How to choose the best CRM for your business: questions to ask vendors

In this guide, a vendor is a company that sells CRM software.

Why a sales demo is not enough

A CRM sales demo uses clean, made-up data with one simple sales process. Your team is different: you have years of contacts in spreadsheets, email inboxes full of history, and salespeople who will stop recording their calls as soon as it becomes tedious. The problems usually show up after you have signed the contract, for example:

• the import of your old data loses half of the fields,
• the email connection misses some replies,
• a feature you need is only on a more expensive plan,
• the price goes up when you add three more people.

So ask about these in writing, and ask every vendor exactly the same questions. Then you can compare their answers directly.

Before you contact any vendor

Write down your answers to these four points. They decide which questions in the checklist matter most to you.

• How you sell. Whether your deals close in days or take months, whether you have one sales process or several, whether you sell one product or many, and who passes a customer on to whom.
• Where your customer data is now. Spreadsheets, an old CRM, email, business cards. Roughly how many contacts you have, and how messy the data is.
• What the CRM must connect to. Your email and calendar, your accounting or invoicing software, the forms on your website, and your phone system.
• Who will use it, and how. Salespeople who travel need a phone app that works well. A manager needs reports. Someone in the team needs to look after the CRM.

The checklist

The questions are in three groups. Must have means most small sales teams cannot do without it. Nice to have means it saves real time or trouble. Optional means it only matters for some teams. When you open the checklist in NeutralPick, you can move any question to a different group to match your answers above.

• Must have
• Records your emails and meetings automaticallyDoes it automatically record every email and meeting, sent and received, against the right contact, without anyone forwarding or copying them?If people have to record emails and meetings by hand, most of them won't be recorded.
• Imports your existing contacts and historyCan we import our contacts, companies, deals and notes from spreadsheets, including our own fields, and will you help us with the first import?A bad first import gives you duplicate contacts and lost history from the first day.
• Deal stages you set yourselfCan we set up our own deal stages, and can we have more than one sales pipeline on the plan we would buy?More than one pipeline is often only available on more expensive plans.
• A phone app that works away from the officeCan salespeople look up a contact, record a call and update a deal in the phone app, including when the mobile signal is weak?Salespeople who visit customers use the phone app far more than the website.
• Export all your data at any timeCan we export all our records, notes, activities and attachments ourselves, in a standard file format, at any time?This is what lets you move to another CRM later. Some exports leave out notes or activity history.
• Finds, exports and deletes one person's data when they askOften required by lawCan we find everything stored about one person, export it, and delete it completely when that person asks us to?Data protection laws in many countries give people these rights. Check which laws apply to your business.
• Nice to have
• Control over who sees whatCan we limit each user to their own contacts and deals, and control who is allowed to export or delete records?This matters when a salesperson leaves and might take the contact list with them.
• Website enquiries become leads automaticallyWhen someone fills in a form on our website, does that create a lead in the CRM and assign it to a salesperson, with no manual steps?An enquiry that waits in an inbox for days is often lost.
• Reminders to follow upCan it remind a salesperson to follow up when nothing has happened on a deal for a number of days that we choose?Most lost deals are not refused by the customer. They are forgotten by the seller.
• Reports a manager can buildCan a manager build reports on pipeline value, win rate and activity per salesperson, without help from you?Reports that only the vendor can change are rarely used.
• Connects to your accounting or invoicing softwareDoes it connect to our accounting or invoicing software, so that a won deal becomes a quote or invoice without typing it again?Otherwise someone has to enter every won deal twice.
• Finds and merges duplicatesDoes it warn us about duplicate contacts and companies, and can we merge them while keeping all their history?Duplicates grow quickly once several people add records.
• Optional
• Calls recorded from your phone systemCan calls made or received through our phone system be recorded against the contact automatically?Useful if your team sells mostly by phone.
• Follow-up email sequencesCan salespeople send a series of follow-up emails from the CRM that stops automatically when the contact replies?Only worth paying for if your team contacts people who have not contacted you first.

Answers to look at carefully

Vendors often answer the points below in vague terms. When you get a vague answer, ask the follow-up question shown here. A vague answer often means the honest answer is "no" or "only partly".

• "It integrates with everything." Ask: which connections are built in, which need a separate connector tool that we pay for, and which need a more expensive plan?
• A price per user. Ask for the full yearly price for your whole team on the plan that has every must-have. It should include add-ons, extra storage, and the price after the first year.
• "Easy to set up." Ask: who does the setup and the import of our data, how long does it usually take for a team of our size, and does it cost extra?
• Leaving later. Ask: what can we export when we leave, how long does our data stay available after we cancel, and does the contract lock us in for a fixed period?

What to do with the answers

1. Put all the vendors' answers side by side.
2. Look at the Must have questions first. If a vendor cannot do something you marked as a must-have, remove that vendor.
3. If a vendor answered "Partial" to a must-have, ask them exactly what is missing.
4. Book a product demo only with the vendors that answered well.
5. In each demo, ask them to show you what they claimed in writing, using your own data: import a sample of your spreadsheet, send an email and watch it get recorded, and update a deal on a phone.
6. Ask two of your salespeople to try the tools on your shortlist. They are the people who will decide whether the CRM actually gets used.

Why use NeutralPick to compare CRMs

• Every vendor answers the same questions. Each vendor gets its own private link to your checklist and answers in writing, so you can compare their answers question by question.
• All the answers in one table. You see every vendor's answer to every question side by side, instead of searching through emails and call notes.
• No vendor can pay to influence it. There are no adverts, no paid placements and no "featured" vendors. No vendor can pay to be shown to you or placed higher.
• Free, with no account. You don't need to sign up or pay anything.

Start with this checklist See an example comparison