Keeping on top of active leads and managing the day to day relationship with clients is an area of your business that can’t be ignored. We’ve helped many of our clients translate their piles of client notes and stacks of business cards into a system that works for them. It’s important to understand the options and limitations of each system before investing the time in setting up your CRM. The key here is that it needs to work for you so you will use it!

Consider the following when selecting your CRM:

- Integration: What other tools or systems are you currently utilizing that your new CRM will need to easily integrate with ? Think: calendars, email, website, accounting, event software, email marketing, shopping carts.

- Make a list of your must-haves. What are your top three requirements for your CRM? Most CRMs will not be able to handle your lengthy list of requests so narrow it down. Think: price, levels of access, analytics, contact categorization, lead or client progression tracking, mailings, scheduling, social media integration.

Below are a few of our favorites:

- Salesforce: the Cadillac of CRMs, it literally does everything and integrates with just about anything! The only downside here is the pricetag per user (and) it may do more than you actually need.

- Highrise: Built by the creators of our PM tool, Basecamp. It also plays well with others- especially Basecamp! Biggest downside here is that it does not allow for recurring appointments- which means ongoing manual entry.

- ZohoCRM: The basic version of this is free and it offers alot of sophisticated options at this level including email and calendar integration. Downside: Can be confusing to setup and doesn’t integrate as well as the others.