How to find the right CRM for your startup

How will you know if a CRM is right for your startup?

You may be tempted to go with a solution that offers you more features than any other CRM, but it’s more important to find the one that offers the right features. You may also be tempted to go for a CRM for startups, designed or priced with new businesses in mind, but you may quickly grow out of it and need to find yet another with more features.

Here are some essential features to look for in a CRM as a startup.

Sales reporting and forecasting

If you feel overwhelmed by the high (and often unrealistic) expectations typical to the startup world, a great CRM will be a game-changer.

With visual reporting, you can get an instant overview of the current situation. You’ll be able to answer questions like:

How many open deals do we currently have?

What’s our stage-to-stage conversion rate?

How successfully do we attract new leads?

Where do we find our highest value leads?

These numbers will also help you forecast future sales and plan your sales activities to maximize results.

Automations

Your CRM shouldn’t add work to your plate; it should help you remove some of it.

How? By automating tasks like:

Generating reports

Following up with a template email

Scheduling next activities for a deal in your pipeline

Collecting publicly available data about a lead

This way, you can eliminate busywork and focus on sales conversations that move the needle for your startup instead of the admin that comes with them.

In Pipedrive, you can automate just about any step of your sales process, collect lead data with one click and boost your performance with AI-powered recommendations on what to focus on next.

Customization

Who are your customers? What type of data do you need to track based on that? Does your CRM let you tweak and customize options to match your needs?

Here are some CRM elements you may want to customize:

Pipeline stages

Data fields inside contacts

Activity types

Templates

Web forms

Metrics

Adjusting these to your startup’s needs should be easy and intuitive.

Your business is unique, so customizing your CRM is crucial for efficiency. When you tailor your CRM to your sales cycle and your needs, tracking every interaction becomes a habit. No detail will get lost, so your CRM can truly become the main hub for all lead generation and sales activities.

Easy user onboarding

When you hire a new sales rep, would you rather put them through a weeklong sales process training course or have them spend their first week diving into details about your leads, sales conversations and customers?

If the answer is the latter, make sure your CRM of choice is easy to get started with. The faster your new sales hire can start making sales, the better for your entire startup, so pick a CRM that makes it possible.

Business data security

You don’t need us to tell you about the importance of data protection when your business operates online. This is simply a reminder that your CRM should be part of your overall approach to data security.

A great CRM will allow you to:

Monitor who has access to your company data

Manage logins, user permissions and access

Back up your data regularly

Prevent security breaches and get alerts for suspicious activity

Your customer data shouldn’t be an afterthought. Check out how Pipedrive CRM gives you a peace of mind when it comes to privacy and security.

