Managing a sales funnel can be a massive task if you don’t have the right tools. We’ve implemented a few different things here, but one critical for our business to business sales is Base CRM. It’s the most intuitive platform that we’ve found out of approximately 20 that we have researched or used over the years. Why is it awesome? A few key points below.

1. Mobile Integration. Their mobile app is fantastic. In past systems we had to lean on Outlook to keep our contacts up to date, in Base we just rely on it. When customers call we see it’s from them. If we need to make notes after a meeting, we just put them in the app while thoughts are fresh. Need to send a quick email or look up your customers phone number? It’s in there.
2. Deals. Whether mobile or on the desktop, the deals tab is fantastic. You can easily review and change the opportunity position from prospecting, qualified, quote, won with a click, change the associated contact, close date, etc.
3. Separate Leads From Contacts. Some systems combine all into “contacts” and segregate with tags instead. Base allows tags too which I like, but I’d rather keep the two cleanly separate and use tagging as a back up to build into. Tagging can quickly spiral into a mess if you don’t have a good plan.
4. Task Manager. We use this selectively since it can spiral out of control pretty quick. My tip would be to think of what is truly a task and make it a specific note. Organize your tasks by a preface like “Sample follow up-60 days, or Preorder for Event-XXX, or Setup Meeting for Event” so you can sort and recognize what is truly critical versus “follow up”.
5. Calendar. The calendar is fantastic as well to manage your appointments directly from Base, again avoiding what is typical of using Outlook or other platforms which require redundant work.
6. Email Integration. This is the big one for me. You can send emails direct from base and use templates too. There are benefits to this with tracking that are great, but I still use Outlook as my email platform and love that it automatically syncs my emails, inbound and outbound, to the contact or lead records in base.

Base CRM is a win for us and word on the street is that they have email automation coming soon which we’re very excited about. Currently we use another system for that which is what controls reorder points and product information emails and though it works well, a consolidation will make our lives that much easier. Want to learn more? Base is just my contribution, see the article at TechLi which has 13 other tips featured in addition to mine which are all fantastic! Learn more at Techli