The 5 Best Small Business CRM Tools To Follow-Up and Communicate with Customers

“Why do I need a customer-relationship management (CRM) tool? Can’t I just use a spreadsheet?”

The benefit of a CRM is that it can generate activity reports, provide notifications for follow-up, help organize customer details, track activity and so much more that makes a simple spreadsheet completely ineffective. Here are some top picks for small-business CRM tools.

Zoho CRM – I’m a big fan of Zoho’s suite of applications. I use their project management software and it is tremendously useful. Their CRM tool is very powerful and helpful to assist with nurturing leads, automate and cut-out time-intensive and repetitive tasks. https://www.zoho.com/crm/

Monday CRM – You may be familiar with Monday.com – they offer project management software but also a CRM – from handling sales pipelines, customer onboarding, clients’ projects, marketing, and much more. https://monday.com/s/crm

Less Annoying CRM – Manage contacts, track leads and stay on top of follow-ups. Most affordable of the options listed here but not as feature rich. https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com

Salesforce Essentials – You may have heard of a little Mom & Pop shop called “Salesforce”. And by “little Mom & Pop shop”, I mean behemoth of a SaaS (software as a service) cloud-CRM company. They started over 20 years ago and have since become a leader in cloud-based customer relationship management software. But what they offer has become very complex for small business owners. They have seemingly recognized this and have established a pared-down version of their software called Salesforce Essentials. https://essentials.salesforce.com/

Vtiger – Very versatile CRM and they also offer a free edition ‘Vtiger Pilot’. Most others listed here offer some kind of a free trial as well. https://www.vtiger.com