What CRM Do You Use? Why?

Question

Team,

What CRM do you use for your business and why did you choose it? Pros/Cons? Would you recommend it? What sort of business do you use it for, and do you think you might choose something else if you had a different business area/model?

It seems like a lot of folks use Podio, but I'm thinking about just making a Google Sheet with contact info and using Evernote to keep notes about meetings for active projects. Simple. Cheap. Do you think I would miss out on something?

I'm mostly using it to track leads in a leasing agent capacity (at this time).

Brian Woods · Answer

Hi @Chris Price, I guess I'll go first. After using many different CRMs in the past, I have settled on Nimble CRM. The reason I picked this one over others is due to the following:

1) Its syncs with Google/GMail & Calendar, and it has several "killer addons" for Gmail & Chrome, which is where I have all of my current contact info.

2) It only costs $15 per month, but, I believe that they have recently increased their initial price to $25.

3) It's one of the only CRMs that is heavily centered around social media. I won't go into details here about what that means, but, would suggest that you check out their detailed videos that demonstrate how it works.

4) It allows you to be able to immediately discover information about anyone whom you might be meeting with, before the meeting. In other words, if the person has an online presence, you can find out many things about them and then add them to your contact list.

5) There is a nice follow-up feature that you can setup.

6) Integrates with alot of the other different services that will allow you to "do business within your business".

7) Can be used from within any browser and also has an IOS app for both my iPhone & Ipad.

There is more that I can say about the service, but, I'll stop here. Hope this helps.

Brandon L. · Answer

@Chris Price I will be interested in the answers to this, but it seems if you ask 100 people you will get 100 different answers.

Adam M. · Answer

@Dave Ramirez Curious as to your experience w/ Pipedrive. Seems pretty solid and customizable.

@Chris Price I'm working w/ an agent that uses Firepoint. I would stay away. Not as many features as some more mature systems. Small company 5-10 people so development time is a bit slow. We are having to build a lot of systems/processes around it's failings (i.e. Transaction mgmt, marketing ROI, etc.)

Propertybase looks like an interesting solution. Built on top of Salesforce so it has solid infrastructure. Customizable workflows and automation. Expansive API so if you need to develop some of your own features you can.

https://www.propertybase.com/

A new entrant that I think might be an interesting option could be ProsperWorks. It's built on top of G Suite so if you are using that it is really nice.

ProsperWorks

https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/prosperw...

G Suite in general has released a new tool called App Maker that allows you to build some really powerful applications on top of it. Abstracts a lot of the programming and design work. Feel like this would be preferential over Podio if I was already using G Suite (I've never used Podio).App Maker release bloghttps://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/customize...App Maker ecosystem bloghttps://cloud.googleblog.com/2015/11/strengthening...

Just my 2 cents

Lesa Stewart · Answer

I use REI Blackbook and it's pretty amazing!  Too many features to list, so check them out at www.reiblackbook.com.  They have a 3 day bootcamp coming up at the end of the month and the content you get in those three days is worth WAY more than the cost, and their support is hands down the best I've seen anywhere!  (And no, I am not an employee!)

Account Closed · Answer

@Chris Price podio is free and comes with free apps.

Aaron Mazzrillo · Answer

@Duncan Wierman Please post a link. There isn't a post about CRM on your Biggerpockets blog. You have 2 posts from 10 months ago. But I may be looking in the wrong area.

Ray Dipasupil · Answer

Streak because it's lightweight & syncs with Gmail & it's free

Sanjay Patel · Answer

If you want to spend a lot of time, $ and effort without a lot of bang for your dollar, go with Salesforce. otherwise there are a lot of good products out there (some mentioned above). i really like Insightly - because it is easy to use, lots of great simple reports and followup features, and you can link different people to to each other so you know who knows who...  also free for the first 2k contacts doesnt hurt. I think the real question should be what is the best CRM specifically for the real estate market (e.g. rentals, lending, etc.) - and that one I am still waiting for someone to come up with on.

Roger Rustad · Answer

Personally, I use SugarCRM and SalesForce.  Salesforce when I have the budget and SugarCRM when I have no budget.

For real estate, best is to probably get something that syncs easily with gmail and then includes that email trail in your CRM.  The one I use for that is Salesforce's tool, RelateIQ (which they acquired). It works good and is very "hackable" to let you sort through the hottest leads.

HTH...

What CRM Do You Use? Why?

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