Ask the coach about CRM: Some great tools for the Sales Evangelist

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Karl Goldfield.
Categories: Ask the Coach, CRM-SFA, Sales 2.0, Sales Evangelist, Sales Process.

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A reader and great friend to the entrepreneur,

Cheryl Liquori, asked me the following:

“Do you have any knowledge of, or experience, working with ZOHO.com for CRM? I’m not interested in the desktop applications, but only in the CRM. I\’ve read reviews, but they seem to focus on large enterprise applications. For the sole propriator on a shoe string, wrestling with excel and overwhelmed by user-unfriendly ACT, I was wondering about zoho as an alternative. Your expert thoughts?”

Now you all know I support Landslide as the ultimate Workstyle system. If you need something that focuses o the sales process, YOU MUST ADD LANDSLIDE TO YOUR TOOLKIT!

What you do not know is that I am designing a fully automated CRM system for a client that is based on the combo dialer-crm Insidesales.com. These guys have designed a complete system that allows you to do anything via javascript. I am literally making it so reps can make 200-300 quality calls a day with almost no admin work. EVERYTHING IS AUTOMATED BY A BUTTON CLICK!

If you are CRM hunting, let me know, as I get a referral fee for either of the above.

Now back to the question. What a coincidence! I found Zoho and have loaded one of my clients into it. Mind you, I havenever talked to the company, but intend to!

As their sole sales person for my startup client I have started using it for everything. Frankly, it is awesome! I believe it is based on SugarCRM, but SalesForce look out. At a price of $12/mo after 3 FREE USERS, this is going to get the small businesses, entrepreneurs, individual consultants… onboard and adopting.

So far:

1. Fast, I mean super fast

2. Complete sales and marketing system with all of the trimmings

3. The reporting is easy to use

4. Forecast tool is great

5. Opportunities are called potentials, how adorable!

6. Uploads work really well.

7. Mimics the standard SalesForce, SugarCRM, Netsuite methodology of lead to accounts.

8. Really flexible design

9. Did I mention that the first 3 users are free?

10. Upgradeable to an enterprise system with a load of featers for $25 a user. YES I SAID $25 A USER!

I would strongly recommend any small budget player with little demands on automation to play with this system prior to looking at anything else.

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4 comments.

Sales Training: ki work and the world of sales »« Coffee Break: Actually a pepto break, we need to have patience with ourselves

Cheryl

Comment on October 9th, 2008.

Karl,
Thank you very much for taking time to consider, investigate and answer my question. My sole-proprietor clients are going to be relieved to hear there’s an easy and workable solution out there; and I’m thrilled to provide another resource to clients and colleagues alike.
Thanks again! Cheryl

Engago Team

Comment on November 11th, 2008.

All these CRM solutions have very comparable features.
This ends into a price war as mentioned in this blog post.

It is time solutions for the salesman moves beyond forms and reports on a relational data base as this concept is 20 years old.

There is more in the world what a salesman needs for getting leads, nurturing and closing deals.

VMS

Comment on January 23rd, 2009.

I am using ZOHO CRM at the moment and I haven’t really felt the benefit. I feel that I’m not really using it to its full potential as the layouts need to be modified which I found difficult to do.

Has anyone got any tips and layout suggestions for a field sales rep.

Also Karl is there any news on your CRM you have been working on?

Sam

Comment on February 2nd, 2009.

I think that online applications are a great way to save money. Here is a site that I found that has some more info on CRM-like apps: