Is Sales or CRM Software Best for Your Business?
If you’ve ever tried to find software for your business, you quickly realized it wouldn’t be a simple decision. Do you need a CRM to manage contacts and leads, or does your team need more niche, dedicated sales features?
Don’t worry: We’ve got your back. To make the decision easier for you—and to keep you from ending up locked into a contract for the wrong software—we’ve come up with a list of common CRM and sales software features you can use to serve your unique business challenges.
And if these features aren’t enough, we’ve even created a quiz that will further help you decide which software is right for your business so you get means improved customer and employee experiences, better forecasting, and more closed deals.
Why you might need CRM software
At its core, CRM software helps automate and manage the customer life cycle of an organization. It is usually used by the customer-focused side of businesses to maintain contact with customers and quickly respond to their needs.
Check out some additional resources about CRM software here:
For an exhaustive look at what CRM software is and why your business might need it, read “What Is Customer Relationship Management? Defining CRM.”
To see what other buyers are looking for in a CRM, read “CRM Trends for 2019: A CRM Buyer Analysis.”
If there’s one thing to know about CRM, it’s that if you work with a lot of customers, a CRM is your team’s best friend.
Not only will it help you manage your data, a good CRM makes your customers’ experience fluid and effortless.
Take a look through this list of common CRM features and decide which your business truly needs. Most are probably useful to your business, but keep in mind that the more features your CRM has, the more expensive it is.
Common CRM Software Features
Manage the process of converting prospects into potential customers (leads) by identifying, scoring, and moving leads through the pipeline. | |
Pipeline management | See an overview of the entire sales pipeline and bucket deals based on stages in the sales funnel. |
Automate repetitive tasks by creating workflows that trigger actions or send follow-up reminders for next actions. | |
Interaction tracking | Add notes and track history to document conversations with specific contacts. |
Email integration | Lets users access their email accounts from within the CRM, update the customer database from their inbox, or send an email directly from the platform. |
Stores contact information such as names, addresses, and social media accounts in a searchable database. | |
Execute marketing campaigns for lead generation by tracking prospect behavior and targeting leads in different stages of the sales cycle. | |
Customer data management | Generate reports that track and analyze the performance and productivity of your company and employees based on the data in the CRM system. |
Cater to customers’ needs by allowing customer service representatives to document, route, track, resolve and report on customer issues via a trouble ticketing system, using tools such as live chat, customer self service and multichannel management. |
Why you might need sales software
Sales software is used by businesses to track and monitor sales performance. It’s often used to help scale sales teams by providing automation, quota management, and training tools.
Realistically, your business will need a CRM because the types of businesses that can fully utilize the robust feature set of sales software are call centers without marketing or client success teams.
Figure out what your business truly needs after after looking through this list of common sales software features. If you read the list of features and think “that might really help my business,” but it’s the only feature that you can use, you’re in luck.
Often, you won’t have to buy dedicated sales software because a lot of these sales tools integrate with CRMs to help teams which need more specific software solutions.
Common Sales Software Features
From auto dialers to preview dialers, sales dialers help eliminate some of the tedious repetitive tasks while making sure no errors get made. | |
Assembles comprehensive customer datasets which businesses can run powerful predictive models that are important for planning and prioritizing sales activities. | |
Sorts leads and distributes them to different areas of your lead management process and helps organize your process and keep track of leads. | |
The is the process of designing and implementing inbound telephone call rules that route calls through a sales team. | |
Sales engagement | Helps identify trends and determine best practices for the sales process to facilitate more closed deals. |
Conversation intelligence | Records and tracks call and email conversations in order to help determine best practices and develop training material. |
Quota management | Allows for the easy creation, allocation, and management of sales targets across your organization. |
Territory management | Helps you optimize, assign, and manage territories based on opportunity, workload, account information, and geography. |
Makes sure sales reps are accurately paid and offers businesses transparent, consistent processes. Also rewards good behavior and reduce payment errors. |
CRM vs. sales software: Find your software with this quiz
The differences are subtle, but you should think about what solution(s) you want the software to solve.
Are multiple teams (sales, client success, marketing) going to be using the software to manage customer data and the customer experience, or do you need to get your sales team off the ground or back in shape?
It’s also entirely possible your business is too small for either a CRM or sales software. You might want to consider using a spreadsheet as your first CRM.
If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team of advisors by calling (855) 998-8505. They’re here to help you make the best software decision possible for your business.