Top CRMs Used for Industrial Sales

4 MIN. READ

In order to integrate IndustrySelect with the most commonly used CRMs among our userbase, we recently turned to our thousands of customers in industrial sales, marketing, and business development to find out what CRM they used to manage interactions with their industrial clients. The results of the survey were very revealing, and we thought we would share these results with you today.

What is CRM?

Surprisingly, 30% of those responding to our CRM survey of industrial sales professionals reported “I Don’t Use a CRM,” and a few even responded to the survey with questions about what exactly CRMs are.

CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management,” referring to any tools and techniques that are used to maintain and improve your relationships with customers.

CRM software is a type of system, usually cloud based, that streamlines this process, centralizing all your customer data, including purchase history, customer interactions, and buying behavior in one place. In short, it provides a way for businesses to have both a practical grasp of every customer interaction and also glean insight into their customers’ needs.

What does IndustrySelect have to do with CRM?

Many sales, marketing, and business development executives use CRMs in tandem with their IndustrySelect subscription. IndustrySelect is a live industrial database subscription that provides sales and marketing leads, including direct executive contact information and other actionable data among 500,000 companies in the manufacturing, energy, and cannabis sectors. IndustrySelect works seamlessly with CRM software in that users can create a pool of leads based on very specific criteria and then export those leads to their favorite CRM.

Top CRMs for Industrial Sales

There are a ton of CRMs out there, far too many to list in this post, but the following CRMs proved to be most popular for industrial sales according to our survey. Based on 275 respondents, here are top 10 CRMs used for industrial sales.

1. Salesforce (34.38%)

Salesforce is arguably the “Google” of CRMs, commanding a 19.5% worldwide market share, more than double that of its nearest rival (SAP – which, interestingly is not on our top list).

Their cloud-based software boasts a powerful platform that helps sales, marketing and customer service departments in a given organization communicate about their customers. More than a third of IndustrySelect users report using Salesforce.

2. Hubspot (19.27%)

Our second most popular CRM, Hubspot, has seen massive growth since its founding in 2006 by two MIT graduates.

Back then, their focus was centered on the concept of inbound marketing, one that would completely transform marketing in the decade that followed.

Hubspot has expanded to incorporate many tools and strategies for managing marketing campaigns and customer relationships, including its free CRM, which allows users to access company and task reporting dashboards.

A paid, “enterprise” version provides access to a more comprehensive set of reports and analytics.

3. Microsoft Dynamics (13.54%)

Like Hubspot and Salesforce, Microsoft’s contribution to the CRM world helps sales, marketing and customer service teams coordinate their interactions with customers.

Microsoft Dynamics is customer-focused, with features including contract management; territory/quote management and database management, available as both a cloud-based systems or on-premise.

4. Zoho CRM (10.94%)

Zoho’s cloud-based CRM package is available for free for up to ten users, making it a popular choice for small to medium-sized businesses.

What’s unique about this system is that all customer interactions, including those online, on the phone or in-person, are managed from one place. Additionally, their real-time function allows other businesses to observe all customer interactions with sales, marketing and customer service through a live feed.

5. ACT! (5.37%)

ACT!, our fifth most popular CRM for industrial sales, features CRM and marketing automation in one. Features of their software include opportunity management, dashboard reports.

Integrating with Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Contacts and Gmail, this product allows users to interface with other software for seamless communication and analysis. Their software also allows users to access data from other ACT users on the web.

6. Insightly (2.6%)

Insightly is marketed more towards small businesses, looking to eventually scale up and is a favorite for start-ups.

This cloud-based software provides API Access, contact management and database management and has a free version available for up to two users. Unique to this system is its military-grade encryption for customer data --a useful feature in this age of stricter privacy laws.

7. Sugar CRM (2.08%)

Sugar CRM won PCMag’s Business Choice Award for Customer Experience four times and provides both CRM and marketing automation applications.

Their cloud-based systems allows marketing, sales and customer service teams to communicate across all stages of the customer lifecycle.

They have several tiers of pricing, from $52/month for small businesses to $1,000/month for their “Sugar Market” full enterprise version.

8. Freshsales (2.0%)

Freshsales is communication-oriented, with a unique cloud-based system that permits users to make calls and send emails straight from the platform and provides data on important customer actions such as when an email is opened or a link clicked.

They offer a free, limited version that companies can try out and upgrade to a more enterprise-style version with more advanced functions such as lead scoring.

9. Pipeliner CRM (1.5%)

Pipeliner is sales-focused and affords sales teams the opportunity to monitor leads from the early general interest stage to after-sales.

Their software provides API access and includes funnel reporting, pipeline management and database management. This software is hosted on-premise.

10. Oracle Sales Cloud (1.04%)

Oracle Sales Cloud provides a vast number of capabilities for sales teams including productivity tools and real-time insights. Their platform includes a customer management systems, sales performance and partner relations management tools and advanced analytics that encompasses data visualization for at-a-glance insights.

Other top CRMs reported in the survey included Close; Streak; Agile CRM and LionDesk.

Are you looking for quality industrial sales leads to fill your favorite CRM? Get live access to our database of 500,000 industrial companies and one million executives, including up to 40 data points to help you identify and pre-qualify the best leads.

Click here to try out a free demo.