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    • Mon Jan 07, 2008

    What would the perfect small business CRM look like?

    Jason Friend, a co-founder of the wildly successful software developer 37Signals stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast recently to chat.

    37Signals makes a collection of killer online apps such as Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire. These productivity enhancing tools are the back office support for a lot of small business collaboration.

    We spent a fair amount of time discussion the workings of their newest offering, a CRM app known as Highrise. The CRM field is a pretty crowded one and lots of folks are trying to get it right for the small business. It’s a pretty tough task since small business needs vary so wildly in this category.

    Service providers are faced with trying to create something that will meet all the needs and causing potential overkill or focusing on a set of needs in a niche and doing that well. As is usually the case, 37Signals chose to do some of the primary CRM functions elegantly and leave the others to, well, others. It’s worth a look.

    I know there are other, so feel free to let me know who they are!

    CRM as a category is tough for the small business because there will always be the balancing act of “too much or too little” and “return vs. upkeep.” CRM or at least tracking leads, nurturing leads and converting, reconverting and partnering with leads will always be a good thing. Once you more than about 10 such leads, keeping it all in you head, or in the head of a person that walks out into the street everyday, get dicey. And yet, looking for another CRM fix to cure your poor processes or cultural dysfunction can be more of a waste than a productivity gain.

    In thinking about this category, I would say don’t just look at a CRM solution as a way to keep track of leads, think about it as a way to keep track of leads and improve the overall experience your prospects, customers and partners have with your organization. If you think that way, the cost of implementation might not seem as steep (cost being money and time) and the actual features you think you need might change a bit.

    So let’s do a little CRM feature survey shall we!

    Tell me what you think the perfect small business CRM would look a little like. Please visit this four question CRM survey and pick the actual features you think the perfect small business CRM offering should have.

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    Posted by: John Jantsch on Jan 07, 08 | 12:12 pm
    Category: CRM | Tags:

    Comments
    « Friday roundup of stuff | Home | Will Search Wikia capture the imagination? »
    • Craig
      John ny biggest beef from way back about small business CRMs is the lack of ability to customize them/it to fit the business. Any that I have seen require you to work & flow your work their way. Instead of being a quiet & competent assistant, they become a nagging nuisance to fit to their idea of how to do business
    • I think you have hit the nail on the head with this post. It is all about keeping it simple enough to use and keep up to date but without being overkill. The other thing is how small is small when you are talking about businesses. We are just starting up and and a lot of the items listed charge what seems like a lot of money per month/user for their crm solution. It is a shame as we obviously need a crm solution but not sure we can afford the prices. I guess you get what you pay for in this area.
    • Through work, I have come to know a CRM product called Investor Dynamo. It is VERY industry specific, it was created with the needs of the alternative assets industry in mind. What I find interesting about it is, though, is that it is fully integrated with Outlook, i.e. it functions within your email client. If you already know the Outlook interface, you can pretty much figure out the rest on your own.

      In my experience, a lot of CRMs are really great products but they are so difficult to learn to use, that they become more of a hassle than anything else.

      Whatever the product, it has to be usable!!
    • Hi John,

      Just a note we actually make a CRM (Heap):

      http://heap.wbpsystems.com

      So I would of course naturally like you to take a look at it.

      But you also didn't put MarketCircle's DayLite or Pipeline deals. In both cases they are our closest competition and I definitely think they should be on your list.
    • John Jantsch
      Ben, Thanks - that is one of the things I wanted from this post - there are so many great products out there that I know I don't know them all - Heap looks very promising and thanks for the others as well.
    • Hi John - SugarCRM is worth adding to your list. They have an OpenSource version that's great for small businesses starting out on a budget.

      http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/

      My sense is that the long-term projected cost of running some of the more popular CRM systems scare some small businesses away from all CRM applications. This is a shame because, as you mention, CRM is really so much more than an advanced filing system. It's about improving customer experience and figuring out how to sell more of your product/service at the same time.

      A good CRM should be viewed as an investment in future revenues, rather than a "nice to have" that keeps your office better organized.
    • We're testing one new from Intuit: www.quickbase.com which blew us away with all of the optional modules. It may be bigger than what a small business needs for CRM, but modules include project management, legal forms & contrct management, development tools, surveys, customer support and so forth. For what we pay, we save on not having to hire or buy so many other programs.
    • I humbly submit our product, BatchBook, for your consideration. In addition to the standard features of a user-friendly web-based CRM, our biggest differentiator is that you can create unlimited custom fields (to Craig's comment). We built the product with the diverse needs of small businesses in mind.

      We also allow users to affiliate records to each other for both individuals and companies, which allows you to keep track of who is in your database and why. And you can tag records and create reports, email lists and even mailing labels from your contacts.

      Here's a review of BatchBook that was posted today by salesteamtools.

      Thanks much for this post and for the always-excellent blog.
    • I have found the perfect CRM, and it's not on your list: Zoho CRM. I have a very small business (less than 5 employees), and Zoho CRM fits my needs perfectly. It is not too complicated, and has all the categories I need for managing leads, opportunities, quotes and orders, but its best features are its customization and reports.

      I can add any fields that I like to any part of the system, and I can run reports based on any parameters. So I've added fields related to Israeli accounting, to stages, and even to whether they have ordered web hosting and when it expires! I love it and highly recommend it, and it's free for up to three users.
    • John Jantsch
      Miriam,

      Thanks for that, yes, I am familiar with Zoho and just forgot to add them - I've heard lots of very good things about a number of the services besides CRM too.
    • Great post, John. We're seeing the major search engines move agressively into technology platforms that seek to close the marketing loop.

      CRM and lead generation go hand-in-glove. You can't effectively manage a paid search (PPC campaign) without measuring ROI through CRM and analytics.

      Google Analytics? Free. Google CRM? What do you think?
    • We've been using Maximizer for a couple of years. It's certainly got some issues for us (specifically on the usability front), but so have all other CRMs we've tried.

      Check it: http://www.maximizer.com/
    • John Jantsch
      Kevin, you do have to wonder if we are only months away from Google CRM+ERP+Books for the really small biz. Maybe they pick-u Zoho and add finance and they've got it licked.

      Netbooks is trying to come at this approach from the finances side as well.
    • I am an avid Goldmine user and have been since the DOS days. While many people think GM is too complicated, once you fully grasp all its capabilities, it's tough to beat.

      My fear for GM, however, is that they are still largely client/server based and I don't know where their online strategy is headed.
    • I have tried many CRM's and find many want you to work the way they work as Craig pointed out in an earlier post. Sugar is a fine CRM, but I find that is still needs some improvement and requires to much maintenance for me. Maximizer is one of the best for me as it works well with my work flow, but I do find that it is getting fairly bloated now. Problems I find overall is once you are using a certain CRM and all your data is in it, it becomes difficult to switch to another CRM as data does not always easily convert.

      One thing about hosted CRM's is that I want the data on MY server or computer not on someone else's. You can tell me how secure it is all you want, but I still don't like it. Just my personal viewpoint.

      Now that I switched to the Mac my choices are different, but I am still looking for that perfect CRM.
    • John Jantsch
      So Dave, you do back up your data hourly and make a copy everyday to take off site right?
      No question offsite is safer, but it's like trying to tell folks that a phone line is a better way to give a credit card than an encrypted secure shopping cart page.
    • Good point Jon, I do back up my data offsite daily. But perhaps I should clarify where my concern lies about the hosted solutions.

      - How easy is it to get my data back off the hosted solution?
      - With so many hosted CRM companies, which ones are going to be around next month, year, etc... I would feel more secure with the larger hosted companies. i.e. saleforce.com etc..

      I did not say I would never use a hosted solution, I just said I don't like it. Since it's my business data, it could be costly to my business if I lost it all. I just feel more comfortable when it's under my control. Having it all under someone else's control is what I don't like.

      I just listened to the Jason Fried podcast. Very good, thanks. Maybe I'll break down one day.
    • John Jantsch
      Dave, sounds like you are doing a better job than most - most small businesses don't do half of what you are doing - so, I wasn't picking on you!
    • I used to do some Salesforce.com consulting. I mainly worked with very small businesses in helping them set up their Salesforce.com account. One thing, I continually found was that companies that sold B2C had a hard time grasping the Salesforce.com workaround.

      The story is. Salesforce.com was originally designed for larger companies who sell B2B. Hence they have a rigid Account to Contact relationship. Then they introduced this "duck-tape" solution called Person Accounts for B2C customers.

      The problem is not only that it's confusing with Accounts, Contacts and Person Accounts. But it's not even available unless your purchase the Cadillac version of Salesforce.com (Enterprise Edition)

      So in my mind. Having a very simple, streamlined solution for B2C business is a must.
    • John,

      Great topic. Organization, focus and technology choices are often what make or break small-to-medium sized businesses today. Managing your company's sales pipeline is critical as future revenue is the lifeline for us all. I respect Jason Fried greatly, however he is trying to redefine CRM to fit his view of the world which is different (and not necessarily bad) than how the majority of businesses think about CRM. Highrise is an awesome choice if the way your company uses/thinks about CRM matches Jason's view. Really, with the choices now on the market, you are not only signing up to the actual software product, but also to that particular provider's philosophy and ethos. It is important your view off the world aligns with that of your chosen software provider.

      I wanted to elaborate that our company, Pipelinedeals is an option at $15/user/month with no long term contracts. We endeavor to bring a constantly evolving and improving product with the most valuable pieces of functionality of the enterprise solutions, less the lofty price tag and aggressive contracts.

      Thanks to Ben Smith from Heap to include us above. It shows a lot of character for someone to not only mention themselves but throw in a couple of other solutions, arguably competitors. Very much appreciated Ben and I look forward to returning the favor.

      ~JP Werlin, PipelineDeals Co-Founder
      (866) 702-7303
    • Entellium's Rave product is an interesting product. Two things they do differently - 1) they don't have the same old boring user interface and 2) the take a smart client approach so you get the interface of a desktop app with the data sharing and other benefits of a hosted app.
    • John- Thanks for writing this, my brother and I just started looking around at different CRM solutions recently. While our needs are undoubtedly different than others, two things that really matter to me are compatability with existing software and analysis features. We still use Quickbooks for accounting so it would be important that the CRM integrates with QB (and ideally our shopping cart software as well!). For small businesses I think people often overlook the value of not having to do data entry yourself. We typically have 3-5 employees at any point in time (our business is somewhat seasonal) but they all have a purpose and tasks to perform other than just taking data from one program and entering it into another...which leaves us with my brother and I who already shoulder the rest of the "no one else to do it" jobs. Anytime we can find some software that saves precious keystrokes we eat it up.

      We've tried using the QB customer manager as a cheap fill-in/trial run of CRM software but I feel it's too limited as far as the analysis, sorting, rating and relevance type of viewing I like. I am a nerd at heart after all, and data is my friend so the more of it to manipulate the better.

      Thanks again
    • Great posts, have found it really interesting the different view points.

      One questions - I am trying to find out and evaulate different applications available. Obviously I have the above ideas BUT where do people look and how do you search for these products and other small business IT apps - all I find when I use google are the same old companies - SAP, Salesforce and these are well out of my league? Are there good search terms, websites or blogs out there?

      Thanks in advance
    • John Jantsch
      Duncan, You can grab a bunch of good links here from all the comments.

      Also, Inside CRM is pretty good - http://www.insidecrm.com
    • David G.
      John,
      Great information, Just wanted to share one with you. Ted Rubin an old friend and associate designed a very industry specific CRM for the Automobile Dealership. I have not looked at in for several years (no current need) but when I did use it I found it very valuable for managing. It also appears it was picked up by JM&A in Florida.

      http://www.dealerups.com/public/p1.asp
    • Not wishing to be a "PITA" but shouldn't we be talking about strategy and not software? CRM software is developed (I hope) to help a company deliver better services to its clients. What I hear most is which software package should we use - Cart is before the horse don't you think?

      (PITA = Pain in the A$$) :)
    • John Jantsch
      Bill,

      Asking good, relevant questions does not make you a PITA.

      Of course you're right, that's the place to start but few do. I've got a problem give me a tool, if that doesn't work, give me a new tool.

      I've often said CRM is more about culture than software - no matter what tool you use if the culture, the leadership, the current process isn't set up to support it, it will likely fail.

      On the other hand, most of the tools out there will work with the right mindset and strategy in place.
    • Hi Bill,

      I just wanted to comment on your great point. I do think that many people confuse "CRM" with "CRM software". In an attempt to make this point, we actually spend the first part of our manual discussing a coffee shop and how by simply putting a sticker on the cup they have achieved every goal that you would ask of a CRM.

      What someone really should do, to implement a CRM, is get a list of goals they want to achieve with the CRM system (not necessarily software), then find the simplest tool that achieves all of their goals. If you can achieve all of your goals with a spiral ring notebook, then you should use a spiral ring notebook. Of course if you need Salesforce with some-odd add-ons then that's what you should use.
    • Gerald Tannam
      Hi John -

      I found this a particularly helpful edition. I liked what I heard about both Signals 37 and HighRise (and am seriously looking to them for our own CRM upgrade). I was also struck by Jason's "I like when I hear others do well", which seems to me to be at the heart of his business success.

      I believe that the big corporations will have to follow the lead of small business (and before us, small and big countries) in taking a friendly competitive approach to commerce and look forward to using 37 Signal's products & piggybacking on Jason's attitude to help us all get there.

      Thanks! Gerard http://openheartbranding.blogspot.com/
    • Pam
      Great post and podcast, John. Thank you.

      Quick question: I just tried to take your 4-question survey and got a page that said the survey is closed. Do you plan to publish the results? I'm very interested to know what others think are the most important features.
    • John Jantsch
      Pam,

      Yes I will publish the results this week.
    • Joan
      I'm using Wrike for project management and about 3 months ago I desided to use it for simple CRM too. I put all my clients data into Wrike and organized my clients in groups. The cools thing is that we can treat each client as a project and collaborate on working for him, that is assign tasks, set due dates and build plans.
    • You missed one that you should add to your list. It's very affordable, works on all OS's (Mac, PC, Linux...).

      Have a unique way also that is different than all the salesforce.com clones.

      SalesJunction.com
    • Hi John,

      Your article was really insightful and highlights that CRM solutions for the small business sector may indeed be over subscribed...but I think we all doing ok business out there hoping that we dont get blasted by a google or some other large player who gives it away as a value add to some other product.

      I thought perhaps some of us "smaller" providers should actually get together and look at creating the uber SME CRM solution, combining forces, technologies and solutions. Easily said I know but maybe its worth considering, Like other product life cycles we'll see consolidation at some stage I think.

      Thanks again, going to go looking for the results of the survey now.

      PS: We develop NovoCRM...a niche solution for small businesses, generally software development in nature, but able to cater to others too....good to be part of the club. Cheers..!
    • Hi all:
      You should take a look at Entellium's RAVE CRM. We are on-demand CRM solution focused primarily on the small business. We have a unique design and UI, based on gamer influenced design. The idea is that if kid can take out a complex game and start playing seriously in 15 min, business software, and for that matter, CRM should not be any more complex.
      RAVE is highly customizable, priced right(we do not nickel and dime you to death as some of our competitors like Salesforce.com) and there is a freetrial going on right now at www.ravecrm.com .
      I pray we are added to John's list-we are so it.
    • Great! Everubody posts his CRM here.
      Take a look at LEADSExplorer
      This CRM starts from the visits on your website, as 7 out of 10 B2B purchases start with an Internet search. Thus from the moment the potential customers visit, you can start tracking and nurturing them.
      A Lead and Customer Relationship Management
    • thaumata
      Highrise was really promising, but they don't allow you to add custom fields, which is a total deal breaker for a business like mine. Also, if you've been using basecamp for a long time and have some projects in there or contacts, you can't easily integrate that data between the two sites, which is really unfortunate.

      Salesforce looks to do everything but the laundry, but I have a one-woman business and while my needs are unique, they're just not that complicated, and I don't have so much time to wade through hundreds of pages of online docs to find how to do simple functions.

      Honestly, if Highrise would just become a bit more flexible so that I could add custom fields and reports, and maybe even add in some product tracking, I would be SO happy to support 37signals as they developed it further. As it is, I am still looking for solutions.
    • CRMbrella might be a good choice for those who still favor the performance of the desktop...
    • aah... "..the performance of the desktop". That resonates with me. In our country, with its poor excuse for broadband, SaaS products struggle to gain traction.
    • We use 5PMweb as our small CRM tool
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