Ok, some background.
First, I worked at the company that developed the CRM, so I know the guy who developed it (in fact, he remains my programmer to this day). His description of it is even more strongly negative than mine. He can't do much though as he's pulled in a million directions.
In terms of issues, the big one I have is being able to search leads by vehicle, so when you add new inventory, you can go back and search through the leads and see who has been interested in that vehicle and send them off an email. That is not possible. It's actually weird as most info is auto imported from trader or the site (our 2 big sources of leads) yet the vehicle is not one of them. You have to manually add that. There is no email functionality whatsoever.
Plus, there are some huge sync issues. The CRM in integrated with the inventory on our site. That inventory is pulled from a feed from trader, so theoretically the trader inventory should be the same as the site inventory. But that is not the case. I've had leads come in from the site that I deleted from trader literally a week (or weeks) earlier, and then when I search for them in the backend of the site I can't find them. Or when I search the inventory on the front end. So i have no idea how they found these cars. I can get there with an exact link though.
Plus there are other tabs within the CRM that remain useless....3years later (I worked there when it was launched). Meaning there is still a fairly high manual element. Its because of this and the other shortcomings that no one uses it.
I got the job cuz I made their website - my "day job" these days is affiliate marketing - which means 1. I know my way around software, 2. this position isn't my bread and butter, which means I'm a little more relaxed and have freedom in terms of what I say and do, and 3. know a thing or two about persuasion and conversion. All of that, that, plus the fact that I used to teach college English (meaning good spelling and grammar, quickly typed forum posts excluded) is why he offered the position to me. I am officially tasked with developing the internet department. And I have to say...I don't really know what I'm doing.
Sorry for the tangent. I wanted to give the full picture of where I'm coming from.
Anyway, there is only 1 CRM, but it is so integrated with the inventory that he is hesitant to change. Plus, we get the whole shebang for $300 a month. I don't know what other CRMs cost, but I'd think it would be more. Perhaps if it was in the $500 a month range maybe. How much do decent ones cost?
Any other thoughts? Please let me know!
