Over the 45 years I’ve been involved in sales, I’ve used all kinds of sales contact management tools for tracking, follow-up and reporting. They range from a pad of paper to some of the most sophisticated (and complicated) tech based tools of today. And, I still haven’t found that one tool that is effective, simple, and will be welcomed by most salespeople with open arms. Too many of the contact management tools of today seem to have been designed by committee. And, there were too many financial controller types on the committee, it seems to me.
Please help me and salespeople everywhere!
Tell me what you’re using and why you use it. I’d love to find a cloud based system that will give us the tools we need for tracking and reporting without weighing us down with unnecessary work that takes away from actual selling.
I’ve got something that I personally use and I’ll tell you what it is and why I use it after we start our discussion. You can answer in the comments section at the bottom of this post or send me an email if you prefer. Please put “Your Blog Request” in the subject line. Thank you!
I think there are a host of systems that can be good, but it depends 100% on how they are implemented and how the associated processes are defined. I love Salesforce and believe it can be an extremely effective solution that helps sales people really show their value. BUT it all depends on the way it is set up, the processes and how they are integrated with the sales process in given company.
I agree with your comment, Jacqui, especially the part after BUT. That’s one thing that small companies sometimes just aren’t not willing to take the time to set up and they quickly lose interest in Salesforce.
Hi Bob,
We built Contactzilla to be a super easy to use tool for managing contacts, a CRM system for people that think CRM is too complicated. It’s currently in beta you can try it at http://www.contactzilla.com
If you are looking purely for a simple sales pipeline tool we highly recommend http://www.pipedrive.com (not related to us at all).
Hope this helps, Mark.
Thanks, Mark, for sharing both names. We’ll check them out.
No problem. Let me know what you think.