Starting from just a small team of hands-on staff, we’re now at a point where phone calls and emails from our clients demand our constant attention.
This attentiveness is necessary to keep pace with the ever-evolving demands of client communication. The introvert in me tends to shy away from this communication and stay focused on the tech and coding side, but as we are a business, time must be spent on the business side of things. Things like planning and sales forecasting. Things that are uncharted territory. Even intimidating. But my perseverance through it comes inspired by the fact that our clients love what we do. And part of that love is because many of our clients previously struggled to find a company that does what we do in the way we do it.
Mission was to search for some potential clients and projects. I have gone back to my whiteboard (Sketch app) a few times to draw the map of our conversions. We just launched a new website with some conversion optimizations and simplifications made in our information architecture. We normally test our new websites by flowing some additional traffic to the site with various marketing and SEM pushes like Social Media and Paid Ads: it helps us to get an immediate response from new visitors and learn quickly from their first impressions. It was time to execute our SEM plan for this stage and watch the visitors’ response!
After getting the website, the landing pages, and all the media outlets ready, it was time to run the ads, and still here I am; picking which CRM to go. This was not the last-minute homework since I enjoy testing apps and I have become really good at it. But there were so many CRM tools with many interesting features each that I felt like being in a toy shop, amazed by all the cool toys. Needless to mention that each comes with a nice price tag and I only could pick one or two at most. After almost two weeks of research and broader testing, I have narrowed down 6* modern CRMs and I am down to maybe one or two from all to give our company what we need.
*Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, ProsperWorks, Contactually, Insightly, and Nimble.
If I narrow down my criteria of search, I was looking for a few specific features:
Most CRMs that were tested had all 5 above elements with their twists and various User Experiences and focuses. I put my research together to make a final decision and rank these against one another for our use.
Given that most of the CRMs have API interactivity embedded, using an external application on each of these CRMs is technically possible to make any interaction happen. The extent of this ranking goes as far as testing the difficulty of integrations to unlock each feature. That is based on our interest in using CRM for our web company requirements, preferences, and resources. We have also left many other CRMs out of the scope here in this review, and I’m sure they require attention when it comes to finding the fittest solution in other scenarios.
After ranking my preferences through test drives, google search, watching videos, and all the figuring out – I’m still having a hard time picking one. At this point, I’m certain one CRM might not be able to get everything perfect, but each of these apps perhaps perfects one or more areas they are made for.
User Experience is actually really important to me. Makes me use the app rather than having a rough time dealing with it. That’s why I really loved Contactually at first sight; they really take this idea to next level with the Contacts Gamification. I have to admit, with using some of the right tools, Marketing becomes way more fun than just cold call sale pitches. The whole idea behind Contactually makes sense to find, capture, nurture, and develop leads in programs.
Nimble has been awesome in centralizing and importing my contacts so quickly. The sales pipelines and deals are nifty and easily navigated. Their recent feature for email tracking takes Nimble to the next tier for me and makes me think they haven’t stopped perfecting this young and fast-growing app.
ProsperWorks was so wonderful to try; felt at home as soon as I landed in the Material Design Google-like dashboards and quickly found my way around. There has been so much thinking I believe in the design of this app and its integrity. ProsperWorks literally lives inside your Gmail and tracks every email interaction.
I’m starting to have a love and hate relationship with Zoho. They have covered so much ground in their products and so many good utilities within their various apps. The CRM itself is really practical in many ways and customizable. Sales IQ takes the whole Zoho CRM to another level. Yet, some stuff are hidden behind doors and takes a while to get around, I just wished these all came under one roof with a single price tag.
During the next test, I couldn’t hide my excitement to want to work with Contactually. It made a really good impression with its quick uptake time and by solving many immediate problems through a simple to understand and usable application. There are missing features for us such as Visitor interactions tracking, Live Chat, and WebForms. I had to go back quickly to the whiteboard, and group my workflow criteria into some priorities here:
Looking at the basics, I compared this flow with the apps and checked which satisfied the most practicality for our use case.
Contactually had my first choice of interest, but it does not cover much of the tracking work. Looking back, almost none of the above CRMs were strong in tracking the conversions but allowed APIs and integration to other 3rd party apps. Zoho CRM made it slightly simpler and much stronger with the addition of Sales IQ app integration. On the other hand, tracking information from email communication was available in most apps.
Aside from tracking — it may have been too much to ask — I found all other tools capable of Collecting, Segmenting, Engaging, and Nurturing fairly well. Contactually has amazing interesting twists in getting the job done. Nimble is compact and offers a lot. ProsperWorks works elegantly in no time. Pipedrive is simple but well equipped with amazing features.
What’s your choice? Leave a comment and tell us why you like your choices of CRMs.