Best CRM for Small Business in 2024

How To Select the Right CRM – Insider Tips

We asked decision-makers what their top priorities are when selecting a CRM solution. Contact Management and Reporting factors were the most important for them when choosing a platform. 

Small businesses often operate with limited resources and need solutions to manage their contacts effectively. Adequate contact management combined with the right reporting and insights is an essential outcome for SMBs to see ROI on CRM. 

For SMBs in particular, there’s an urgency to drive results as soon as possible. Dani Mariano advises businesses to consider a crawl, walk, run approach: “ensure there’s a very clear understanding of what the early applications of the tools will be versus when it’s done to understand the payback on investment,” says Mariano.

You may not need the keys to the Ferrari just yet; many CRM companies will work with you to determine what features to prioritize while considering your short and long-term roadmaps.

Primary Use Cases for CRM Software

Expert Tip to Plan:

“Think about the ‘crawl, walk, run.’ Ensure there’s a very clear understanding of what the early applications of the tools will be versus when it’s done to understand the payback on investment.”

-Dani Mariano, President, Razorfish

Questions To Consider When Shopping CRM

When evaluating the right product for your small business, consider answering the following questions about your business needs:

What are my goals and objectives?

Now that you understand a CRM’s main capabilities map out your primary reason for adopting the best CRM software. Are you looking to improve sales efficiency, enhance marketing campaigns, streamline customer service or another reason?

Which teams and employees will be using the CRM?

Identify the stakeholders and end-users who will be interacting with the CRM most, like sales reps, marketers, managers, customer service agents or IT staff. How will you incorporate them into the process?

Do you have any CRM experts in-house, or will they need a more user-friendly interface and/or personalized onboarding?

What onboarding resources and support will I need?

Users surveyed listed onboarding and ongoing customer support inside of the platform itself as an item not to be ignored. Static user forums are no replacement for personalized onboarding and support from real people when your business is in need.

CRMs not only store client contact information in one place, but they generally track all communication: form fills, calls, emails, text messages, meetings and any notes taken by your sales or customer service teams. This can ensure your team is in the right place at the right time.

CRM Customer Service Features Ranked by Importance

What specific pain points am I solving for?

What are the main inefficiencies in your organization? Fragmented data management? Poor communication between people or departments? Difficulty tracking various customer interactions?

Which features and functionalities are must-haves vs. nice-to-haves?

Assess the core features offered by the CRM platform. It’s tempting to draw up a list of every CRM feature you can think of, but check your list of features against your priorities and budget.

The following are the primary features and functionalities to consider:

Features punch list:

• Analytics and reporting
  • Sales activity and performance: review metrics like “speed to lead” and “total talk time”
  • Lead generation: lead tracking and customer journey insights
  • Marketing campaign performance: broken out by ad metrics like conversion rate and cost per conversion
  • Sales forecasts
• Customization and pipeline management
  • Sales funnel, including custom stages
  • Contacts and leads, including custom contact fields 
• Contact management
  • Email, text and call logs
  • AI content creation: the most time-consuming part of communication can be the messaging component within your emails and texting, AI can be transformative in this regard for small businesses
• Document storage
• Mobile app
• Testing capabilities: platforms like Hubspot and Salesforce allow for testing of messaging inside the platform.
• Integrations

Expert Tip to Streamline Workflows:

“Leverage tools like Zapier alongside your CRM (freemium, limited to 100 semi-restricted tasks monthly) to streamline workflows and connect to existing systems without requiring built-in, native integrations or custom coding.”

-Joe Karasin, Small Business Owner, Karasin PPC

How scalable does the CRM need to be to accommodate my future growth forecasts?

Consider the scalability of the CRM solution to accommodate your business growth over time. Evaluate whether the CRM can scale in terms of data storage, user licenses and additional features/modules. 

Review our comparison table and product breakdowns to calculate the cost of adding new “seats” and determine your cost of scaling. This can be more costly for some CRM platforms

Expert Tip for Scalability:

“Scalability is key,” says Dani Mariano. “Choose a CRM platform that can grow alongside your business without compromising performance or functionality.”

What is my budget for implementation and ongoing maintenance?

Evaluate the pricing plans offered by CRM providers, and consider both upfront costs and ongoing subscription fees. Look for flexible pricing options that scale with your business and offer value for money.

Bigin by Zoho CRM, Freshsales, Insightly and HubSpot are the four providers on this list with free plans, but there are others: EngageBay, Agile CRM and Bitrix24.

Monthly paid plans start around $7 to $20 and run up into the hundreds, even thousands, but a yearly upfront payment will almost always be less expensive overall. Pricing is by the seat — a single user might be $15 a month, for example, but add another seat, and it’s $30 a month and so on.
The lowest tiers generally offer the fewest features. Compare your list of must-have features against each tier and look for the vendor that offers the functionality you need at the price you can afford. Ideally, the tier you want is available for a free trial.

Are there any specific industry regulations or compliance requirements that my CRM must adhere to?

Determine if your business operates in a regulated industry or if there are specific data privacy and security standards that the CRM system needs to comply with, such as GDPR, HIPAA or PCI DSS.