Looking for a new CRM? Start Here.

If you ask the RevOps community which CRM is best, buckle up—you’ll get some passionate responses. We have members who’ve built entire careers around one CRM or another, and they’ll fight for their favorite like it’s a hometown sports team.

But there’s a reason we defer to the default everyone loves to hate. “It depends” is always the right answer.

Sure, some CRMs fit certain use cases better. They all have their strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. But after years of debates, trials, and (let’s be honest) deep regrets, we’ve come to a new realization:

Focusing too much on which CRM to buy is generally a waste of time.

Instead, the real priority is investing in the right skills, tech, and processes at the right time.

The CRM Reality Check

A CRM is sold as a tool to make jobs easier. In reality, it’s built to collect data for leadership to make business decisions. That means CRMs prioritize data capture, not user experience.

Which leads us to an ongoing battle: we need data, but end users won’t input data unless it’s easy to use.

We still have some die-hard “if it’s not in the CRM, it doesn’t exist” admins out there (please stop - here’s why), but most of us have realized:

• If end users provide good data through an integration, we don’t care what tool they use.
• As long as we can extract clean, useful insights, the UI doesn’t matter much.
• What we do care about is:
  
  • Cost: Can we afford this now and as we grow?
  • Integrations: Does it play nicely with our existing tools? Will that list expand?
  • Third-Party Connectors: Can we fix gaps with middleware?
  • Data Structure: Is the schema logical and scalable?
  • Reporting Capabilities: Can we get the insights we need without losing our minds?
  • Adoption: Will it work well enough until we can add the plugins people actually want to use?

So if you’re an early-stage company panicking about whether it’s time to migrate to a “real” CRM—breathe and keep reading.

Internal CRM Disruptors

Regardless of industry, you need to track:

• Leads
• Sales
• Customers

If you’re PLG or B2C, maybe this happens through a billing system integrated with your product. If you have a longer sales cycle, you’ll need sales forecasting. If your product is complex, ticketing systems and customer support tools come into play.

Your product, pricing strategy, customer journey, and target market will shape your CRM needs. And if you’re an early-stage company, things will change.‍

Questions to Ask (Even If the C-Suite Has No Clue):

• How likely is our product to change? (Be brutally honest.)
• Have we really found product-market fit?
• What pricing models are leadership considering today? What would they love to do?
• If our product improves, would that change how we sell?
• Will our customer support needs evolve as we close feature gaps?

If you know you’ll eventually need sales and customer success teams, start integrating your core systems with your CRM now. Map your priorities against leadership’s data needs before you end up duct-taping a mess together.

Prioritization: Get a Roadmap, Not Just a CRM

If we could convince teams to prioritize one thing when choosing a CRM, it’s this:Hire someone who has successfully scaled multiple CRMs before.

‍This is not the time to throw your greenest resource into the deep end. (New CRM admins, if this has happened to you—we see you. Use the community, keep things standard, and remember: your company isn’t as unique as leadership thinks.)

‍A new CRM is a clean slate. Keep it simple. Don’t go wild with custom objects.

The Basics: What You Actually Need

Start by defining the core objects you’ll track and ensuring smooth team handoffs. Learn from companies with similar business models and figure out what metrics you’ll need to report.

‍If you have a marketing team passing leads to sales, you need:

• Integrated lead capture methods (Best practices here)
• Proper lifecycle tracking (Read this)
• Campaign tracking (Deep dive here)
• Deal/opportunity tracking (Step-by-step guide here)

Then, refine:

• Marketing-to-sales handoff (Optimize it here)
• Lead scoring (Best practices here)
• Basic attribution modeling (Start simple—read this)
• Account definitions (You need this article)
• Parent-child account structures (Proceed with caution! And read this article.)

If customer success matters:

• Set up support request tracking.
• Define how expansions and renewals are handled.
• Consider an account planning tool.
• Then fix the sales to customer success hand off. (Trust us. It’s broken.)

The "Oh Crap, We Need to Fix This" Phase

Your CRM setup will need adjustments as your company evolves. Handoffs are usually the first place to audit. Every time data moves between teams, things break.

Routine Checks:

• Audit handoff processes for inefficiencies.
• Review system error logs.
• Make sure nothing is broken up/downstream from your team.
• Fix lead workflow inefficiencies (Guide here).
• Adapt to new territory models as you grow (here’s a how-to).
• Define how cancellations and downgrades are handled (we’ve got you covered here).
• Choose whether to buy or build analytics solutions (Yep, here’s more “light reading.”).

Ongoing Data Hygiene: Keep It Clean

To prevent duplicate data disasters, figure out lead-to-account mapping early (here’s how to get started). Check out our partners for more advanced data error handling. Finally, consider data enrichment tools to improve quality, but read contracts carefully—some vendors own your data if you cancel.

Best in Class: The Endgame

If you’ve made it this far without accumulating a lifetime’s worth of projects, congrats! But if you’re aiming for best-in-class RevOps, here’s the gold standard:

• Full integration across your tech stack
• Real-time analytics that don’t require a team of data scientists
• Automation that works seamlessly
• User adoption that doesn’t require brute force
• Executive reporting that makes sense

TL;DR: Stop Overthinking the CRM

Pick something that mostly works. Focus on data quality, integration, and scalability. Invest in the right expertise. And, for the love of RevOps, keep it simple.‍

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