These days there are a lot of CRM options out there and they have a lot of features. That’s good because you can likely find a combination that works for you. That’s bad because it may take a while to figure out what you want.
This checklist identifies a lot of features that are available across different CRMs.
You can use it to decide if you want/need a CRM. Or if you’ve already decided that you do want one, you can use the checklist to see which ones have the features that you care about.
If you are using the checklist to compare CRMs then I recommend making a table similar to the one below
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CRM Feature
|
Our Interest Level
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Feature Availability
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Notes
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Feature 1
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|
|
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- Each item on the checklist would go under the first column
- The interest level column would be one of -
- Essential
- Nice to have
- Not interested
- The feature availability column would be one of -
- Included
- Available for an additional cost
- Separate product required
- Custom development required
- Notes would be any other information that you want to record
CRM Features Checklist
*Note - this list is pretty long
- Customizable workflows
- Customizable dashboards
- Customizable reports
- Customizable data fields
- Automation tools
- Process automation
- Outreach automation
- Mobile support
- Customer segmentation
- Contact management
- Able to label contacts
- Able to categorize contacts
- Customer communication management
- Documents management
- Lead/prospect management
- Contract management
- Sales performance management
- Vendor management
- Team collaboration tools
- Revenue forecasts
- On-premise or cloud?
- Pricing transparency
- Customer support
- Able to track progress through sales pipeline
- CRM implementation support
- CRM customer support
- Data migration support
- Training for team members
- How steep is the learning curve?
- How scalable is it?
- How many contacts can be supported?
- How many leads can be supported?
- Etc.
- Integrations
- Calendar
- Existing applications
- AI-tools
- Social media
- Etc.
- Online knowledge base
- Role-based access control
- Access tracking
- Data encryption
- Two-factor authentication
- Single sign-on
Final Notes
- You can use this list to see if you need a CRM
- You can use this list to create a table to determine which features you care about and are willing to pay extra for
- I recommend bringing the team leaders and some of the team members that will be using the CRM for their input