channels in one interface or dashboard view.
Some of your clients are going to want to hang out in your DMs, some want to be texted, some want to be emailed. So, how do you streamline that?
One way is to focus all your energy into making sure people know what your preferences are. But another way, which might open the door to more possibilities, is having a CRM system that connects all of those pieces.
There's actually eight CRMs that we recommend for different types of businesses. That's not really narrowing it down for some of you, but it's a great starting list because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of CRMs.
The Best CRMs for Businesses
The customer relationship management software I recommend the most for small businesses is HubSpot. It packs in a lot for the free version, which means that it can cover so many different industries and businesses. It's fairly easy to use.
You can add on certain features but for what I've described above, it has everything except the ability to streamline the channels. It uses email as the base form of communication (which most of the CRMs do). But it's, again, easy to set up and the robust base version is free.
Once you have all your data in one place, it's easy to transfer it somewhere else, so you can check it out and see what you think. If you are growing and need something bigger or more specific, you can easily move to a new platform.
The next two are highly recommended from a lot of small businesses from a service business standpoint, and they are Dubsado and HoneyBook.
I know a lot of these CRMS have funny names, but Dubsado has a lot of automation capability! You can set up certain workflows, the If-Then-Then sequence. There are client portals, you can send contracts and invoices, collect data, and so much more.
The next one is what we personally use. HoneyBook was designed for the wedding industry, but it's got so many amazing features, and it's an all-in-one package that I just really love. The best feature is that I get a pipeline view. It easily lets me know who to follow up with, to send an invoice or a brochure, and sets reminders so no one gets lost in the cracks.
If you're interested in trying HoneyBook, let me know and I can send you a coupon code!
Pipedrive is another great one, very robust, very similar to the big, bad Salesforce - which is another great CRM but not necessarily for small businesses. If Salesforce has everything that you want, Pipedrive is like the little sister — it's got most of what you need.
It's a little pricier than the ones I've mentioned in this in this list already, but it is amazing and very user friendly.
The next one is Zoho. It's super user friendly, very low price, and even has a free version if you only have one user! Zoho is really customizable. You can add a whole bunch of templates, like for emails that you normally send.
The last one that I'm going to mention is probably the one that I would recommend the most: High Level CRM. The downside? It is a little bit more expensive than the others because it has a ton of capabilities the others don’t. There's not a ton of information about it online because it's a white label service.
If you access High Level with all the bells and whistles, you can text, call, email, all within the dashboard view. You can set up campaigns for marketing, you can set up web pages and you can collect payments, all in one!
I have a couple of clients that are using it, and they really, really like it. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but it's one of those apps where once you see it, you will want it: highly customizable. However, when you look at the things you're paying for: a social media scheduler, email marketing, a different CRM, a payment processor, website — you can do it all for one price, so that's the trade off.
As with any software, you have to test drive it. Everything has a free version or at least a free trial. Still not sure which CRM is right for your online business? Let’s chat!