Finding the best CRM software to fit your business’s needs is essential to entrepreneurial success.
Once you commit to a CRM software, you should be all in — changing to another platform is complicated and often takes a lot of time.
To help you avoid landing in that situation, I’ve used my background in corporate America and CRM expertise to research, review, and rank my top choices.
Welcome to your comprehensive guide to the best CRM software to bring into the new year, based on their costs, usability, pros & cons, and most importantly, how they can contribute to your business’s success.
All of the customer relationship management software on this list has been tested by our team of experts, using methods like:
- Independent experience with each CRM
- Lab testing
- Comparisons
- Review research
What is a CRM?
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is an invaluable business tool that simplifies the process of managing relationships.
With a CRM, you can store data and history for all kinds of customer-business relationships, including current customers, prospective buyers and leads.
All customer data can be stored in one centralized platform, allowing sales teams to track conversations, interactions and activities quickly and easily.
Moreover, processes can be automated from a central dashboard, such as follow-ups or sales notifications.
Some other essential CRM features include lead management, project management solutions, workflow automation, and sales pipeline tracking.
In essence, a CRM tool provides organizations with an effective means of streamlining their customer service operations from start to finish.
CRMs have completely revolutionized the way companies interact with their customers, by serving as a storage device containing data regarding both successful and missed connections.
We strive to stay ahead of the curve in terms of CRM software advancements.
Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for future updates in CRM technology, including innovative trends like artificial intelligence, marketing automation, and social media integrations.
How to Choose a CRM
1. Set a Budget
While the cliché that businesses need to spend money to make money is often true, you don’t want to break the bank on a CRM software.
Luckily, all of the CRM platforms on this list offer multiple price plans to accommodate different sized budgets.
The most basic plan on this list will offer impressive features that can help your business run more efficiently.
Don’t be afraid to start small and scale up.
2. Make a List of Features
Before you choose a CRM system, ask yourself what the most important features would be to help you achieve your business goals.
Are you struggling to keep track of customer data and analyze reports? Consider a CRM known for its data visualization, storage, and reporting.
Experiencing burnout trying to contact all of your clients? Look for a CRM package that allows you to reach out to all of your clients at once, even over multiple channels.
If you have a set of features in mind, it’ll make the narrowing-down process much easier.
3. Assess the Market
You’re ahead of the game, because this blog is an excellent example of how you can assess the market.
Familiarize yourself with the top-ranking CRMs currently available.
Read comparisons and overviews before you get your mind fixed on just one.
Make sure you have a comprehensive idea of all that’s being offered in the CRM sphere before you’re ready to decide which one is right for you.
Visit the sites and review the offerings of each CRM company, too.
4. Read Reviews
While it’s important to pay attention to how CRM platforms advertise themselves, it is recommended for businesses to pay attention to third-party reviews.
These reviews are by people who’ve been in your position, so they could offer some valuable advice and save you time.
5. Test With Your Team
Ensuring total satisfaction from your team is the key to finding a CRM that works best for your business.
Consider giving each employee an opportunity to test out various software to identify which one will meet all of your needs.
This shouldn’t be a difficult task, since more of the CRM solutions on this list offer free trials.
Then, your team can provide any useful feedback or insights about functions or features they’d like included.
This way you can be confident that you’ve made the right choice.
What are the Benefits of a CRM System?
Build Customer Relationships
With a comprehensive understanding of your customer’s needs, you are in the perfect position to provide them with tailored service and support.
As such, it’ll be easier for your sales reps and sales team to give your customers what they want and make them happier.
App notifications instantly alert you when customers reach out through social media, web forms, email, etc.
Furthermore, automation tools rapidly transfer inquiries to agents while collaborative resources connect multiple team members for smarter problem-solving capabilities.
These features ensure speedy response times and efficient issue resolution without compromising quality.
Utilizing a CRM system can drastically enhance customer satisfaction, enabling you to keep your current customers and transform potential leads into new business.
Marketing Automation
Automated marketing tools have the capacity to skyrocket your business’s strategy and get you closer to success.
Automation grants a plethora of opportunities, including segmenting leads, creating prospects, fostering relationships with existing clients- not to mention customer retention and account-based marketing techniques as well.
Automate Workflow
Workflow automation can make tedious and manual tasks a breeze.
This is a huge advantage if you need extra time for the more creative components of your business-like brand building and campaign design.
With CRM automation, you gain back precious hours so that developing your business is no longer weighed down by menial labor.
Sales Forecasting
With sales CRM solutions, it’s easy to plan sales goals and allocate resources accordingly.
Automated forecasting tools are designed with metrics on deal value and the likelihood of close deals in mind, so you can always rest assured that your estimates will be accurate.
Insights and Reporting
By collecting customer data, businesses can gain insight into their customers’ behaviors and habits.
CRM software often allows companies to unite cross-channel activity of users – from geographical location to brand affinities, interests, and purchasing behavior – providing a comprehensive view on each individual consumer.
Furthermore, if you run business processes through your CRM, you’ll be able to eventually generate data regarding which aspects of your sales process are successful and which need adjusting.
Data Dashboards
If you’re a visual learner, there are many CRM solutions that will fit nicely with this style.
Data dashboards centralize all of your sales and customers for your entire sales team.
This will make it easier to understand your company’s metrics and plan out future customer interactions and marketing strategies.
Customer Data
Unlock the power of CRM analytics to gain a better understanding of your customers and make informed decisions.
With data reporting tools at hand, you can prioritize lucrative deals for top-tier clients, manage leads more efficiently for an optimal customer experience, as well as view key metrics in one place.
From there, contact management and outreach strategies should be a breeze.
What are the Different Types of CRM?
Strategic CRM
Strategic CRM software is designed to take a more traditional approach to relationship management.
It seeks out long-term customer relationships and recognizes that customers are more likely to remain loyal when they have had positive interactions with businesses over time.
This strategy relies upon the notion that excellent experiences will breed devotedness, leading consumers back for more in the future.
Operational CRM
Operational CRM is a powerful tool that helps businesses focus on efficiently streamlining their processes and operations.
Operational CRM software enables businesses to store, track and, analyze customer data to deliver tailored messages.
They also offer businesses the ability to optimize services for customers while gaining valuable insights into their behavior.
Operational CRMs give companies an edge over rivals who don’t use this technology.
Analytical CRM
Analytical CRM software is, as you might have guessed, analytics focused.
These types of CRMs revolutionize customer relationship management by leveraging data and analytics to gain insights into customers.
This approach analyzes, evaluates, and refines interactions between businesses and their patrons with information from reliable sources such as sales histories and client service logs.
By utilizing this type of CRM, organizations can guarantee they are delivering an outstanding experience, upholding valuable relationships with clients, and maintaining valuable data for future projects and leads.
Collaborative CRM
Collaborative CRMs are especially useful for businesses that frequently collaborate with customers, suppliers, and other sorts of entities that their business relies upon.
This software is meant to optimize customer service, vendor management, advertising strategies, and revenue development, while making operations more efficient than ever before.
It also enables external stakeholders access to crucial resources and information needed for successful collaboration.
What are the Best CRMs This Year?
CRM technology is constantly changing.
We’re always on the lookout for the latest and greatest software developments, so that we can provide you with our top choices of 2023.
Check out what we’ve gathered thus far to ensure you stay at the cutting edge!