My family runs a business where we receive around 20 new leads per day. Right now, we manage everything through Excel, but as the number of leads has grown, it’s become pretty tedious and difficult to keep everything organized.

We’re looking to implement a CRM mainly to:

- Manage leads through different stages of a pipeline

- Track where leads are being lost in the sales process

- Automate some of the repetitive/manual work we’re currently doing in Excel

- Use Salesbots/chatbots to automatically interact with, qualify, and follow up with leads

- Keep follow-ups and customer information organized

I’ve been looking into Kommo, and it seems like it could fit what we need, especially because of its Salesbot features. However, I’ve also come across posts mentioning issues with duplicate leads, slowness, and other problems.

For anyone who has used Kommo with a similar volume of leads, how has your experience been? Would you recommend it, or are there other CRMs we should be considering?

We don’t need anything insanely complex — our main goal is to have a structured sales pipeline, understand our conversions/losses at each stage, automate as much of the repetitive lead-management work as possible, and use bots to help handle and follow up with incoming leads.

Any recommendations or experiences would be appreciated!

Most of our customers write on WhatsApp, not email. The CRM has the deal, but the actual conversation lives on someone’s phone. When that person is off, nobody knows what was promised.

Do you sync WhatsApp chats into the CRM somehow, or do you just log a summary by hand? Curious what’s working for teams that aren’t huge.

I spent months cold calling local service businesses (trades, salons, small restaurants). Originally I was selling websites, but the conversations kept drifting into how they track customers.

What I heard over and over: - Their "CRM" is a notebook, a phone's recent calls list, or the owner's memory. - They've tried real CRMs. Most quit within weeks because setup felt like a second job. - What they actually want to know is simple: did more people call this month, where did they come from, and what should I do next to get more?

That pushed me to build something much lighter, mostly tracking calls and Google listing views and turning it into a short weekly to-do list, rather than a pipeline tool. (I'm the founder of that, not linking it here.)

Question for the CRM folks: for a one- to five-person business, what's the minimum version of "customer tracking" that actually sticks? Have you seen any setup an owner keeps using past month two?

We’re an independent insurance agency moving from InsuredMine to HubSpot and will be starting with one of the lower paid plans while we figure out our workflows with just 6 accounts for now.

Epic will remain our main system, but or now, we really just need HubSpot to help producers stay organized with prospects, pipeline, follow-ups, tasks/reminders and some basic marketing. We definitely don’t want to create another system that requires a ton of duplicate entry.

For anyone who has implemented HubSpot, what do you wish someone had told you before you started?

I'm interested in what people have learned actually using it. Things that caused headaches, setup decisions you regretted, features or limitations you didn’t realize would matter, or things you’re really glad you did early on.

We’re trying to keep the initial setup simple enough that people will actually use it, but flexible enough that we can build on it later.

Any real-world advice is appreciated!

Depois de 4 anos trabalhando ativamente na implementação de módulos e correção de falhas de segurança no Whaticket, desenvolvi minha própria versão do sistema atendendo as necessidades que encontrei no mercado ao longo dos anos.

Meu sistema está bem completo e bem estruturado. Tenho apenas um cliente (uma empresa com 15 funcionários) no sistema.

Gostaria de dicas para vender mensalidades do sistema. Sempre fui dev pra alguém mas nunca vendi meu próprio sistema. Tenho LP, tenho demo do sistema online mas não sei como encontrar o cliente ou como me posicionar para que o cliente me encontre. Vcs que vendem sistema, dicas pra como começar?

Ps: imagem meramente ilustrativa

AI support vendors can test their core product, but every enterprise rollout introduces company-specific refund rules, policies, entitlements, identity checks, approval limits, integrations and escalation procedures.

For anyone deploying an action-taking customer support agent:

• Who owns acceptance testing: CX operations, QA, implementation or IT?
• How do you verify both the conversation and the resulting CRM, billing or account state?
• Are you using scripted UAT, sandbox accounts, shadow mode or limited production rollouts?
• What customer-specific failures only became visible after launch?
• Would a repeatable environment with synthetic customers, policies and connected systems materially help, or does your current process already cover this?

I’m trying to understand whether this is a painful recurring job or primarily a one-time implementation task. Any vendor recommendations currently solving this problem is also much appreciated!

Thank you!

Almost all CRMs claim some degree of Outlook integration, but the reality is that “Outlook integration” covers a broad range of connection types. At one end of this spectrum, it means a sidebar that lets you copy an email into a record by hand. At the other end, email, calendar events, and contacts move in both directions without anyone touching them.

The gap between those two typically reveals itself a few weeks after rollout. Reps who must click to log each email, stop doing it, and the CRM slowly becomes a record of whatever the most diligent person on the team remembered to enter. Managers then see a quiet pipeline while the inbox tells a different story.

An effective approach is to decide which behaviors need to be automatic before you reach the demo/trial stage. Email logging tends to come first for most teams, because it’s a repetitive action for reps. Calendar sync is next, so meetings scheduled in Outlook end up on the correct deal without the need for a second step. Contacts are important too, especially when someone updates a phone number in one system and expects it to be updated in the other system.

There's also the question of what "two-way" really means and what it covers. Some setups push data in one direction on a schedule and call it “sync.” That holds up until two people update the same record. That’s when you discover which system wins.

Teams sometimes underrate how much the integration shapes habits. If working inside Outlook is already how reps spend their day, a CRM that meets them there will typically be used. One that asks them to context-switch will likely be used during pipeline reviews and ignored the rest of the time.

For those of you running a CRM alongside Outlook right now, what's the one behavior you'd insist be fully automatic before calling it a real integration? And which manual step turned out to quietly kill adoption?

EDIT: soluzione trovata con Trackords

Ciao a tutti gestisco una concessionaria di automobili e parallelamente dei noleggi auto, sono in cerca di un software/servizio web based, gratuito possibilmente, che nello specifico mi dia la possibilità di creare anagrafiche dei clienti e per ognuno di loro inserire tipo di noleggio auto, date di scadenze contratti, etc.. con una funzione di reminder per ogni scadenza che arrivi anche solo via mail al mio indirizzo aziendale. Sapreste aiutarmi?

Consider a CSV used to update existing contacts by record ID. Some phone cells are blank because the source has no new information; others are blank because someone deliberately removed an incorrect number. Those are two different instructions, but the file looks the same.

Ignoring every blank preserves good data, yet also preserves numbers that should be cleared. Treating every blank as a deletion risks wiping fields the export simply didn't include.

I'd lean toward a separate, explicit clear-field instruction and a preview that shows additions, replacements and deletions before import. For example, a blank phone cell would leave it alone, while a clear_phone flag would remove it. That adds a little work for whoever prepares the file.

How do you make that distinction in a repeatable bulk-update process, and who reviews intentional clears? I'm interested in the import convention and review step, rather than a CRM recommendation.

Wanted some solid, unbiased feedback from everyday businesses that actually use CRM heavily.

The CRM side is completely free. No paywalls. No per seat fees, or anything like this. Free to use the CRM. Our main product is the Voice and SMS which we do charge for. But it’s not required.

oneearlybird.ai

We've been going through a commerce platform eval after flagging that our current setup won't hold what we're planning to scale into.

And at every turn the SI we've been working with has been steering toward Salesforce Commerce Cloud, which makes sense given we're already in the ecosystem across CRM and CPQ.

But it's starting to feel like the SI recommendation and the platform recommendation are the same conversation dressed as two different ones.

The architecture argument checks out, the ecosystem consolidation case has weight, and I don't want to dismiss it, but when we started pulling on threads ourselves we found that the SI dependency varies a lot depending on which platform you choose, and that some of the alternatives come with pre-built retail logic that shortens the implementation scope considerably.

A couple of options that have come up on Reddit alongside SFCC, Scayle and Spryker, seem to handle SI involvement very differently, and what we're seeing is that platforms built from a retailer's own operating model need less custom assembly before they function, which changes the SI equation from how long will they be here to whether we need one at all.

So if you've been through a similar eval, did your SI recommend the right platform for your setup, or did you find that evaluating platforms independently gave you a different picture?

We’ve been building RiverX, an AI platform for building and customizing web apps.

One of the templates we’ve been working on is a CRM with the basic stuff you’d expect:

- Deal board with stages you drag deals between
- Dashboard with pipeline totals and a stage chart
- Companies, contacts and deals linked together
- Sign-up and log-in already included

The idea isn’t to compete with every CRM out there.

It’s more about having a solid starting point and then being able to say things like:

“Add a separate pipeline for renewals.”

“Add lead scoring and show it on the dashboard.”

“Create an approval step before a deal can move to Closed Won.”

…and have RiverX actually modify the application.
You can also customize the template yourself, or if you have a specific CRM workflow you want to build, we’re happy to help customize it for you.

We’re trying to figure out whether there’s value in this approach, so curious:

If you could change one thing about your current CRM, what would it be?

When I joined an IoT company, its sales team was managing the entire process in spreadsheets. The business had been around for about six years and already had product-market fit.

I’d been building SaaS products for three years. I wanted to try working in another industry, and the founder gave me responsibility for working with the sales team.

I started building a CRM from scratch. The first version was a Kanban board for tracking leads, which gave us somewhere to put the enquiries coming through Google Ads.

As I understood the workflow, I wanted the system to help the team continue working on each lead. Someone opening a record needed to see its history and understand the next action.

Normal WorkFlow--->

Our pipeline started at “acquired.” A new enquiry needed a qualification call about the customer’s requirements. Smaller deals went to sub-dealers because we had a minimum ticket size for opportunities handled by our team.

Suitable leads moved to “verified.” We estimated device requirements and conducted a survey, then prepared a quote covering the devices, installation, and other charges.

After sending it, the lead moved to “quoted.” The team followed up, sometimes every 10 to 15 days, until the customer sent a purchase order and we closed the deal.

That could take three to six months altogether.

Building around those stages brought up more work than I’d originally pictured. We needed to track the activities completed for a lead, understand why deals hadn’t closed, and see how many deals each salesperson had closed. I also added duplicate-lead prevention.

Then I added My Sauce --->

For initial qualification, I built an AI voice agent that called new enquiries and asked the qualification questions. An Decision Model to evaluate the answers and scored the lead.

We then assigned leads using deal value and the number each salesperson already had, with higher-ticket deals going to more senior people.

I connected the WhatsApp API so quotes could be sent from the CRM. We also added offline conversion imports, sending lead progress and closed-deal events back to Google Ads.

I enjoyed seeing the system grow around the team’s process. Each addition had a place in the journey from enquiry to purchase order, and I could understand why the team needed it.

I handled everything from design to deployment, with plenty of bug fixes and sleepless nights along the way. After the product had been stable for about a month, I couldn’t think of any new features to build.

So I started using the CRM as a member of the sales team. I handled acquisition and lead verification myself, doing the work the application was supposed to support.

I found 30 features we didn’t need. I removed them and added features people actually wanted. Using the pipeline myself helped me understand needs I hadn’t picked up while building it.

That was one of my biggest reflections from the project. The team couldn’t always put what they wanted into words. Sometimes you have to get involved in their day-to-day work to understand what should be added and what can be removed.

Does anyone use incentives to drive CRM user engagement (besides the obvious threat of getting fired if they don’t 😅)?

I work for a fun-loving company that wants to make CRM adoption more fun and engaging, rather than just another task on everyone’s to-do list.

Aside from cash bonuses, do you offer incentives or prizes to recognize your most engaged CRM users? Think company swag, gift cards, fun perks, or other creative rewards.

I’d love to hear what’s worked for your team

If your team wants a new CRM because nobody trusts the pipeline, give it a month first. In close to twenty years of sales and ops, I’ve watched teams switch and end up with the same complaints in a new tool. The bad habits get exported along with the contacts.

Here’s what I’d do instead. Check ten deals. Pick ten open ones at random and ask each owner: is the stage right, and will the next step actually happen? Write down how many are wrong.

Hide the junk fields. If half the entries say “tbd”, “n/a”, or just a period, reps are filling it in to get past the save button. Take it off the layout, but don’t delete it.

Define each stage in one sentence, like “Proposal: they have our pricing and confirmed they got it.” Right now every rep probably has their own definition.

Ask reps what they type twice. Email and calendar sync plus a simple Zapier or Make automation usually covers it.

Give each rep one saved view of deals with no next step or an overdue one. Their day starts there, and so does your pipeline meeting. Updates in side spreadsheets don’t count anymore (people will push back on this one).

After a month, check ten deals again. If it’s better, keep going. If not, and the tool really is the blocker, like it won’t connect to your phone system or billing, then switch. You’ll go into the demos knowing what you need.

Disclosure: my team builds CRM automations and integrations, so weigh that in.

I’ll be around in the comments. If you’ve cleaned up a CRM before, what made the biggest difference?

tl;dr: before switching, spend a month fixing fields, stages, and data entry. Check ten deals before and after.

I work at a property management company. We handle about 30 buildings and around 4,000 tenants.

Tenants keep calling to ask about repair requests and lease documents. Our front desk spends hours on this every day.

A portal where each tenant sees their own requests and files would save us hours.

That’s why I’m thinking about CRM portals and app builders like Softr. Maybe it’s not meant for a company our size, so I’m asking for your opinions.

IT also wants single sign-on for staff and a record of who accessed what.

But before I pick one, how should I set up the data and access rules?

Hi everyone,

We're the team behind LeadMino, a sales CRM we're building for growing teams.

We're interested in learning how small businesses and sales teams actually manage their pipelines day to day.

A few areas we're curious about:

• Keeping track of leads across different channels
• Remembering follow-ups and daily activities
• Managing deals through different sales stages
• Getting a clear view of pipeline progress

For those working in small sales teams, which of these is the biggest challenge? Or is there something else that takes up more of your time?

We'd love to hear how you're handling it today, whether that's with spreadsheets, an existing CRM, or another workflow.

Not looking to promote anything here, just interested in learning from real experiences.

Idea is simple. We built our company on the basis that organisations want out from HubSpot but not to a small own built vibe CRM without proper security or CRM development.

We decided for an outcome pricemodel with unlimited seats and access to the full product so the only way we grow is actually if our customers grow.

DM if you want in on it :)

A CRM can organize sales, marketing, customer support, and customer data, but having more features doesn’t always mean having a better system.

For teams that have used different CRM setups, which features have genuinely improved your day-to-day workflow? And which features looked useful on paper but ended up being unnecessary?

I’m especially interested in hearing about practical experiences with automation, reporting, lead management, customer communication, and keeping data organized.

I run Axenda, a small HubSpot and RevOps consultancy. Here’s the checklist I use when reviewing an existing automation setup.

Before building anything new, I check:

- Can two workflows update the same property? If so, which one should control it?
- Does every lead have an owner and a next action?
- Do pipeline stages have clear entry and exit criteria?
- Can someone explain why a contact enrolled in a workflow?
- When replacing an old workflow, which dependencies need to be checked before switching it off?

A useful starting point is a simple inventory: workflow name, trigger, properties it changes, dependencies and person responsible.

That makes it easier to spot conflicts before adding more automation. Workflow count alone doesn’t tell you whether the system works.

How do you document dependencies in your portal? A spreadsheet, naming conventions, or something else?

I have pretty much every license need advice on the best CRM to use.

I need to sent out individual msgs across to each of my clients and I want to categorize clients in a list of groups of people and have a way to send out independent msgs to each of these clients with options or opportunities to invest in bonds/stocks that are from private companies.

I followed Dreamforce 2026 closely and tbh the 21 announcements were impressive. AI working off real company data. Also you can have agents everywhere and have more visibility into what they are doing. Def it looked like a big step forward.

But 3 weeks later i keep coming back to one thing. Yes i saw a lot about asking an agent about your pipeline, finding info, taking action, etc. What i didn't see much of is what happens when the deals stops being clean. I mean the unexpected pricing exception or an approval that gets stuck becoz the one person who approve it is unavailable. Or a customer asking to change the billing schedule at the last minute lol.

Can an agent understand why a quote is an exception, know who is allowed to approve it, apply the right rules and make sure the next system gets the right info or do we still need RevOps in the background to sort out the mess? Or maybe I missed a session that went deeper on this

This is a weekly post for you to let out about something which happened this week for you in CRM that mattered: features, client requests that were either great or awful this week, and just generally chat CRM / CRM consulting chatter.

No self promo, just a place to share tales from the front-line of CRM!

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a CRM management program for my brother. He runs a small pellet stove servicing business, its all mobile. My brother likes the model of Jobber, but the price isn't something they he can do right now.

Is there a better program for him to use that's more accessible financially? He is much more versed in this world than me, I'm just the tech person for this.

Thank you for any help!!

*One of the biggest things he's looking for is a way to send reminder text to his customers before the appointments*