CRM for an individual salesperson.

[Jason Martin]

Hello,

I am the Internet Manager at a Nissan dealership in rural Mississippi. We currently do not have a CRM. Even if we did have one, I would be the only one that used it. So my question is:

Are there any affordable CRM tools I can buy as an individual?

I need help keeping track of my leads and follow ups. I need a tool that will tell me what I need to be doing that day.

Thanks for any help or advice.

Jason

 

[ddavis]

Jason, the typical CRMs that are available for dealerships are very expensive. For an individual, I would suggest Salesforce. You can check it out at Salesforce.com. You might also consider Oncontact or Sage Act. I believe that all have a free trial.

 

[tomfohr]

Check our CarSalesAssistant.com

It was created by a car salesman looking to do the same thing as you are. It is surprisingly robust and should be able to do everything you want and is incredibly affordable.

 

[Jason Martin]

Thanks. I appreciate the replies.

 

[CAORYAN]

you may want to check out a company called ZOHO. They are the google version of salesforce. Lot less expensive.

Thanks. I appreciate the replies.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I've been using Highrise: Small Business CRM, Web-Based Contact Manager for a few years now and it does everything I believe someone would need for an individual CRM (minus VIN decoding and like features).

I believe an individual sales rep would get away with the 49.99 a month package - 30 day free trial

They have integration with MailChimp, could run and manage your individual email list

Have your own blog or landing page on WP? Have your leads from there go straight into HighRise. There's some social features built into the CRM as well. It has a SOLID follow up scheduler and you can respond and record emails using their Dropbox feature. Their Mobile APP is solid too.

I'm sure there are several other options out there to consider but I've always taken a liking to this one.

There might even be a few industry CRM/ILM providers that are still willing to offer your a stripped down / 1 user lic for cheap. I know there used to be but im sure it's hard to justify the resources / revenue.

Big question here - Will a dealer (that's in the know) ALLOW you to have this separate data base of YOUR/THEIR customers?

What happens with all the customers in this CRM if and when you leave the dealership? I guess the reality is - anyone looking for a personal CRM at a dealership isn't working at a dealership that's "in the know". So who would know the difference, as long as your selling cars - right!?

 

[Jason Martin]

Thanks for the reply Jeff and Ryan.

The dealership already uses iMagic ILM. So, when I leave, the dealership will have all of it's customers information retained.

I am starting to get 75+ leads a month and it is getting a little difficult to keep track of the task I need to be doing that day. I need something that is going to tell me who I need to call and email, birthday cards, postcards, and followup task like that.

The doubt the dealer principle will care if I get my own software. Like you said Jeff, as long as I am selling cars, hopefully MORE cars.

Thanks again guys.

 

[tomfohr]

I haven't personally used iMagic ILM but I've sat thru the demo, and it should be able to do what you are looking for. Sounds like the follow up schedules just need some work.

 

[JoeyD]

I'd also want to point out that you can look at deploying a private CRM "PC" with a local Apache server in-house so that it can only be accessed offline, and won't go with you should you change jobs.

The Top 10 Open-Source CRM Solutions

That's a good list of CRMs. I've heard a lot about SugarCRM, but I think it's fairly limited. Zoho.com/crm is another choice, but you'd have to give the dealership management access to your account to avoid any conflict with customer information (at least, I'd require that if you worked for me) so make sure you don't sign up using your Gmail or Facebook login. Create an independent account. You might want to give eLead a call and ask them for pricing information on their lite CRM product strictly for sales tracking, and no desking. Might could talk your dealer into that. But working without a CRM is almost impossible in this century. It's like trying to build a house of cards, no matter how many times you think you got it right, it's only a matter of wind and when it'll fall.

Good luck!