How to Evaluate A CRM

I work with business owners all day long and one of the first questions I ask is what is your CRM?

Then I ask where they keep their list of active and potential clients and customers.

These 2 questions provide a lot of insight into a business.

One of the most critical pieces of software for any business is its CRM - Customer Relationship Management software.

In this post, I am going to walk you through how to choose a CRM for your business.

How to evaluate the options is probably the most important part of this particular post.

How to go through an evaluation process and what to look for and the mission-critical things that you need to address, and finally we'll talk about the cost and how much is going to cost you.

Choosing your CRM is not a decision that should be taken lightly because it's very difficult to make a change.

It's expensive and time-consuming and frustrating making the change once you go down a CRM path.

Also, it's one of the most difficult decisions because CRMs aren't tools you can just take for a test drive. 

It's not a video editing application nor is it a document editor where you can just give it a wing and let's see. 

And a 14-day free trial doesn't really help either when it comes to CRMs because you have to use it in the field and you can’t do that on a trial. You have got to commit to it and you have got to bring it into your business process. 

I can't think of a way to do that with a test.

This is a decision that you have to make with a certain amount of faith with a certain number of questions that can’t be answered until you're into it.

You're not going to know exactly what the results are for you and your business.

The decision-making process is rather organic because it changes as your needs change.

My goal today is to help you understand better what is involved when choosing a CRM. 

As I go along, I'm going to introduce you to the important things that are going to have an impact on your business in different aspects.

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No CRM is going to be perfect and you're going to be disappointed with every single one in some way.

With your CRM once you make your decision it's not up to the company that you are purchasing it from to make your decision a good one that's up to you. 

It's how you embrace the tools, how you end up using the tool, and how much you invest in understanding and working with that tool that's going to determine the success and you can be successful with all of the main CRMs they're all really amazing pieces of technology.

So it's just up to you to find the inconsistencies, find the places that don't work, and then MacGyver your own systems to make sure that it does work for you. 

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First, get clear on what exactly we are looking for.

I think there are 2 options to look at when choosing a CRM:

• Sales CRMs

• Marketing CRMs

Both can be either one, they can be focused on marketing or they can be focused on sales.

A Marketing CRM

The features and benefits you are really looking for in marketing CRMs are the ability to manage groups of people and to manage content assets things like list builders in opt-ins and downloadable assets. 

And also, to track the activity, the open rates, and the engagement that people have inside those emails.

Along with a funnel where we bring people in the top through some sort of an opt-in sequence and then you generate trust with them through regular communication such as newsletters or email sequences and all of that leads to a conversion at the bottom of the funnel.

And all of that leads to a conversion being generated at the bottom of the funnel.

A Sales CRM

A sales CRM is all about targeting an individual and working your way through your process with an individual. 

A sales CRM is about the individual relationships as opposed to managing groups in segments. With some people, you want to track their actions, of course, what you want to do in both but instead of looking at a funnel, you tend to look at a pipeline.

A pipeline which is qualifying an individual moving them in different stages through the final and perhaps making sure that they are dealing with the right person or in the right stage in your funnel or in your process which is how sales pipelines work.

You are going to be tracking information about them, about their engagement, about where they are in your process of moving them from a prospect to your customer. 

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The questions I want you to ask yourself before you even start looking at the CRMs are:

First, understand your needs and your process.

This is really important. You can make a lot of mistaken assumptions if you don't really spend some time evaluating what your real needs are for the CRM.

What process is the most important to you?

What process that a CRM can deliver is most important to you?

• Is it gathering and collecting leads 

• Is it managing an email sequence 

• Is it regular communications to a newsletter or something similar to that 

• Is the most important feature making sure that you identify people and nurture them through the sales process

So these are the questions I want you to ask yourself before you even start looking at CRMs.

• What's the most inefficient part of your system?

• What do you really need help with?

• Is there something in the way that you acquire customers? 

• What is your client journey?

• How do you nurture your customers?

Is there something there that is really inefficient or you're really not very good at and a tool will help you or a feature within a tool will help you?

For me and for most business owners - we suck at follow-up!

Important questions but difficult to answer.

Answering these is going to help you as you begin to evaluate the CRM options that you have.

Next,

What other tools does your CRM need to work with?

Your CRM is at the hub of your business so understanding what is native vs needing to be integrated is key.

Third-Party Integrations

So which tools does your CRM need to communicate with?

Write down a list and evaluate every piece of software you have to take a look at and see how it will work with that particular tool. This is crucial to your success.

Ask if it has an API. This will allow you much more flexibility.

What Tools Can You Replace

Now let's talk about streamlining operations.

I went through this process recognizing that not only do you have to concern yourself with which tools the CRMs are going to work with but what tools you currently use that can be replaced.

A CRM is a big investment and you will be spending a lot of money on it so if you can replace some other tools that you're paying for it's going to help with the financial considerations of your CRM.

It's also going to streamline the process because all of the different processes that you put in place every time you have an external integration that you attach is a stress point where your systems can break more easily than if it's internal in one application. 

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What Other Tools Does The CRM Have

Looking at the extra tools/functionality that the CRM delivers is also an important part of the evaluation process.

As you choose your CRM, identify other tools you can eliminate and consider the dollars you can save by eliminating them.

This is a big deal and I think you'll be surprised by the number of features that are built into many CRMs that make quite a difference that you can take advantage of.

How does changing or implementing a new CRM impact my team?

The nature of implementing a CRM and/or installing a new CRM is very disruptive. 

Perhaps you've got a system that kinda works. What happens when you change that system and introduce a new tool?

You're going to go through a lot of disruption so you need to be consciously aware of that as you make your decisions.

This brings us to what I think is one of the biggest focuses that I think you should be considering as you value your CRM.

How do you evaluate the options?

Create a Shortlist 

On a feature level, you need to be looking to see if the CRM meets your needs as opposed to having a bunch of features that are going to be useless to you that you won't use.

When choosing a CRM it is important to look at some of the more intangibles such as:

Vendor Reputation 

What sort of reputation does the vendor have? Look into the developers and owners as much as you can to determine the reputation of the vendor.

Email Deliverability 

Look for deliverability reports, the numbers that they claim as far as their deliverability goes. How many emails get delivered into the proper inbox when they're being sent is a crucial number for a business.

Down Time

Do they have a reputation of 99.9% uptime or more?

Try and get a sense of the stability and the reliability of the product.

Communication

Does the company communicate, and have a level of transparency with the platform and what is happening? Are they openly communicating with their members?

This is so important. 

Those are the soft factors that will also help you decide.

Resources Available

Another thing to think about is what resources are available for you.

Training Offered

How good is the training and what sort of training is offered by the company?

Support Offered

What is the quality of support that's available from the CRM?

• Chat Support

• Phone Support

• Availability
  

Can you talk to a human?

High-quality support is essential but it doesn't matter whether it's high quality or low quality if it's not timely so making sure that it's convenient as well is a big part of the decision-making process. 

Often Overlooked But Critical

Look at the CRMs' track record of releasing new features, fixing bugs, and overall growth.

• When was the last time the software was upgraded

• Is there a roadmap for future features

• How well do they stick with their timeline

• Do they listen to their community

The Money

Finally, let’s talk about the financial aspect. 

This is big, this is a long-term investment for many of us. If we look at our line items for our subscriptions for the software that we use, a CRM is going to be one with the biggest price tag.

I spend more on this per year than any other tool that I have.

Some questions to ask regarding cost:

• What's the current cost of having and not having a good CRM?

• What does it cost to scale up in the new CRM?

• What are the criteria for upgrading?

  • Is it sending more emails 

  • Is it having more users 

  • Is it having more email addresses in your system 

  • Is it the size of your Iist

All CRMs have different ways of measuring growth, most are by the number of email subscribers. Be sure to check.

Be Realistic

Know what the numbers are for you to reach your goals long term.

So many business owners I talk to say they don’t need a CRM - they are too small.

This will get you into a lot of hot water.

It is important to recognize and be realistic about what success is going to look like for you and what growth is going to look like.

In the end, knowing and understanding this helps you determine the right CRM for you.

If you don’t you will have to migrate. I promise you don’t want to do that if you don’t need to.

You'll get a lot of gray hairs from having to make a migration so future-proof your decision. 

Make sure that the CRM that you are choosing if all things are equal you have the ability to stay with them for a long time.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to go through this suggested process and look at your business and the CRMs and evaluate these criteria:

• Understanding your needs 

• Understanding what you want the CRM to do 

• Understanding what the CRM will do for you 

• Understanding where the CRM is coming from as far as support 

• Understanding how the community sees it 

• Understand what assets are available to you to help you build better systems as you grow 

• What sort of subcontractors or people can you bring into the fold 

• Understanding how they support the product

• Understanding the company's commitment to growth 

Understanding all of these pieces is critical. 

If you can't get all of those answers you're going blind into the decision.

Even with all of these answers you still do not get a clear picture.

During your onboarding and implementation process, you're going to experience some pleasant and unpleasant surprises.

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My Recommendation

You probably know my answer… High Level of course.

With the criteria I have outlaid above, all things considered, High Level is perhaps one of the very few that would fit.

The biggest factor to take a look at is the cost.

High Level is $97/month - unlimited.

When you start to scale in other CRMs the costs go up significantly when your list grows.

The second is the number of features High Level has that will allow you to replace other software and the headaches of Zapier connections.

The third is the commitment to the software the owners have to make it the best out there. They are updating and fixing bugs all day long.

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