Direct Sales Follow Up Systems - CRM Reviews
Update – 4/7/2024 – Two years later and nothing has changed. There still isn’t a sales CRM built for tracking orders, customers and followups. I wonder why that is. Thousands of consultants, affiliates, advocates need this type of tracking and we’re all left with trying out the same CRM’s out there over and over in hopes that they caught on, but they haven’t. We’re not working with pipelines with ‘wins’ or ‘losses’, nor do we have one opportunity rate. We’re selling products. I’d love to work with someone to create what is needed for all, it can’t be that hard. I would love to do it myself, however, time is limited.
Are you a direct seller with a direct sales company and needing a better followup system or plan? NO matter how big or small your business is, following up and providing customer service should be your number one priority.
I was on the hunt for a true followup system to help me provide customer service. To keep track of all the things. To be able to provide only the information my customers wanted. To run a business, with real data and be able to forecast and know when something is working and when something is not.
When you’re a direct seller (consultant, promoter, affiliate) the company you’re associated with has all that data. They run their business based on all that data. Where does the data come from? The very customers you interact with, the customers you spend marketing time and sometimes dollars to get in front of. You see the order come through your back office, sometimes you get an email notification that you received an order. Then what? Do you scramble to write all the info down in a binder? Do you use a spreadsheet? How are you tracking your customers outside of the Corporate Office’s system of choice? Pen & Paper are not going to help you long term, if you have under 30 customers, it’s fine. Once you grow, you will not have time for pen and paper and will run quickly out of patience for manual entry of anything.
This industry is in need of something more. There are so many of us that run our business as a business and not just some side hustle or a hobby that we do in our spare time. For many of us, this pays the bills. For many of us, we know that we don’t buy stock / inventory just to try to sell it later. For the most part, I think that 2020 opened everyone’s eyes to online sales and how much easier it is to inform our customers and let them make the decision to browse online or not to.
I have been in direct sales with one company for 13 years. I had no idea what I was doing when I signed up. I was not thinking it was going to be a business because I already have a full time job, that I really like. After building my wordpress website, learning how search engine optimization along with the right content can drive people to your website that are already interested in learning more about your products that you sell – I realized that it was becoming a business – ready for it or not. Then came, how do I keep track of these orders, how do I send them emails letting them know that new products came out, how do I know when the last time I followed up with them was, when their last order was? I’ve been on the hunt for at least 10 years for something. Below I’ll talk about what I’ve tried, what worked, what it was missing and then some that fell completely flat.
I really wanted to note down what my requirements were, as I was evaluating these CRM’s – but I feel like one day I’ll build the darn thing myself and don’t want to give up (just yet) what I was able to create in Salesforce that turned out to be just about perfect. So, if there are any developers out there – or someone that has the budget to employ someone to develop this amazing CRM that I have detailed flows for and know exactly how it needs to work – I’m here to help with the adventure!
I’m no developer. Boy, I wish I was – because I’m really shocked no one has built anything like what is needed. There were a couple that were very close.
$29.99 monthly
Fell a little flat in my opinion – while you could log that a sale took place, there wasn’t a field for the amount of each sale to be calculated in a report later.
Teamzy is more for wanting to recruit and turn customers into consultants, it seems.
If that’s important to some, that’s great, but I don’t feel an entire app should go down this one path as it loses others that do not run their businesses this way.
Interface was nice, looked modern and up to date.
$12.99 MONTHLY
I just didn’t get it. There was no place to enter an order that a customer placed. It is a very simple contact list and will allow you to track when you followed up with them. Which is something you can also do in a spreadsheet for free.
Unfortunately, Sell With AMI had to close its doors. This was a sad day. This could have been the one with more enhancements down the road. Almost fit all the criteria, did lack full functionality on desktop version, which is where I work from. Companies need to realize while it’s great to have an option while you’re out on the go, to be able to complete tasks, the entire business should not be ran from a mobile phone. There was also some reporting that could’ve been developed along with some algorithm tweaks for consultants that have been with the company years and have thousands of customers/contacts.
But like I said – this one was close folks. The company had heart.
It’s Free. Until it’s not and you realize you need more features, then the pricing plans become super complex.
It can be done. There seems to be a whole lot there, most overkill for what consultants need, which could lead to most giving up and not following through since it’s overwhelming. The main features are there, there’s a ton of limits to the free version, so my fear is that you’ll reach it and then it’s super expensive and most plans are charged for 2 seats minimum, so while you see $40 a month, it’s really $80 even though you don’t need 2 seats. Overall, if you have the patience to set it all up and have time to figure it out and are able to look past the mess you don’t need, maybe an option.
FREE (unless you need custom fields, then it’s $20 a month)
Pretty much like HubSpot CRM, but only cheaper. There’s a lot of options, a lot of fields, most you wouldn’t need. Still based on a sales pipeline – expecting you to always start with lead > customer and all focused around pre created ‘deals’ that sales people are trying to sell. You could be creative and have a deal be every single order, but it looks like that’s a lot of manual work. So, while, yes, it can totally do it, you’d have to do a lot of trial & error trying to figure out how to set it up all , which could take weeks.
When you think of Trello, you think of a kanban board with a manual movement of cards from column to column in the board for different stages. This is true and how’d you use it. However, when I used it for a year, I had automation included with the help of Zapier and the Trello Butler to help make things happen without me having to go in all day and manage it. It was something I could manage at a low cost of $20. It didn’t do all that I needed and was not the view I wanted at a glance. It’s not really an application, it’s a work flow and while it does it well, it really didn’t fit what I was trying to get done.
The idea is that each card is a customer. Each column is a month of the year. When the customer orders again, it updates the original card and moves the card to the next column (month). The goal is to not have any contacts (cards) in the older columns as you want repeat customers.
I also used Google Sheets for a year. I hired a developer to help me with some automation here as well, as customers ordered, it would take it from one sheet (labeled June 2022) to the next months’ sheet they ordered again in. It was pretty fancy- I liked it because the view of a grid was what I liked, I could see all the data I needed. On the master sheet, it had all contacts on the left, at top was each month – then the dollar amount of their orders in each cell related to the month they ordered. However, the part missing – the push to follow up , to reach out to them and then the tracking of when that happened, it started to become super messy and in my opinion not time efficient , however, it was free.
Monday.com
$30 a month, no automations
$36 a month w/automations and integrations
Oh how I love me some Monday.com – again not cheap, based on the fact that you need to pay for 3 seats minimum. I was still trying to see if I could make it happen. I quickly realized that it was too much. Too many contacts. I get over 75 orders a month, over the last 13 years, I have thousands of contacts. I would have to break up the boards into years and that defeated the whole purpose of ‘the view’I was looking for.
Free for up to 6 customers tracked or $8.99 a month for more
What is happening here. You can only import contacts from your phone, not from a csv. There are no settings. There’s a default followup schedule – if you don’t like it, you have to change it at each contact record. You can’t import customer order information and I saw no where to enter the data manually. It’s all about following up with a person and they’ll track it and remind you to do it on the dashboard per their default timeline. There are no reports. It’s just not for direct sellers. Maybe more for the MLM’s that don’t sell products? I don’t know. Who wouldn’t want to track order amounts?
Pros
- Cost, I think
- Simple for someone wanting to enter manually
Cons
- Everything is done manually
- There’s no where to put order information related to customers
- Super lite app, not much to it.
Where did this one come from? One, the name is hilarious – as it is fitting. For one, the training in the app is superb. I was shocked it was very well organized. The user interface isn’t as fun as some look, and is a little dated, no fluff there. However, this is a little beast and not too overwhelming. Adding custom fields is really nice. This one’s not bad actually, you could probably get a lot out of this one – It has sales leads that can = each order. has a report with filters, however in the report its lumped in one block, which is odd for viewing. Still, it has a lot of potential and seems to have the ability to track what is needed. $15 per user. that’s it. no crazy tiers or limitations. I’m a little shocked with this one as they really have tried to not make it super overwhelming but still providing the capability needed. A few little enhancements and it would be top contender.
Pros:
- Cost
- Easy setup
- Custom Fields
- Training
Cons:
- No formula fields (Can’t show total of all orders)
- No reports
- Can’t import any sales data related to contacts
It’s $35 a month. Can do just about everything and anything. I found it. Sat down mapped out my requirements – attempted to set everything up myself. Then hired someone to come in and create salesforce flows to hand the automated follow up. The ability to create custom fields that contain formulas/calculations, roll up fields to the account level, see a grid view. I mean, it’s like I finally found an application that can keep up, still have room to grow. This is my winner, less expensive than Hubspot, more expensive than the others. But I’m not limited, Emails are sent directly from Salesforce and it all works without me being in there all day entering data. Using Zapier to create / update the records in real time is the icing.
While it’s totally doable and you’re able to enter all your data manually – there were a couple of blockers for me, personally. You’re unable to import directly into a list or paste into a list. My list of contacts and orders would be constantly growing and this was not going to work for me.
Pros
- Cost
- Flexibility in designing
Cons
- Can’t import to existing list
- No Copy & Paste in list
$0 up to 500 contacts
$14 a month up to 1,000
I was entering info, I was importing info, I was really trying to envision it all in here. Imported Contacts, check, Imported Companies, check – Imported Deals (customer orders) check – oh, but wait, it ignored my related contact to the deal. Which would mean after import, I’d have to manually go through each one to relate them.
The company import doesn’t allow you to import the contact so it’s related at that level either. So, again, if you don’t have many records to import or you don’t have many that you need to manually create, sure, you could enter one by one and this looks like it could do the trick.
Capsule CRM
Still evaluating…
$15 per month
Still evaluating …
User Interface is really good. Clean.
The contact import tool allows importing of related fields, like orders and amounts , this is the first CRM that allows the importing across tables, so that everything is linked with one import.
Email syncing within the app is super helpful. Logging of communication works really well.
So far, I really like this one. When you import you also select to override records or merge duplicates, meaning if there are added values in fields, it will add them and not create a new record.
I’ll continue to add benefits to using this one. I’m on the Starter plan of $15 a month and so far it’s better than any of the others I’ve tried. (salesforce excluded)
If you have a CRM that you would like to have reviewed or you think out perform those above, please contact us, we’d love to add it to the list!
