“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” — Bill Gates
To manage this properly, a startup should consider an effective CRM solution. Before moving to that, let’s find out what is CRM and why it is essential to have in a startup
What is CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management which helps to manage leads and mainly focuses on existing and new customers. It is a scientific approach to building and sustaining long-term business with customer retention and acquisition.
It helps in converting your leads into customers, building a loyal customer base who advocates for your brand, and delivering a better experience throughout. It has some features such as leads management which can increase your revenue.
Earlier, companies were using spreadsheets, emails, and other methods before realizing that it is never late to start using a CRM system. Whether to store information with access to multiple devices or to manage customer interaction and focus on their satisfaction, one will need CRM software.
It makes everything much easier and organized in many ways and helps startups to increase their productivity.
Read More: 10 Basic Laws for Startups
Advantages of using CRM software for startups:
1. Better data organization
With CRM software, a startup can manage large data effectively by importing the list of contacts, customers, and leads details into CRM and tracking sales and engagement.
One can add tasks for each employee and increase its visibility by sharing at a central place. All the data from social media to emails can be stored at one source only, Thus, making it fully organized and easy to access.
2. User-friendly
It is simple and easy to use with better UX that doesn’t require any intensive training. It is well-designed and can be customized as per the needs.
3. Shared information
CRM software provides all the information about projects, customers, and deals to the whole team. It supports transparency as it allows everyone to look at each other’s tasks and distribute the workload evenly.
4. Increases productivity and revenue
It sends reminders for the tasks that need to be done and allows you to track deals. It increases efficiency and saves time. It helps eliminate mistakes and scale up the profit.
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5. Helps in sales management
This software performs various functions including sales management. It helps in tracking and reporting your sales, sorting important information through the sales pipeline, and in sales forecasting.
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6. Maintains relationships between vendors and marketing teams
It assists in maintaining a good relationship with vendors by saving their feedback and delivering it to the marketing teams.
8 Best CRM for Startups in 2022:
1. HubSpot
It is free, user-friendly, and offers discounts of up to 90% for startups with proper training and support. It helps in assigning tasks, tracking leads, and maintaining customer interactions effectively.
It has a feature called ‘Zapier Integration’ which enables the sharing of information across various apps.
Important Points:
- It is free but for extra features like AI, automation, and reporting, a paid subscription is there.
- It starts at $300 per month and add-on packages like marketing, sales, and service hub cost around $50 per month, for each user (billed monthly)
- It has another suit ‘All-inclusive Starter growth’ which is $113 per month, each user (billed monthly)
2. Zoho
It has a simple user interface mainly designed for startups and small businesses with customizable tools and automation features. One can transfer all important data from spreadsheets to the Zoho platform at ease and integrates it with social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to reach and engage leads in a short time.
Important Points:
- It offers a free version for up to 3 users and generally targets home businesses.
- The standard version is $12 per user, per month (billed annually), and the enterprise version for $35 per user, per month (billed annually)
3. Monday
It has various features for email management such as email sync, email tracking, and email templates to notify team members of important tasks and save their time.It keeps track of sales pipeline, target, and team performance. One can find all the information on their dashboard and organize data like a pro.There is no need to switch between tabs for managing your entire sales pipeline. It focuses more on sales management with a sales forecasting and sales tracking feature.
Important Points:
- Free trial is up to 2 users and a basic plan is around $10 for each user, per month (billed annually) and $14 for the standard plan, and $24 for the Pro plan.
- You can try all the above-mentioned plans for free.
- For the enterprise plan, you need to contact their sales team. This plan offers a complete set of services mainly designed for startups.
4. Agile CRM
It offers a free, full-featured CRM for up to 10 users. This platform combines all the services such as contact management, automation, real-time alerts, social suit, and email tracking in one place. It even automates all your voice calls and provides follow-ups. You can also attach all your documents, contacts, and emails in-app.
Important Points:
- The free version is available for 10 users.
- The cost of the basic version is $8.99 per user, per month (billed after two years), and the regular version for $29.99 per user, per month (billed after two years).
- For the enterprise version, the cost is $47.99 per user, per month (billed after two years).
- No free trial is available for paid plans.
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5. Insightly CRM
This CRM software has features like contact management, tracking leads, enhanced communications, and project management in a single interface.It provides options to structure and access your customer data while creating your specialized fields to add subscriptions, contract renewal dates, and unique billing numbers. It has a special feature called the ‘Insightly sidebar’ that helps you to save email messages to your CRM directly.
Important Points:
- The ‘No-frills’ plan is free for up to 2 users. Plus plan is $29 per user, per month (billed annually) and the professional plan is $49 per user, per month (billed annually).
- The enterprise plan is $99 per user, per month (billed annually).
- A 14-day free trial is available for the plus and professional plans.
6. Cooper
It is a startup-friendly CRM that provides features like leads and customer tracking, optimization of sales contacts, and automated data entry. It improves the management of teams and workflows with weekly progression. It seamlessly supports data importing from Google and other application. You need to learn all the features to use them effectively.
Important Points:
- The basic plan is $19 per user, per month (billed annually) and the professional plan is $49 per user, per month (billed annually).
- The business plan is $119 per user, per month (billed annually).
- It offers a 14-day free trial for all the plans.
7. Keap CRM
It is one of the best CRM software for startups with features like sale pipeline, contact management, and creating marketing campaigns. It provides separate tools for sales and marketing with an easy interface.You can import your spreadsheets, business card, and customized business forms too.
Important Points:
- The Keap pro starts at $129 per month, billed annually and the Keap max starts at $199 per month, billed annually.
- A free trial is available for the above plans
8. Streak
It has desktop and mobile apps which include all the features by downloading the Google extension or the app. It is built directly into Gmail which captures data from your emails and contacts to notify you through the leads progression of your sales pipeline.It has a centralized record-keeping feature and in-app notes to help team members organize the necessary data.
Important Points:
- The personal version is for free but the professional plan is $49 per user, per month (billed annually).
- The enterprise plan is $129 per user, per month (billed annually).
- A 14-day free trial is available for the professional plan.
Bottom-Line
A CRM system helps your startups grow by providing various features which increase efficiency. Doing it manually can be tiring and confusing and take lots of time.Therefore, choose the best CRM well suited for your company according to your requirements and thrive in your industry.
Read: FAQs for Startup
With over two decades of experience in the software technology arena, having worked in multinational and SME companies in India, USA and Singapore in the capacity of programmer to CTO – I felt now was a good time to give back to the world what I have learnt in this journey. Even if it ends up benefitting a few of my readers by giving them insight or solving a technical issue, I think I will have achieved my mission!