Let’s get you the right tool for the job
Every CRM is built with a different use case in mind.
That means that most of the 750+ CRMs (!) you’ll find out there on the internet do not really fit your specific use case. Finding out which ones will work best for your company can be a true nightmare.
That's why we’ve made a list of some popular use cases… and we'll give you an example of a top CRM for each one of those cases.
Here are the CRM examples we’ll discuss:
- Salesflare: CRM to follow up B2B sales
- Salesforce: CRM to build enterprise workflows
- ForceManager: CRM to manage a field sales team
- Propertybase: CRM for a real estate company
- ActiveCampaign: CRM to do marketing automation
- Virtuous: CRM for fundraising as a non-profit
- Zendesk: CRM to organize customer support
- amoCRM: CRM to manage instant messaging
Found your use case?👆 Awesome - just click right to it!
Your specific use case is not in the list? Let us know on the chat on our site and we’ll help you out!
1. Salesflare: CRM to follow up B2B sales
If you ask a customer of Salesflare why they use it, they’ll probably tell you: it helps me follow up my leads better. ✨
Salesflare is built to help sales teams in small and medium-sized B2B businesses build better relationships and sell more - following up flawlessly at scale - with a very easy to use sales CRM platform that automates most of that work for you.
Most CRMs rely on you for (a ton of) data input. Otherwise they won’t do any of the things they’re promising they’ll do for you.
Not so with Salesflare. This CRM automates that data input - it collects and curates the information that already exists in your mailbox, calendar, phone, social media, email & web tracking, LinkedIn, … and displays it to you so you can use it to follow up your leads like a pro. 💪
It neatly integrates into your Gmail or Outlook inbox, as well as in LinkedIn, so you don’t have to continuously switch tabs. And wherever you work, it all ends up in one and the same place.
You can use it to automate a lot of your routine sales work:
- Send personalized email sequences at scale. It can follow up for you until they reply, click or book a meeting.
- Use email templates and snippets to quickly send emails. (No need to retype or copy-paste.)
- Find their email address based on their name and domain… straight from LinkedIn.
- Get automated reminders in case you forget to follow up.
- Automatically gather info about customers from email signatures, company databases, publicly available info, … without lifting a finger.
Salesflare is specifically built for B2B sales, so if that’s you, awesome! Just sign up for a free trial and try it out.👈
If you’re not selling B2B, read on. We have 7 more use cases for you below!
2. Salesforce: CRM to build enterprise workflows
While small and medium-sized businesses are focused on finding a practical solution for their team, a large enterprise will find it more important to find something that allows them to turn all their internal and external workflows into software.
That’s why an enterprise CRM, with Salesforce as a prime CRM example, is essentially like a set of building blocks that you can combine and customize the way you like. ⚒️
There’s virtually no limit to what you can build with Salesforce, which is why they even organize a conference called “Dreamforce” where customers and prospects can go to dream about all the possibilities and share what they built.
As an enterprise CRM is big, complex and versatile, you usually have to hire a consultancy to take care of all the customization and building. This makes sense for enterprises, but not so much for smaller businesses.
Using an enterprise CRM is not much fun for your sales team either. The system is built for the organization (not the end user) and to provide infinite customizability, so being usable and practical is only a secondary goal of such a system.
Also, enterprise CRMs come with enterprise contracts. 🧐 That means commitments for multiple years with a fixed amount of licenses, no refunds, lots of small print, and enterprise sales people to deal with.
In short: if you’re not an enterprise, look for a Salesforce alternative. If you are an enterprise, this is most probably the type of CRM you need for your company.
3. ForceManager: CRM to manage a field sales team
Is your sales team spending all or most of their time in the field?
Then you probably need a mobile CRM that is built for this, with:
- Geolocation, so you can quickly find the accounts and opportunities that are closest to your current position.
- Quick location based check-in, so you can record your visit in a few clicks or swipes.
- Mapping and routing built in, so you don’t need to get any additional mapping software like Badger Maps.
- Offline capabilities, as you can’t always have internet connection in the field.
A great example of a CRM that is built for this purpose is ForceManager. Although nowadays it states on its website that it’s a CRM for both on the road and in the office, until mid-2020 - a few months into the pandemic lockdown - it was fully focused on being a field sales CRM.
If your sales team doesn’t email much, doesn’t book meetings, and just knocks on doors - basically, if they’re only productive when in the field - this is what you need.
If they do field visits but email and book meetings beforehand, using something like Salesflare can be a better alternative.
4. Propertybase: CRM for a real estate company
We often get real estate teams trying and liking Salesflare, but - let’s be honest - it’s not exactly built for it.
Salesflare is built for B2B sales, so if you’re in commercial real estate, awesome, but if you’re selling residential real estate you better get a CRM that is a better fit.
A great example of a CRM for real estate companies is Propertybase.
It actually does more than you’d normally expect from a CRM:
- You can easily spin up real estate websites.
- You can launch ad campaigns through it.
- You can keep track of leads and listings.
- You can send email marketing campaigns.
- And you can even sign contracts through it.
Granted, it’s maybe not exactly as slick and easy to use and some of the more generic sales CRM solutions for small businesses… but if you’re in real estate juggling different responsibilities, this may make your life a little easier.
5. ActiveCampaign: CRM to do marketing automation
If you’re a blogger or influencer, a teacher, a fitness coach, … then your CRM needs are probably not that much about following up sales and much more about marketing effectively to your audience.
In that case, a great CRM example is ActiveCampaign.
If you Google them today, it’ll say it’s a “Customer Experience Automation Platform”. It may be hard to understand what they mean with that, so let’s break it down to see what it actually does:
- It helps you segment your audience and build case-by-case email workflows, so you can send the right message to the right people in the right scenario.
- It has a built-in template editor with which you can build beautiful marketing emails.
- Its website tracking can automatically track what topics people are interested in, so you can use that to personalize your emails even better.
Essentially, it’s a next-gen email marketing platform that enables you to go way beyond the generic email newsletter.
You might be asking yourself: then when don’t they say so? Well, they added some basic sales functionality later too and want their tagline to cover the whole package… but - at least according to what we hear from our prospects and customers - it’s not amazing.
It is yet another good example of the fact that you should get a CRM that is built for your exact use case.
6. Virtuous: CRM for fundraising as a non-profit
Many non-profits out there need a way to organize their fundraising / donor management in a better way… because organizing yourself with a series of Excel sheets and an additional bunch of disconnected tools can be a huge pain.
An example of a CRM that helps with this is Virtuous.
Here are some of the things it can do for you that CRMs built for other purposes won’t do:
- Keep track of donor wealth, interests and social media behavior
- Engage through email marketing, direct mail, text messages, forms, …
- Process donor payments
- Help with volunteer recruitment
It’s of course not the right CRM for every non-profit organization. Many non-profits need the same type of easy-to-use sales CRM as for-profits. But if you’re knees deep into fundraising, this is probably what you need.
7. Zendesk: CRM to organize customer support
Running a support heavy business and in need of a system that manages support tickets and conversations?
Then a good example of a dedicated CRM for this purpose is Zendesk. The company was founded all the way back in 2007 and has been leading the space ever since. It was essentially started to make managing a helpdesk more “zen”.
Since then, a large amount of challengers have popped up, all focusing on a different aspect:
- Intercom: started from providing a human live chat experience with customers
- Hiver: enables you to simply use your Gmail inbox as a powerful support mailbox
- Groove: is really focused on the shared inbox experience (Front as well)
These systems are CRMs too in the sense that they enable “customer relationship management”, but they are very different from many of the other CRM examples in this list.
8. amoCRM: CRM to manage instant messaging
If you’re spending more time using WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram than emailing, you may need a CRM that’s built for instant messaging.
An example CRM that is trying to serve this use case is amoCRM.
The company has been around since 2009 and its focus has varied widely over the years. The Internet Archive tells us that in 2011 it was an online CRM, from 2012-2016 a sales management system, from 2016-2018 a sales automation platform, and in recent years became a messenger-based sales CRM.
Now what does it do?
- It connects with the different instant messengers so you read and reply from one place.
- It has an “AI chatbot” that helps you automate some of your conversations.
- It helps you organize this in a sales funnel, so you can manage conversations better from lead to deal.
If that’s exactly what you need, give it a go! However, if emailing is your most important channel and messaging is only secondary, one of the other CRM examples in this list is probably a better choice, as amoCRM’s Gmail and Outlook integrations are relatively shallow.
If this article helped you find the right CRM for your use case, we’re super happy we could help!
And if you haven't found your CRM yet, we hope this article makes clear that there’s a CRM for every use case and you shouldn’t just go for the first system that pops up when you type “best CRM” into Google.
It’s not an easy journey, so if you want to find the best CRM for you, reach out to us on the chat on our website! We’re here to help out, even if Salesflare is not the right fit for you.
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