Find the best Distribution CRM

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Salesforce Sales Cloud

Grow your revenue and profits with intelligent sales automation with Sales Cloud. Help every rep be more efficient. Close more deals. Collect cash faster. Boost growth and profit with intelligent automation and integrated tools fr...Read more about Salesforce Sales Cloud

4.4 (18265 reviews)

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HubSpot Sales Hub

Supercharge your sales process with Sales Hub, a powerful and easy-to-use sales CRM that includes sales engagement tools, configure-price-quote (CPQ) functionality, and robust sales analytics and reporting for growing teams. Optim...Read more about HubSpot Sales Hub

4.5 (448 reviews)

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FreeAgent CRM

FreeAgent CRM is a fully-featured CRM that helps your team get organized, gain visibility into day-to-day work, and get more done with a powerful, easy-to-use sales platform your sales team will actually love. Work smarter and f...Read more about FreeAgent CRM

4.7 (72 reviews)

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Claritysoft CRM

Claritysoft is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution designed for midsize and large enterprise businesses. It offers sales automation, customer service and support, marketing automation and social CRM withi...Read more about Claritysoft CRM

4.5 (167 reviews)

26 recommendations

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Maximizer CRM

Maximizer CRM is a powerful solution specifically designed for sales. We understand the unique challenges faced by sales managers and sales teams. That's why we provide a game-changing alternative to complex CRM solutions and cumb...Read more about Maximizer CRM

4.0 (351 reviews)

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SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, expertly crafted to enhance interactions with prospects and customers while accelerating sales success. Renowned for its cost-effectiveness, this potent solution enabl...Read more about SugarCRM

3.8 (406 reviews)

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monday sales CRM

Built on top of monday.com Work OS, monday sales CRM is a no-code, customizable solution that empowers managers and sales teams to take control of their entire sales cycle - from lead capturing and sales pipeline management to pos...Read more about monday sales CRM

4.7 (383 reviews)

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Workbooks

Workbooks offers growing companies a SaaS platform to run their business and engage with their customers – at an affordable price. Workbooks designs, develops and implements its own software, which is targeted specifically at mid-...Read more about Workbooks

4.3 (109 reviews)

6 recommendations

SalesNOW

SalesNOW by Interchange Solutions Inc. is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation solution that allows sales teams, management and executives to manage aspects of sales cycle including conta...Read more about SalesNOW

4.6 (83 reviews)

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Issuetrak

Issuetrak is a flexible issue tracking software solution that can be configured to suit the needs of a variety of industries and usages, including IT Help Desk, Customer Support, Project Management, and more. Issuetrak can be dep...Read more about Issuetrak

4.6 (187 reviews)

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Creatio CRM

Creatio is a global vendor of a no-code platform to automate workflows and CRM with a maximum degree of freedom. Creatio offering includes a no-code platform (Studio Creatio), CRM applications (Marketing, Sales and Service), indus...Read more about Creatio CRM

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LeadMaster

LeadMaster is a SaaS-based all-in-one lead management solution that offers capabilities to capture, track and follow up with leads. The solution comprises of integrated modules for sales force automation, customer relationship man...Read more about LeadMaster

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Quickbase

Quickbase is a no-code collaborative work management platform that empowers citizen developers to improve operations through real-time insights and automations across complex processes and disparate systems. Here's why Quickbase i...Read more about Quickbase

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Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a web-based marketing automation service with millions of users worldwide. The application allows users to share newsletters on various social networks and track customer engagements. The application provides tools to...Read more about Mailchimp

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a cloud-based business management platform that caters to businesses of all sizes. It offers sales and marketing automation tools with helpdesk, analytics and customer support functions. Zoho CRM helps users respo...Read more about Zoho CRM

Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based CRM ecosystem for small, medium and enterprise organizations, with a focus on Sales, Field Service, Customer Service complete with strong integrations with Microsoft’s other Office 365 offer...Read more about Dynamics 365

HubSpot CRM

With its cloud-based, customer relationship management (CRM) platform, HubSpot CRM helps companies of all sizes track and nurture leads and analyze business metrics. HubSpot is suitable for any B2B or B2C business in a variety of ...Read more about HubSpot CRM

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a web-based Sales CRM and pipeline management solution that enables businesses to plan their sales activities and monitor deals. Built using activity-based selling methodology, Pipedrive streamlines every action invol...Read more about Pipedrive

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with the must-have platform for intelligent marketing automation. Customers from over 170 countries depend on ActiveCampaign’s mix of pre-built automations and integrations (in...Read more about ActiveCampaign

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk solution from Zoho Corporation, catering to businesses of all sizes. Key features include management of customer support tickets, a customer support portal, contract management and report creat...Read more about Zoho Desk

Buyers Guide

Last Updated: November 07, 2023

Those in the distribution industry, like any other business, stand to benefit by using customer relationship management (CRM) software—through increased customer satisfaction and sales, for instance. Also, as in other industries, our research finds that distributors want a CRM tool that offers features relevant to their field.

For distributors, customer relationships are tied very closely to the products they distribute; they fall in between the customer and the manufacturer whose products they're distributing. That's why the CRM tool they use should not just let them manage customers but also the products flowing to them.

There are plenty of software vendors that are aware if this need, and thus build or modify CRM tools to suit distributors' unique requirements.

In this buyer's guide, we'll look at the core features of distribution CRM software and what you should know before making a purchase.

Here's what we'll cover:

What is a distribution CRM?

Common features of distribution CRM

What type of buyer are you?

Key considerations

What is a distribution CRM?

A distribution CRM is a software tool for managing customers as well as products in a centralized location. This type of software comes with monitoring and reporting functionalities that help distributors manage customer information, track product orders, generate invoices/quotes, and automate marketing efforts.

bp'm-online-CRM-dashboard

Tracking prospects, invoices, and payments in bpm'online

Common features of distribution CRM

Distribution CRMs offer certain common functionalities that cater to a wide range of distribution businesses: food distribution, consumer packaged goods, fuel delivery, and so on.

Let's look at these functionalities more closely.

Contact management

Create a centralized database of customer data such as shipping address and phone number.

Interaction tracking

Track communications with contacts via multiple channels, such as emails, chat conversations, and phone calls.

Lead management

Capture and store details of potential clients, in a central location, and track their conversions.

Quote management

Allow sales representatives to automatically generate price quotes of products for customers.

Order and invoice management

Process orders and create invoices using shipping and billing details.

Inventory management

Keep inventory records based on item size, color, and other attributes. Monitor stock levels.

Warehouse management

Track how items are arranged and stored in the warehouse and optimize their storage for quick order processing.

Workflow automation

Create and monitor tasks that sales agents need to complete as customers move along the sales pipeline.

Document management

Store and track documents, such as bills of material, product quotes, and invoices in a centralized location.

Reporting and analytics

Monitor and analyze the performance of your sales team with detailed reports and analytical dashboards.

What type of buyer are you?

The right distribution CRM depends on the size and specific requirements of your business.

Here are three common types of distribution CRM buyers and their chief concerns:

  • Small and midsize businesses (fewer than 1,000 employees): These buyers typically have limited budgets for software. As a result, they're primarily concerned with a solution's pricing. This makes cloud-based CRM tools preferable over on-premise tools, as cloud-based deployment requires significantly lower upfront investment.

  • Large enterprises (more than 1,000 employees): These buyers need a tool with advanced functionalities. Enterprise resource planning software that offers CRM as a built-in module is a viable option for these buyers. ERP tools typically also offer accounting and project management functionalities; this can serve cross-functional needs by allowing teams to use a single solution to manage different business processes.

  • Best-of-breed buyers: These buyers could belong to either of the above categories. They are typically looking to solve a specific business need with software. For instance, a wholesale distributor that wants software primarily to process customer orders more quickly might need distribution inventory management software, instead of a CRM tool. Likewise, if you're looking to improve after-sales customer service, you might go for help desk software, which is a part of the larger family of CRM solutions.

Key considerations

To choose the right manufacturing CRM for your business, you must take into account factors such as total cost and integration requirements.

Let's look at these more closely:

  • Total cost of software: Understanding the total cost of software means looking beyond its procurement cost (usually a one-time license fee for on-premise and a recurring subscription for cloud-based solutions). Businesses also need to account for costs incurred during installation, customization, maintenance and support, data migration, training, and so on.

  • Integration requirements: As you evaluate options, you need to consider a CRM's ability to integrate with the tools you already use, or intend to use. This will ensure seamless data flow between otherwise disparate tools, reducing effort and errors due to manually copying and pasting data, and should also speed up processes. Email marketing, project management, and help desk software solutions are some popular integration options.

Note: The applications selected in this article are examples to show a feature in context and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations. They have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.