CRM question
March 01, 2019
by a searcher from INSEAD in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Hi all, I'm at the early stage of my search and have read that the use of CRM tool is important when conducting a search. I have not used a CRM tool in the past, so the tool is quite new to me. I visited the website of Zoho to get smarter on the topic, but I have not yet realized why the tool is so important for the search. May I ask you for what type of tasks you use a CRM tool in your search, and what CRM tools you recommend (keeping the cost into account as well)? Is there a time-efficient way to get savvy on how to use the CRM tool? Thanks for your feedback!
from University of California, Berkeley in San Francisco, CA, USA
Keep in mind that often you'll need an outreach tool along with a CRM, and you'll want these share data seamlessly and play nicely. You want to get this right before you really start in earnest, because porting emails/leads will be a huge pain mid way through.
Everyone has a different opinion about CRM tools, the biggie is Salesforce but you should check a few out and decide what's best for you, many have free two week trials. Here are a few I've heard good things about (no particular order or personal endorsement):
1) close.io - good calling features and email, this is one of the few CRM + Outreach tools combined
2) streak.com - CRM in gmail - I didn't love it, but the idea of having everything in once place is great
3) hubspot.com - Free! This basic CRM, paired with a good outreach tool might be all you need, especially if you only use this to track companies you have a strong interest in
4) pipedrive.com - clean pipeline interface, relatively affordable
Here are a few lists of CRMs you can check out as well:
https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/crm
https://sales.reply.io/#/crm
Best of luck with the search!
-Mike
from IESE Business School in London, UK
CRM basically helps you to automate relationships interactions - say for SF these would be investors at fundraising stage, companies and their owners at search stage and company customers once you acquire.
Excel and Outlook may be enough at the beginning, but if you go through hundreds of companies, having CRM is preferential - you will have there staged activity funnel (you should be able to customise stages) and can see what interactions you had with specific contact in the past, keep some conclusions, etc.
There are paid and free options available with different functionality. I am leaning to start with Hubspot now as it is free for most key features and looks expandable into reasonably priced options in the future. Other names I have looked at: zoho, bitrix24 (free) and pipedrive, salesforce (paid options).
Happy to hear any feedback in case anyone used any of the above or other names for some time and would have any advice.