What's the Best CRM for Startups? (It's Not Salesforce)
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 4:31 am
"Don't use a gun to kill a mosquito" - Confucius.
There are two keywords in the title of this post. Startups and Salesforce.
Startups are usually juggling a million things at once. Ensuring product/market fit, building the product with the support of their first few customers, solving virtually non-existent or chaotic processes, and saving every dollar they can (I'm not talking about the lucky few fueled by venture capital) while pursuing their dream.
Salesforce is a giant (with a capital G). It's a huge Phone Number Database corporation that creates a complex set of products that cost a fortune and require additional investment in serious expertise to use effectively. Salesforce CRM apps aren't really designed for small businesses. It's a great app, it does a lot of things very well, but it only makes sense when you do them in a ladder .
One might assume that the two will never meet .
It still amazes me how often startups simply default to Salesforce when moving to a CRM solution. Once the first few bills hit the credit card (up to the max), they realize how expensive this solution can be. More often than not, companies that are simply growing their sales and marketing functions find little use for the vast majority of the capabilities that Salesforce provides them - at a high cost.
So you're thinking, " Okay, smart guy, I see you're another CRM vendor who says Salesforce is the wrong choice. What then?
Short answer: It depends.
To get to the heart of the argument, we need to break it down into a few key questions that need to be answered.
What is CRM in the context of startups? (short answer: it's complicated)
Can a startup simply not have a CRM and still keep the bundle? (short answer: not really)
What are some good questions to ask when choosing a CRM solution? (Short answer: very good questions. Three of them.)
Grab a can of your favorite beverage and relax. We're going to take a little detour and try to clear up a lot of the confusion surrounding the concept of CRM and its usefulness.
What is CRM in the context of startups?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. The problem is that most people focus on “management” while ignoring what really matters – the customer relationship. That’s why arguments often boil down to the advantages or disadvantages of one technology solution over another.
CRM software is not what drives your relationship. That work is all yours.
Now let's define what a customer is in the context of a startup. It's unlikely that you have a database of tens of thousands of contacts, thousands of paying customers, and dozens of sales and marketing people scattered around the world using complex customer acquisition strategies.
(If yes, please stop reading this post right now and explore the full range of features of Vtiger All-In-One edition . We would like you to be a paying customer. I promise - This is the only commercial plugin in this post.)
Chances are, you're talking to a handful of early adopters every day. These interactions aren't just transactional, they're transformational . Your product evolves based on these conversations. Your entire focus is on product/market fit.
Those conversations, the leads you get through referrals and early adopters, are gold. The last thing you want is to lose customer data or drop the ball when closing deals because the information was scattered across sticky notes or in one of the dozen spreadsheets you created.
Let's face it. In a startup, you're likely the founder and head of a one-person marketing department and a friendly customer service agent all rolled into one. If you have a couple of other warriors around, congratulations - you can afford to sleep for a few hours.
Is complex software with a steep learning curve the right choice in this situation? If you enjoy understanding the guts of enterprise-grade applications, something like Salesforce might work for you. If you’re like me, you want to focus on the relationships, not the tool that manages them.
So, let me go back to my previous short answer to this question. What CRM is in your context is complicated. It all depends on you. If you believe that customer centricity is important and want to build a solid foundation for your business, treat your customers with the respect they deserve and get a CRM tool.
Can a startup simply not have a CRM and still keep the bundle?
This is a very popular question. Why bother with yet another software that also seems like a glorified contact management tool. Spreadsheets seems to do the job very well.
Spreadsheets are very useful. They are designed to crunch numbers and process data. With a little effort, you can even build fairly complex data models and perform goal-seeking analysis on your billion-dollar ARR forecasts.
But they are definitely not designed for real-time collaboration and historical data tracking! And the less we talk about spreadsheet data security, the better.
In the early days of my startup, we had only a few dozen customers who paid us very little in real money. What we valued infinitely more was all the feedback they patiently gave us about the product, the process, and our offerings as we struggled with the challenges of building our company. I wanted all my teams to have the information they needed about customers when they needed it, without having to spend hours training to figure it all out. We used a free cloud CRM. It got the job done, it did it efficiently, and it cost us nothing.
At the very least, it will keep all your customer data centralized and secure. A good one will even give you insight and be a great companion in your sales process as you build it.
You may save a few dollars a month by not investing in a CRM, but the losses you'll incur from lost sales, missed conversations you weren't able to follow up on, customer churn from support requests that were never resolved, and campaigns that kept sending out to people who weren't interested will cost you 1,000 times more.
There are two keywords in the title of this post. Startups and Salesforce.
Startups are usually juggling a million things at once. Ensuring product/market fit, building the product with the support of their first few customers, solving virtually non-existent or chaotic processes, and saving every dollar they can (I'm not talking about the lucky few fueled by venture capital) while pursuing their dream.
Salesforce is a giant (with a capital G). It's a huge Phone Number Database corporation that creates a complex set of products that cost a fortune and require additional investment in serious expertise to use effectively. Salesforce CRM apps aren't really designed for small businesses. It's a great app, it does a lot of things very well, but it only makes sense when you do them in a ladder .
One might assume that the two will never meet .
It still amazes me how often startups simply default to Salesforce when moving to a CRM solution. Once the first few bills hit the credit card (up to the max), they realize how expensive this solution can be. More often than not, companies that are simply growing their sales and marketing functions find little use for the vast majority of the capabilities that Salesforce provides them - at a high cost.
So you're thinking, " Okay, smart guy, I see you're another CRM vendor who says Salesforce is the wrong choice. What then?
Short answer: It depends.
To get to the heart of the argument, we need to break it down into a few key questions that need to be answered.
What is CRM in the context of startups? (short answer: it's complicated)
Can a startup simply not have a CRM and still keep the bundle? (short answer: not really)
What are some good questions to ask when choosing a CRM solution? (Short answer: very good questions. Three of them.)
Grab a can of your favorite beverage and relax. We're going to take a little detour and try to clear up a lot of the confusion surrounding the concept of CRM and its usefulness.
What is CRM in the context of startups?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. The problem is that most people focus on “management” while ignoring what really matters – the customer relationship. That’s why arguments often boil down to the advantages or disadvantages of one technology solution over another.
CRM software is not what drives your relationship. That work is all yours.
Now let's define what a customer is in the context of a startup. It's unlikely that you have a database of tens of thousands of contacts, thousands of paying customers, and dozens of sales and marketing people scattered around the world using complex customer acquisition strategies.
(If yes, please stop reading this post right now and explore the full range of features of Vtiger All-In-One edition . We would like you to be a paying customer. I promise - This is the only commercial plugin in this post.)
Chances are, you're talking to a handful of early adopters every day. These interactions aren't just transactional, they're transformational . Your product evolves based on these conversations. Your entire focus is on product/market fit.
Those conversations, the leads you get through referrals and early adopters, are gold. The last thing you want is to lose customer data or drop the ball when closing deals because the information was scattered across sticky notes or in one of the dozen spreadsheets you created.
Let's face it. In a startup, you're likely the founder and head of a one-person marketing department and a friendly customer service agent all rolled into one. If you have a couple of other warriors around, congratulations - you can afford to sleep for a few hours.
Is complex software with a steep learning curve the right choice in this situation? If you enjoy understanding the guts of enterprise-grade applications, something like Salesforce might work for you. If you’re like me, you want to focus on the relationships, not the tool that manages them.
So, let me go back to my previous short answer to this question. What CRM is in your context is complicated. It all depends on you. If you believe that customer centricity is important and want to build a solid foundation for your business, treat your customers with the respect they deserve and get a CRM tool.
Can a startup simply not have a CRM and still keep the bundle?
This is a very popular question. Why bother with yet another software that also seems like a glorified contact management tool. Spreadsheets seems to do the job very well.
Spreadsheets are very useful. They are designed to crunch numbers and process data. With a little effort, you can even build fairly complex data models and perform goal-seeking analysis on your billion-dollar ARR forecasts.
But they are definitely not designed for real-time collaboration and historical data tracking! And the less we talk about spreadsheet data security, the better.
In the early days of my startup, we had only a few dozen customers who paid us very little in real money. What we valued infinitely more was all the feedback they patiently gave us about the product, the process, and our offerings as we struggled with the challenges of building our company. I wanted all my teams to have the information they needed about customers when they needed it, without having to spend hours training to figure it all out. We used a free cloud CRM. It got the job done, it did it efficiently, and it cost us nothing.
At the very least, it will keep all your customer data centralized and secure. A good one will even give you insight and be a great companion in your sales process as you build it.
You may save a few dollars a month by not investing in a CRM, but the losses you'll incur from lost sales, missed conversations you weren't able to follow up on, customer churn from support requests that were never resolved, and campaigns that kept sending out to people who weren't interested will cost you 1,000 times more.