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Looking for a CRM to develop your startup? Here is everything you’ll need to make the right decision!

Looking for a CRM to develop your startup? Here is everything you’ll need to make the right decision!

By Anna Benzaquen

Published: October 12, 2022

Sometimes running a startup can seem like a circus. Management can take time away from selling and/or furthering your business goals.

We'll highlight the best CRM for startups and small enterprises in this article.

Increased revenue is the result of features like lead management and sales pipeline management. Time is saved and tedious processes are eliminated with workflow automation, two-way syncing with other apps, and automatic data entry.

What is CRM software?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A CRM helps a startup deepen its relationships with customers, partners, and suppliers. Having the right CRM software can help your team dodge miscommunication issues between your sales and marketing teams. Using a CRM system can increase a business's cross-selling and up-selling revenue by 39%.

All of your company's relationships and interactions with customers may be managed using customer relationship management technology. CRM systems assist businesses in:

  • Maintaining contact with clients,
  • streamlining procedures,
  • boosting profitability.

Today, customer relationships may be managed across marketing, sales, digital commerce, and customer support engagements using CRM solutions.

Everyone in a firm can manage the external connections and relationships that are essential to success. A CRM platform enables you to manage marketing campaigns, track service issues, track sales opportunities, and store customer and prospect contact information.

💡 Small businesses, where teams frequently need to find methods to do more with less, might benefit particularly from it.

Why is it important for your business to have a CRM?

Worldwide spending on CRM software is expected to reach USD $114.4 billion by 2027. A CRM platform lets you manage the inquiry across channels without losing track. It gives sales, customer service, and marketing a single view of the customer. Customer service and support is a rising segment of CRM.

Without a standardized platform for consumer interactions, communications may be overlooked or buried in a deluge of data. The inability of managers to provide the proper support at the appropriate time results from their tendency to lose track of what their teams are doing. Lack of supervision may also cause the team to be less accountable.

CRM compiles customer and prospect data into people and businesses. CRM systems start by gathering information from a customer's website, email, phone number, and social media accounts. Additionally, a CRM platform can be linked to other enterprise applications that support the growth of client relationships.

  • On one hand, client service representatives can swiftly respond to customer needs on any channel – from home, in the field, or in the office.
  • On the other hand,commerce teams can quickly establish and grow ecommerce from online orders to curbside pickup for their consumer shoppers and business buyers (B2C commerce).

To free up time for more worthwhile pursuits, built-in intelligence and AI automate administrative duties like data input and lead or service case routing.

This entails engaging your prospects with the appropriate message at the appropriate time through targeted digital marketing campaigns and journeys, from a marketing standpoint.

Key benefits and features of using CRM for startups

Helps in organization

CRM software automates corporate processes by bringing together customer contacts, sales and marketing activities, and service and support initiatives in one location. Teams can be set up and responsibilities can be assigned to improve visibility and organizational transparency.

Data can enter the central platform through integrations with social media, email programs like Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, and other digital technologies. Everything becomes more ordered when it is processed internally and flows into a single source.

Improved communication and transparency

Working together becomes simple no matter how far apart you are thanks to collaborative CRM capabilities. They make it easier for everyone on your team to access real-time information about clients, deals, tasks, and projects, allowing workloads to be divided more effectively (and fairly). You can provide client interactions that go beyond the scope of any one department or team function by centralizing customer data from all of your communication channels.

Boost effectiveness and output

By reminding you when to send a follow-up email, providing thorough client purchase histories, and enabling you to monitor deals through the sales pipeline, CRM productivity tools make it simple to stay on task. Additionally, they can locate a fresh sales opportunity and monitor current ones by stage, month, value, and likelihood of success.

Service expenses will decrease when face-to-face meetings become less necessary and errors and duplication are eliminated.

Connect your Firm Storage facilities

56 percent of corporate executives acknowledge that organizational silos have a detrimental effect on the satisfaction of their clients and potential clients. A unified platform and process for managing client connections across functions can significantly help. Information silos are a huge concern.

Determine and classify leads

You may easily and rapidly find new leads, add them, and precisely categorize them with the aid of a CRM system. Sales may prioritize possibilities that will close deals by concentrating on the proper leads, while marketing can identify leads that require additional nurturing and position them to become quality leads.

Sales and marketing can concentrate their efforts on the correct customers if they have access to complete, accurate, centrally maintained information about their clients and prospects.

Boost sales and profitability

CRM tools free you up to concentrate on fostering relationships by streamlining corporate operations and automating job management.

Better relationships can raise your sales conversion rate, boosting the profitability of your company. While using analytical tools, you may improve every stage of the sales cycle and adjust your plan in light of discernible trends.

Fewer reliances

Team members will be able to work more independently if they have access to an all-in-one platform that offers quick access to information and complete visibility over projects and tasks. Less switching between apps and waiting for responses to messages from other team members. Everyone is given the freedom to produce better work as the red tape is reduced.

Top 8 best CRMs for startups 2022

Zoho CRM

Agile CRM

Close CRM

Insightly

Keap

Streak CRM

For all companiesFor all companiesFor companies with more than 250 employeesFor all companiesFor companies with more than 250 employeesFor all companies
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Paid version from €14.00 /month

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Paid version from $29.00 /month

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Paid version from $12.00 /month

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Learn more about Zoho CRM Learn more about Agile CRM Learn more about Close CRM Learn more about Insightly Learn more about Keap Learn more about Streak CRM

1. Agile CRM

    Agile CRM is gaining popularity in the CRM sector. Gamification, a relatively recent trend in workflow management, is a feature of the software. In order to reward, inspire, and increase staff productivity, it imitates the addictive features of gaming.

    We prefer Agile's methodology since it generally results in greater labor output, which leads to better business. Agile is a platform for customer relationship management that focuses on tracking, marketing, sales, and service with all-in-one automation.

    On a user-friendly software platform, it provides telephony, online analytics, helpdesk, two-way emails, gamification, and many other features. Agile lacks several essential elements for large businesses, yet it functions admirably for many on a smaller scale.

    💪 Finding a date for appointments and meetings is simple with the help of the online scheduling feature. You may forecast future sales, set up milestones, or automate follow-ups using the deals tool. Every call you place and receive through telephony is intended to be beneficial to your company.

    2. Close CRM

    Close CRM is a fantastic CRM application for managing interactions with leads and customers. With a secure place to keep your data, it can reduce costs for your business and enhance remote collaboration. Free versions of office suites allow you 5GB of storage per user that may be shared among your team; premium subscriptions come with additional email storage and cloud storage restrictions.

    You can use the power dialer to find a prospect automatically after importing a list of leads. As a result, you may concentrate on growing your customer base rather than making every effort to connect with a caller.

    💪 It's simple to view and comprehend all of your client and lead data. Without switching back and forth between your conventional CRM and email autoresponder tool, you can quickly automate email marketing campaigns. Close makes it simple to monitor your key performance indicators so you can figure out what works and put your attention there.

    3. Hubspot CRM

    With Hubspot CRM, 1,000,000 contacts may be managed without spending a dime on any one plan. Operations, content, customer support, sales, and marketing are all covered by modular, scalable tools. Despite HubSpot's convoluted price structure and modularity, it is fairly simple to use. In addition to being simple for users to use every day, HubSpot is also tremendously simple to produce with. No matter if they use HubSpot as their CRM, everyone can access the free tools.

    💪 Any B2B or B2C company in a range of industries can use HubSpot CRM. Inbound and outbound marketing, sales automation, customer relationship management, email tracking, and other services are available. Other HubSpot solutions, such as the HubSpot Marketing Hub and the HubSpot Sales Hub, are integrated with the platform. All HubSpot contact management, sales, marketing, and customer care solutions are accessible for free to an infinite number of users.

    4. Insightly

    Insightly is great for Small- to medium-sized organizations since it provides all the standard CRM capabilities you would require, such as lead management and mass emailing, in one convenient location. It features an amazingly broad number of potential integrations and comes with some good project management capabilities. Additionally, Insightly provides an astonishing array of over 250 app and website connectors. Excellent project management tools are provided by Insightly.

    Although Insightly concentrates on the fundamentals of a CRM, it includes certain special features. You may immediately create a lead in the software using the Insightly mobile app. With the ability to record calls or route calls to representatives, Insightly Voice is a fantastic time saver.

    💪 Insightly Plus subscribers have access to 100,000 records and 10 GB of file storage. Up to 2,500 emails can be scheduled for leads and customers each day. You can route qualified leads to the appropriate salespeople by using the lead assignment and routing features of the Professional plan.

    5. Keap

      Customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing are two areas where Keap has long been a player. Through sophisticated marketing campaigns, lead scoring, and essential integrations, it is a simple-to-use, all-in-one solution that aids businesses in achieving and maintaining long-term success.

      The solutions from Infusionsoft are perfect for sales and marketing executives who want to increase the effectiveness and openness of their whole organization.

      💪 Services such as inventory management, processing payments at the checkout, and order fulfillment are provided. You may anticipate newfound efficiency for first-time users across all of your marketing initiatives. You can create a scalable and repeatable sales process with Infusionsoft. Both SMS text messages and email replies can be automated. Your email will be transmitted without domain spam and other measures thanks to built-in spam checking.

      6. Pipedrive 

      Pipedrive is a user-friendly CRM program that offers clever marketing capabilities to assist you in actively selling your goods and services. The platform's scalability makes it a fantastic option for organizations that expand quickly. Pipedrive is ideal for small teams or even solopreneurs that wish to organize leads, produce leads, or enhance their sales process because it is also relatively affordable.

      Additionally, Pipedrive keeps track of every step of the lead generating and follow-up processes, allowing you to optimize for efficiency.

      💪 Your lead creation and sales process are prioritized by pipeline management. It's absurdly simple to track your leads and email conversions with Pipedrive. You can grasp your priorities and target your marketing efforts like a laser beam thanks to the dashboard's excellent usability. You can keep incredibly organized with Pipedrive. Emails sent straight from Pipedrive will also be synchronized with your other email accounts.

      7. Streak

      Streak helps you organize all of your emails by seamlessly integrating with your Gmail account. The CRM creates a powerful CRM by combining pipelines, stages, columns, and boxes. Streak can be a little challenging to use at first, but if you get the hang of it, it's simple. After deciding on a pipeline to track, you must start adding various phases to your pipelines. The distinct processes or benchmarks in your workflow are referred to as stages.

      Streak maintains a single database called a "box" where all information on your leads, clients, or applicants is kept. Streak is a sleek, well-designed solution that combines the ease of Gmail with a powerful CRM. While a CRM's main function is to handle customer interactions, Streak goes a step further by letting you create routines for routine tasks.

      💪 The email tracking function in Gmail enables you to contact prospects at the appropriate moment. You can archive emails with Snooze so that you can later bring them back to the top of your inbox. Emails can also be scheduled to be sent at a particular time.

      8. Zoho CRM

      Zoho CRM has a wonderful selection of office products, is simple to set up, and functions flawlessly across all platforms. Zia is an AI-enabled tool that is your built-in assistant and is available in both free and subscription options. Email, instant chat, and video conferencing are all included in paid Zoho Workplace plans. The Zoho Office Suite is a fantastic substitute for Google or Microsoft software. Paid versions, however, are useful for bigger teams.

      💪 Grammar and spelling mistakes are highlighted by Zia, and Microsoft Excel is compatible with the spreadsheet program. To make designing charts simpler, it makes advantage of the AI tool Insights by Zia. Zoho offers over 100 fonts, 30 layouts, and 36 themes.

      Slideshows can be produced and presented on Apple or Android TVs. When it comes to customizing notes and collaborating in real-time, Zoho Notebook is comparable to Google Keep or Evernote.

          Conclusion

          When you have to handle a ton of responsibilities by yourself, it can be very difficult to maintain your startup. You may manage client interactions with simplicity and save time and other resources by using free CRM software for startups. Contact management, lead management, sales pipeline tracking, and marketing automation are among the features.