VIDEO: What is CRM? CRM Explained And 4 Top Vendors

if your organization sells anything you will probably want to invest in a good customer relationship management system or crm in this video we will explain what a crm is and how it works in addition to highlighting some of the best vendors on the market but if you're in a rush use our product selection tool at technologyadvice.com to get a free short list of crm software recommendations click the link in the description below to get started crm stands for customer relationship management and it's a type of software system that takes the place of spreadsheets or a more traditional method of organizing sales contacts like rolodex a crm works by storing information on leads contacts opportunities companies and deals each record type is typically saved as a card similar to the way you'd write down contact information in an address book cards usually display a person's name organization phone number and email address and social media information a good crm will let you send emails and make calls right from the system so it also logs your contact history with the appropriate record which you can usually find lower down on a card crm users can comment on a card and mention colleagues create tasks and reminders with deadlines and change the deal stage for any given record additional features vary depending on the crm solution you choose so you may also find features for lead scoring pipeline management texting reporting and marketing automation features like reporting and marketing automation are sometimes considered advanced features as such you may only find these in higher priced plans or in systems specifically designed for enterprises the crm market can feel pretty crowded so here are some of the best solutions on the market for businesses of all sizes salesforce is one of the most popular crm systems on the market and for good reason the standard crm offering from salesforce is salesforce sales cloud as its name implies this is a cloud-based crm system that you can access from a web browser and from a mobile app this makes sales cloud a scalable solution that can grow with your business and stay fast even when handling large volumes of data standout features of salesforce include tools for data cleansing marketing and workflow automation users typically cite a clean user interface and availability of features as the two biggest pros of salesforce if you're new to the system it can feel overwhelming at first but salesforce offers a free online learning center called trailhead to help you get up and running quickly hubspot crm is a freemium model crm that offers paid add-ons for additional features the free version of hubspot crm gives you all the tools you need to conduct simple customer relationship management free features include contact and deal management email integration with gmail and outlook email templates and scheduling and a live chat feature for your website if you decide you want more features you can purchase a premium sales hub plan for premium versions of free features sales automation predictive lead scoring customizable reports and more hubspot offers several other hubs in addition to its sales hub so you can branch out to add tools for marketing automation customer service and content management as your business grows frequently named as one of the best crm platforms for the value zoho crm is an affordable yet powerful crm like hubspot zoho offers a free forever plan for up to three users that includes all the basic features you need in a crm contact and deal management task management interaction history gmail integration with email templates basic reporting and basic customer support as your business grows you can upgrade your plan to access more advanced features like lead scoring web forms custom reports and zoho's proprietary conversational ai zia voice like i said the value might be the biggest pro of zoho crm but prospective buyers shouldn't take this to mean they'll be settling for a lower quality product zoho crm routinely ranks as a top-rated software by many software review sites it's an added bonus that the price tag is lower than some of its competitors fresh sales is a crm best suited for small and medium-sized businesses though it also offers plans for enterprise organizations this being said fresh sales offers an impressive degree of functionality its free forever plan lets you add unlimited users and contacts and you get all the basic features you need like contact and deal management email integration and custom views more advanced features available and paid plans include custom workflows multiple sales pipelines multi-currency and lead scoring based on users activity on your website and app fresh sales offers a solid product for a reasonable price making it a great choice for smaller organizations with complex feature needs in addition to the four options we already covered there are several other crm solutions worth looking into depending on your needs you may also want to consider microsoft dynamics 365 less annoying crm pipe drive copper crm and insightly still not sure which crm is right for you use our product selection tool at technologyadvice.com to get a free short list of crm software recommendations click the button on the left to get started you

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