Pipedrive Vs. Freshsales: Official Winner for SMBs

Pipeline management is a great litmus test for whether CRM software is worth your investment. 

Fortunately, Freshsales passed with flying colors.

We could easily customize our pipeline stages and deals dashboard to our needs. 

From there, we added some of our affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire. 

Here’s a look at one of the deal cards we created (in less than a minute). 

We were able to get an overview of each deal, in addition to adding custom fields at the drop of a hat. 

Once our deals were put in, we could drag and drop them between stages in our pipeline. 

Here’s how it looked (during our sixth-month testing window).

We loved the sleek and simple user interface that allowed us to get a bird’s eye view of our sales process (at all times). 

We also really liked that Freshsales provided a nice little congratulatory message for each sales rep who closed a deal (screenshot below). 

This little detail gave credit where credit was due and helped foster friendly competition between sales reps. 

The nuts and bolts: If you’re looking for a no-nonsense pipeline management platform, Freshsales is a fantastic choice. 

If you’re serious about scaling your business, I’ve got three words for you—automate, automate, automate. 

Whether service, sales, or marketing automation, Freshsales offers many automation options to help your business run more efficiently. 

Here’s what we discovered while testing out Freshsales’ automation capabilities (over six months):

• Helpful templates: Freshsales offers pre-built templates and workflows to get your automation up and running quickly.
• Customization: You can also create your own custom rules for automation based on your specific needs.
• Real-time notifications: Get notified immediately from your CRM when a rule is triggered (so you’re always in the loop).

We utilized Freshsales’ automation features to help streamline our lead nurturing process (among many other processes) and free up our sales team to focus on closing deals. 

Here’s an example of some workflow automation templates that are perfect for beginners (and experts alike) to get started with. 

Outside of these templates, there is a bit of a learning curve to Freshsales’ automation creation; however, we think it’s worth the extra effort.

Here are some of the tedious tasks we were able to automate using Freshsales:

• Sending follow-up emails to clients
• Notifying users when a deal was created
• Notifying users when an activity was scheduled
• Automatically assigning sales reps to new leads (based on lead scoring)

The bottom line: Despite the slightly higher learning curve, Freshsales offers a robust and efficient automation system for any business looking to save time and resources. 

Being able to narrow down your prospects based on their level of interest is a game-changer for any sales team. 

With Freshsales’ predicting contact scoring system, you can quickly and easily assess where each lead stands in the buying process. 

Essentially, how this feature works is that you can customize the specific criteria for scoring your leads. 

Here’s how the customization process looked (to give you a better idea). 

From there, each new lead is given a score from 0-100 based on how well they align with your chosen criteria. 

Here are some ways this feature helped us out:

• Identifying high-quality leads: We could pinpoint which leads had the highest likelihood of converting into customers.
• Saving time and resources: By focusing on only the most promising leads, our sales team could prioritize their efforts and close deals faster.
• Providing valuable insights: Freshsales’ lead scoring provided useful data and trends that helped inform our overall sales strategy.

Our takeaway: Freshsales’ lead scoring is a powerful tool for businesses looking to optimize their sales process and increase conversions. 

While it may not seem like the most exciting feature, trust us, it’s a game-changer for cutting through the noise and optimizing your time. 

Connecting to your customers has never been easier with Freshsales’ built-in telephony feature called Freshcaller.  

We could make and receive calls directly from the CRM platform (and mobile device), keeping all our communication in one place. 

To get started with this feature, we simply had to purchase a phone number (at an affordable rate) and add it to our Freshsales account. 

From there, we were able to take advantage of the following telephony features through Freshsales: 

• Mobile and desktop apps for remote calling
• Voicemail transcription for missed calls (so you never miss an important message)
• Call recording to review and analyze customer interactions

We especially loved the mobile version of Freshcaller, which let our sales team connect with clients from the palm of their hands (which was awesome). 

Here’s how it looked from mobile. 

What’s great about having this on the go is that our sales team could easily close deals while on the move (without having to be tied down to a desk all day). 

The breakdown: Freshsales’ telephony feature is a must-have for any business looking for seamless customer engagement. 

It’s simple, convenient, and provides valuable call data to help improve your sales tactics.

Effective contact management can make or break a growing business. 

If you lose track of your contacts, you lose business (and, therefore, money). 

That’s why we were thrilled to see how organized and user-friendly Freshsales’ contact management system was.

We could easily store, manage, and segment our growing contacts list. 

We also loved how easy it was to import contacts from other sources. 

For example, we were able to import from the following (shown below): 

• Excel or CSV form
• Google & Outlook contacts
• Popular CRM platforms

With just a few clicks, we could import all of our B2B affiliate contacts from Small Business Bonfire. 

To really put the CRM software to the test, we added our contacts manually as well. 

Here’s a contact card (to give you some reference). 

Each card was highly customizable and offered a ton of information at just a glance. 

For example, Freshsales provides an entire dashboard (pictured below) where you can create entire folders of custom fields.

We’ve tested a lot of CRMs over the years and can easily say Freshsales offers some of the most customizable contact management on the market.

It’s perfect for niche SMBs that need more specific segmentation options for their contacts. 

Overall, we found the contact management system to be highly efficient and user-friendly, making it a top contender for any SMB looking for an organized and comprehensive CRM solution.

Freshsales impressed us with its comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities. 

It offers a variety of dashboards, each one designed to give you insights into a different aspect of your business. 

Here are some dashboards we found particularly useful:

• Sales: This dashboard gives you a bird’s eye view of your entire sales pipeline. It’s super easy to track deals, spot trends, and identify bottlenecks.
• Activities: Perfect for keeping track of what your team is up to, the Activities Dashboard helps monitor tasks, events, appointments, and their statuses.
• Calls: With the calls dashboard, you can gain insights into call activities, analyze call recordings, and track the productivity of your sales team.
• Chat: This dashboard gives a clear picture of your team’s chat activity, helping you assess how effectively customer queries are handled.

For example, here’s a look at our sales forecasting dashboard (during our six months of testing). 

But that’s not all—one of the key features that sets Freshsales apart is the ability to create custom reports. 

You can tailor reports to your specific needs, deciding what data to include and how to present it.

This flexibility is a huge advantage when gleaning meaningful insights and making data-driven decisions.

Our only complaint with this feature was that our dashboards didn’t update in real time (like other platforms we’ve tested). 

Instead, it sometimes took over an hour for our sales data to reflect accurately. 

The need to know: Freshsales provides a great variety of pre-made reports that are easy to use and highly informative. 

If you want to make more data-driven decisions, Freshsales’ reporting and analytics features are a great place to start.