The difference between marketing automation software and customer relationship management (CRM) software can be confusing. While they’re two distinct platforms, they often work side by side. Although these two platforms have the same end goal—revenue generation—understanding how they differ can help you properly integrate them for maximum results. Main Differences Between CRM & Marketing Automation…
About the Author
Christine Gomolka
Christine is a contributor for Fit Small Business specializing in sales and technology. Her professional background is in IT and software sales. She’s worked for start-ups and Fortune 500’s alike before transitioning into entrepreneurship. She writes from experience on topics such as sales enablement software, management, and training.
When she isn’t writing, she’s spending time with her rescue dog, practicing yoga, and spending as much time at the beach as possible. She’s also a life skills mentor for Age Out Angels, an organization dedicated to young adults transitioning out of the foster care system.
What Is CRM Reporting?
Reporting capabilities are one of the most valuable customer relationship management (CRM) features. Reports pull all of the information your team spends so much time amassing and allows you to derive actionable business insights from it. CRM reporting’s usefulness goes beyond simply tracking sales; the insights they provide help you operate faster and smarter. Let’s…
5 Best HIPAA-compliant CRMs for Healthcare
HIPAA-compliant customer relationship management (CRM) software is critical for healthcare organizations. This is because attracting and retaining new patients or clients needs to be a top priority for services to stay relevant and competitive. We identified the top five CRMs that comply with the latest patient privacy rules to help your practice or health-related service…
The 7 Best Sales Management Books
To be an effective sales manager, you must first be an effective salesperson. It’s not so much about your resume as it is about understanding how to be an effective seller yourself. You can’t teach what you don’t know. The following books are a mix of not only management topics, but tried-and-true selling techniques. Predictable…
Account Manager vs Account Executive
Account managers (AM) and account executives (AE) are both an important part of an effective sales strategy. Simply put, AEs bring in new business and are often referred to as “hunters,” while AMs take care of existing business by “farming” the existing client for retention and additional opportunities. Both roles fall into the sales function…
Free Sales Tracking Software
Whether you’re working on 10 deals at once or starting a business, sales tracking software helps you stay on top of sales numbers. If you’re still using spreadsheets to manage customers, it may be time to modernize sales operations. We’ve identified a number of free versions and trials of sales tracking software that can help…
6 Best CRMs for Sales Operations
The sales operations role—also known as sales ops—helps sales teams do their jobs more efficiently. The sales ops role is shifting to focus more on managing the sales technology stack, specifically customer relationship management (CRM) software. It’s crucial that your CRM not only works optimally for sales reps, but for the support staff that assist…
How to Organize & Track Your Sales Leads in 7 Steps
Leads, customers, and prospects are critical stages within your business cycle. When you properly track leads, business results become more clear. In addition, properly tracked leads indicate how well a salesperson is doing their job and how to improve your sales process for better results. Leads should be organized by source, level of interest, and…
Measuring CRM Success: A Beginner’s Guide
The success of any customer relationship management (CRM) software is based on whether it helps you to better serve your customers and meet your company’s goals. Now that you’ve chosen and implemented a CRM and trained your team on how to use it, it’s time to track and analyze the business results generated by your…
6 Best CRMs for Mailchimp Integration 2020
Integrating your CRM with Mailchimp allows you to create email campaigns that laser-target your prospects. Mailchimp is one of the most widely used email marketing platforms for small businesses, so we took a deep dive into which CRMs offer the best integrations in 2020. We looked at dozens of CRMs based on features, price, and…
How to Submit Your URL to Google in 4 Steps
Getting found in search isn’t always easy, but a good first step in increasing your site’s search visibility is to submit your URL to Google. By doing so, you’re helping Google to recognize your site so that it can be considered for search results. It’s free and can be done in just a couple of…
6 Best Zoho Alternatives for 2020
Zoho CRM is a leading CRM software with features that include contact and lead management as well as HR functionality and social media integrations. However, it’s not always the best solution given its size and complexity. In this article, we found the six best Zoho alternatives based price, features, and functionality, arriving at the best…