CRM is software that helps you manage your customers and prospects better. Anyone that is going to be serious about creating sales and taking advantage of website lead generation needs to have a CRM in place and to define their sales cycle.
I have build these kinds of things many times and it all starts on paper and will modeling software – not the crm system. You need to map out the entire process and know what happens in any situation. My mistake the first time I set up a CRM was to think that the software would tell me how to build my sales process – but all that happened was a lot of confusion because I tried to use every feature in the CRM instead of turning some things off.
I am going to tell you about three free CRM software solutions – and you can check out all of them after building your sales process to see which one works best for your need.
Keep in mind that nothing is truly free – these things take time to set up and configure, and some have more advanced features that you may need to buy.
The easiest to get going is Zoho CRM – view here – This is hosted for you and very good, but it is only free for a couple of users and then there is a charge. I also really like the email automation of it, but that makes it more expensive too. If you are just looking for the easiest one to start with and do not mind limited users and features, Zoho CRM is great. When I was the only sales person, it is what I used.
Sugar CRM and vTiger CRM – These are open source CRM software solutions. The code base is free but you will have to pay for hosting someplace. You can also find someone that can set it up for very little money – but if you cannot do it by yourself you will at least be spending a few hundred dollars.
The reason to go with these open source solutions is if you are going to have more than 2-3 users and you do not want to pay the bigger monthly price someplace like Zoho or SalesForce charge.
If you can afford the premium services, they have a lot of advantages. However, if you are just trying to grow your small salesforce, find the best free crm software package that works for your sales model and use it until you outgrow it.
The three different kinds of CRM solutions are all very effective and efficient.CRM software solutions.Choose whatever fits on your business.