How do I choose the best sales CRM tools for my business?

If you are starting a small business, you may be wondering exactly why you need anything dedicated to CRM. After all, isn’t CRM just fancy talk for customer relations? Well, somewhat, yes, but customer relations management, which is what CRM is actually short for, it’s complicated. This isn’t just about handling customer calls in communications, this is about managing their account, resolving problems when they do happen, preventing churn and turning all of this statistical information on your customer base into useful metrics for forecasts.

Sales CRM is absolutely not the only CRM concern you will have, but it is one of the bigger subsections of CRM. Now, as I will point out in a second, you don’t technically have to use dedicated CRM software at all, it can be managed through tool chains of standard office software, but that is a colossally bad idea, and you’re going to understand why shortly.

What the sales CRM software do for me?

An online sales management software is all about exactly what you would think – sales. As such, your biggest focuses by way of data are going to purchase, demographics doing purchases, and tracking return customers, and things like that. It will also have a secondary focus around customer retention, continuing the business relationship with a customer after the first time they make a purchase. The secondary concern is bigger with subscription-based services, but applies to pretty much everyone to some degree.

Sales CRM is different than customer service CRM, though it is a great idea if the software you use can share data between one another, due to some overlap in that event diagram.

Do I want dedicated software, or will any CRM software do?

So, you have two basic choices when it comes to choosing your CRM software. You can get a large sweet that works across various subsets of CRM, or you can go with something a little more task-dedicated like Onpipeline.

Larger CRM suites are handy for bigger companies, at least if they have some sort of framework in place for extensions, programmability and deeper customization. Such things can be tamed to handle every aspect of CRM with just a little bit of elbow grease.

However, software like Onpipeline is not only affordable, but is already configured to focus on sales CRM, while still being compatible, format-wise, with other business applications in CRM solutions in your toolchain.

While I personally would be first in line to recommend paste that, there may be cases where a general suite is a better option, at least when you have large corporate budgets to go off of. Chances are, though, if you are reading this, you don’t have a large corporate budget, because you aren’t a gigantic corporation. In a situation like that, dedicated applications are definitely the route to go, and I don’t mean generally, I mean across the board.

You aren’t out anything by arranging a demonstration from paste that, which they will be more than happy to provide, so you can definitely see this sort of software in action and see why it’s probably a far more practical application for you.