Are you tracking business contacts... or losing them?
Without the right CRM, your key relationships could be slipping through the cracks.
[Note: this post does not include any affiliate links. It is not designed to promote any specific platform nor be a comprehensive listing of every possible top-rated CRM available. I simply present some options that after a conversation with some entrepreneurs think could be helpful to someone new to a CRM. I absolutely know there are other CRMs out there preferred by other people.]
Have you ever wondered “What is this thing called “CRM?” or been unhappy with a CRM you are using? This post reflecting on my conversation with a group of food and beverage entrepreneurs may help guide you in finding a decent solution. As business owners we have too many people to track - they may be contacts from retail stores, distributors, manufacturers, possible partners, prospective clients, and more. Without an organized system these contacts become spread around email messages, business cards, a contacts app, sticky notes, project management systems, and our brains. There is no single source of truth. Plus, at any given time these relationships are at different stages of the pipeline. Enter the CRM!
Before we go further, we should understand “the pipeline”. When people talk about CRMs and pipelines, typically they are referring to Sales Pipelines. These pipelines include the stages of the Buyer’s Journey until they get to the ultimate decision of whether or not to purchase your product or service. However, pipelines can be very helpful for other aspects of your business as well. What distinguishes pipelines from projects is that they center around people (contacts) and companies. So, you could set up a pipeline for manufacturing that includes contacts, companies and contracts you are seeking. Or a service provider could establish a networking pipeline which includes people they are trying to engage and build relationships with. This is all to say pipelines can be a flexible and powerful way to grow and manage various parts of your business.
Food & Beverage Founders Discussion
Recently I facilitated a discussion with a group of Food & Beverage entrepreneurs from the PNW Packaged Food & Bev Google group to discuss CRMs (Contact Relationship Manager systems). We came to some helpful conclusions for people who’ve considered a CRM for their business (and if have not yet, you should).
After a brief introduction about the amount of information a salesperson (which may be you) needs to track in an organized way related to their relationships with business contacts, I opened the discussion up to the group with assistance from Dan Brazelton of The Bitter Housewife and Michael Kanter (frmly. Elliot’s Nut Butters) Senior Sales Manager of Sach Foods.
Here are my key takeaways from the conversation, including some additional thoughts post-meeting:
For food and beverage (and other product companies) nurturing ongoing relationships is probably the most important activity a salesperson or company founder can undertake. CRMs are the closest you will get to a tool that can help with that.
Dan shared that he has “tried them all”, meaning just about every style of CRM at every price point, from DIY Google Sheets to $1,000 per month NetSuite. And he has yet to find the perfect one for the food and beverage industry. Most are oriented around service companies. Still, a CRM is essential to his business.
Ideally a CRM gives you transparency into specific product orders from each contact on a timeline so one can identify lagging and over performing accounts, and everywhere in between. That requires a more expensive system such as Prospect ($100/month per seat).
Michael shared that in his experience “there is not a perfect CRM”. He successfully used the Zoho suite (Zoho One) of products, which includes the Zoho CRM. He valued that everything was integrated. One danger noted: with a complete system like Zoho is that software companies tend to come and go or be sold, so having the major elements of your business in one basket may not be the wisest move. Consider separate SaaS products which cover your major business systems and talk to each other.
Regarding the integration of various products into a CRM for transparency and functionality, each CRM has different levels of connection to other software products used to run a business such as accounting, inventory, and email marketing. Usually there is a way to automatically move data between systems, even if using Zapier. And within lower CRM price points you can still reference customer accounts on other systems like Quickbooks, to quickly click over to their orders and invoices.
For people who have never used a CRM, Google Sheets (template) a legitimate way to start tracking the varied bits of information and digging into setting up a sales flow that fits with the business. Once you have the systems down, then you can figure out what type of CRM you really need. You can likely import most of the info from the columns in Google to fields in a CRM.
But, Which CRM Platform?
In the end, for people relatively new to CRMs, there were four software recommendations that stood out to me in the conversation. Like Michael said it is all about finding the right fit, but the four below seem like good starting points for those new to CRMs, as everyone had a positive experience with them.
While this tool was originally built for project management (still, it’s strongest use case), it has evolved into a more complete data management system. You can build your own CRM that holds all the data you wish to track, and is organized in ways that keeps you on track with the tasks needed for your accounts. The reason it works very well as a DIY CRM is that you can set statuses for your contacts and accounts, just like a CRM pipeline, and you can see your data in customized views, which gives you transparency into your accounts and contacts. The Kanban view is popular in CRM pipelines, and ClickUp includes it. It is also very affordable - you get a lot of features for free, and get pretty much all you need for about $12/month per seat. Dan Brazelton of The Bitter Housewife runs his entire CRM on ClickUp.
This tool I discovered while doing research for this conversation. Built as a CRM from the ground up, it has been around for 15+ years and bootstrapped all the way. It is a small business, just like the companies who use their tool. For those who want an ethical, affordable CRM ($15/month per user) that is already put together, this is worth a look. It has a simple interface with Contacts, Companies, Pipelines, Statuses, Tasks, and Relationships. See below where I recommend an alternative.
Originally developed as a marketing platform, HubSpot has added a good CRM that integrates well with digital marketing. As a CRM it is simple enough to jump into, and has more advanced features than the others mentioned above. HubSpot starts out pretty affordable ($15/mo, but gets expensive the next tier up ($90/mo). Hubspot users are often very happy with their experience, and it’s the best choice if you want a marketing-oriented CRM.
Zoho CRM or Bigin by Zoho
While we did not demo Zoho CRM it fits the criteria and Michael found it helpful for his nut butter company’s sales process. While looking at Zoho CRM, I discovered Bigin by Zoho which is specifically tailored for small businesses. While I am not a big fan of using a “dumbed down” version of a larger platform, this one is actually a standalone product that went into development about five years ago, and the mobile app is five-star rated on the Apple App store. I imported my CRM data from Less Annoying CRM to begin the set up. After a few days of using it, I would take it over LACRM as it just does more out of the box and for as low as $7/mo (and only as high as $15/mo) it has most of the features one needs. For $7/month a product company could get three pipelines which could be used for prospects, current customers, and distributors. You can also add your products to the platform. While the feature is not incredibly sophisticated, and without real-time sync, it helps track what you are pitching to different vendors, especially when introducing new products. Lastly, they offer four onboarding appointments within 30 days after you subscribe.
Final Recommendation
After the conversation and working more with Bigin I have come to the conclusion that it is my top recommendation for someone starting out with a CRM. Plus, it can grow with the business. The nice thing about going with an out-of-the-box solution vs. building one in something like ClickUp is that if you have no experience with CRMs, it has a framework for you. And with Bigin’s free one-on-one onboarding it seems like a no-brainer to get help with moving your data to it, setting it up for your business needs, and putting together a solid pipeline strategy. However, if you like to tinker, and don’t have a project management system for your business (which you should), ClickUp could be just the ticket. And they have templates to get you started.
The bottom line is that if you are running a business which deals with multiple contacts and multiple companies, you need a Contact Relationship Management system. Without it, you are flying blind and it is very difficult to grow your revenue and keep all of your hair. Try one of these out, any of these, start somewhere, and one day you will wonder how you ever got along without a CRM.
Want to talk more about CRMs, pipelines, and your processes?
Schedule a 20-Minute Coffee Break with me.
A slide from my presentation.
