The Best CRM Startups For B2B Sales is a term that describes an online business’ assessment of early stage, small or young businesses. These businesses are commonly referred to as startups. These startups are often known to have uncertain futures according to leading startup scholars. Some people use the terms small business and startup interchangeably, but there are some differences between the two words which make it important for strategic marketing purposes to change your mind about using the best CRM startups for b2b sales.
There are many things that should be considered while selecting the best CRM for b2b startups. An ideal CRM for b2b startups should be perfect for keeping track of prospects, leads, and sales pipelines. These top CRM startups will help you narrow down to what’s best for your startup.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive makes the list of the best CRMs for startups because of its focus on getting you more sales and managing your deal pipeline effectively.
This tool was founded in 2010, with over 95,000 companies in 179 countries using its services.
Main Features
- Visual Sales Pipeline: Prompts you to stay organized and in control of complex sales processes.
- Sales Automation: After every activity, Pipedrive reminds you to schedule the next step, or you can have the tool automate the whole sales process for you.
- Mobile App Integration: Access Pipedrive in your iOS or Android device wherever you are.
- Reporting: Get performance metrics that have been customized for your business.
Benefits
- Add or complete activities on the go
- Sync your tasks with Google Calendar
- Full transparency of your business
- Built under an activity-based selling system
Oracle CRM
Oracle is another complex, powerful system that rivals Salesforce in terms of pricing, learning curves, and a setup process that’s going to take time. Once again, the benefit is you end up with a fully customized platform designed to meet your specific needs.
The key difference with Oracle is that the company has been heavily invested in artificial intelligence whereas Salesforce and many other providers are only now venturing into this technology – if at all.
That said, Salesforce’s AI platform Einstein is no slouch.
Oracle CRM On Demand brings industry-leading predictive analytics, forecasting and algorithmic data management to a truly enterprise CRM. So if these are key selling points for you, Oracle is capable of delivering more accurate predictions and robust calculations than most of its rivals.
Freshsales
Freshsales was designed with startups and small businesses in mind as you can manage contacts, capture leads, make phone calls, send emails, and create sales funnels all in one place without leaving the platform.
The tool was created in 2016 and is used by big companies such as Dyson, Blue Nile, and PharmEasy.
Main Features
- Customer 360° View: Access your customer’s social profiles, identify their touchpoints, and see what they’re doing all on one screen.
- AI-powered Insights: Find the best leads, drive sales, and improve conversion rates with the help of artificial intelligence.
- Automation: Automate repetitive tasks such as communication and sales processes.
- Integration: Integrate with Freshdesk and unlock new features.
Benefits
- Close more deals faster
- Personalize engagement and build relationships easily
- Find more opportunities
- Reduce IT costs and complexity
ZenDesk CRM
ZenDesk offers a lead generation and engagement tool called Reach (within The Sales Suite product that offers both Sell and Reach) that helps you build targeted prospect lists, identify the right professionals within each account, and prospect across multiple channels creating customised email sequences using personalised templates to automatically follow up leads. Other products include Zendesk for support and the Zendesk Marketplace.
The option to have multiple sales pipelines is available as well as being able to customise the stages and data fields. You can also define scoring formulas to score leads and deal to prioritise and know which to focus on.
Data can be added using their lead generation and engagement tool, Reach. Data can also be imported and captured from new leads who enquire through your website form where you are able to build targeted lead lists using industry, company size, role and more. You can view lists of individual records for leads, contacts, and deals that can be customised by applying filters of your choice. This can then be saved as smart lists to access your filtered view of your data.
Copper
If you use G Suite and want a CRM solution that can natively integrate with it, then Copper is the best choice for you.
Formerly known as ProsperWorks, this CRM is on our list because of its simple UI and powerful workflow automation that streamlines your sales process.
Copper was founded in 2013 and currently has over 25,000 users in 100 countries.
Main Features
- Sales Management: Can handle bulk sales emails with ease.
- Eye-Pleasing Dashboard: A dashboard that displays everybody’s tasks so you can ensure your team follows up on leads.
- Opportunity Management: Track deals that are in progress with visual pipelines.
- Multiple Currencies: Manage, report, and record opportunities in different currencies.
Benefits
- Google Workspace integration
- Build authentic relationships
- Auto-update profiles
- View Copper in English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.
Nutshell
Nutshell has developed a CRM platform with entrepreneurs and small businesses in mind. The company offers two affordable plans and, like Pipedrive, both offer unlimited contact records and storage space so you’re never forced to pay more as your business grows.
The Starter plan will cost you $19 per month, per user, and this gives you access to most features, too. The biggest omission on the Starter plan is that you don’t get any automation features and there are a few other things missing, such as call tracking and certain reports.
The Pro plan unlocks all of these features for $35 per month, per user, and this gets you a capable CRM platform with some decent automation.
Nutshell doesn’t compete with the advanced automation and email marketing capabilities of platforms like ActiveCampaign but the key selling point here is that you’re not limited to contact restrictions. So, if you’re more interested in customer/lead volume and less concerned about features and lead quality, Nutshell remains an affordable choice.
Salesforce CRM
With Salesforce CRM you can get a complete view of your customers, activity history, customer communications, and internal account discussions in one place. You can also set up automatic lead scoring and routing to ensure leads are assigned to the right people, as well as track and receive updates on information about your leads such as customer activities and what stage your deal is in.
You can create email templates, create targeted email lists, and send mass emails while automatically tracking which leads or contacts received emails. You are also able to manage and track marketing campaigns across all channels and see where a marketing campaign lead came from.
You can see a complete view of your entire pipeline and business by creating real-time configurable reports and dashboards to track team performance and build customized sales forecasting reports using drag and drop fields, filters, groupings, and charts.
Creatio
Creatio (formerly bpm’online) provides a comprehensive, flexible CRM platform for enterprise brands. It adopts a similar structure to HubSpot, offering three separate products for marketing, sales and customer service.
What sets creation apart is that you can customise your plan with complete freedom, based on the number of active contacts you want, number of users, number of emails you need to send to each contact per month, the type of technical support you require and a range of other variables.
You can even select how long a contract to sign and your fee per year drastically reduces, the longer you sign up for.
Flexibility is Creatio’s biggest strength and the quality of its tools/features is high across the board although analytics and reporting isn’t quite as extensive as some of the other enterprise options we’ve looked at.
Really Simple Systems
Really Simple Systems makes our list of the best CRMs for startups because it achieves a balance of being easy-to-use, integrating with other tools, and offering unique CRM features.
This powerful cloud-based CRM is designed for small businesses as its prices can fit your budget.
Really Simple Systems was founded in 2004 and is used by big companies like The Property Jungle and Hello Scotland, to name a few.
Main Features
- Built-in Calls: Call without leaving the platform.
- Pipeline Management: Customize or build multiple pipelines.
- Sales Analytics: Get sales insights to help you make better decisions.
- Sales Workflow: Automate repetitive sales tasks.
Benefits
- View all customer data on one page
- Loyalty and increased customer retention because of good user experience
- Scheduled reports delivered in your inbox
- Friendly customer support
Less Annoying CRM
Less Annoying CRM (LACRM) offers a solution that is specifically tailored for small businesses.
LACRM allows you to store all contact information in one place. You can customise how you see all of the notes, files, email conversations, tasks, events, and pipeline information related to a contact.
You can also have events and tasks on one calendar instead of going back and forth between different apps. The calendar and tasks are built directly into the CRM so that everything is in one place. You can set up sharing with other users at your company so that everyone can stay on the same page and sync with Google Calendar for easy access from your phone.
To help teams to focus on the right contacts, you can control whether users only have access to their own data, or to everyone’s data. Since data can be segmented into groups, users of LACRM can also be segmented into teams. This way, groups of contacts can be visible only to teams that are assigned to them.
You can run lead reports to show you a real-time list of all your leads in your pipeline. This includes contact info, notes from the last communication, status and priority of the lead. There is also an Activity report that is a list of recent activities in your CRM. Each can be filtered in various ways to see specific kinds of activities or specific users.
With an internet connection, LACRM can be accessed directly from your web browser to be accessed by almost any phone, tablet or computer.
Conclusion:
A customer relationship management (CRM) startup is a type of company that uses the concept of CRM to its advantage. What does this mean? It means that, as a startup, your business and needs are unique and tailored to the market you’re in and the customers you’re trying to reach. While it can sound daunting, using a CRM system will actually help streamline your business and increase productivity.