How to choose your CRM

Most companies choose a CRM the same way they choose a car: they look at features, read reviews, and pick the one that sounds most impressive. They want the CRM with the most integrations, the fanciest automation, and the biggest brand name. Then they implement it, and within three months, half the team has gone back to spreadsheets.

The problem isn't the CRM. The problem is choosing based on what sounds good rather than what actually fits your workflow. A CRM with 200 features is useless if the five features you actually need don't work the way you work. An enterprise platform designed for 500-person sales teams will frustrate a 5-person consultancy, no matter how powerful it is.

I've helped dozens of companies choose and implement CRMs, and the pattern is always the same. The companies that succeed pick a CRM that matches their actual workflow, integrates with their existing tools, and is simple enough that everyone actually uses it. The companies that struggle pick based on features, brand reputation, or what their competitors use.

This chapter gives you a simple framework to choose a CRM based on what actually matters: does it handle your core workflow well, does it talk to your other tools, and will your team actually use it? By the end, you'll know exactly how to assess your options and pick the CRM that disappears into your workflow instead of fighting against it.

Before we talk about which CRM to choose, let's establish the baseline. Every CRM, regardless of price or complexity, must do three things well: manage contacts, track deals, and log activities. If a platform can't handle these basics, nothing else matters.

Contact management means storing information about people and companies in a way that's easy to find and update. At minimum, you need names, email addresses, phone numbers, and company associations. But more importantly, you need to see the relationship history. When did you last talk to this person? What did you discuss? What are the open action items? A good CRM shows you this context immediately when you open a contact record, so you're never starting conversations from zero.

HubSpot does this well with a timeline view that shows every email, meeting, and note in chronological order. Pipedrive keeps it simpler with a contact card and linked activities. Folk takes a different approach with a visual interface that feels more like a personal address book. All three work, they just present the information differently. The question isn't which is objectively better, it's which presentation matches how your brain works.

Deal tracking means seeing where every opportunity sits in your sales process and what needs to happen next. You need pipeline stages that reflect your actual sales motion, not generic templates. If your sales process is discovery call, technical demo, proposal, negotiation, closed, then those should be your stages. If you're running a consultancy where deals progress through audit, pilot, build, optimise, your stages should reflect that.

The key is that moving a deal from one stage to the next should mean something specific happened. A deal doesn't move from discovery to demo just because time passed. It moves because the prospect agreed to a demo. This keeps your pipeline honest and makes forecasting actually useful. Salesforce gives you complete flexibility to customise stages but requires configuration work. Pipedrive gives you sensible defaults that work for most B2B sales. HubSpot sits in the middle with customisable pipelines that are easier to set up than Salesforce.

Activity tracking means logging what you're actually doing with prospects and customers. Emails sent, calls made, meetings held, proposals delivered. The best CRMs do this automatically. When you send an email from Gmail to a contact in your CRM, it should log automatically. When you have a calendar meeting with a prospect, it should appear in their activity timeline without manual entry.

This automation matters because manual logging doesn't happen. Your sales team is busy. They're not going to remember to log every call and email at the end of the day. If activity tracking requires manual work, you'll have incomplete data, which means you can't actually see what's working. HubSpot's Gmail and Outlook integrations handle this automatically. Pipedrive does it through their email sync. Even simpler CRMs like Folk can track email activity if you BCC their tracking address.

These three functions are the foundation. If a CRM doesn't handle contact management, deal tracking, and activity logging in a way that makes sense for your workflow, stop looking at it. Nothing else matters if the basics are broken.

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Once you've confirmed a CRM handles the basics, the next step is identifying which additional features you actually need. This is where most people go wrong. They see a long feature list and assume more features equals better CRM. But features you don't use are just complexity that slows everything down.

Start by listing the five things you do most often in your sales process. For a consultancy, it might be: send discovery meeting invitations, take notes during calls, send proposals, follow up on proposals, and track project start dates. For a SaaS company, it might be: qualify inbound leads, run product demos, send trial follow-ups, track product usage, and hand off to customer success.

Your CRM must handle these five things smoothly. If any of them requires a workaround or a third-party integration that feels clunky, that CRM isn't right for you. This is your must-have list. Everything else is nice-to-have.

Let me give you concrete examples. If you're a consultancy doing discovery calls, client work, and retainers, you need meeting scheduling, project association, and recurring revenue tracking. HubSpot handles all three natively. You can embed their meeting scheduler on your website, associate deals with projects, and track monthly recurring revenue in the deal record. Pipedrive can do this too, but project association requires custom fields and recurring revenue needs a separate subscription tracking system.

If you're a product-led SaaS company where users sign up for trials and you convert them through product usage and automated emails, you need user lifecycle stages, product event tracking, and marketing automation. HubSpot is built for this with lifecycle stages and deep marketing automation. Pipedrive is not built for this. You'd need to bolt on multiple integrations to make it work, and it would never feel native.

If you're an agency managing multiple clients with ongoing projects, you need client portals, project linking, and team collaboration features. HubSpot's Service Hub can create client portals. Salesforce can do this with custom configuration. Pipedrive doesn't really have this capability without heavy customisation. Folk definitely doesn't have it.

The pattern here is simple: different businesses need different things. The question isn't "which CRM has the most features?" It's "which CRM has the features I actually use built in, so I'm not cobbling together workarounds?"

Here's a quick filter for nice-to-have vs must-have. If you can honestly say "we've been doing fine without this feature for the past year," it's nice-to-have. If you're currently using a spreadsheet, a separate tool, or manual process to handle something, and it's painful, that's must-have.

One more thing about feature bloat: complex CRMs with hundreds of features often do each thing adequately but nothing exceptionally. Salesforce can do almost anything if you configure it right, but it's not exceptional at any single thing out of the box. HubSpot is exceptional at inbound marketing and sales alignment but overkill if you just need simple deal tracking. Pipedrive is exceptional at visual pipeline management but limited for complex sales processes.

The 80/20 rule applies here. Pick the CRM that does your five most important things perfectly, even if it only does those five things. Don't pick the CRM that does 50 things adequately. You'll spend all your time configuring features you don't need instead of actually selling.

Your CRM doesn't exist in isolation. It needs to talk to your email, your calendar, your marketing automation, your proposal tool, your accounting system, and probably five other tools you use daily. If your CRM can't integrate with your existing stack, you're choosing between abandoning tools that work or doing manual data entry between systems. Both options are terrible.

Start with the critical integrations. These are non-negotiable because you use these tools multiple times per day, and manual data transfer would be painful.

Email integration is mandatory. Your CRM must connect to Gmail or Outlook and automatically log sent emails, track opens and clicks, and ideally let you send emails directly from the CRM. HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce all do this well. Folk does it through BCC email forwarding, which works but feels less native.

Calendar integration is mandatory. When you book a meeting with a prospect, it should appear in their CRM timeline automatically. When someone books a meeting through your scheduling link, it should create the contact and log the upcoming meeting. HubSpot does this natively with their meetings tool. Pipedrive integrates with Google Calendar and Outlook. Salesforce requires configuration but supports both.

Marketing automation integration is mandatory if you're running email campaigns, lead magnets, or nurture sequences. Your CRM needs to know which emails someone received, which they opened, and which links they clicked. This is typically where HubSpot shines because the marketing automation is built into the same platform. If you're using Pipedrive or Salesforce, you'll need to integrate with ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, or another marketing automation tool.

Now the secondary integrations. These matter, but you can work around them if needed.

Proposal tools like PandaDoc or DocuSign should integrate with your CRM so that when you send a proposal, it logs automatically and updates the deal stage when signed. HubSpot has native integrations with both. Pipedrive has integrations through their marketplace. Salesforce can integrate with anything if you configure it properly.

Accounting tools like Xero or QuickBooks should sync with your CRM so that when a deal closes, it creates an invoice automatically and when payment is received, it updates the customer record. This integration exists for most major CRMs but often requires Zapier or Make to set up properly.

Customer support tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Intercom should connect to your CRM so that support tickets appear in the customer's timeline. This is important if your sales team needs to know about ongoing support issues before renewal conversations. HubSpot has a native Service Hub that handles this. Salesforce integrates with everything. Pipedrive requires third-party connections.

Here's the practical test: list every tool you use daily and check whether your CRM shortlist has native integrations, marketplace integrations, or requires custom API work. Native integrations are best because they're maintained by the CRM company and usually work reliably. Marketplace integrations work but sometimes break when either tool updates. Custom API integrations require developer time and ongoing maintenance.

HubSpot has the deepest integration ecosystem for marketing and sales tools. If you're using common B2B tools, HubSpot probably integrates natively. Salesforce can integrate with anything but often requires configuration or custom development. Pipedrive has good integrations for sales-specific tools but fewer marketing integrations. Folk has minimal integrations and relies heavily on Zapier.

One final consideration: some CRMs have open APIs that let you build custom integrations if needed. This matters if you're using niche tools or have specific workflow requirements. Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive all have well-documented APIs. Folk's API is more limited. If you think you'll need custom integrations in the future, pick a CRM with a robust API and good developer documentation.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the best CRM in the world is worthless if your team doesn't use it. I've seen companies spend £50,000 implementing Salesforce only to have their sales team continue using Google Sheets because Salesforce felt too complicated. The CRM you choose must be simple enough that your team actually adopts it.

Ease of setup matters because you want to start getting value quickly. If it takes three months to configure your CRM before you can use it, that's three months of paying for a tool that's not helping you sell. HubSpot can be set up and running in a day for basic use cases. Pipedrive takes a few hours. Salesforce typically requires weeks or months of configuration with a consultant. Folk can be set up in an hour.

The trade-off is that CRMs that are quick to set up are usually less customisable. CRMs that require long setup times usually offer more flexibility. You need to decide which matters more for your situation. If you're a 5-person team with a straightforward sales process, quick setup wins. If you're a 50-person team with complex quoting and approval workflows, the configuration time is worth it for the flexibility.

Learning curve matters because if your team finds the CRM confusing, they won't use it consistently. Watch how your team actually works. Are they technical and comfortable with complex software? Or do they prefer simple, intuitive interfaces? Pipedrive has the gentlest learning curve with a visual pipeline that makes sense immediately. HubSpot is more complex but still learnable within a week. Salesforce has a steep learning curve and usually requires formal training.

Test this by doing a trial with your actual team, not just yourself. Give three salespeople access for a week and watch what happens. Do they naturally start using it? Or do they keep asking how to do basic things? If they're struggling after a week, they'll abandon it after implementation.

Mobile access matters if your team works outside the office. Sales reps doing field visits need to log activities and check customer information from their phones. If your CRM's mobile app is clunky or limited, your remote team won't keep records updated. HubSpot's mobile app is solid for basic CRM functions. Pipedrive's mobile app is excellent and feels native. Salesforce's mobile app exists but feels like a stripped-down version of the desktop experience.

Migration complexity matters if you're switching from another CRM or from spreadsheets. Moving contact data is usually straightforward. Moving deal history, activity logs, and custom fields is harder. Some CRMs make this easy with import tools and migration support. Others require manual work or consulting help. HubSpot offers free migration assistance from other major CRMs. Pipedrive has good import tools but less hand-holding. Salesforce migrations typically require consultants.

Here's my practical advice: before you commit, run a one-month pilot with your actual sales process. Import 50 real contacts. Create 10 real deals. Log activities for actual sales conversations. Track proposals. Close a few deals. See if the workflow feels natural or if you're constantly fighting the system.

If your team is still using it enthusiastically after a month, you've found the right CRM. If they're making excuses about why they haven't updated records, you've found the wrong CRM, regardless of how good it looks on paper.

Choosing a CRM comes down to three questions. First, does it handle your core workflow smoothly? If your five most common activities feel clunky or require workarounds, keep looking. Second, does it integrate cleanly with your existing tools? If you'll need to do manual data entry or maintain multiple systems, the CRM will create friction instead of reducing it. Third, will your team actually use it? If it's too complex or doesn't fit how they naturally work, adoption will fail.

The most common mistakes are choosing based on brand reputation, feature count, or price alone. Salesforce isn't automatically the right choice because it's the market leader. HubSpot isn't always best just because it does everything. Pipedrive isn't the answer just because it's affordable. The right CRM for you depends entirely on your specific workflow, integrations, and team.

Apply the 80/20 rule ruthlessly. Pick the CRM that does your core workflow perfectly, even if it doesn't do everything. A CRM that handles your five critical functions beautifully is better than a CRM that handles 50 functions adequately. Simple and excellent beats complex and adequate.

Once you've chosen your CRM, the next challenge is setting it up properly. The next chapter covers how to structure your pipeline stages, configure your fields, and set up automations so your CRM actually helps you sell instead of just storing contact information.