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Old 12-06-2018, 08:23 AM   #1
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What does everyone use for a CRM?

We have about 10 direct sales staff & engineers, plus 15 more support staff. I'm looking for ideas on better CRM ideas for guys that aren't very open to accepting new technology or being able to work with software.

We currently use Active Campaign to manage our leads, however it doesn't QUITE seem to have all the features I want.

Ideas? Experiences?
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Old 12-06-2018, 08:31 AM   #2
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I am in the tech industry, and I always find that G2 Crowd is a great place to start for comparisons based on user reviews and if you like rankings:

https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/crm

As expected, Salesforce is at the top of the food chain when it comes to CRM. However, Dynamics 365 and HubSpot are also good tools - assuming you are planning to scale or want more functionality in the future (e.g. HubSpot has content marketing tools if that is something you are interested in).

If you are interested in Salesforce and in Calgary, I can put you in touch with a small company that is growing and doing great things for clients locally. I believe they are also one of the few Calgary-based pure Salesforce outfits, and they are quite apt at both the business requirements and the technical rollout of what you are looking for.
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Old 12-06-2018, 08:36 AM   #3
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I forgot to mention it sounds like you have business requirements in additional/enhance functionality and a change management program for people to adopt it. A good consulting company can help with that transition - adoption is critical to the success of a new technology.
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Old 12-06-2018, 08:43 AM   #4
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agilecrm.com is a decent option if you're looking to try something for free before committing to a paid option your team might not use. There are a lot of integrations for WordPress and Quickbooks for pulling in client data.
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Old 12-06-2018, 08:56 AM   #5
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My company has tried 3 different CRM products over the past decade (Saleslogix, Salesforce, MS Dynamics). All promise the world, all turned out to be much more expensive than was anticipated, and all required a fair bit of customization (for added cost) to fit the defined needs.

If you are going into it fresh it might be easier; none have worked very well for us.
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Old 12-06-2018, 09:05 AM   #6
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It's not cheap, but ZenDesk is the most comprehensive one I've had to deploy and use. Tons of in-built API/App integrations, excellent scaling and routing options, and the interface is extremely easy to teach to those who aren't tech inclined. It's also much more attractive than say, SalesForce which is like, 2003 called and they want their GUI back.

But yeah, not cheap.
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Old 12-06-2018, 09:35 AM   #7
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The biggest issue is adoptability. Every software companies promises the moon, which I'm sure is possible, but from my experience 50% of your staff is going to put up a major wall when it comes to adopting new technology.

I am not looking for something comprehensive. Mostly something for project management / CRM where sales staff can track their leads & projects.

Salesforce and Zendesk are far beyond what we need. Hubspot looks interesting.

Last edited by Azure; 12-06-2018 at 10:01 AM.
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Old 12-06-2018, 09:50 AM   #8
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So I'm out of that game. But here's some thoughts.


adoption is everything, however for most of the companies that I worked with CRM adoption by the staff was mandatory, if they didn't want to do it, they wouldn't work there for long.


Too many people think that a CRM is a spy tool, so getting people to use it is about selling the benefits of using it from the persons perspective.


Anchoring to your email and removing as many separate points of entry is an absolute key.


I think we'd need a little more of an idea of what your wanting to track and what your life cycle is for sales, because that goes towards funnels and metrics and the cost of gaining sales.


Do you do marketing campaigns? Automated mail or email outs.


What do you want to track from a leads generation standpoint?


Do you want to track the costs of gaining leads and through to close?


These are a few questions that you can ask. If you don't want to do that and just want to track simple communications, there are cheaper ways to go.


I believe that Dyanmics 365 has a CRM or you can look at the full Dynamics CRM which is expensive.


Probably Insightly, Zoho and sales force lightning are good ones to look at and they offer a SaaS model so you con't have to pay a bunch of money for IT costs.


If you want to discuss in detail let me know, I have no skin in that game anymore.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:03 AM   #9
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Quote:
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Do you do marketing campaigns? Automated mail or email outs.


What do you want to track from a leads generation standpoint?


Do you want to track the costs of gaining leads and through to close?
Yes on all 3 counts. We are doing part of it right now, however I'm not sure Active Campaign can do proper CRM the way I want. I am trying to make it work but I want to do what you mention above, plus do project tracking for those leads once they come through.
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Old 12-06-2018, 01:21 PM   #10
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Quote:
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Yes on all 3 counts. We are doing part of it right now, however I'm not sure Active Campaign can do proper CRM the way I want. I am trying to make it work but I want to do what you mention above, plus do project tracking for those leads once they come through.

Ok, put of curiousity what are you doing for accounting, I'm assuming you're engineering/project based?


There are a couple of different ways to do these things.


I'll give you example A.


A lot of my former clients (I'm out of the industry) went with an integrated project based ERP. The CRM was inclusive.


For the most part they used something like Deltek Vision which is now called professional services. It allowed them to track campaign and sales costs right back to accounting, do automated email blasts, do show cases and track costs. Basically track every single cost involved in moving a lead to a prospect to a client, because it treated selling like a end to end project.


Example B. Dynamics CRM can certainly do all of that for you and probably integrate back to your account system. When I used Dynamics we would do email blasts, campaigns, webinars and seminar management from within the CRM and it can integrate across.


Here's the problem though or the rub. With Dynamics CRM, it comes pretty generic and you need to do some customization, same as Sales Force.



You're probably looking at a cost per user per month of about $50.00 in the SaaS model, but I'm guessing.


If you want to do automated campaigns, event tracking, full contact tracking, things like base quoting and estimation, and even rudimentary proposal generation you're looking at a full featured CRM like Dynamics CRM.


I do have a friend that does work with a CRM consulting firm, let me know if you'd like me to forward that to you.
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Old 12-08-2018, 11:02 AM   #11
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Yes we are engineering / project based. Our ERP software is specialized for our industry, however not specialized for CRM. Call it more of a MRP instead.

Works amazing, but not setup to do any of what we've been talking about.

I do not want to do all the features you mention. Mostly lead tracking, some automated campigns, both in terms of a CRM perspective, but also from a marketing viewpoint. And then project management of those leads once they translate into actual customers. No quoting or anything like that as our ERP / CAD system does that for us already.
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Old 12-08-2018, 05:23 PM   #12
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Quote:
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Yes we are engineering / project based. Our ERP software is specialized for our industry, however not specialized for CRM. Call it more of a MRP instead.

Works amazing, but not setup to do any of what we've been talking about.

I do not want to do all the features you mention. Mostly lead tracking, some automated campigns, both in terms of a CRM perspective, but also from a marketing viewpoint. And then project management of those leads once they translate into actual customers. No quoting or anything like that as our ERP / CAD system does that for us already.

There are a couple that still stand out. One is Dynamics CRM, the other one is Deltek's CRM which I think can be bought seperately, and both can work really well in your project environment.


By saying project management of those leads once their clients, are you talking about continual marketing, touchbase business expansion, etc or actual management of actual projects
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Old 12-08-2018, 05:53 PM   #13
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pm sent
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