Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Looking for a platform to store all your client information? As a consulting firm with multiple sales pipelines, chances are you've been struggling with your search for your next customer relationship management software because a lot of the ones out there don't support cross-collaboration between multiple business functions.
In the blog post, we recommend some of the best CRMs out there for a consulting business and some features you should look out for in particular.
Top 6 features consulting firms should look for in a good CRM system
1. Pipeline management
Need a place to keep an eye on your sales pipeline? A good pipeline management feature should have a user friendly interface that allows your team to choose from a Kanban board style or listicle view, to adapt to your particular sales cycle and what stage they are in your consulting services. A great CRM should allow you to create multiple pipelines per each consulting team to make lead management and nurturing client relationships easier across the business.
2. Contact sync and contact management
A good CRM should help you organise your contacts effortlessly. Whether that's as they move along your sales processes or finding someone to update after client communication, both should be effortless. Contact sync will help you organize all your contacts into your CRM from any platform. Pay particular attention to this as some CRMs only allow you to sync contacts from Google – but the best ones can support Outlook as well. Contact management will help keep it organized so that you can filter them by status or source, sort them by last interaction and see your most substantial connection with them.
3. Contact enrichment
Whether you're missing emails, or looking for a way to enhance the data you already have to take your client management to the next level contact enrichment can help you automate this process so that you can focus on project management and research on potential clients.
4. Mail merge
There's nothing worse than having multiple platforms for multiple lots of things. Mail merge allows you to create email marketing campaigns directly in your CRM platform. That way, you can save time and avoid constantly switching context. A good CRM product will allow you to merge emails from multiple accounts, provide email templates for you to customize or bounce off, and a way to automate your email campaigns whether that's with AI to speed up the process of personalizing your outreach.
5. User experience
Whether you're a small consulting business or established consulting firm, chances are you need the right CRM platform that can let you get started right away from day one. Often, horror stories about choosing CRM systems go hand in hand with poor user experience and clunky design that takes ages for you to understand it. We've heard about how small consulting business had to block out a lot of time to train their team to use their new CRM tools. With the right user experience, that shouldn't have to happen. The best consulting CRM software should be easy to navigate and good customer service should be at hand to help you face what should be a small learning curve.
6. Scalability
As your consulting business grows, you'll need a CRM that can grow with you and adapt to your new business needs. Sometimes, this isn't achievable because of price range or other factors. This can without a doubt be a hinderance if you've invested time in your new CRM, only to have to move all your customer data to another one once you're ready to scale.
The top 4 Best CRM software for consulting businesses
folk
folk is an award winning CRM loved for its Notion-like interface, making it one of the most user friendly CRMs on the market. It's packed with features that help with marketing automation, sales activities, client interactions and customer support perfect for both small businesses, growing consultancies and large established ones too.
Best for: All-in-one CRM that can support multiple business functions including business development, marketing, recruitment, fundraising and more.
Pros
- Lead management: folk comes with a lead management feature that allows you to choose from a Kanban board style or listicle view that is highly customizable so you can ensure that it mimics your unique sales process. You'll also be able to leave notes to keep track of whether or not you're cold calling someone and assign reminders to teammates so you know exactly when to follow up.
- Contact management: folk allows users to aggregate contacts from multiple sources, creating a single source of truth. It automatically updates contact information, ensuring users have access to the latest details.
- Integrations: folk can support Microsoft Outlook users, Gmail users and more through Zapier.
- Custom fields: This supports you to further organize your contact list to your unique needs. You can add custom data to your contacts with custom fields and create sub groups indicating for example 'investor' and 'investor type'.
- Mail merge and AI-support: From creating email sequences to supporting your email campaigns with a vast email template library – and the option of AI support that helps you personalize emails en masse, folk's mail merge feature is super charged.
- Uninterrupted workflow: Looking for new contact information for business development purposes? With folk's handy Chrome extension, folk X, you will be able to import search lists from LinkedIn without leaving the page. You can also import individual profiles, and have access to email templates to save time as you find new clients.
Cons
- Reporting is not available in folk yet, but it's coming soon.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a CRM designed by sales folk, for sales folk. As it's not super well rounded, it might be more suitable for your consultancy's business development needs.
Best for: Business development
Pros
- Full custimzation: API access available to make Pipedrive uniquely yours.
- Capture potential customers easily: Customizable live chat tool you can use to get new leads from your web forms.
- Automation: Save time with automation that helps you fill in fields as you type.
Cons
- Limited to sales folk: May be too sales-focused for those who need a more well-rounded CRM.
- Limited free trial: Short 14-day trial plan, not the most affordable CRM for something very sales-driven.
- User experience: Expect to face a learning curve if you’re new to CRMs.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is a cloud-based CRM that helps businesses manage their customers, leads, sales, and more.
Best for: Track project progress and customer support
Pros
- Mail merge: Bitrix24 has a sophisticated setup that brings in all your communication channels into what they call a 'Contact Center'. It gives you access to everything you need to communicate with your clients including social media and email.
Cons
- Complex User Interface: The number of features available can be overwhelming, particularly for new users or smaller teams that might not need such complexity or business processes. The user interface can feel cluttered and intimidating.
- Gated features: A lot of useful features are only available on the enterprise plan, including the sophisitcated mail merge system mentioned above.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM has a strong sales focus, but does some features that can be used by both sales and marketing teams.
Best for: Business development
Pros
- Contact management: Presented in a data-driven dashboard for sales and support teams to collaborate from and get real-time notifications from customers.
- Integrations: Offers a huge range of integrations that are categorized by location and use including ones for shipping carriers, payment gateways and project management tools.
- Customer support: Provides an extensive range of customer support resources. You can choose from training videos, tutorials and live webinars. For more technical issues, there is the option of user and admin documents, FAQs and e-books.
Cons
- User experience: Optimized for those with a sales background which may be a steep learning curve for those with no prior experience, as it requires you to have expert knowledge about the sales cycle, forecasting and pipeline.
Conclusion
Looking for the right consulting CRM software to add to your tech stack can be hard, but with the comparison we've put together you now know what type of features you should look out for. So you'll be in a good position to make an informed decision. For consultancies, we suggest prioritizing a CRM that can support multiple business functions to encourage your teams to collaborate from a single source of truth. You can also get help automating manual tasks. Try folk today.
