There are hundreds of CRMs on the market, most of which advertise themselves as the perfect fit for your needs, no matter how specific. But we all know that’s not true – if you’re in fintech, you’ll need a specific set of features. Similarly, your priorities will look different when looking at CRMs for recruitment.
(And that’s without going into the specifics of your team’s existing workflows.)
Luckily, our team at Findymail has worked with them all. We know what’s hiding beneath the polished exteriors. So in this guide, we’ll show you the best CRMs depending on your specific use case.
Why Your CRM Matters
Before we dive into the individual CRMs, let’s go over a couple of things they all have in common: their goals and importance.
First, CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management software. It’s a type of specialized tooling that’s built to help companies manage their clientele, keep customers happy and stay competitive by leveraging data and personalization.
And since customers are the lifeblood of a company, eventually every business will need a CRM if they want to thrive and succeed. The numbers back up this sentiment: 91% of businesses use a CRM, with 45% saying it helped them increase their revenue.
With a CRM, you can monitor and track interactions with prospects and existing customers, so you streamline your marketing and sales efforts. You’ll get unparalleled insight into your customers’ and leads’ behavior so you can adapt to serve (and upsell) them even better.
As a manager or a senior stakeholder, the reporting will show you everything you need to know about the efficiency of your sales processes at a glance. Forecasts are never 100% accurate, but a CRM will help you get to 99%.
The Benefits of Implementing a CRM System
1. The Right CRM Tool Deepens Your Knowledge of Customers
One major challenge all businesses face when developing long-term relationships with customers is gathering data and building a holistic view.
A CRM solves this issue by giving you a centralized location to store all your contact data, regardless of the source. Then, you and your team can see details on each customer, including the following:
- Full name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Job title
- Company name
- Social media
- Birthday/age
- Technology used in their company
- Latest news about their company
And more! With all this data easily accessible, it’s much easier to create targeted campaigns that deeply connect with prospects. On the managerial side, the data shows you how to adapt your sales plans to maximize revenue.
Beyond that, a CRM also lets you track all the interactions you have with the customer including emails sent and opened, orders, support tickets, contracts, meetings and other relevant activities. This opens up the possibility for automation; why have your salespeople manually send follow-up emails when they could be closing?
2. Improved Customer Segmentation
66% of customers expect personalized communication, so segmentation is vital. A CRM will simplify separating and grouping your contacts into target groups so you can tailor your strategies, messaging and sales pitches.
CRM segmentation also helps you determine which prospects aren’t as qualified as others, saving you effort and money. Additionally, your CRM can be set up to monitor customer lifetime value and map it to specific segments and campaigns.
3. Improved Customer Retention
It’s no secret – it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. In fact, it’s up to seven times cheaper.
While a CRM can indeed help bring in new clients and nurture leads, the right tool also helps retain the customers you already have. CRMs can take routine tasks like scheduling appointments and sending follow-up emails off your team’s plates.
For example, if your team hasn’t reached out to a customer in a while, they can set up a workflow where the CRM will let you know when the time is right. When you add data enrichment to the formula, the CRM can also track sales signals like increased hiring and funding rounds to time the message perfectly.
The CRM should also help you automate customer retention strategies like sending out surveys after purchases, asking for referrals, thank you emails, promotions and more.
4. Increased Productivity and Efficiency
Automation is another huge benefit of CRMs. For example, you can automate your drip campaigns so your teams can focus on high-value tasks like writing sales copy or lead qualification.
But CRMs also give you a centralized dashboard so you can see how well your sales processes are doing and the areas where you can improve the workflows. Depending on your chosen CRM sales pipeline, you can use it to get a bird’s eye view of your sales efficiency and go as granular as understanding how every team member’s activities contribute to their quotas.
Ultimately, all of these benefits work together to help boost productivity, drive sales and increase revenue.
The Best CRM Tools and Their Use Cases
1. Salesforce for Enterprises & Analytics
If you’re in sales, you’ve heard of Salesforce. While it is the go-to CRM for mid-market companies and enterprises, it has specialized offerings for industries such as fintech (and financial services) and healthcare.
Salesforce also offers a suite of other enterprise tools that help companies manage their customer relationships and use the data to derive invaluable insights. For example, Salesforce Maps will help with field and outside sales.
Salesforce can help you streamline workflows, increase productivity, automate marketing, forecast sales, manage customer care and more. It’s almost infinitely customizable.
However, scaling with Salesforce means increased costs. User adoption (when adding additional functionality) can be challenging, but the insights are unparalleled; Salesforce integrates with all the services you use, including Findymail for verified email contact information.
2. BIGContacts for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business, you’ll want something more manageable compared to the behemoth that’s Salesforce. BIGContacts puts a huge focus on simplicity with out-of-the-box features like task automation and reminders.
You can also track and manage your sales funnel, commissions and upcoming appointments.
Ultimately, BIGContacts is a CRM you will feel comfortable in, but scaling is another story.
Reporting isn’t as refined as it is in more enterprise-oriented CRMs. It’s best suited for actionable sales manager reporting, but if you are hoping to see breakdowns by region, you’ll need a separate analytics tool.
On the plus side, BIGContacts is incredibly simple to set up and use. If your team mainly uses email to contact leads and prospects, you’ll enjoy features such as automated emails. But coming from a scale-up perspective, you’ll need to integrate other emailing tools in the future.
3. Recruit CRM for Recruiting
In the current recruitment era, candidate experience is paramount. In addition to Applicant Tracking Software (ATS), you need a CRM to stay in touch with (potential) hires.
Why not choose a CRM that does both?
Recruit CRM offers specialized software that streamlines your hiring process with ATS features, automates recruitment tasks and helps you manage candidates. It has a user-friendly interface, robust reporting tools, AI-powered resume parsing and comprehensive candidate profiles.
You can also automate workflows to get time back and dive deeper into patterns your best hires have in common.
Recruit CRM has helped companies like Placesetters cut their time to hire by 22%. They also worked with Cura to boost their growth by an incredible 451% in a single year.
4. Salesforce Health Cloud CRM for Healthcare
Personalize patient communication and relationship management without sacrificing compliance. That’s what Salesforce Health Cloud stands for and all the features in this healthcare-focused CRM tool support the mission.
Health Cloud’s core strength is consolidating patient data from various sources, so your team gets a unified view. For example, you can track and manage patient demographics, medical conditions, treatment plans, medications and care team interactions all within the platform.
In cases of chronic or complex care conditions, Health Cloud offers tools to manage patient care, as well. All stakeholders, including physicians, nurses and administrative staff, have the information they need to improve the patient’s condition.
Finally, as the CRM that it is, Salesforce Health Cloud allows you to use automation and communication tools to reach out to patients for appointment reminders, follow-up care instructions or educational resources.
As with the standard Salesforce, Health Cloud is the best choice for a scalable or enterprise healthcare CRM. However, user adoption can become challenging if you add too much additional functionality. Training is key.
5. Pipedrive for B2B SaaS
B2B SaaS companies face unique challenges, including managing a recurring billing model, lowering customer churn rates and managing multiple sales pipelines. Unless the CRM is set up to support your workflows, customization will become a challenge.
Pipedrive, as you might expect, emphasizes driving sales and closing deals. It’s a cloud-based platform that lets you track where customers are in the sales pipeline and uses AI to help you find opportunities to turn prospects into customers.
In our experience, it works best for mid-sized B2B SaaS businesses that are highly oriented on revenue-driving activity (as opposed to monitoring sales performance by region or other higher-level metrics).
However, you can seamlessly switch from pipeline monitoring to activity tracking, so you understand exactly what is driving most of your revenue.
For example, SoMe Connect was able to boost revenue by 113%. Document360 sales team increased the amount of leads tenfold. Pipedrive may not have all the Salesforce bells and whistles, but it works – and your team understands how to use it, too.
In terms of scaling, Pipedrive has integrations with over 400 tools, including Findymail for high-quality contact information.
6. Hubspot Is the Best CRM for Marketing and Sales Collaboration
Hubspot can be used in a variety of cases (including full integration with service and customer success functions), but we want to highlight the sales and marketing collaboration.
Firstly, Hubspot’s approach to marketing is unparalleled. HubSpot's CRM allows for detailed lead tracking and segmentation. Marketing can create targeted campaigns based on lead behavior and demographics, while sales can use this information to prioritize leads and tailor their approach.
Moving forward, the closed-loop reporting allows both marketing and sales teams to track the entire customer journey from the initial touchpoint to closed deals. Understanding which channels drive and close the most profitable customers means increased ROI as you watch your customer acquisition costs rapidly decline.
Finally, Hubspot offers workflow automation, as well as plenty of integrations with data enrichment tools such as Findymail. This means you won’t have to struggle to integrate additional functionality as you scale.
7. Zoho CRM for eCommerce
If you manage the sales of an eCommerce business, Zoho CRM offers an AI-enabled solution. Additionally, it has a gamification system that breeds healthy competition amongst your sales team and keeps them focused on revenue-driving activities.
The particular areas where Zoho CRM shines for eCommerce include multichannel customer experiences, tracking purchasing histories and personalizing communications accordingly.
The automation simplifies day-to-day sales tasks like sending reminder emails. And with the AI we mentioned, everything can be set up through chat, making Zoho CRM incredibly easy to use.
Finally, you can easily scale your customer relationship management since Zoho CRM features integrations with tools like Stripe, FedEx and Findymail.
8. Copper CRM for Google-First Companies
If your team relies on Gmail to close deals, Copper CRM supports you with an extremely functional CRM. After all, issues will arise unless the CRM adapts to your teams’ workflows.
But with Copper, your team remains in the Google ecosystem they know (and love).
And with integrations that support QuickBooks, DocuSign, Findymail and others, your data will stay fresh.
However, this won’t be a feature trade-off. As a manager, you still get powerful reporting and forecasting. From the micro level, where you understand how deals get stuck, to the high-level overview, Copper CRM provides the data.
Its key caveat is the inability to scale through channels other than email outreach. That’s why we recommend it in specific cases where your team has found a winning formula – and it’s email.
9. Close CRM for Startups
When you’re a startup, every call and email matter. The problem is, the startup environment is often too fast-paced to spend months training your team on using complex, enterprise-grade systems.
That’s when you need a tool like Close CRM. This CRM provides everything you need to keep your team sharp, including email automation, lead scoring and sales pipeline management with additional support for channels such as SMS and calls.
With Close CRM, the company Cloosiv went from 20 customers to 300 in just a few months.
While Close offers integrations with your existing tech stack (including Findymail), you might encounter issues as you scale. It wasn’t built to be an enterprise CRM.
However, if you need a CRM that streamlines information updates so your reps can focus on deals, Close works like a charm.
Which CRM Is Best for Your Company?
Our guide has given you plenty of options, but to choose the best CRM for your team, consider the following:
Your Size and Customization Affect Your Decision
Some CRMs are built to be a one-size-fits-all, but as you scale, the universal size will no longer fit you.
Consider how your chosen CRM will (not) support you through your growth trajectory.
For example, if you’re an early-stage startup, choosing Close or Copper is perfectly fine. But if you’re forecasting becoming an enterprise within the next two years, your team will need additional functionality that adapts to their workflow. It’d be simpler to use Salesforce right away.
Does Your CRM Support Your Team’s Workflow?
The best CRMs feel like a natural extension of your team. They seem to know exactly how sales happen and which actions drive deals. The issue is that you can’t start with a CRM that’s two sizes too complex, either. Instead, find a CRM that accommodates your existing sales process right away.
Start by mapping out your sales process. Identify any pain points and areas of increased manual workload that could (and should) be automated. Then, identify the tool with supporting features.
Keep the data-entry burden in mind, as well. It’s notoriously hard to get salespeople to update CRMs for good reason. If they have to switch tabs to enter information, that is a barrier. Try to find a CRM that works as a browser extension or integrates with your team’s main workspace (Google Workspace, Slack).
What’s the Most Important CRM View for Your Team?
Depending on the size of your sales team, the CRM views will play a crucial rule.
For example, Pipedrive is more geared towards pipeline management, which means that’s its primary view.
On the other hand, if you want multiple view layers in one CRM (company, lead, deal and multiple deals for the same company), you need a CRM like Hubspot that’s equally developed on all view fronts.
Cost-Effectiveness
You’re aware of the per-user costs. However, consider the implementation costs, as well. When implementing a more complex solution like Salesforce, you will need a partner to design the CRM architecture.
When weighing the benefits and the costs, identify your must-haves: what are the features that your team absolutely needs to close more deals and what are simply nice-to-haves you could do without?
Don’t Devalue Time When Choosing Your CRM Tool
Selecting a customer relationship management tool is a debate about time well spent.
The ideal solution should do the heavy lifting for your salespeople, so they have the information they need at hand when navigating the sales journey. It should keep your data clean, enriched with fresh information and seamlessly exchanged with the rest of your tool stack.
After all, why make your salespeople struggle with menial tasks when they could be doing what they do best – closing deals?
