How to Choose a CRM: Step-by-Step Guide

Choosing the right CRM is harder than planning your next vacation. With so many options and price points, how do you know which one is the “best” CRM for your small business?

It all comes down to understanding your business, your workflow, and your future plans. In this guide, we’ll show you how to choose a CRM system that fits your needs and budget.

Step 1: Identify Your Goals

Every CRM is different and is built with different goals in mind. Some CRMs, like Streak, are extremely basic and user-friendly, while other CRMs, like Salesforce, are more complex and take time to learn.

Before you start comparing tools and reading user reviews, you need to understand why you need a CRM in the first place. Ask yourself what problems you're trying to solve and use that as a starting point.

• Are leads falling through the cracks?
• Is customer communication disorganized?
• Do you lack visibility into your sales pipeline?
• Are you missing follow-ups or struggling with customer retention?

Now, make a list of your biggest goals and organize them in order of priority. It might look something like this:

1. Store all my leads and customers in one central location.
2. Send automated follow-ups to new leads.
3. Improve visibility into my sales pipeline.
4. Automate new customer onboarding.
5. Send automated payment reminders.

After you do this, you can start mapping those goals to specific features and capabilities that you want in a CRM. Here's what that might look like:

You now know what your biggest problems are and what features are most important. But before you officially start shopping, you need to understand exactly where and why the pain points are occurring. So, the next step is to examine your internal processes up close.

Step 2: Examine Business Processes

Don’t assume that a CRM will fix all your problems. While it can make your business more efficient and organized, it can’t fix a broken process or hold team members accountable.

Taking a close look at your business processes will help you find inefficiencies, spot what to automate, and improve consistency. It’ll also help you better understand what you need from a CRM, and spot any problems that a CRM can’t fix. Here’s a quick step-by-step approach you can use to audit your internal processes:

• Pick one core process at a time. Start with your biggest problem area, such as missed quotes, and then audit each remaining process one by one.
• List all the steps in that process. Start from the very beginning and go until the very end. For example, a standard lead-to-customer process might look something like this:

Lead submits form > Custom quote is written > Quote is emailed manually > Lead books and pays deposit > Customer onboarding starts

Doing this will help you understand where the friction occurs and if a CRM can solve that.

• Identify who does what. Make note of who is responsible for each task and if the handoff is smooth or clunky.
• Look for friction and bottlenecks. What steps are the most time-consuming? What parts are confusing? Are there any steps that are frequently forgotten?
• Rule out simpler or cheaper solutions first. Now that you have a clear picture of how the process works, ask yourself if you need a CRM yet or something else first. A simple scheduling tool or email marketing automation platform might be all you need. Or maybe you need better standard operating procedures or project management.

A CRM organizes and tracks customer relationships. But if your business doesn't have clear workflows, it becomes a messy contact list with more buttons. Only consider a CRM if you have clear and repeatable processes, more volume than your team can handle, and need access to multiple features or tools.

Step 3: Identify User Needs and Priorities

If you don’t know what you or your team actually need from the CRM, you’ll either choose the wrong tool or underuse the one you have. Talk to the people who will be using the CRM and ask questions like:

• “What’s the most frustrating part of your current workflow?”
• “What tasks do you repeat every day or every week?”
• “Where do things fall through the cracks?”
• “What tools do you currently use to track or manage your work?”
• “What’s one thing that would make your job easier?”

You can use this information to sort out what they need to do their jobs better, versus what would be a nice-to-have. Here’s what a list of requirements might look like:

Doing this exercise will also help you avoid paying for things you don’t use or adopting a CRM that's too complex for what you need. It’s important to know how your team works to choose a tool that solves your problems.

Step 4: Set Your Budget

You’re always going to see a wide range of prices when comparing software subscriptions. You'll also notice that different products have different pricing structures, which makes a side-by-side comparison difficult.

So, before you get into the weeds about pricing for your CRM, it’s best to set a high and low range for your budget. How much can you comfortably spend every month on your CRM? What’s the most you would be willing to spend for your ideal solution? Setting a range like this will help you narrow your options from the start and make your search easier.

Here’s how you can set a budget:

1. Assess Your Monthly Cash Flow: Take a look at your monthly recurring revenue over the last 6-12 months and set a comfortable spending threshold. Account for seasonality and decide if you can still afford your CRM subscription if your revenue dips. You generally don’t want to spend more than 3-7% of your monthly cash flow on software subscriptions (across all tools).
2. Consider ROI: Look at your CRM as an investment, rather than an expense. Consider how it'll help you grow your business and see if it makes sense to allocate more budget. For example, a CRM with robust automation features may allow you to save money on headcount in the long run.
3. Account for Total Cost Ownership: Some CRMs will advertise a low price tag, but include hidden fees or complex pricing structures. For example, you may have to pay extra for additional users or contact storage. Take this into consideration to avoid sticker shock when it’s time to sign the contract.
4. Don’t Forget Opportunity Cost: You may be tempted to save money on a cheaper option, but consider what you would be giving up by doing that. A CRM without automation can save you money upfront, but may cost you efficiency or productivity gains down the road.
5. Plan for Training and Implementation: Factor in the time spent implementing and training on a new CRM. More robust CRMs can take longer to set up and may require more training. That might take away from revenue-generating activities, so consider training and implementation as part of your budget.

If keeping the cost of your CRM low is an important factor for you, check out our list of the best cheap CRM software and the best free CRM software. As shown in image below, you can filter our list based on what's most important to you.

Plus, each option on the list pops down to show you all the key features. This is designed to help you quickly add or discard software options. You can add any that may be a fit directly to our Software Comparison Tool for further analysis.

Step 5: Consider Scalability

If you plan on growing your business, you need to find a CRM that can grow with you. Make sure that your CRM has enough features and gets updated often enough to support you at least two to three years from now.

Scalability is hard to plan for, and this is where people make the most mistakes. It’s tempting to go with an affordable solution for now and upgrade later, but that's more complicated than it sounds. Changing software can disrupt business continuity and impact your bottom line. Your ROI might also suffer if the CRM doesn’t have the features and capabilities that your growing business needs.

Choosing a scalable CRM that grows with your business can help you avoid growing pains and protect your ROI as your operations and customer base expand. Here’s how you can assess a CRM for scalability:

• Understand Limitations and Evaluate Upgrade Costs: It’s a good idea to start with a free or basic plan. But make sure you understand the limitations and how quickly you will outgrow this plan. Do some investigating to see what it looks like to upgrade later on. How much does the next tier cost? What features are included? Some CRMs will offer a generous plan for beginners, but there may be a huge cost jump to access the next tier.
• Check User Limits and Licensing Models: Some CRMs will charge you by user, by contacts, or by usage. Look for plans that allow you to add new users or store more contacts without a huge jump in cost.
• Assess the Integration Capabilities: Your CRM needs to play nice with the rest of your tech stack. Assess its integration capabilities and see how easily it connects with ecommerce platforms, accounting software, project management tools, and more. Look for native integrations with your current tech stack and check if it supports APIs or third-party connectors for more flexibility later on.
• Look for Customization Options: Your business will change as it grows, and so will your CRM needs. As you update processes, standard operating procedures, tech stacks, and standardization with your business, your CRM needs to support this. Look for things like custom fields, custom objects, multi-step workflows, custom sales pipelines, custom reports, and API access to ensure your CRM can scale without breaking.
• Investigate Vendor Stability and Support: Investigate the company to see if they're stable and have a dedicated user base. Check how often they update features and infrastructure. You should also look into the quality of customer support they provide.
• Assess Total Cost of Ownership Over Time: Factor in rising subscription fees, storage upgrades, and integration costs. Calculate what it'll cost to maintain your CRM at 2x or 3x your current size to see if that's still feasible.

Step 6: Build Your List of CRM Options

Now that you understand what you need, it’s time to build your shortlist. Pick three to five of your top choices to drill down on. You can use the needs list and budget that you created earlier to narrow down your list.

Then, head over to our Software Comparison Tool. Since you’re shopping for a CRM, you want to compare CRM software by clicking on the CRM option.

Click on the “+” button to add providers and build a list of your top choices. You can choose from more than 35 of the best CRMs on the market (take our word for it, we rigorously tested them all.)

For the sake of this exercise, let’s compare HubSpot, Brevo, Pipeline, and Freshworks.

To do this, just find the software provider in the list, select it, and click “Confirm.” You can add as many as you want.

Step 7: Compare CRM Features

The next step is to take a closer look at the CRM options you want to compare and see how they stack up against one another.

The first thing you'll notice is that only three of the selected options (HubSpot, Brevo and Freshworks) offer a free plan. And only the Brevo free plan provides access to automation. You can also directly compare other features to see which options include most of the ones you need.

But let’s say you want to go deeper. You can find all kinds of information about the different features you're interested in. So think about scalability and explore what the paid plans have to offer. You may notice that Brevo supports unlimited users without additional cost per user, while your other options will require you to purchase extra seats if your headcount grows.

You should also note that anywhere you see a red X on the chart, you can hover over it with your cursor for additional information. This might show you that the feature is available, but only on higher-level plans. That information can be useful if it’s not a necessary feature, but one you may want in the future.

You can also use the “Just the differences” slider to remove any line items where all the selected providers have the same values.

After comparing your top choices in detail, take a look at the pros and cons we've outlined for each. You might also have your own advantages and drawbacks based on your specific needs.

Step 8: Test Your Top Picks

Hopefully, at this stage, you’ve narrowed your choices down to two or three top CRMs. Most CRMs offer a free plan or at least a free trial, so it’s a good idea to test them out before upgrading to a base plan. During the testing phase, you might want to keep a running list of what you like and don’t like about each option. Consider asking questions like:

• How easy is it to use? Is the setup and onboarding painless? Is it easy to navigate and find what I want?
• Does it integrate easily with my other tools? Do I need help from a developer to connect my CRM to my website?
• Is customer support helpful? Do they offer free resources and training materials?
• Does it work well with my existing processes? Can I customize workflows, contact fields, and pipeline stages?

You should also test your CRM against possible future scenarios. Look at how pricing will scale as you add new contacts and users to your plan. Some CRMs may be affordable at first, but the cost can grow exponentially if you aren’t careful. For example, Pipeline is limited to 250 contacts on its base plan. If your contact list grows bigger than that, you'll need an expensive upgrade to store them.

Testing your CRM is all about seeing how well it works for your current situation and how it'll support your growth plans. See how well the base plan works for you now while also considering how the pricing structure and tiered upgrades can impact you in the future.

Step 9: Make Your Choice

You’ve compared and tested your different options. The last step is to make a final decision. Avoid common pitfalls like choosing a CRM that is too complex or too limited for your business. Find one that has most (if not all) of the features you want at a price point that is within your budget. You need to make sure it'll integrate with the tools you use every day to prevent issues with fragmented data and manual workarounds.

Choose whichever CRM works best for you and begin the onboarding and setup process. Consider important aspects such as:

• Importing clean data: Make sure all your customer data is complete, correct, and mapped to the proper fields in your CRM.
• Integrating with existing tools: Connect your CRM to your existing tools, such as your CMS, email inbox, social media accounts, and scheduling tools.
• Training and education: Get familiar with your CRM by taking advantage of any training and educational materials they provide you with. We highly recommend getting relevant certifications.

This approach helps you maximize adoption and get real value from your CRM investment.

Bonus: CRM Selection Shortcut

There's a lot to consider when comparing CRMs for your small business. If your head is spinning right now, our Finder Tool makes it easy to compare CRMs by finding most of the answers for you. All you have to do is answer a few key questions, and the Finder Tool will quickly provide a recommendation specific to your needs.

Here's how it works.

Step1: Launch the Finder Tool

Go the Finder Tool and select the “CRM” category. Then, type in your name so we can address you by it. Don't worry, we don’t collect your data or email address.

2. Answer Key Questions About Your Business

Next, tell us what is most important to you so our algorithm can provide a tailored recommendation. You'll be asked about:

• The number of users you need in your CRM.
• Which features are most important.
• How important price is to you.

Once you’ve answered all the questions, you’ll get a personalized recommendation based on thousands of data points. We’ll also provide all the key information you need to know about this software, including pricing, a features list, integrations, security, and pros and cons.

It’s as simple as that - try it for yourself.

Finding the Best CRM for You

Choosing a CRM doesn’t have to be stressful. We’re here to make it simple. As a trusted software advice platform, we deliver the best tools, insights, and information to guide you in choosing the right CRM for your small business needs.

We've rigorously tested and reviewed all the top CRMs on the market and built smart tools and algorithms to help you find the perfect match. While some small business owners may struggle to stay organized and efficient, you don’t have to be one of them! Stop worrying about how to choose a CRM solution and let our tools do the heavy lifting for you.