All the CRMs Said Yes
The actual hunt for a CRM spanned two years. I started by interviewing five top CRM companies. I had a list of questions that I could ask each of them to begin comparing their offerings, costs, and other key factors.
Our non-negotiables
I had very relevant needs and questions.
We were a multi-client brokerage. Instead of one company needing to track sales initiatives and contacts, we were a single company with multiple sub-companies that required data tracking. I needed to ensure the CRM would let us act on behalf of the sub-companies, or clients, in our case, and maintain the privacy of each in reporting.
We needed to track revenue by client and customer. Not just sales, but commission as well. Brand A, Brand B, and Brand C needed to roll into a data set, and Customer 1, Customer 2, and Customer 3 also needed to be trackable. The customers needed to be assigned to sales reps/territories so we could manage our people. Logging POs was a bonus and would allow us to start to predict our very unpredictable cash flow.
I was adamant that our CRM would make the job as easy as possible for our team to implement. If it were clunky with a broken user interface that would require manual steps and things to remember, our people wouldn’t use it. Integration with our email was a must. A monkey needed to be able to operate this thing.
I needed a clear understanding of what the executive dashboards would look like and how this was going to give managers more tools for managing the salespeople. And how it would enhance communication with our clients. A big problem in sales brokerages is that the worker bees are out in the field working, but they are not talking to each client they are selling for, so the client thinks nothing is happening. I needed tools that could be pulled easily to support conversations with our clients and showcase how hard our team was working for them.
I scheduled interviews with five different CRMs at first. I asked all of them the same questions.
Too Good to be True
Every single CRM told me they could do what we asked of them. I knew that we had a complicated programming need from the CRM and knew in my gut that most of these guys couldn’t do what we needed of them. Every. Single. One. Said. Yes.
My boss was warming up to the idea and became more involved in the process; he sat on several calls where we attempted to request examples of how the CRM would work for our specific business. However, none could demonstrate its effectiveness in meeting our particular needs. We interviewed about 15 more CRMs during this time, trying to find one that could prove their product would be effective in our business model. We did finally unearth one CRM that would do what we needed, but their license fees were so far out of the ballpark of our budget that they were in a neighboring city 😅
