A Thousand Birthdays or What Is the Best CRM Software for Small Business

I’m Biased From Ears to Feet

Let me start with a huge disclaimer: this will be a very biased, though honest, opinion. I’m biased because I’m a Salesforce Consultant with 8 years of industry experience. I’m also biased because I’m interested in helping people like you onboard to the Salesforce CRM platform—you may even become one of my clients. Lastly, I’m biased because, at some point, I stopped looking into other solutions.

But I try to be as honest as possible. I don’t recommend anything I’m not using myself. This isn’t one of those situations where someone is an ambassador for Samsung but secretly uses an iPhone. No, I’m genuinely invested in this CRM platform. But it wasn’t always that way. I’ve gone through love, hate, indifference, contempt, and passion for the platform. I’ve had all sorts of emotions. Let me share a story with you.

The Journey

I started my career at my parents’ clothing manufacturing company. As an 18-year-old freshman working as a sales rep, I was first faced with a question from my father: where do we source new customers?

I was a complete blank slate—young, ambitious, and full of self-confidence. If only I had that confidence now! I believed everything was possible and that anyone could become my client if I just found the right words and the right approach.

I remember one phone call early in my career with a random middle-aged lady who owned a multi-brand store. She couldn’t get rid of me for weeks. She tried to politely shake me off the phone, postponing the conversation week after week.

At some point, it became apparent to her that I was either too stupid to understand her “between the lines” attitude, or—what seemed less likely to her—I was too stubborn to stop calling.

One day, she finally picked up the phone, and we had a very meaningful conversation. We talked about fashion trends, the brands her store carried, and even complained about politics—a topic I knew almost nothing about but agreed with her on anyway.

Forty minutes into the conversation, I realized something troubling: I had no idea what her company was called, and, even worse, I didn’t know her name.

For context, I was using a paper diary notebook to keep track of all my notes. When I needed to follow up with someone, I’d simply jot down the phone number and their name on the day I needed to call them back.

This time, however, because the conversation had been postponed so many times, I had only written down the phone number. While on the call, I frantically flipped through the pages, trying to figure out who I was speaking with—no luck.

Thankfully, I managed to play it cool, and she didn’t realize I had no idea who she was. I offered her a meeting and asked for her email, hoping it would reveal her name. It did, and luckily, I found her on LinkedIn and matched her details with my own notes.

That was the moment I realized I needed to organize my notes differently. I needed to link them to both the company and the person I was speaking with. I didn’t know how to do that at the time, but I knew exactly what I needed.

Remembering a Thousand Birthdays

I was young and inexperienced, lacking many skills—except one. Ever since my father bought me my first computer, I had mastered the art of googling.

I was heavily into tech, and to figure out anything in that world, you had to know how to search. Oh boy, I was good at it. But that skill played a cruel joke on me.

I started looking into tools that could help me manage customers, contacts, and track interactions with them. And I got trapped in the rabbit hole of the internet.

It consumed me like nothing had before. Vendors promised to double my sales in a matter of weeks, boost productivity by a thousand percent, and make it seem like I hardly had to work at all.

But beyond the marketing hype, there was something else that captured my interest. For some reason, the idea of creating a structure where I could see a clear list of clients and the next steps with each of them felt almost hypnotic.

You may have guessed it—I learned a new word: CRM. Little did I know that this word would become an integral part of my future career. At the time, I was just a desperate sales rep, hungry for productivity.

I played around with a few CRMs, but one in particular caught my eye. And no, it wasn’t Salesforce. It was called Pipedrive.

First Steps

I signed up for a Pipedrive trial, scheduled a call with their sales rep, and started exploring the CRM. I had no idea what to expect, nor did I fully understand what a CRM system was supposed to do.

After speaking with the CRM sales rep, I realized things were worse than I thought—no one seemed to know how to properly apply a customer relationship management process to a business.

I asked questions like: What do sales stages mean? How do I determine which sales process stages are right for me? What happens if every customer follows a different process, making it impossible to fit them into a uniform flow?

I had a lot of questions and very few answers. After four weeks of intense testing, reading documentation, and moving all my contacts and accounts into the CRM, I decided I wasn’t ready yet. Let’s not forget that my primary job was to sell, and I had a sales quota to meet.

Second Attempt

About a month later, still struggling to remember the names of all my prospects, I decided to revisit the idea of using a CRM software to store customer data.

This time, I discovered another product called amoCRM. It was yet another CRM solution, very similar to Pipedrive but slightly less expensive. It had tons of features, and one in particular that I really liked.

At the time, amoCRM was one of the first customer relationship management software vendors to offer easy plug-and-play VoIP telephony integration. Now, most vendors have this feature, but back then, it felt like a major innovation.

I gave it a try, moved all my contacts and accounts to the CRM—again. After spending a couple of days exploring the system, I came up with a simple rule. I decided I would only track a few high-level sales stages: “Never Contacted,” “Nurturing,” “Negotiation,” and “Closed Won/Lost.”

But I also established the most important rule of my career, one that I still follow today: every contact in my CRM must have a follow-up task in the future.

Whenever I got in touch with someone, unless they clearly rejected communication, I would continue to call and engage with them until we either closed a deal or became well-acquainted.

This was the moment I first realized the power of CRM software. Each time I spoke with a contact, I’d jot down notes on their account or contact card, so when I followed up, I always knew the topic of our last conversation.

Even better, I could listen to call recordings to refresh my memory on every detail. This had a profound impact on the quality of my relationships with clients.

I began to remember birthdays, their kids’ names, hobbies, and, most importantly, their business challenges. These personal touches became fantastic icebreakers every time I followed up, deepening my connections and improving my sales.

The Good, The Bad, and The SAP

As time passed, my communication processes became more sophisticated. I added a few new people to my sales team, and I gradually outgrew amoCRM’s capabilities. I needed something more advanced.

One day, I came across SAP, a German-based software company that seemed to provide business software solutions for every industry on the planet, including the company I worked for. They specialized in ERP systems, which tracks invoices, inventories, warehouses, and everything else you could imagine.

Intrigued, I began exploring their CRM solution, which looked promising at first. So, I requested a trial—big mistake.

Once I gained access to SAP CRM software, I was bombarded with countless tabs: Quotes, PriceBooks, Opportunities, and so on. 

I had no idea what any of it meant. The worst part? No one could explain to me, in simple terms, how each tab would benefit my business. I scoured the web for answers, but the only advice I found was to get a consultant.

That didn’t sit well with me. I represented a small company, and we didn’t have the budget for consultants.

After nearly a month of frustration, I decided to stick with amoCRM. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew it well, and it was implemented effectively in our company, even though it lacked several features we needed at the time.

The Discovery

Then I stumbled upon Salesforce for Small Business.

I remember the first time I opened the interface: it was clean, simple, but still had plenty of tabs I didn’t fully understand. So, I did what I do best—I googled.

To my surprise, I found full documentation, forums, and even “Trailhead” (Salesforce’s own training platform) that explained everything in detail.

Once again, this is a biased opinion—I’m a Salesforce fanboy, and for good reason—but bear with me.

I dove deeper into the documentation and features. I learned what Opportunities were, how Quotes and PriceBooks worked, and more.

Many of those CRM features didn’t quite fit our use case, so I started exploring customization options. That led me down a rabbit hole where I lost myself for another month or so. (and still there nowadays)

At some point, I realized I had everything I needed, and it was time to make a move.

We picked a day to transition from amoCRM to Salesforce.

Salesforce did miss some important features for us. For example, we had to give up the ability to click-to-call from within the same window, but we made that sacrifice for several reasons.

One of our biggest issues was managing quotes outside the CRM system, which led to inconsistent pricing offers—even to the same clients. 

Some customers caught on and would send the same email to three different sales reps, picking the cheapest offer. 

We needed a way to track whether the same customer had one or multiple opportunities, and we needed a clear system for assigning account ownership.

Salesforce gave us that capability. As our process evolved, it became more complex. But the great news? We stayed on the same CRM platform.

Why I Think Salesforce Is a No-Brainer

Salesforce probably isn’t the most sophisticated or feature-packed customer relationship management software on the market. It’s not the most technologically advanced, nor is it the easiest to use.

If you evaluate every aspect of a CRM and build a list of the “best in something,” Salesforce might come in second or third place in many categories. But here’s the thing: Salesforce will always be on that list.

In my opinion, Salesforce is the most well-balanced small business CRM software solution. It’s a system that’s universally good at everything—not great, but solid across the board.

And it gets the job done.

There are times when my customers show me software that excels at one thing but lacks other crucial features Salesforce offers. For example, in a recent project, we had to integrate a complex auto-configurator. The customer already had a solution they loved for configuring vehicles, but it lacked essential CRM features like contact management, email integration, and reporting.

What did we do? We integrated it into Salesforce, combining the best of both worlds. Salesforce’s flexibility allows for that, and that’s why I think it’s the best CRM software for small businesses.

When you’re a small business, you don’t have the budget to buy specialized software for every single task like marketing automation, customer relationships, sales forecasting, workflow automation and project management. You need a Swiss Army knife. Maybe it doesn’t have the world’s best can opener, but it’s there when you need it. Maybe it’s not the sharpest blade, but it’s handy and always in your pocket.

Thank you for reading this far. Have I managed to convince you? Yes? Let’s talk. No? Well, give me a chance to convince you over the phone. Let’s talk.

Either way, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter and stay in touch!

Cheers,
J.