If you’re a small to medium-size
business owner, the term CRM, or customer relationship
management, may initially be a bit of a daunting or overwhelming concept.
CRM platforms can have a negative reputation, as many well-known tools can be
tough to implement and customize for your business’s needs, making them even
harder to use regularly and properly.
However, there’s no doubt that CRM
platforms can help your
business grow tremendously once you’ve found the perfect fit, and
fortunately many of the tools created recently were designed specifically for
SMBs. A good CRM platform for a SMB collects and organizes a TON of valuable
information about your customers, ranging from rich contact data, interactions
over email and social media,
sales tracking and much more. When used correctly, CRM software allows your
SMB’s team to work efficiently and productively while resonating more strongly
with your client base.
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Thinking of getting a Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) application? Below, I’ve described 11 terrible ones. Sure,
they are all popular, affordable and mature. In fact, my company (full
disclosure) sells and services five of them (Salesforce, GoldMine, Microsoft
MSFT
+0.65% Dynamics CRM, ZohoCRM
and Nimble). And given their features and functionality you’d think
they’d be great tools for so many small and medium sized companies. But
they’re not. They are all terrible.
Salesforce.com
is arguably the most well known of these applications. And deservedly so.
The company pretty much invented cloud-based CRM and remains committed to its
future. Like the products listed below, Salesforce.com
CRM
-0.12% offers sales,
marketing and service management capabilities to its small and (very) large
customers. The application is only available through the cloud and can
range in price from $60 to $125 per month per user for the typical corporate
version (although pricing can be less for very basic features or more depending
on the added modules purchased).
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