I’ve had a surprising amount of questions from start-ups recently, especially from solopreuneurs and consultants, about what the best CRM would be for their start-up. I think it’s worth sharing my views on this question here, and my answer might surprise you.
It Makes No Business Sense to Pay for CRM Software that you’re Not Going to Use
When you’re a start-up you don’t know what you don’t know. Your vision for the business will more than likely change along the way. And the company that evolves from your start-up may be very different to the one you envisaged. So don’t expect to know what you need in a CRM to support your business and clients.
The start-up phase of a business is all about experimentation, discovery, and then pivoting to take advantage of the data you’ve collected. You need to focus on making sure that your product and/or service is viable, that you know your target market(s) inside out, and that you price and position yourself within that market correctly. The only way to do this is to get out there and test it all.
Established businesses rarely use all the functionality of the CRM software they buy. And in my experience start-ups use even less at between 0%-10% of the functionality. Yes, that’s right some people buy the software, never start using it, and end up buying another solution that meets their needs later, when they become an established business. At best they end up with an initial outlay plus monthly subscriptions for software their business doesn’t need at worst it’s one more business cost that can drive your start-up into the ground.
My advice: use the cash you save to invest in market research and product development.
Save Yourself Time – You Don’t Need to Keep up With the Joneses
As consumers we do a lot of research both online and offline. We’ll take advice from friends, relatives, and other connections. Pumping them for business insights if they run successful businesses. We might even envy the way that their businesses work and so attempt to emulate or better them.
But technology and CRM needs differ during the various stages of business. I work with established SMBs as well as start-ups and I don’t believe that I’ve ever come across the requirements of these groups matching. Start-ups often think that they need the same technology as established SMBs, but this is rarely the case, let me explain why.
When you’re in start-up mode you won’t know what you’re IT requirements will be. You have the bare bones of what will become a company. You won’t yet have the stakeholders – clients, suppliers, investors, staff – in your company or the products and services to determine everyone’s needs. So researching and implementing a sophisticated CRM from day one is not only a waste of money, but time and energy too.
A more established and successful business has these stakeholders in place and is in a place to make an informed decision about their needs after consulting with them.
Of course being distracted by shiny pieces of technology is an excellent form of procrastination. It keeps you away from completing the tasks that your fledgling business needs you to do!
My advice: use the extra time to get out there and network with potential suppliers, clients, investors, and staff.
Conclusion: The Best CRM for Start-ups?
Just going to put this out there — there is no holy grail — it doesn’t matter if you’re a start-up or an established business, there’s no one best CRM. There will always be compromise with an off the shelf solution. You’ll have to decide which features you absolutely must have and which ones you can do without. Luckily as a start-up you don’t need to worry about this because you don’t need a specialist CRM – you’re going to keep it simple.
I’m someone who likes as few moving parts as possible. So Google would be my first port of call. You have a few options:
The Free Google Cloud Based Solution – A Solution You Can Work With
1. Use a Gmail account for your email system.
2. Install the Chrome browser extension Raportive to import all your Gmail contact’s social media accounts directly into Gmail – allowing you to follow them and keep up to date within Gmail.
3. You’ll want to manage your inbox efficiently – preferably to an inbox zero position. My favourite extension for this is ActiveInbox - the free version is adequate or you can update for $25 per year. It’s an app that I’ve always got my money’s worth from.
4. Use Google calendar for all your appointments.
5. Use Google Drive as your CRM. It’s an elegant solution with no moving parts at all. If you’re capturing leads via web forms across the internet, you can keep your lists efficiently synced.
That might sound like hard work, but it really isn’t. There are a few free templates that you can copy over to your Drive to get you started. Here are a couple that I really like:
The simplest one I’ve come across is Ecquire’s CRM Template - it’s ready for you to add some extra columns for notes and key demographics.
On the other hand this one from James Moore is more of a belts and braces solution, he even includes the kitchen sink. He has literally thought of everything. You don’t need to use it all, but it’s there if you need it.
6. If you don’t particularly like Google Drive then I’d suggest trying Streak, which is a very neat add-on for Gmail. It was introduced to me a few months ago by a commenter on one of my earlier posts, and I have to say it’s a gem.
It’s free, whilst in beta, but they will be following a freemium model shortly. It’s almost verging on one of those shiny toys that you don’t need to be concentrating on, but it’s so quick to install, set up, and use that with the other Gmail add-ons it’s a bit of a no-brainer.
One consideration to note – I think it might be simpler to export data from #5 into a new CRM, once you’re ready, than it would be to migrate from #6.
Non Google Based Solutions
If you hate Google, and I know some of you do, you could use a desktop solution such as Excel, Open Office, or Numbers. Simply download one or both of the spreadsheets from #5 and open in your app of choice! You can make the data accessible from anywhere by saving the data to Dropbox or any of the other cloud file storage providers.
There are of course bound to be some exceptions to this, but I think that the majority of start-ups can use this tactic to help them to bootstrap their businesses.
Am I wrong, should start-ups invest time and money into technology from day one? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
Copyright 2013 SteamFeed. All rights reserved. Sign up for our free newsletter!
Author information
The post Which CRM is Best for a Start-up? appeared first on SteamFeed.
