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13 CRM Tools to Help You Stay Connected to Your Customers

Scott Gerber
Scott Gerber
business.com Member
Apr 18, 2017

13 entrepreneurs from YEC share their favorite CRMs

It's hard to keep track of how customers are interacting with your company. Are you getting more leads from your Instagram posts or do your clients prefer to talk with someone directly via phone call? And how many people are remembering your marketing materials?

Customer relationship management programs help companies follow their prospects, tracking where they connect, where they lose interest and how often they buy products. However, there are a wide variety of programs, and not every one fits every industry or business.

Below, 13 members from YEC discuss their preferred CRM and why it works for them.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is an easy yet powerful CRM tool that offers the same primary capabilities as a larger CRM without overcomplicating the process. Its automation systems and analytics help us to be more efficient in organizing and keeping track of prospects. Since integrating HubSpot into our marketing strategy, we have noticed a significant increase in our sales. - Stanley Meytin, True Film Production

2. Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft integrates with our VoIP system, Dropbox, DocuSign and text marketing applications. We have been able to incorporate several automated tools into one system that reaches across all departments. This has allowed us to create a customized system that incorporates the automated marketing tools provided by Infusionsoft with tools that are custom to our unique sales process. - Hillary Hobson, Highest Cash Offer

3. Intercom

Our team uses Intercom for our customer support; we also have a WordPress theme for support documentation. Customers can easily start a conversation with our team through a simple web form. This approach works well and has proven to be efficient for us. - Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

4. Salesforce

Salesforce makes it easy for us to stay on top of our clients and the communication our team has had with them, as well as track emails sent and report key performance indicators for the sales team. - Jayna Cooke, EVENTup

5. Close.io

Most traditional CRM software programs are heavy and require a lot of money to get implemented correctly. With Close.io, you can hit the ground running very quickly without the need to hire a consultant to set everything up. It is lightweight, acts as a phone system and keeps track of all customer communications. For most businesses, this is exactly what you need. - Ryan Shank, PhoneWagon

6. ONTRAPORT

We've been using ONTRAPORT as our CRM for the past three years. Email marketing is very important for converting leads into customers, and ONTRAPORT's functionality makes it very easy to set up sophisticated lead funnels. It also integrates seamlessly into our tech platform, so we can properly track sales by customer and collect other important data. - Diana Goodwin, AquaMobile

7. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a simple to use and relatively cost-efficient CRM tool. It helps you track client and project status in a visual drag-and-drop funnel. It's straightforward to learn and it's especially useful for people who find Salesforce too expensive or complicated. - Adelyn Zhou, TOPBOTS

8. WordPress

WordPress continues to be a platform that has completely changed the way we all use the internet. We work with customers and clients around the world who all use WordPress to power their businesses. With this in mind, we've been able to create a platform and membership site based on WordPress and the many plugins and tools they have to offer. - Zac Johnson, Blogger

9. Insightly

Insightly rocks because it is so comprehensive and includes a wide range of project management tools. It also works with so many other tools and platforms to expand what you can do and how tightly you can integrate all of your activities. - John Rampton, Due

10. Appboy

We use Appboy to engage with our mobile app users. It’s a comprehensive tool to monitor our community of users and provide personalized updates via push notifications and email campaigns. Appboy makes it easy to keep track of feedback and allows us to create custom on-boarding campaigns, answers to frequently asked questions and more. - Brian David Crane, Caller Smart Inc.

11. Streak

The Streak CRM has been great for our business. It's simple, flexible and integrates great with Gmail. You don't often need an overpowering CRM (ahem, Salesforce). It's like killing an ant with a sledgehammer and can also frustrate staff. Picking a simpler, effective CRM is the goal, and Streak has been a good choice for us. - Mitch Gordon, Go Overseas

12. Highrise

We find that the most successful tools for our business are the simplest. Highrise keeps CRM extremely basic without all the "noise" that keeps us from using the tool for what it does best: managing our customer's information. The more complex a customer relationship management software becomes, the less our employees choose to use it. Simple is best and Highrise gets it. - Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors

13. PipelineDeals

We've used PipelineDeals for years and love it for its simplicity. It's a great CRM for service-based businesses that sell discrete projects and want a way to manage all of the activities that go into their sales cycle. We pair it with Zapier to help automate profile creation from any forms we have on our website or marketing collateral, and it streamlines all of our data entry. - Ross Beyeler, Growth Spark

Photo credit: Shutterstock / one photo

Scott Gerber
Scott Gerber
business.com Member
Scott Gerber is the founder of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. Gerber is also a serial entrepreneur, regular TV commentator and author of the book Never Get a “Real” Job.