Andrew MartinAs a B2B business, staying ahead of your competitors and scaling your company require not just understanding your clients but proactively managing relationships with them. A CRM for B2B companies is a tool designed to streamline and strengthen interactions between your business and your clients.
From enhanced communication to strategic decision-making, a robust CRM is a critical asset for any enterprise. But how do you choose the right CRM with so many options on the market?
Here, we dive into the basics of B2B CRMs and some of the top platforms out there. We’ll also discuss what to look for in a CRM. As a result, you can make the right decision for your business.
Key Takeaways:
- According to Gartner, sales reps only have 5% of a customer’s time during their B2B buyer journey. A typical buying group for a complex B2B product involves six to 10 decision-makers.
- B2B buying journeys are long and complex, and reps have little time to influence the decision. The stakes are high, so you need an excellent sales strategy and a powerful CRM for B2B companies.
- The best CRMs for B2B companies help track customers at each stage of their long buying journey. A CRM helps you improve the customer experience and win more deals.
- When evaluating B2B CRMs, you must consider each platform’s feature set, configuration options, ease of use, integrations, and customer support options.
- Some of the top B2B CRMs include Teamgate, Salesforce, HubSpot Sales Hub, Zoho CRM, Nutshell, Insightly, Pipedrive, Close, Salesflare, and NetSuite CRM.
Contents:
- Teamgate
- Salesforce
- HubSpot Sales Hub
- Zoho CRM
- Nutshell
- Insightly
- Pipedrive
- Close
- Salesflare
- NetSuite CRM
What Is CRM for B2B Companies?
CRM for B2B companies is a software solution that helps manage customer relationships. The idea of a B2B CRM is fundamentally the same as that of a B2C CRM—to guide customers through your sales funnel and offer prompt support to improve repeat sales and cultivate brand advocacy.
However, B2B customer relationships are more complex. That’s why finding a solution with the right feature set is critical. For example, a CRM for B2B companies must collect insightful sales data. The CRM must also have extensive reporting features so you can use the sales data to make data-driven decisions.
How to Evaluate CRMs for B2B Companies
The factors you should consider when evaluating a CRM for B2B companies include its feature set, configuration options, ease of use, integrations, and customer support options.
Features Useful for B2B Companies
Features like pipeline management and workflow automation are critical for B2B companies with long sales processes. The best CRMs for B2B companies also offer features like sales forecasting, extensive reporting, and omnichannel outreach capabilities.
Configuration Options
Customization and configuration options enable you to use the CRM in a way that fits your needs without investing in an expensive, fully customized solution.
Ease of Use
A complex interface can be time-consuming to implement. Complex solutions require you to invest excessive time and resources in training. Even with training, complex solutions can result in inefficiency. Look for easy-to-use solutions for maximum productivity.
Integrations
CRMs that integrate with popular business apps help automate workflows. For example, a CRM that integrates with platforms like Xero can help track sales, income, and value for each customer without manual work.
Customer Support
A knowledgeable support team that responds quickly ensures you never have to put business on hold because of a problem with the CRM. Look for solutions that offer real-time support options, such as phone support and live chat.
1. Teamgate
Rating: 4.4/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Lead qualification and contact management
- Drag-and-drop sales pipeline
- Native call management feature called SmartDialer
- Built-in analytics and reporting
- Integrations for business apps like Slack, Mailchimp, and more
- Track KPIs like conversion and retention rates
Teamgate is a highly configurable and easy-to-use CRM for B2B companies of all sizes. It offers an extensive feature set, including features like lead management, contact management, and native call management (SmartDialer). These features help nurture leads right from their first interaction with your company to the moment they complete the purchase.
Teamgate integrates with popular business platforms like Slack, Google Drive, and Quickbooks. Integrating these apps helps streamline and automate your sales processes. For example, suppose a customer pitches your product to the buying committee, and they send an email requesting help. Teamgate can alert your team about this email via a message in the relevant Slack channel.
Teamgate also offers a sales dashboard that helps track sales performance. The dashboard monitors sales targets, so you can always act quickly when needed.
The CRM’s extensive analytics and reporting capabilities help identify opportunities to improve customer journeys and internal processes. Optimize your sales strategy based on insights from analytics and reporting to improve conversions and retention.
Pricing for Teamgate starts at $9 per user/month when billed annually. It’s one of the most affordable B2B CRM options on the market today.
2. Salesforce
Rating: 4.3/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Contact and account management
- Ability to create custom objects, rules, fields, calculations, and views
- Quote and order management
- Knowledge base
- Forecasting and reporting
Salesforce CRM is an excellent choice for large companies and enterprises. The cloud-based CRM offers an extensive feature set that helps improve B2B customer journeys, no matter how complex.
The CRM includes features like lead management, opportunity tracking, customer journey management, sales forecasting, and more. Salesforce also has built-in workflow automation features to make your processes more efficient.
However, the extensive feature set comes at the expense of ease of use. If you’re a large enterprise, Salesforce is a good option. Small and medium businesses may find Salesforce to be overkill.
Salesforce pricing will depend on the services you need. For example, Sales Cloud pricing starts at $25 per user/month when billed annually.
3. HubSpot Sales Hub
Rating: 4.4/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Contact management
- Live chat
- Reporting dashboard
- Rep productivity performance stats
- Custom objects
HubSpot Sales Hub is one of the most popular CRMs. It offers everything you need to manage B2B sales and customer relationships. Unlike Salesforce, HubSpot has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface.
The CRM offers a generous free version, which offers access to features like the email template builder, AI email writer, and live chat software. More advanced features available on the paid plans include conversation routing, predictive lead scoring, and recurring revenue tracking.
The HubSpot App Marketplace includes over 1,400 custom integrations. These integrations help connect the apps you use to manage your B2B company with your CRM.
Pricing for the Sales Hub starts at $450/month when billed annually for up to five users. Other plans are available, including Enterprise.
4. Zoho CRM
Rating: 4/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Predictive sales
- Omnichannel support
- Anomaly detectors
- Opportunity management
Zoho CRM is a complete CRM solution for B2B companies looking for an established but pocket-friendly solution. The CRM has a free version that offers features like lead and contact management, deal management, custom list views, and Zapier integration.
The paid plans offer various advanced features based on your selected pricing tier. Examples of paid features include anomaly detectors, autoresponders, and field-level security. Zoho CRM also has built-in reporting and analytics tools that offer insights needed to optimize customer journeys.
Zoho CRM offers a free trial, so you can test drive the CRM. The Standard pricing plan then starts at $14 per user/month when billed annually.
5. Nutshell
Rating: 4.2/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop pipeline board
- Sales and lead reporting
- Embeddable web forms
- One-click integrations with Slack, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and more
Nutshell is a great CRM for small businesses looking for an affordable B2B CRM. The CRM doesn’t offer a free tier. However, all pricing tiers include unlimited contacts and data storage, live support, a suite of customizable reporting tools, and migration assistance from the Nutshell team.
Nutshell offers embeddable web forms that bring in leads from your website. Once leads roll in, the drag-and-drop pipeline board and interactive lead map enable you to manage and nurture leads efficiently.
The easy-to-use CRM integrates into popular business apps, including QuickBooks, Google Workspace, and Slack. The app is also available on iPhone and Android, so your team can stay connected and collaborate wherever they are.
Nutshell’s Foundation plan starts at $16 per user/month. There are three other plans to choose from, including Pro, Power AI, and Enterprise.
6. Insightly
Rating: 4.2/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Contract and account management
- Forecasting and reporting
- Web-to-lead capture
- Kanban view
Insightly offers customizability and scalability, allowing your B2B company to build sales pipelines, improve productivity, and deliver remarkable customer experiences.
The modern yet affordable CRM offers all the essentials, including the ability to centralize and manage customer and sales data and integrations. Insightly also offers enterprise-level products, price books, and quotes (PPQ) functionality. PPQ allows you to quickly search and manage a large product or service portfolio within the platform.
Insightly auto-connects products and services to specific opportunities, minimizing the risk of human error and improving efficiency. This can be a valuable proposition for companies with long and complex buyer journeys.
Insightly’s Plus plan starts at $29 per user/month when billed annually. Two other pricing plans are available: Professional and Enterprise.
7. Pipedrive
Rating: 4.2/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Customized pipelines
- Streamlined lead routing
- Drag-and-drop interface to manage sales opportunities
- Meeting, email, and video call scheduling
- Lead filtering and segmentation
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM for businesses of all sizes. However, Pipedrive does offer other additional features as well, such as email tracking and reports, third-party integrations, and visual dashboards.
Pipedrive’s built-in marketing automation features help generate and nurture leads at scale. For example, you can configure rules on Pipedrive that trigger email and text campaigns based on their last interaction with your business.
Pipedrive offers comprehensive pipeline management capabilities. For example, you can add values, win probability, and estimate closure dates for each deal. Visualizing each deal with critical metrics helps track progress and determine the right time to reach out to a lead.
Pipedrive Essential starts at $14.90 per user/month billed annually. There are a range of other plans available, depending on your specific needs.
8. Close
Rating: 4.6/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Power Dialer
- Custom fields
- Opportunity funnel reports
- Integrations for Zoom, Zapier, Calendly, and more
- Call forwarding and call recording
Close is tailor-made for small businesses. It’s a powerful, easy-to-use CRM loaded with features. Close takes essential CRM features a step further. For example, the contact management features include the ability to communicate with contacts in multiple ways, such as through the Power and Predictive dialers and by building email and text message sequences.
The CRM integrates with many popular business apps, including Gmail, Zoom, and Zapier. However, Close has limited marketing features. The CRM doesn’t offer a free plan but does have a 14-day trial. After the trial, plans start at $49 per month for one user.
9. Salesflare
Rating: 4.8/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Automate CRM data input
- Create custom dashboards
- Customer contract management
- Track emails, links, and website visits
- Personalized email campaigns
Salesflare is an intelligent, easy-to-use CRM. It offers a zero-input pipeline tool that eliminates the need for manual data entry by automatically filling out your address book and tracking interactions with people you contact.
Salesflare pulls data from company databases, email, calendar, phone, and social media. It uses this data to create automated customer timelines that keep you informed about everything you need to know to close more deals.
Salesflare pricing starts at $29 per user/month billed annually. If you need additional features, you can also choose between the Pro plan ($49 per user/month) and the Enterprise plan ($99 per user/month).
10. NetSuite CRM
Rating: 4/5 (G2)
Key Features:
- Opportunity, upsell, and quote management
- Track and measure prospect activity to determine readiness to buy
- Automated case management
- Built-in reporting, real-time analytics, and role-based dashboards
NetSuite by Oracle is an advanced CRM system. It offers all the basics, including sales force automation, customer service management, and marketing automation. Plus, the CRM also offers the ability to manage sales commissions, revenue forecasts, and quotes from a single platform.
The CRM provides sales, marketing, and support teams with a unified view of customer interactions, transactions, and preferences. As a result, your teams can deliver consistent and personalized experiences across touchpoints.
As for pricing, you must contact the Oracle NetSuite sales team for a custom quote.
Choose Teamgate as Your B2B CRM
Designed with user-friendliness at its core, Teamgate CRM empowers you to manage sales processes effortlessly. Unlike other over-customized solutions, Teamgate’s configurability ensures you have all the tools you need without the headache of unnecessary complexity.
From organizing new leads to closing deals, Teamgate has the tools you need for success. Learn more about Teamgate today by starting a free trial or scheduling a free demo.
CRM for B2B FAQs
Q: What is a CRM for B2B companies?
A: CRM for B2B companies is a software solution that helps manage customer relationships. It guides customers through your sales funnel, offers prompt support to improve repeat sales, and cultivates brand advocacy. B2B CRMs are designed to handle the complexities of B2B customer relationships, collecting insightful sales data and providing extensive reporting features for data-driven decisions.
Q: Why is a CRM essential for B2B businesses?
A: A CRM for B2B companies is crucial because it streamlines and strengthens interactions between the business and its clients. It aids in enhanced communication, strategic decision-making, and tracking customers throughout their long buying journey, ultimately improving the customer experience and winning more deals.
Q: How do B2B buying journeys differ from B2C?
A: B2B buying journeys are longer and more complex, often involving 6 to 10 decision-makers. Sales reps typically have only 5% of a customer’s time during their B2B buyer journey, making it essential to have an effective sales strategy and a powerful CRM for B2B companies.
Q: What should businesses consider when evaluating B2B CRMs?
A: When evaluating B2B CRMs, businesses should consider the platform’s feature set, configuration options, ease of use, integrations, and customer support options.
Q: How does Teamgate CRM benefit B2B companies?
A: Teamgate CRM is highly configurable and user-friendly, suitable for B2B companies of all sizes. It offers features like lead management, contact management, native call management, and built-in analytics. Teamgate integrates with popular business platforms and provides a sales dashboard to track performance, helping businesses nurture leads and optimize sales strategies.
Q: Are there any specific features that a CRM for B2B companies should have?
A: A CRM for B2B companies should offer features like pipeline management, workflow automation, sales forecasting, extensive reporting, and omnichannel outreach capabilities. Customization and integration options, ease of use, and robust customer support are also essential.
Q: Why is ease of use important when selecting a CRM for B2B companies?
A: Ease of use is crucial because a complex interface can be time-consuming to implement and require excessive training. Even with training, complex solutions can lead to inefficiencies. Easy-to-use solutions ensure maximum productivity.
